Original article (in Serbian) was published on 13/11/2022
One reader contacted us with a request to check the claim whether the curse word “tres vulves matres” (three mother’s c***s) is the “oldest swear word in Serbs” and whether Emperor Dusan uttered it.
Over the years, various websites from our speaking area have conveyed the story that during the visit of the emissaries of Pope Innocent VI in 1354, Emperor Dusan sent those emissaries “to three mother’s c***s” or only to one “mother’s c**t”, depending on the media. The given expression in Latin is grammatically incorrect (it should be matris instead of matres), but despite this, we tried to determine whether there is any evidence that Stefan Dusan uttered anything similar.
The journey of the anecdote
We found the oldest version of this claim on the satirical website Vukajlija, where it was published 12 years ago. User Jurodivi wrote the following: “Go to mother’s c**t! The oldest Serbian branded swear word! It was mentioned for the first time in the 14th century! Proof of this exists perhaps only in the Vatican archives, uttered by Emperor Dusan the Mighty, around 1354, during a visit of the papal legates. Rex Dusan the Mighty papa legatum in vulva materna misit! ― Emperor Dusan the Mighty sent the Pope’s legates to the mother’s c**t!”
In 2015, this story appeared on the Russian social network Vkontakte, on a page dedicated to Serbian culture. In 2016, our site Patriot Name published the same anecdote. Only three mother’s c***s now appear instead of one. Facebook page Kvizopedija continued in 2016, with a repeat in 2017. Two years later, Alo, Srbija danas, Beograd.In, Objektiv media and Nacionalist reported that the Pope asked Emperor Dusan to convert the Serbs to Catholicism, but also that he received the most famous Serbian curse in response. In 2020, Nasa Borba and YouTube channel Lice Balkana (video – link) stated the same thing, and this year, the story is brought to life again by Kurir, Republika, Patriote Srpske, Espreso, Opanak, and Vidovdan.
Rewritten content and a missing element
In the beginning, the text shared in our media is mostly the same, that is, it contains almost identically constructed sentences. And the key paragraph is the same everywhere:
“Petar Toma stood in front of Stefan Dusan without kissing his foot as usual, which annoyed the emperor so he received him extremely arrogantly and coldly. Petar Toma’s mission did not achieve the expected results, and the Vatican also has an original report about that meeting with the papal legate whom Emperor Dusan the Mighty banished to ‘tres vulves matres’! (to three mother’s c***s!)”
We found most of these sentences, with minor differences, in the biography of Emperor Dusan written by academicians Sima Cirkovic and Bozidar Ferjancic in 2005 (p. 299). However, although the story is almost identical to the one reported by the media, there is not a word in this book about the fact that Emperor Dusan sent the emissary Petar Toma to the mother’s c**t/ three mother’s c***s or that he was cursed. It is noted that inconveniences accompanied Peter Toma’s stay but shortly afterwards, the Serbian emperor softened his repulsive attitude towards Toma and received him with great honours.
No mention of Dusan’s swearing
In the texts of our media, there is also the following sentence: “There is a report by Filip Mezier, his biographer and perhaps a companion on the way to Serbia, about the stay of Petar Toma at the court of Stefan Dusan, as well as about everything that befell him there”. We decided to follow the trail of this source.
It turned out that the author Milos Stanic had already researched this same topic on his blog Zivotne price i monasi Saolina in the text “Did Emperor Dusan sent the the Pope to three mother’s c***s?” The conclusion was as follows: “I reviewed three books, but they don’t mention such a thing”.
On the 14th page of Filip Mezier’s biography of the emissary of Petar Toma, there is a report about this event and the visit of Petar Toma to Emperor Dusan. “It is mentioned that they visited Emperor Stefan (Dusan), Empress Jelena, the son Uros, the Patriarch of Serbia Joanikije and numerous princes and barons of Serbia and Raska”, writes Stanic. “Everything about that event is neatly written in the book, there is even a papal letter addressed to Empress Jelena and her son Uros, but there is no mention of swearing”.
From Kraljevic Marko to Dundo Maroje
In his book “The Obscene Swearing”, Franciscan Ignacije Gavran states that the oldest recorded swearing in these areas is considered the one from the work “Dundo Maroje” by Marin Drzic. Franko Padovan, in his work “Communicative features of swearing in the Croatian language”, mentions an example from the second act of the fourth scene of Drzic’s comedy “Mande”, where the phrase “dera t’ pas mater!” appears. That’s where Gavran, according to Slobodan Prosperov Novak’s explanation, censored the original – “*eba t’ pas mater!” (“A dog f****d your mother”).
Our linguist Nedeljko Bogdanovic, who dealt with curse words in the Serbian language, also mentions Dundo Maroje in this context, but he tells FakeNews Tragac that he is not familiar with the oldest recorded curse word in Serbia. “In bugarstica, Marko Kraljevic and his brother Andrijas it is said that the brothers cursed”, says Bogdanovic, with the comment that it might be about a fight, not swearing. After all, the verb to swear is not a curse word in itself.
It is interesting that in Dusan’s Code, as many as three articles refer to punishments for swearing:
- A lord, who curses and embarrasses a lord, to pay one hundred perper, and a lord, if he curses the lord, to pay one hundred perper and to be beaten with sticks.
- And if a lord, or a small lord, curses a brother, to pay one hundred perper; if a neighbour curses a lord, or a small lord, to pay a hundred perper and be blamed.
- Whoever curses a bishop, or a monk, or a priest, must pay one hundred perper. Whoever is found to have killed a bishop, a monk, or a priest, should be killed and hanged.
It is, of course, impossible to establish whether Emperor Dusan refrained from swearing. However, the anecdote about sending the papal emissary to the “three mother’s c***s” is most likely just that – an anecdote. The mentioned expression in Latin is grammatically incorrect, and in the closest possible source, the text of Filip Mezier, there is no mention of Dusan’s swearing. As a basis for the text, our media have used direct quotes from the book by B. Ferjancic and S. Cirkovic for years, with the added reference to swearing, which is not in the book.