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306 Cyprus. The Primates of Achrida and Ipek are occasionally called Patriarchs, though they were never considered the equals of the five great Patriarchs. We are now concerned with Ipek. In this city (now a small village in Northern Albania) St. Sabbas, the national Saint of the Serbs, set up his throne as Metropolitan of Servia in 1218. At that time the Latins held Constantinople, and the Orthodox Emperor and Patriarch had fled to Nicæa (p. 227). In the midst of their own troubles, the Byzantines did not care much about the affairs of Ipek, so in 1221 they agreed that the Serbs should elect their own metropolitan, and that he should be only confirmed by the Œcumenical Patriarch. During the troubles of the Eastern Empire in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Serbs managed to set up a great independent Power under King Stephen Dushan († 1355), which at one time stretched from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth, and from the Adriatic to the Ægean Sea. King Stephen Dushan, who was always at war with the Empire, would not let the Imperial Patriarch rule over his Church, so in a synod of the year 1347 the Serbs declared their Church autocephalous, and gave to the Metropolitan of Ipek the title of Patriarch. Constantinople, as usual, excommunicated them, but eventually, in 1376, had to recognize the Servian Church. In 1389 came the crushing defeat of Kossovo, in which the Turks utterly annihilated Dushan's great kingdom, and nothing more is heard of Servia