Venerable David of Serbia

David of Serbia was a thirteenth-century member of the Serbian Nemanjic dynasty who, after a career in secular rule, ended his life as a monk. According to the synaxarion he bore the name Demetrius in the world and was a nephew of the holy King Stephen. He is remembered above all as the founder of a monastery on the Lim, where he himself received monastic tonsure with the name David and lived an ascetical life to the end of his days. He is commemorated on September 24.

Historical sources identify him with Dmitar Nemanjic, a Serbian prince whose father was the grand prince Vukan Nemanjic and whose uncle was Stephen the First-Crowned. He held the rank of zupan in the region of Polimlje, the valley of the upper Lim. The monastery he built at Brodarova, on the River Lim, is identified with the Davidovica Monastery near Brodarevo, which the historical record dates to around 1281 and associates with the work of masons from Dubrovnik.

In his later years David exchanged the rule of his domain for the monastic life, taking the habit in the foundation he had endowed. The tradition records that he traveled to Jerusalem on pilgrimage and that he died after 1286, the exact date being unknown. He is venerated in the Serbian Orthodox Church with the title of the Venerable.