He sought to resurrect the Serbian Empire and place himself at its helm, claiming to be the direct successor of the Nemanjić dynasty, which went extinct in 1371 after ruling over Serbia for two centuries.

Lazar was killed at the Battle of Kosovo in June 1389 while leading a Christian army assembled to confront the invading Ottoman Empire, led by Sultan Murad I.

[2] Lazar's father, Pribac, was a logothete (chancellor) in the court of Stefan Dušan,[3] a member of the Nemanjić dynasty, who ruled as the King of Serbia from 1331 to 1346 and the Serbian Emperor (tsar) from 1346 to 1355.

Dušan became the ruler of Serbia by dethroning his father, King Stefan Uroš III, then rewarding the petty nobles that had supported him in his rebellion, elevating them to higher positions within the feudal hierarchy.

The same happened with Braničevo and Kučevo, the empire's north-eastern regions controlled by the Rastislalić family, who recognized the suzerainty of King Louis of Hungary.

Vojislav started as a stavilac at the court of Tsar Dušan, but by 1363 he controlled a large region from Mount Rudnik in central Serbia to Konavle on the Adriatic coast, and from the upper reaches of the Drina River to northern Kosovo.

Stavilac Lazar is mentioned as a witness in a July 1363 document by which Tsar Uroš approved an exchange of lands between Prince Vojislav and čelnik Musa.

[7] The book Il Regno de gli Slavi [The Realm of the Slavs] by Mavro Orbin, published in Pesaro in 1601, describes events in which Lazar was a main protagonist.

[18] Ban Tvrtko annexed to his state the parts of Zahumlje which were held by Nikola, including the upper reaches of the Drina and Lim Rivers, as well as the districts of Onogošt and Gacko.

[27] Lazar's large and rich domain was a refuge for Eastern Orthodox Christian monks who fled from areas threatened by the Islamic Ottomans.

A Serb monk from Mount Athos named Isaija, who distinguished himself as a writer and translator, encouraged Lazar to work on the reconciliation of the two patriarchates.

[32] Lazar extended his domain to the Danube in 1379, when the prince took Kučevo and Braničevo, ousting the Hungarian vassal Radič Branković Rastislalić from these regions.

Besides the capital Kruševac, the state included important towns of Niš and Užice, as well as Novo Brdo and Rudnik, the two richest mining centres of medieval Serbia.

The strategic position of the Morava basins contributed to Lazar's prestige and political influence in the Balkans due to the anticipated Turkish offensives.

However, powerful regional lords—the Balšićs in Zeta, Vuk Branković in Kosovo, King Marko, Konstantin Dragaš, and Radoslav Hlapen in Macedonia—ruled their domains independent from Prince Lazar.

The peace was sealed, probably in 1387, with the marriage of Lazar's daughter Teodora to Nicholas II Garay, a powerful Hungarian noble who supported Sigismund.

After he made peace with Sigismund, to avoid troubles on his northern borders, the prince secured military support from Vuk Branković and King Tvrtko.

[34][38] The King of the Serbs and Bosnia was also expecting a bigger Ottoman offensive since his army, commanded by Vlatko Vuković, wiped out a large Turkish raiding party in the Battle of Bileća in 1388.

[49] The central part of Narration is the patriarch's version of Lazar's speech to Serbian warriors before the battle:[50] You, O comrades and brothers, lords and nobles, soldiers and vojvodas—great and small.

The authors of the cultic writings interpreted the death of Lazar and the thousands of his warriors on the Kosovo Field as a martyrdom for the Christian faith and for Serbia.

[60] Italian traveller Marc Antonio Pigafetta, who visited Ravanica in 1568, reported that the monastery was never damaged by the Turks, and the monks practiced freely their religion, except that they were not allowed to ring bells.

[61] Saint Lazar was venerated at the court of Ivan the Terrible, the first Russian tsar (1547–1584),[62] whose maternal grandmother was born in the Serbian noble family of Jakšić.

In 1675, Prince Lazar and several Nemanjićs were represented in an icon commissioned by the brothers Gavro and Vukoje Humković, Serbian craftsmen from Sarajevo.

In 1690, a considerable proportion of the Serbian population living in these lands emigrated to the Habsburg Monarchy, as its army retreated from Serbia before the advancing Ottomans.

In this period they started to use printing to spread the veneration of the Holy Prince: they made a woodcut representing Lazar as a cephalophore, holding his severed head in his hand.

[67] In 1697, the Ravanica monks left their wooden settlement at Szentendre and moved to the dilapidated Monastery of Vrdnik-Ravanica on Mount Fruška Gora in the region of Syrmia.

Syrmia became part of the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, controlled by the fascist Ustaše movement, which conducted large-scale genocide campaigns against the Serbs.

The Archimandrite of Vrdnik, Longin, who escaped to Belgrade in 1941, reported that Serbian sacred objects on Fruška Gora were in danger of total destruction.

[75] Jefimija, the former wife of Uglješa Mrnjavčević and later a nun in the Ljubostinja monastery, embroidered the Praise to Prince Lazar, one of the most significant works of medieval Serbian literature.

[78] In an inscription from Ljubostinja dated to 1389, he is mentioned as "knez Lazar, of all Serbs and Podunavlje provinces" (кнезь Лазарь всѣмь Срьблемь и подѹнавскимь странамь господинь).