Ephraim of Serbia
Our Father among the Saints Ephraim, Patriarch of Serbia
Patriarch · Bishop · Venerable · b. c. 1311, in the Bulgarian lands (Trnovo) — d. 1399 or 1400, at Peć
Commemorated 15 June — Repose at the Patriarchate of Peć
Ephraim (c. 1311 – 1399/1400) was a Bulgarian hesychast who became Patriarch of the Serbs twice, and both times against his will. Trained in the ascetic life on Mount Athos and afterwards abbot of the Serbian house there, he was drawn into Serbia and was elected to the patriarchal throne of Peć in 1375, in the year of the reconciliation with Constantinople, and it was he who anointed the prince Lazar. Longing for silence, he resigned after some four years and withdrew to a cell at the monastery of the Holy Archangels near Prizren, where he lived nine years unknown; after the ruin of Kosovo in 1389 and the death of his successor he was brought back and took up the throne again, crowning Lazar's son Stefan, and resigned a second time in 1392. He died at Peć in extreme old age and was buried in the patriarchal church; his feast is kept, with his prince's, on June 15.
From Bulgaria to the Holy Mountain
Ephraim was a Bulgarian, born about 1311 — the tradition places his birth in the region of Trnovo, the Bulgarian capital, the son of a priest — and was formed in the ascetic and hesychast movement that swept the Balkan Slav lands in the fourteenth century. Fleeing an arranged marriage, he went as a young man to Mount Athos, where he lived in the strictest seclusion, and afterwards, when he could no longer avoid office, became abbot of the Serbian monastery on the Mountain — the "Serbian Iviron" of the OCA notice, more probably Hilandar. Turkish raiding on the Athonite peninsula drove him north; he settled first in the region of the Ibar, then in a hermitage near the Patriarchate of Peć, where he became known to the Serbian hierarchy and to the ruling house without seeking either.
He belonged, that is, to the same movement as the elder Isaiah the Serb who negotiated the lifting of the Greek anathema in 1375, and to the network of Athonite hesychasts — Slav, Greek and Romanian together — through whom the theology of Palamas and the practice of the Jesus Prayer passed into the Slav churches in the generation before the Ottoman conquest.
The first patriarchate: the anointing of Lazar
The Serbian Church was reconciled with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1375, ending the schism that had followed Dušan's unilateral elevation of Peć to patriarchal rank in 1346. In that same year the Patriarch Sava died, and a council was called at Peć to elect a successor. Two strong candidates divided the hierarchy; the choice fell instead on the Bulgarian hermit, and Ephraim — who had never held a Serbian see and had no party — was elected. The Serbian sources present the choice as a deliberate compromise and also as a providence.
As patriarch he anointed and blessed the prince Lazar, an act which in the circumstances of 1375 was the visible seal of the restored order: an undisputed patriarch of an undisputed patriarchate confirming the ruler who had brought the reconciliation about. He held the throne some four years and then, unable to reconcile the office with the life he had chosen, resigned in about 1379 and withdrew to a cell at the monastery of the Holy Archangels near Prizren — Dušan's great foundation, and the "Archangel-Dushanov monastery" of the OCA notice — where he lived nine years in seclusion. Spiridon was elected in his place.
The second patriarchate: after Kosovo
The disaster of Kosovo on 15 June 1389 killed the prince and most of the Serbian nobility; Patriarch Spiridon died shortly afterwards, in the August of the same year. The Church, needing a head at the worst moment in its history, turned again to the old hesychast in his cell, and Ephraim returned to the throne. It fell to him to bury Lazar, to support the regency of the widowed Milica — soon the nun Eugenia — and to preside over the transition by which Serbia became an Ottoman tributary; he crowned Lazar's son Stefan Lazarević as ruler. Three years later, in 1392, he resigned a second time in favour of Danilo III, and went back into seclusion for the remainder of his life.
Repose
He died at Peć, aged eighty-eight by the reckoning the OCA notice gives, in 1399 or 1400, and was buried in the patriarchal church of the Holy Apostles there. His tomb is still shown, and his relics rest at Peć. He was numbered among the saints of the Serbian Church, and his memory carried into the Russian calendar, where he appears as свт. Ефрем II, патриарх Сербский.
Feast and commemoration
June 15 (church date; New Calendar civil June 15, Old Calendar civil June 28), shared with Lazar, the prince he anointed and buried, and with the Prophet Amos, whose service the day carries. The pairing is not accidental: the Serbian Church keeps on Vidovdan the ruler and the hierarch of the same catastrophe together. He is a Serbian and Russian commemoration; the Greek and Antiochian books do not carry him.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable hierarch)
A rule of stillness and a pattern of humility wast thou, O father Ephraim: twice didst thou take up the burden of the patriarchal throne for the sake of thy people, and twice didst thou lay it down for the sake of the silence in which thou hadst found God. Entreat Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Ephraim is painted as an aged hierarch-monk: white-bearded and gaunt, in the polystavrion or a plain phelonion with the omophorion, and very often in the black monastic koukoulion rather than a mitre, since the Serbian tradition remembers him first as an ascetic. He appears in the fresco cycles of the patriarchs of Peć in the narthex of the patriarchal church, among the line of his predecessors and successors, and in modern Serbian compositions of the Kosovo saints, where he stands beside Lazar. No pre-1900 image of him alone was verified for this collection — the Commons file "Patrijarh srpski Jefrem" was identified but its provenance and date could not be checked before rate-limiting ended the search — and a the list of icons still being sought entry is recorded rather than an unverified store.
Disputed questions
- The year of his repose. The OCA gives 1400 and the age of eighty-eight; Serbian sources more often give 1399. Slavic calendar entries print the bracket (1395–1400), which appears to be a conflation of his last years rather than a set of regnal dates, since he had resigned the throne in 1392. All three figures are recorded here and none is preferred; the century is 14 on the strength of 1399/1400, which falls within it on the strict reckoning.
- "Ephraim II." Russian calendars number him Ефрем II. The Serbian patriarchal lists know only one Ephraim at Peć, and the numeral appears to arise from a different reckoning of the Serbian primatial succession; the name is given here without a numeral, with the numbered form in alternate_names.
- Which monastery on Athos. The OCA notice makes him "Igumen of the Serbian Ivḗron monastery," which conflates two houses: Iviron is the Georgian (later Greek) monastery, and the Serbian house on the Mountain is Hilandar. The Serbian tradition places his abbacy at Hilandar, and that is the likelier reading of the notice.
- The date of Patriarch Sava's death and of the election. The OCA gives "after the death of Patriarch Savva III in 1376"; the Serbian records place the death of Patriarch Sava IV in 1375, in the same year as the reconciliation with Constantinople, and the election of Ephraim at the council of Peć in that year. Both the numeral and the year differ between the sources, and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved.
- His nationality. He is consistently called the Bulgarian — a fact worth keeping in view, since it means the Serbian Church at the height of its national self-consciousness elected a foreigner to its patriarchal throne, twice, on the strength of his ascetic reputation alone.