Everything about Saint Sava totally explained
Saint Archbishop Sava (or
saint Sabbas;
Serbian: Свети Сава,
Sveti Sava) (
1175 -
January 14,
1235), originally the prince Rastko Nemanjić (
Serbian: Растко Немањић) (son of the
Serbian ruler and founder of the Serbian medieval state
Stefan Nemanja and brother of
Stefan Prvovenčani, first Serbian king), is the first
Archbishop of Serbia (
1219-
1233), the most important saint in the
Serbian Orthodox Church and important cultural and political worker of that time.
Early life
Rastko was born ca. 1175 in
Gradina (near modern-day
Podgorica,
Montenegro).
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 retreated to a
skete close to
Karyes which he built himself in
1199. He also wrote the Karyes Typicon valid for both for Hilandar and his skete. The
typicon has been inscribed onto a marble board at the skete and still stands there. Sava stayed on
Athos until the end of
1207.
In 1208, Sava returned to Serbia, where the feuding between his brothers had created a state or anarchy. 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 perform his pastoral and missionary duty among the people. Sava eventually managed to free the Serbian church from the jurisdiction of the
Archbishopric of Ohrid. In
1219, Sava was consecrated the first
archbishop of the new Serbian Church by
Patriarch Manuel I of Constantinople, who was then in exile at
Nicaea.
Saint Sava is considered the founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian Orthodox Christians celebrate him as patron saint of education and medicine. He is commemorated on
January 27 according to the
Julian calendar and on
January 14 according to the
Gregorian calendar. Since the 1830s, Saint Sava has become the patron saint of Serbian schools and schoolchildren. On his day, students partake in recitals in church.
Sava died in
Turnovo, 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 at the
Feast of the Epiphany on
January 12,
1235. Sava visited Turnovo on his way back from the
Holy Land, where he'd founded a
hospice for Syrian pilgrims in
Jerusalem and arranged for Serbian monks to be welcome in the established monasteries there. He died of
pneumonia in the night between Saturday and Sunday,
January 14,
1235.
(External Link
) He was initially buried at the
St Forty Martyrs Church in Turnovo, but his holy relics remained there until only
May 6,
1237 when they were translated to the
Mileševa monastery in southern Serbia. 360 years later, in
1595, the
Ottoman Turks unearthed his remains and took them to
Vračar hill in
Belgrade where they were incinerated on a stake.
The
Temple of Saint Sava in
Belgrade, whose construction was planned in
1939, begun in
1985 and awaits completion by
2004, is the largest active Orthodox temple in the world today. It was built on the place where the bones were believed to have been burned. 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 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 as "Čupina Umka", the tallest point in Tašmajdan.
(External Link)
Gallery
Image:Svetisava.jpg|Saint Sava, Archbishop of the Serbs painting
Image:Saval.jpg|Icon of Saint Sava
Further Information
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