Saint Sava
| Saint Sava Свети Сава |
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 Frescoe of Saint Sava in the King's Church, Studenica Monastery, Serbia |
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| Archbishop of the Serbs | |
| Born | c. 1175 |
| Died | January 14, 1235 Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria |
| Venerated in | Eastern Orthodox Church |
| Major shrine | Cathedral of Saint Sava (Belgrade) |
| Feast | January 27 [O.S. January 14] |
| Patronage | Serbian schools |
Saint Sava (Serbian: Свети Сава, Sveti Sava) (c. 1175 – 14 January 1235) was a Serbian nobleman and Orthodox monk, the first Archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church, the originator of Serbian legislation and literature, the founder of the Monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, and a diplomat. He became a monk as a youth, receiving his monastic name Sava; his secular name was Rastko Nemanjić (Cyrillic: Растко Немањић). He was the youngest son of Serbian ruler Stefan Nemanja (hence the patronymic Nemanjić).
Saint Sava heavily influenced Serbian medieval literature. In 1219 he published the first constitution in Serbia—St. Sava's Nomocanon (Zakonopravilo in Serbian).[1][2][3] It was a compilation of civil law based on Roman law,[4][5] and canon law based on Ecumenical Councils. Its purpose was to establish a codified legal system in the young Serbian kingdom, and to regulate the government of the Serbian Church.
He is widely considered as one of the most important figures of Serbian history, and is canonized and venerated by the Serbian Orthodox Church. His life and personal devotion to Serbian people has been interpreted in many artistic works from the Middle Ages to modern times. The Cathedral of Saint Sava in Belgrade is the largest in the Orthodox Church.
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Early life
Rastko was born c. 1175 in Gradina (near modern-day Podgorica, Montenegro).
According to his hagiography, in his youth (c. 1192) he fled from his home to join the Orthodox monastic colony on Mount Athos (Holy Mountain on the Chalkidiki peninsula) and was given the name Sava. He first traveled to a Russian monastery and then moved to the Greek monastery of Vatopedi. At the end of 1197 his father, who on becoming a monk was named Simeon, joined him. In 1198, they together moved to and restored the abandoned monastery Hilandar (Chilandari, in French) which, since that moment, became the center of Serbian Christian monastic life. Hilandar is one of the twenty monasteries on Mount Athos that still function, and its position in the hierarchy is fourth.
St. Sava's father took the monastic vows under the name Simeon and died in Hilandar on February 13, 1199. He is also canonised, as Saint Simeon.
Serbian Orthodox Church
After his father's death, Sava devoted himself to the ascetic life and went to a chapel in Karyes, which he built in 1199. He also wrote the Karyes Typicon valid for both Hilandar and his skete. The typicon has been inscribed onto a marble board and still stands there. Sava stayed at Mount Athos till the end of 1207.
In 1208 Sava returned to Serbia to reconcile his brothers, since their rivalry brought the state to the edge of civil war. Sava set up his base at Studenica Monastery, and started to organize the Serbian Orthodox Church. He had brought with him several monks to help him to perform his pastoral and missionary duty among the people. Since the Roman Catholic Church already had ambitions to spread its influence to the Balkans as well, Stefan used these propitious circumstances to obtain his crown from the Pope, thereby becoming the first Serbian king, in 1217. In Byzantium Sava managed to secure autocephaly (independence) for the Serbian Church and became the first Serbian archiepiscope. In 1219 Sava was consecrated the first archiepiscope of the new Serbian Church by Patriarch Manuel I of Constantinople, who was then in exile at Nicaea. In the same year Sava published Zakonopravilo (St. Sava's Nomocanon). Thus the Serbs acquired both forms of independence: political and religious.
Saint Sava is considered the founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian Orthodox Christians celebrate him as saint patron of education and medicine. His legislature (Nomocanon of St. Sava) made him the first Serbian legislator, which is also important for the history of legal education in Serbia. He is commemorated on the 27th January according to the Gregorian calendar and on the 14th January according to the Julian calendar. Since the 1830s, Saint Sava has become the saint patron of Serbian schools and schoolchildren.
Second pilgrimage and death
Sava died in Trnovo, capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, during the reign of Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria. According to his Life, he fell ill following the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Epiphany, 12 January 1235. Sava was visiting Trnovo on his way back from the Holy Land, where he had founded a hospice for Syrian pilgrims in Jerusalem and arranged for Serbian monks to be welcomed in the established monasteries there. He died of pneumonia in the night between Saturday and Sunday, January 14, 1235, and was buried at the Cathedral of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Trnovo where his body remained until May 6, 1237, when his sacred bones were moved to the monastery Mileseva in southern Serbia. 360 years later, in 1594, the Turks unearthed his remains and took them to Vračar Hill in Belgrade where they were incinerated by Sinan Pasha on a stake as tactics against the Serb people. The Temple of Saint Sava was built on the place where his remains were burned.[1]
Construction of the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade, on the Vračar Plateau, began in the 1930s but was terminated by the Second World War. The construction was resumed in 1985 and was completed by 2004. In reality, what is Vračar Hill now used to be outside the city walls and not within easy reach. There used to be a different Vračar Hill where today is located the Tašmajdan. This place was used by the Ottoman Turks for executions and seems much more likely to have been the spot where Sava's relics were burnt. Also, tradition holds the place of burning to be "Čupina Umka", the tallest point in Tašmajdan.[2]
See also
- Zakonopravilo
- Dušan's Code
- Serbian Empire
- Serbian Despotate
- Serbia in the Middle Ages
- History of Serbia
- Corpus Juris Civilis
- Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade
- Hilandar Research Library (Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, University of Ohio (Columbus))
References
- Žikić, Bojan (1997). "Културни херој као "морални трикстер": Свети Сава у усменом предању Срба из БиХ [Culture hero as "moral trickster": Saint Sava in oral traditions of Serbs in BiH]" (in Serbian) (PDF). Bulletin of the Ethnographical Institute SASA (Belgrade) XLVI: 122–128. http://www.rastko.rs/antropologija/glasnici-ei/46/bzikic.pdf. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
External links
- Istorijska biblioteka: Saint Sava
- Online Library Cataloging System of Saint Sava
- Sveti Sava Society
- Collected works (Serbian)
| Preceded by New Title |
Metropolitan of Žiča 1219–1233 |
Succeeded by St. Arsenije I Sremac |
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Miroslav of Hum |
Prince of Zahumlje 1190-1196 |
Succeeded by Stefan Radoslav |
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