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St. Sabbas I, Archbishop of Serbia and Enlightener of the Serbs
Serbian SAVVA or SAVA
XII/XIII Centuries
The son of King Stephen I Nemanja of
Serbia,
St. Sabbas was born Rastko c. 1173/76; at 17, to avoid marriage, he fled
to
Mt. Athos, where he became a monk and founded the
Chilandar Monastery. In 1196, King Stephen
abdicated, and taking the name Symeon, joined his son on Mt. Athos. Symeon
died three years later, and Sabbas, Archbishop of Serbia, translated his
father's
relics to their native land in 1208. Sabbas wrote a history of his
father's
reign and a service to his father, the earliest known Serbian hynmography
in Church Slavonic. Sabbas copied books of law and compiled the
Nomocanon,
a book of canon laws. He was responsible for having liturgical documents
translated
from Greek into Serbian and for compiling two Serbian Typica. Because of
his
experience with Roman bishops and leaders on Athos after the Venetian sack
of
Constantinople in 1204, Sabbas opposed the pro-Roman policies of his
brother,
Stephen II, the only Serbian king crowned by a pope. From 1217-1219/20,
Sabbas
was in exile, during which he persuaded the patriarch of Constantinople to
grant
the Serbian and Bulgarian churches autocephaly. When he returned to
Serbia,
he recrowned his brother. Sabbas resigned as archbishop in 1230/33 and
travelled
to the Holy Land, where he visited monasteries at Sketis, the Thebiad, and
Mt.
Sinai. He died in Bulgaria on his trip back from the Holy Land c.
1235/1237
King Ladislas of Serbia translated the relics of St. Sabbas to Milesevo, a
monastery
the saint had founded shortly before his death. The Turks burned the
relics in 1594.
Karen Rae Keck
2
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