The Inscription on Kosovo memorial coulmn by St. Stefan Lazarevic

Fresco of St. Stefan Lazarevic from Manasija monastery

St Lazar’s son, St. Stefan Lazarević, had a memorial column inscribed at the site of the battle with a description of the events that took place there. Addressing any man ‘who enters the Serbian land’, the son calls his father ‘the soundest tower of devoutness who possessed the widest expanse of good sense and depth of wisdom’, and then of the battle:

'What Christ wanted, he(St. Lazar) loved; and to that cause, by his own will, he sacrificed himself and all of his men under his command: brave heroes, courageous heroes, real heroes, in word and deed.

They glittered like bright stars in the sky as the earth glimmers with motley flowers, dressed in gold and adorned with precious stones. There were many chosen heroes whose saddles were in gold, and they had the most magnificent and graceful riders.

Like a good shepherd and leader of the most noble and glorious, he wisely led his lambs, endowed with reason, to die in Christ and to accept the crown of suffering and participate in heavenly glory.

So together, the multitude of warriors with the good and great master, with courageous souls and with the soundest faith, rushed at the enemy as they would into a splendid hall with a many-flavored feast.

They trampled underfoot the living snake and they killed the wild beast and the great enemy, the infernal and insatiable glutton Amurar [the Sultan Murad] and his son: the offspring of the elder and the reptile, the lion’s puppy and that of Vasilisk, and with them killed many others.

Oh wonders, what a judgment of God! The courageous fighters were seized by criminal Agaren (Turkish) hands, and he accepted well the end of his suffering, thus becoming Christ’s martyr, the great prince Lazar.

For he was cut down by none else, oh my loved ones, but by the very hand of that murderer, Amurat’s son [Bayezid I].

All this mentioned above happened in the year 1389, in the twelfth period of fifteen years, on the fifteenth day of the month of June, on Tuesday at six or seven o’clock, I do not know (exactly—God only knows).'

(Fr Matejić and Milivojević, pp. 132-3)