Serbian culture

Serbian culture
Serbian culture refers to the culture of Serbia and of ethnic Serbs.
Serbian culture starts with that of the South Slavic peoples that lived in theBalkans. Early on, Serbs may have been influenced by the Paleo-Balkan peoples. The Byzantine Empire had a great influence on the culture; Serbs were initially governing the Byzantine frontiers in the name of the emperor and were later through their sworn alliance given independence, baptized by Greek missionaries and adopted the Cyrillic script. The Serbian Orthodox Church gained autocephaly fromConstantinople in 1219. The Republic of Venice influenced the maritime regions in the Middle Ages. The Ottoman Empire conquered Serbia in 1459 and placed the country under a state of occupation which lasted for four centuries, the consequences of which suppressed Serbian culture but also greatly influenced Serbian Art. Serbian culture flourished from 1718 in regions that were under the control of the Habsburg Monarchy.
Following Serbia’s autonomy after the Serbian revolution and eventual independence, the culture of Serbia was restrengthened within its people.

Life
Religion
Conversion of the South Slavs from Paganism to Christianity began in the early 7th century, long before the Great Schism, the split between the Greek Orthodox East and the Roman Catholic West, the Serbs were first Christinaized during the reign of Heraclius (610-641) but were fully Christianized by Byzantine Christian Missionaries (Saints) Cyril and Methodius in 869 during Basil I, who sent them after Knez Mutimir, had acknowledged the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire. After the Schism, those who lived under the Byzantine sphere of influence became Orthodox and those who lived under the Roman sphere of influence became Catholic. Later, with the arrival of the Ottoman Empire, many Serbs converted to Islam. Their modern descendants are considered to be members of the Gorani and Bosniak ethnic groups.
The Serbian Orthodox Church was the westernmost bastion of Orthodox Christianity in Europe, which shaped its historical fate through contacts withCatholicism and Islam.
During World War II, the Serbs, living in a wide area, were persecuted by various peoples and organizations. The CatholicCroats under the Fascist Ustaša regime, recognized the Serbs only as “Croats of the Eastern faith” and had the ideological vision that 1/3 of the Serbs were to be murdered, 1/3 were to be converted and the last third expelled. The outcome of these visions was the death of at least 700,000 people, the religious conversion of 250,000 and the expulsion of 250,000.