Social and economic life in Serbia changes…

Social and economic life in Serbia changes radically under the absolute rule of the Turkish sultan.

The Turks split Serbia among several provinces, conscript Serbian boys into their elite forces, exterminate Serbian nobles, and deprive the Serbs of contact with the West as the Renaissance is beginning.

The Turks use the Orthodox Church to mediate between the state and the peasantry, but they expropriate most church lands.

Poorly trained Serbian priests strive to maintain the decaying national identity.

In 1459 the sultan had subordinated the Serbian church to the Greek patriarch, but the Serbs hate Greek dominance of their church, and in 1557 Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic, a Serb who had been inducted into the Turkish army as a boy, persuades the sultan to restore autonomy to the Serbian church.

Turkish maltreatment and exploitation grows in Serbia after the sixteenth century, and more Serbs flee to become mountain outlaws, or hajduci.

Epic songs of the hajduci keep alive the Serbs' memory of the glorious independence of the past.