Sava's remaining years were devoted to establishing the Byzantine principle - that the spiritual authority and temporal power should work hand in hand to guide the state - until 1227 in the person of two brothers and thereafter of uncle and nephew. The autocephaly of the Serbian church was affirmed in every way, not the least in a new manual of Christian law (Nomokanon) which Sava translated or had translated in Saloniki for Serbian use on his way back from Nicaea. This master copy was deposited at Zicha and was still being faithfully copied in the fourteenth century. This code, a selection of both canon and secular law to suit Serbian conditions, remained influential in the Orthodox Balkans, and even in Russia, for centuries to come.

Sava made two pilgrimages to the Holy Land. On the first he made a special study of Palestinian monasticism, staying at the famous house dedicated to his own patron saint near Jerusalem. In Jerusalem itself he set up a hospice for Serbian pilgrims and houses for Serbian monks thus laying the foundation for the active relations which obtained particularly in the fourteenth century. Serbian monks kept up the link with the Monastery of St Sava. His experiences there were applied in the monastic reforms which he put in train in Serbia after his return (no later than early 1230). A rule based on that of St Sava's monastery - the 'Jerusalem Rule' - was more and more widely adopted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the exclusion of the Studite Rule which had been the model for Sava's charters for Studenica and Hilandar. Legend has it that the monks of St Sava presented him with the icon of the Virgin with Three Hands (Trikherousa), reputed to have belonged to St John Damascene who had been a monk there. This Sava took back to Studenica. In 1371 however, to save it from the Turks, the icon was tied to an ass which was turned loose; God caused the animal to find its way to Hilandar, where the icon still is.

With the accession in 1234 of Radoslav's brother, Vladislav, who was married to a daughter of the Bulgarian Emperor Asen, Sava decided that the time had come for him to retire from active affairs. He caused Arsenije to be elected archbishop in his stead and set out in the same year on his second pilgrimage, perhaps with a view to permanent retirement into a Palestinian or Athonite monastery.

(a) It seems improbable that any diplomatic mission had been attached to Sava's journey, as is sometimes suggested, specifically that he was to negotiate at Nicaea in favour of a Bulgarian patriarchate which Vladislav might now wish to promote for his father-in-law. The patriarchate was in fact agreed between John Vatatzes and Asen it spring 1235; but we do not know precisely when Sava was in Nicaea. (b) The frescoes include a fine genealogical tree of the Nemanjich dynasty.

This time, after revisiting Palestine, he went on to various Egyptian monasteries, including St Catharine's on Mount Sinai. Finally, via Nicaea, he arrived at the Bulgarian capital, Turnovo.(a) Here he died on 14 January 1236. His body was first laid in the new church of the Forty Martyrs at Turnovo but soon brought back to the monastery church of the Ascension at Mileshevo. The Bulgarians' request to keep the holy relics was refused.

The Nemanjich dynasty, which had produced its saint and patriot in St Sava, displayed an enthusiasm for pious foundations which did not cease till the collapse of the state before the Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Of the more important may be mentioned briefly the monasteries of Sopochani, built and decorated by Stephen Urosh I (regnabat 1243-76), Grachanica by Stephen Urosh II Milutin (regnabat 1282-1321)(b) and Dechani by Stephen Urosh III (regnabat 1322-31), which earned him the by-name Dechanski. The abbots of these royal foundations counned among the most important functionaries of the state. It is in the interior decoration of these churches, particularly those of the thirteenth century, that the best work of the time in the Byzantine tradition is to be found. For the exiled court of Nicaea and the restored Empire from 1264 were both too poor to devote their resources to splendid building, whereas Serbia was riding the crest of prosperity which her silver mines brought.

If Serbian church interiors, which are the immediate and necessary background of the Orthodox services, were wholly Byzantine in conception, generally Macedonian in style and always having the indispensable symbolic dome over the crossing, their exteriors, as we have noted earlier, often incorporated features of the Western architecture of the Adriatic coast. Craftsmen from Dalmatia were appreciated and ofter more readily available than Greeks. This continued to be true down to the end of Serbian independence. The porch added to the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Ohrid by Archbishop Gregory in 1314 is wholly Italian in style. Dechani, built about 1327-35, amazes by its contrast of an Italianate exterior and a Greek interior; its architect was a Franciscan from Kotor.

Few Serbian rulers between the time of St Sava and the Turkish conquest were without some connections, often close, with the Catholic world. Stephen Urosh I was much under the influence of his Catholic wife Helen, whose open patronage of Catholics caused some misgivmgs among the Orthodox. Her son, Dragutin (regnabat 1276-82) became a Catholic after his deposition. Milutin was obliged to go softly with the considerable number of Catholics in his enlarged state, who had their own bishop. Yet he was the son-in-law of the Emperor and sevastokrator, and recognised Byzantine suzerainty. The coast of old Dioclea remained, as always, largely Catholic. Latin had to be employed side by side with Slav and Greek in Macedonia, the meeting-place of all Balkan currents. No intolerance appears until Stephen Dushan, proclaimed 'Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks' and so crowned at Skopje on 16 April 1346, made clear in his Law Code (1349-54) that  the Serbian Empire, with its new Patriarchate at Pech, was Orthodox. Yet he was not harsh on Catholics: they were no longer allowed to proselytise, and conversely converts to Catholicism were to be persuaded (but not forced) to return to Orthodoxy. We may also note Milutin's veneration of St Nicholas of Bari, who had become a Catholic saint by the felonious transfer of his relics from Myra to Bari in 1087. Again, the style of Serbian coinage was a hotch-potch of Byzantine, Venetian and even Hungarian motifs. While Vladislav's issues were predominantly Byzantine and had Cyrillic inscriptions those of Stephen Urosh I and his successors were more Venetian with Latin inscriptions (VROSIVS REX).

Western traits are visible, though not so immediately, in the literary field also. An early example of this duality is Prince Miroslav's Gospel Book. It was written about 1180-90 in an Athonite-Macedonian ductus of Cyrillic but not by ecclesiastical scribes accustomed to using it (one scribe at least normally used the Latin alphabet) and the ornamentation except for the first miniature, is in the Benedictine style current in Dalmatia. That it was written in Miroslav's province of Hum is further underlined by certain Westernisms of language, clearly of Ragusan provenance. Conversely the Cyrillic ductus current in Serbia from the thirteenth century was strongly under the influence of that of Ragusan documents, itself considerably influenced by contemporary Latin minuscules. This interaction is hardly surprising in a Ragusan chancellery where Latin and Cyrillic documents were written indifferently by the same clerks. Even the principal Lives of the Serbian dynastic saints are not innocent of certain Latin stylistic features.

Serbia remained near the frontier between Orthodox East and Catholic West. Whereas in the early years of the thirteenth century both Serbia and Bulgaria had seemed momentarily within Rome's grasp, by the time of the Council of Lyons (1274) the hastily botched up union engineered by Michael Palaeologos appealed to neither. The day of a restored Papal Illyricum was past. St Sava had decided the direction of the Serbian Church once and for all. Even a recent religious map of Yugoslavia still shows roughly the balance of forces which prevailed in the days of the medieval Serbian Kingdom: a nearly solidly Catholic Croatia and coastline down to Kotor with an Orthodox hinterland except in Bosnia, a patchwork of all possible denominations.

Symeon and his son Sava were early recognised as saints in Serbian piety. Symeon, like the early princes of other Slav countries -Wenceslas, Vladimir and Boris and Gleb - with whom may also be coupled St Stephen of Hungary, remained exclusively a national saint. The Patriarchate of Constantinople was not as a rule eager to recognise such laymen as saints of the Ecumenical church. In their own countries they represented God's Grace manifested towards the legitimate dynasty. St Sava continues to be highly venerated on Athos. He is also recognised as a saint in the Catholic church. The cell which he built in 1199 at the administrative centre of Karyes (Orahovica in Serbian) and himself frequently used for retreat after his father's death, still stands and the Rule which he drew up for it is still followed. For the Serbian church St Sava is not only the first native archbishop but also its Illuminator (prosvetitelj) and Teacher (uchitelj), the proud title accorded to St Cyril the Teacher of the Slavs. His biographers Domentian and Theodosius reflect the temper of the time in stressing that Sava was sent by God to fulfil the unfinished work of his forebears and to integrate Serbia finally into the comity of Eastern Orthodox churches. He was of that small company who sacrifice their own immediate salvation to return to the world for the sake of the salvation of others - the whole Serbian people.

So Sava saw it himself. The close link with Athos proved the keystone of the arch. The saintly pair - Symeon and Sava - represent dynasty and church, the twin pillars of the Serbian state, the source of its remarkable strength. So the Serbians conceived it. All the succeeding members of the house of Nemanja were held to have the Divine charisma for their rule.

The state has need of the church, but the church has no need of the state. Here the church long outlived the state. In the dark days of Ottoman rule the Serbian monasteries were the main foci of Serbian culture. The Turks became so alarmed at the veneration accorded te Sava's relies, not only by their Serbian subjects but also by many Moslems, that they were publicly burnt by Sinan Pasha in 1594.