Sava II of Serbia
Our Father among the Saints Sava the Second, Archbishop of Serbia
Bishop · b. c. 1201, as Predislav Nemanjić — d. 1271, in Serbia
Commemorated 8 February — Repose; commemoration of the third Archbishop of Serbia
Sava the Second (c. 1201 – 1271), born Predislav Nemanjić, was the third Archbishop of Serbia, a prince of the Nemanjić house who followed his great uncle Sava the First into the monastic and hierarchical life. He was a son of the Serbian king Stefan the First-Crowned and thus a nephew of Sava I, the founder of the Serbian Church whose name he took in religion. Renowned for the austerity of his ascetic life, he made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was consecrated bishop of Hum (Zahumlje), and about 1263 succeeded to the throne of the Serbian Church as archbishop, which he governed until his death in 1271. He is venerated in the Serbian Church as one of the line of holy first-hierarchs of the Nemanjić age, and is commemorated on February 8.
A prince of the Nemanjić house
Predislav was born about the year 1201, a son of Stefan Nemanjić — Stefan "the First-Crowned," the first king of Serbia — and therefore a grandson of the founder-saint Stefan Nemanja (Symeon the Myrrh-gusher) and a nephew of Sava I, the youngest of Nemanja's sons and the father of the Serbian Church. He was thus born into the very heart of the dynasty and the sanctity that clustered about it: his grandfather and his uncle were already reckoned saints, and the young prince grew up in a court that had made the founding of an independent Serbian Church its greatest work. Like his uncle before him, Predislav turned from the prospects of rule to the monastic life, and in his tonsure he took the name Sava in his uncle's honour — becoming, in the Serbian memory, "the second Sava," the heir of the first in name, in office, and in holiness.
Monk, pilgrim, and Bishop of Hum
Sava embraced the ascetic life with a severity the tradition especially remembers — he "distinguished himself," the synaxarion says, "by his ascetic practices, in imitation of his sainted uncle." Following the pattern Sava I had set, he made the long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem and the monasteries of Palestine, and steeped himself in the monastic tradition of the Christian East. He was in time consecrated bishop of Hum (Zahumlje, the region of Herzegovina that his uncle had once governed as a prince) — one of the bishoprics into which Sava I had organised the Serbian Church at the assembly of Žiča — and there he governed as a diocesan hierarch, a monk-bishop in the mould of the founder.
Third Archbishop of Serbia
On the repose of Archbishop Arsenije I (Arsenius, the disciple whom Sava I had appointed his own successor), the throne of the Serbian Church passed, about the year 1263, to Sava II — the third to hold the archiepiscopal office after Sava I and Arsenije. His archiepiscopate fell in the reign of his kinsmen, the kings Uroš I and Dragutin, in the decades when the young autocephalous Church his uncle had won was consolidating its life and its place among the Nemanjić realm's institutions. The sources remember him less for great deeds of Church-building than for the sanctity of his person — an ascetic hierarch who carried into the highest office of the Serbian Church the monastic seriousness of his uncle. He governed the Church until his death in 1271 and was buried, with the other holy archbishops of his line, in the great royal mausoleum-monastery; his memory was kept among the succession of saintly first-hierarchs whom the Serbian Church honours as the pillars of its founding age.
Feast and commemoration
Sava II is commemorated on February 8 (church date; New Calendar civil February 8, Old Calendar civil February 21), his principal feast in the Serbian Orthodox Church, which keeps it on the Old Calendar (civil February 21). He is one of the company of holy Nemanjić-age archbishops — Sava I, Arsenije I, Sava II, and their successors — venerated together in the Serbian tradition as the founders and first shepherds of the autocephalous Serbian Church, and named in the Serbian synaxaria and in the fresco cycles of the medieval royal monasteries. His veneration is proper to the Serbian Church rather than pan-Orthodox; the OCA notes his memory on this day.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
As an heir of the first Sava in name and in grace, thou didst take upon thee his ascetic labours and his archpastoral throne, O holy hierarch Sava; wherefore, shepherding the Church of the Serbs in holiness, thou dost intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 2
Following thy sainted uncle in the narrow way of the ascetics and in the care of the flock, thou wast shown a worthy third shepherd of the Serbian Church, O father Sava; and now, standing before the Lord, remember them that honour thy memory.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Sava II is depicted as an archbishop in the manner of the Serbian hierarch-saints: vested in the phelonion or sakkos and the omophorion, bare-headed or mitred, holding the Gospel-book and blessing, an elder of grave and ascetic aspect. He appears in the great fresco cycles of the medieval Serbian monasteries among the line of the holy archbishops of the Nemanjić age — Sava I, Arsenije, Sava II, and their successors — often ranged together in the sanctuary or narthex as the first-hierarchs of the national Church, and is identified by the inscription of his name and office. The stored image is his figure from the Nemanjić family tree fresco at Visoki Dečani (1346–1347), the Slavonic inscription "СТЫ САВ(А)" beside the halo of the archbishop in the polystavrion.
Disputed questions
- The baptismal name and the succession. The Serbian sources give his name in the world as Predislav; he is the third archbishop of the Serbian Church (after Sava I and Arsenije I), and the dates of his accession (c. 1263) and death (1271) are those transmitted by the Serbian episcopal lists and received into the calendars. He is to be distinguished from his great uncle and namesake, and from the other Sava who followed later in the same see.
- Not to be confused with Sava the First of Serbia (†1236), his uncle, the first archbishop and enlightener of the Serbs (January 14), whose name he bears; nor with Sava III of Serbia; nor with Sabbas the Sanctified of Palestine, the common patron of all these Serbian Savas.