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Saint Sava

icon of Saint Sava, date unknown, artist unknown; swiped off the Wikipedia web site Also known as

Rastko Nemanjic
Sava the Serbian
Saba
Sabas
Sabbas
Savas

14 January

Profile

Prince of Serbia, the son of King Stephen I Nemanya. He took the name Sava (Sabas) when he became a monk at Mount Athos. His father later surrendered his crown and became a monk, too, and together they founded the monastery at Chilanari as a house for Serbs. Sava returned home in 1207 when a quarrel between his brothers, Stephen II and Vulkan, broke into civil war. Sava brought monks with him, founded several monasteries, and began the reformation and education of his country, where religion and education had fallen to a low estate. Metropolitan of a new Serbian hierarchy by Emperor Theodore II Laskaris at Nicaea, being reluctantly consecrated by Patriarch Manuel I in 1219. Crowned his brother Stephen II as King of Serbia in 1222. He finished the uniting of his people that had been begun by his father. Translated religious works into Serbian, and gave his people a native clergy and hierarchy. Dispatched to the Holy Land on an ecclesiastical mission, Sava died on the way home.