Sava III of Serbia
Our Father among the Saints Sava the Third, Archbishop of the Serbian and Maritime Lands
Bishop · d. 16 July 1316, in Serbia; buried at the Patriarchate of Peć
Commemorated 26 July — Commemoration of the seventh Archbishop of Serbia, 30 August — Synaxis of the Serbian hierarchs and enlighteners
Sava the Third was Archbishop of Serbia from 1309 to 1316, the seventh successor of Sava the First on the throne of the autocephalous Serbian Church. He rose through the classic Serbian cursus — igoumen of Hilandar on the Holy Mountain, then Bishop of Prizren, then archbishop — and his archiepiscopate coincided with the most lavish building programme in medieval Serbian history, that of King Stefan Uroš II Milutin. He was closely involved in it: he had a hand in the rebuilding of the great church of Our Lady of Ljeviš at Prizren while he was its bishop, rebuilt St George at Staro Nagoričane, and was consulted by the king over Banjska, which he did not live to see finished. In the charters he signs himself "Archbishop of all the Serbian and Maritime Lands." He died on 16 July 1316 and was buried at Peć. The Serbian Church numbers him among its holy archbishops and keeps him on July 26.
Hilandar and Prizren
Nothing certain is known of his birth or family. He appears first as igoumen of Hilandar, the Serbian monastery on Mount Athos founded by St Symeon the Myrrh-flowing and St Sava — the ordinary training-ground for the Serbian episcopate, and the house to which, throughout his later career, he regularly made donations, a fact recorded in the monastery's own archive.
From Hilandar he was made Bishop of Prizren, an ancient see in the south of the kingdom. His time there fell in the years when King Milutin was rebuilding the episcopal church of Bogorodica Ljeviška — Our Lady of Ljeviš — on the ruins of an older basilica: the great five-domed church, painted by the Greek masters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, that is now among the most important surviving monuments of Byzantine art in the Balkans. As diocesan bishop Sava was necessarily part of that work, and the Serbian tradition credits him with a share in it.
Archbishop, 1309–1316
He was elected Archbishop of Serbia in 1309, in succession to Jevstatije II, and held the office until his death seven years later. The autocephalous Church he governed was still young — barely eighty years from St Sava's securing of its independence in 1219 — and its seat was the complex at Peć, where the archbishops built their churches side by side.
The archiepiscopate was administrative and constructive rather than dramatic. He rebuilt the church of St George at Staro Nagoričane (a foundation Milutin raised over an eleventh-century church and had painted by the same Astrapas workshop); he was consulted by the king over the building of Banjska, the monastery of St Stephen intended as Milutin's own mausoleum, whose construction ran from 1312 to 1316 and which Sava did not live to see consecrated; and he continued the endowment of Hilandar. His signature in the royal charters — "Archbishop of all the Serbian and Maritime Lands" (архиепископ свих српских и поморских земаља) — records the full extent of the Church's jurisdiction, from the interior to the Adriatic littoral.
Repose and veneration
He died on 16 July 1316 and was buried at the Patriarchate of Peć, where the Serbian archbishops lie. He was numbered among the saints in the ordinary Serbian manner — by the cultus of the archbishops at their tombs, which the Church confirmed rather than initiated — and his name entered the diptychs of the Serbian hierarchs and the Loza Nemanjića and archbishop-procession frescoes at Peć, Sopoćani, Đurđevi Stupovi and elsewhere, in which the whole line of Serbian primates is painted in order.
Feast and commemoration
July 26 (church date; New Calendar civil July 26, Old Calendar civil August 8). He is kept by the Serbian Orthodox Church, which follows the Julian reckoning, so the day falls on civil August 8; the OCA carries him on July 26 in its calendar. He is commemorated a second time with the other Serbian hierarchs and enlighteners in the Synaxis of August 30, the collective feast of the Nemanjić-era saints of the Serbian Church.
No proper akolouthia of Sava III circulates outside the Serbian books; where he is commemorated the service of a hierarch is used.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8
A guide of Orthodoxy, a teacher of piety and purity, a lamp to thy people and a God-inspired adornment of hierarchs wast thou, O wise Sava; by thy teaching thou hast enlightened all, O harp of the Spirit: intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
Sava III is painted as a Serbian archbishop: in the polystavrion — the white phelonion figured with dark crosses that is the mark of the Serbian and Byzantine primates of the period — with the omophorion, blessing with the right hand and holding the Gospel-book in the left, an elderly figure with a full grey beard. He has no personal attribute; he is identified by his inscription.
His characteristic setting is the procession of the Serbian archbishops, the frieze in which the whole line from St Sava onward is painted in order along the sanctuary or narthex walls. Such friezes survive at the Patriarchate of Peć, at Sopoćani, at Đurđevi Stupovi and elsewhere, and are the principal medieval portrait-tradition of the Serbian primates; in these he appears in his place in the sequence, between Jevstatije II and Nikodim. Because such figures are identified only by their inscriptions, and because the inscriptions in the published photographs of these friezes could not be read with certainty, no image has been stored: the risk of storing the wrong archbishop is too high.
Disputed questions
- Date of death and date of feast. The Serbian sources give his repose as 16 July 1316, but his commemoration is kept on 26 July. Ten days is a common enough gap between death and the fixing of a feast (burial, or the day free in the calendar), but some modern accounts have collapsed the two and assert that he died on 26 July. The distinction is worth keeping. A further confusion arises in secondary literature that converts 26 July Julian into 8 August civil and then re-reads it as a different feast; it is one commemoration, not two.
- Numbering. He is the seventh archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian Church but the third Sava: Sava I (1219–1233), Sava II (1263–1271), and this Sava (1309–1316). The three are frequently confounded in short notices; only the first has a wide cultus.
- His share in the buildings. Medieval Serbian sources credit ktitorstvo generously, and the balance between king, bishop and master mason at Ljeviš, Nagoričane and Banjska cannot be recovered exactly. What is certain is that the archbishop was a party to the programme.