Social and economic life in Serbia has…

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

The Turks have split Serbia among several provinces, conscripted Serbian boys into their elite forces, exterminated Serbian nobles, and deprived the Serbs of contact with the West as the Renaissance spread throughout the rest of Europe.

The Turks use the Orthodox Church to intermediate between the state and the peasantry, but they have expropriated most church lands.

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

The sultan had in 1459 subordinated the Serbian Church to the Greek patriarch, but the Serbs hate Greek dominance of their church, and in 1557, the Turkish military leader and minister Mehmed Pasha Sokollu (also seen as Sokolovic), a Serb who had been inducted into the Turkish army as a boy, persuades the sultan to restore autonomy to the Serbian Church.