Ragusa became a thing of the past, and he undertook conquest on a grand
scale. Between 1331 and 1344 he subjected all Macedonia, Albania,
Thessaly, and Epirus. He was careful to keep on good terms with Ragusa and
with Hungary, then under Charles Robert. He married the sister of the
Bulgarian ruler, and during his reign Bulgaria was completely under
Serbian supremacy. The anarchy and civil war which had become perennial at
Constantinople, and the weakening of the Greek Empire in face of the
growing power of the Turks, no doubt to some extent explain the facility
and rapidity of his conquests; nevertheless his power was very formidable,
and his success inspired considerable alarm in western Europe. This was
increased when, in 1345, he proclaimed his country an empire. He first
called together a special Church council, at which the Serbian Church, an
archbishopric, whose centre was then at Pe['c] (in Montenegro, Ipek in
Turkish), was proclaimed a Patriarchate, with Archbishop Joannice as
Patriarch; then this prelate, together with the Bulgarian Patriarch,
Simeon, and Nicholas, Archbishop of Okhrida, crowned Stephen Tsar of the
Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks. Upon this the Patriarch of Constantinople gave
himself the vain satisfaction of anathematizing the whole of Serbia, as a
punishment for this insubordination.

In 1353 the Pope, Innocent VI, persuaded King Louis of Hungary to
undertake a crusade against Serbia in the name of Catholicism, but Stephen
defeated him and re-established his frontier along the Save and Danube.
Later he conquered the southern half of Dalmatia, and extended his empire
as far north as the river Cetina. In 1354 Stephen Du[)s]an himself
approached the Pope, offering to acknowledge his spiritual supremacy, if
he would support him against the Hungarians and the Turks. The Pope sent
him an embassy, but eventually Stephen could not agree to the papal
conditions, and concluded an alliance, of greater practical utility, with
the Venetians. In 1355, however, he suddenly died, at the age of