Death of St. Helen of Anjou and the Sabor

In his Life of Saint Helen, Queen of Serbia (?–1314), Archbishop Danilo II, her contemporary, speaks of three sessions of the Sabor (Assembly) surrounding her death. The first was summoned by Helen herself when she felt her end approaching: Danilo describes himself and the others summoned rushing to her like the Apostles did at the time of the Assumption of the Mother of God. Modern scholarship believes this assembly to have been a local one, composed of the nobility and church dignitaries only of the lands that Helen held as queen dowager. The second, likely the entire Sabor of the Serbian state, was assembled after her death, for her funeral, headed by her son, King Stefan Uroš Milutin. The third, likely local again, took place three years later for the transfer of her relics, likely initialising (but not yet completing) her canonisation. This paper aims to analyse Danilo’s depiction of these assemblies and their significance both for Saint Helen’s cult-in-the-making and for the medieval Serbian state.