Višeslav of Serbia

Višeslav (Serbian Cyrillic: Вишеслав) or Vojislav (Serbian Cyrillic: Војислав), from Boïsesthlabos (Greek: Βοϊσέσθλαβος), was a Serbian ruler and the first known by name, who ruled in c. 780. Serbia was a Slavic principality, subject to the Byzantine Empire, located in the western Balkans, bordering with Bulgaria in the east. Mentioned in the De Administrando Imperio (DAI) from the mid-10th century, Višeslav was a progenitor of the Serbian ruling family, known in historiography as the Vlastimirović dynasty. He was descended from the unnamed Serbian prince who led his people to the Dalmatia province and established hereditary rule under Byzantine suzerainty. The names of Višeslav's predecessors were not included in the DAI. The dynasty ruled the Principality of Serbia from the early 8th century until around 960.

Name

In Gyula Moravcsik's edition of De Administrando Imperio, his name is spelled Βοϊσέσθλαβος, while Johann Jakob Reiske previously spelled it Βοισέσθλαβος, transcribed in Latin as Boïsesthlabos/Boisesthlabus, and Boïseslav, respectively.

The name is usually rendered in Serbian and other languages as 'Vyšeslav' or 'Višeslav' (Serbian Cyrillic: Вишеслав). The other variant of his name is 'Vojislav' (Војислав); since the 19th-century historians were divided between the use of "Višeslav" and "Vojislav", the alternative interpretation being that the use of "Višeslav" was due to an error in transliteration (as Boise- and Wissa- aren't etymologically the same; others assert that there's no error because Greek oï is Old Slavic y), his correct name being rather "Vojislav/Voïslav", or possibly "Božeslav".

The name Višeslav is dithematic (of two lexemes), derived from the Slavic words više ("great(er), large(r)") and -slav ("glory, fame"), roughly meaning "greater glory"; Vojislav is derived from voj ("war") and -slav, roughly meaning "war glory".

Background

The history of the early medieval Serbian Principality and the Vlastimirović dynasty is recorded in the work De Administrando Imperio ("On the Governance of the Empire", DAI), compiled by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r.  913–959).