The Journeys of the Relics

The remarkable two-and-a-half-century itinerary of the relics of St. John of Rila: from his Rila tomb to Sredec (Sofia) in the late tenth century; carried off to Esztergom in Hungary by King Béla III in 1183 and returned in 1187 amid the legend of the muted bishop; translated to Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire; and, in the great event of 1469, solemnly returned to Rila Monastery in a procession across Bulgarian lands recorded by Vladislav the Grammarian — where they remain. The chronology set out with its disputes named.

Tradition: Bulgarian Orthodox

The First Translation: Rila to Sredec (late tenth century)

The relics did not long remain at the Rila hermitage. The tradition holds that, within a generation or so of John’s death (c. 946), they were translated to Sredec — the city of Serdica, modern Sofia, then the chief city of western Bulgaria — and enshrined there. The Orthodox Lives connect the move to a posthumous appearance of the saint to his disciples directing it, and to the initiative of Tsar Peter I; the date is usually given as around 980 (Repose of Venerable John, Abbot of Rila, Orthodox Church in America [oca.org]; John of Rila, OrthodoxWiki; Rila Monastery, Wikipedia). [Disputed: the first translation, from Rila to Sredec/Sofia, is dated to the late tenth century — variously c. 980 (OCA/OrthodoxWiki) or to the period 969–972 — and attributed to Tsar Peter I; the precise date is imprecise in the sources.] At Sredec the relics rested in a church dedicated to the saint, and the cult took root in the city.

Carried to Hungary: Esztergom (1183) and the Return (1187)

The most dramatic episode in the relics’ travels came in 1183, when Béla III, King of Hungary (reigned 1172–1196), campaigning against Byzantium, captured Sredec and carried off the relics of St. John to his royal city of Esztergom (Gran) in Hungary (John of Rila, Wikipedia; Repose of Venerable John, OCA).

The seizure was not an isolated raid but an episode of the wider Byzantine–Hungarian war of 1180–1185. The death of the emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180 and the subsequent turmoil in Constantinople — culminating in the usurpation of Andronikos I in 1183 — opened the Byzantine Balkans to attack. Béla III, allied with the Serbian grand prince Stefan Nemanja, drove deep into imperial territory in 1183, taking the line of fortresses from Belgrade and Braničevo down through Niš to Sredec (Sofia), where the relics lay (Byzantine–Hungarian War (1180–1185), Wikipedia; Stefan Nemanja, Wikipedia). Carrying off the relics of a venerated saint from a captured city was, in the medieval grammar of such things, both pious acquisition and political trophy — the holy body of the enemy’s land borne home to the conqueror’s cathedral city. [Disputed: some Orthodox sources misprint the king as “Béla II”; the historical king who took the relics in 1183 was Béla III (reigned 1172–1196).] The archbishop of Esztergom in this period was Lukács (Lucas) (cf. the Cambridge Church History study of the Church under Béla III).

To this Hungarian sojourn the Bulgarian hagiographic tradition attaches the legend of the muted bishop, preserved in the monastery’s own published Life and reported here as the vita’s account, not as documented event (per METHODOLOGY §3.5): the bishop of Esztergom, filled with unbelief, refused to venerate the relics, protesting that he could not find this saint in the ancient codices — whereupon “the righteous God restrained his tongue and he lost his speech; he waved his hands instead and remained dumb.” Only after he repented and approached the relics in humility “was his tongue loosened” (Life of St. John of Rila, rilskimanastir.org). The chastened king, the tradition continues, adorned the reliquary and, in 1187, sent the relics back to Sredec “with great honor” (Life of St. John of Rila, rilskimanastir.org; John of Rila, Wikipedia).

To the Capital: Tarnovo

From Sredec the relics were translated to Tarnovo (Veliko Tarnovo), the capital of the resurgent Second Bulgarian Empire, and placed in a church built for them — the saint of the nation drawn to the seat of its restored power. Here the sources divide sharply on the date and the tsar.

[Disputed: the translation of the relics to Tarnovo is dated either to 1195 (some say 1194), under Tsar Ivan Asen I (reigned 1189–1196), who placed them in a purpose-built church on the Trapezitsa hill in his capital — the reading favored by Bulgarian scholarship and supported by archaeology (the “Church No. 8” reliquary on Trapezitsa) (John of Rila; Ivan Asen I, Wikipedia) — or to 19 October 1238 in the Orthodox-liturgical/Slavic-synaxarion tradition (implying Tsar Ivan Asen II, reigned 1218–1241), which is the basis of the 19 October feast (Repose of Venerable John, OCA; OrthoChristian.com). The two datings are roughly forty years apart and rest on different bodies of evidence — archaeological/Bulgarian-scholarly on the one hand, liturgical-calendrical on the other — and are not easily reconciled.] Whichever date is correct, a church was built in the saint’s honor at Tarnovo, and there the relics remained until the great return of 1469.

The choice of Tarnovo was itself a statement. The capital of the restored Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1393) was styled a “New Constantinople,” the principal city of the Orthodox Slavic world and, in the fourteenth century, the seat of a brilliant cultural flowering — the Tarnovo Literary School, whose orthographic reform under Patriarch Euthymius and whose scholars (Gregory Tsamblak, Constantine of Kostenets, and others) would shape the literatures of the Slavic and Romanian Orthodox world (Tarnovo Literary School, Wikipedia; Second Bulgarian Empire, Wikipedia). To draw the relics of the national hermit-saint to this capital was to bind the founder of Bulgarian monasticism to the renewed glory of the Bulgarian throne and patriarchate — and it was Euthymius of Tarnovo, the last patriarch of that golden age, who composed the polished literary Life of John that the later cult would lean upon (see The Sources).

The Great Return to Rila (1469)

The crowning event in the relics’ history is their solemn return to Rila Monastery in 1469, after Tarnovo had fallen to the Ottomans (1393) and the medieval Bulgarian state had ceased to exist.

The catastrophe that frames the return was the fall of Tarnovo on 17 July 1393, when the army of Sultan Bayezid I took the capital after a three-month siege. With the tsar Ivan Shishman absent at Nikopol, the defense of the city had been led by Patriarch Euthymius himself — the same Euthymius whose Life of John of Rila the cult preserved — and with the city’s fall he was sent into exile, the Bulgarian patriarchate extinguished, and the Second Empire reduced within a few years to nothing (Siege of Tarnovo, Wikipedia; Euthymius of Tarnovo, Wikipedia). The relics of St. John passed under Ottoman rule along with the people whose patron he was; the great return of 1469 must be read against this loss — the recovery of the national saint at the very moment the nation had lost its state. The monastery, revived in the fifteenth century, sent monks to recover the relics of its founder, and they were carried back across the Bulgarian lands to Rila — a procession met, in the sources’ phrase, “with exceptional religious fervour and patriotic enthusiasm,” a great gathering of a conquered people around the body of its national saint (Vladislav the Grammarian, Wikipedia; rilamonastery.info).

The event is documented by an eyewitness: Vladislav the Grammarian (Vladislav Gramatik), a monk and scribe of the revived community, wrote the “Rila Story” (Rilska povest, the Tale of the Translation of the Relics of St. John of Rila), included in his great manuscript collection the Rila Panegyric (Rilski panegirik) of 1479 — one of the major literary works of the Bulgarian fifteenth century and a firsthand account of the translation (Vladislav the Grammarian, Wikipedia; Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Slovo-ASO project; a parallel account was composed by Demetrius Cantacuzenus). The procession was led by the monk Theophan (see The Sources).

The return was made possible only with Ottoman permission, and the tradition credits the intercession of Mara Branković (Mara Hatun), the Serbian-born widow of Sultan Murad II and stepmother of Mehmed II, who held influence at the Ottoman court — the relics returning, as the sources phrase it, “at the behest of Sultana Mara Branković” / “with the agreement of the sultan” (Vladislav the Grammarian, Wikipedia; rilamonastery.info).

Mara Branković (c. 1418–1487) was a figure of unusual standing: daughter of the Serbian despot Đurađ Branković, married to Murad II in 1435 to seal a Serbian–Ottoman peace, she was widowed in 1451 and lived thereafter, with the conqueror Mehmed II’s respect and protection, on estates in the Ottoman Balkans — at Ježevo (Yezhovo) — from which she acted for decades as a patron of Orthodox Christianity and a broker between the Sultan’s court and the Christian powers (Mara Branković, Wikipedia/kiddle; Mehmed: Mara Hatun, fandom). It was to this Christian sultana, with her access to Mehmed and her devotion to the monasteries, that the monks of the reviving Rila community appealed; and the tradition that the relics came home “thanks to Mara” is consonant with her documented role as protectress of Orthodox houses under Ottoman rule (Mara Branković, kiddle). Her patronage is the human hinge on which the whole return turned. [Disputed: the exact day/year of the 1469 return is given in the Orthodox calendar as the translation feast (commonly 1 July, in some reckonings 18 August); the central fact — the return to Rila in 1469 under Mara Branković’s patronage, recorded by Vladislav the Grammarian — is firm.]

Where They Rest

Since 1469 the relics of St. John of Rila have remained at Rila Monastery, the founder restored to his own house, where they are venerated to this day — the physical center of the great pilgrimage and the abiding sign of the unbroken bond between the saint, the monastery, and the Bulgarian people (see The Heart of Bulgaria and Patron of Bulgaria). The journeys of the relics — Rila, Sredec, Esztergom, Sredec, Tarnovo, Rila — trace in miniature the whole arc of medieval Bulgarian history: the First Empire, the Byzantine and Hungarian wars, the Second Empire, the Ottoman conquest, and the survival of faith and identity through it all.

See Also

References

  • Repose of Venerable John, Abbot of Rila and the translation commemorations. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), Lives of the Saints (18 August; 19 October translation to Tarnovo dated 1238; 1 July translation Tarnovo→Rila 1469).
  • John of Rila. Wikipedia. (Translation to Sredec; Béla III’s seizure to Esztergom 1183 and return 1187; translation to Tarnovo, 1195/Ivan Asen I; the 1469 return; Mara Branković.)
  • Life of St. John of Rila (Zhitie na sv. Ioan Rilski). Rila Monastery official site (rilskimanastir.org). (The muted-bishop legend at Esztergom; Béla III’s adornment of the reliquary and the 1187 return.)
  • Vladislav the Grammarian. Wikipedia; Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Slovo-ASO project (slovo-aso.cl.bas.bg). (The “Rila Story” and the Rila Panegyric of 1479; the monk Theophan; the 1469 procession.)
  • Ivan Asen I. Wikipedia; archaeologyinbulgaria.com (Trapezitsa “Church No. 8”). (The 1195 Tarnovo translation under Ivan Asen I, Bulgarian-scholarly dating.)
  • “The Church and Béla III of Hungary (1172–1196): The Role of Archbishop Lukács of Esztergom.” Church History (Cambridge). (Béla III; Archbishop Lukács of Esztergom.)
  • Byzantine–Hungarian War (1180–1185); Stefan Nemanja. Wikipedia. (The wider war framing Béla III’s 1183 campaign; the Hungarian–Serbian advance through Belgrade, Braničevo, Niš, and Sredec.)
  • Tarnovo Literary School; Second Bulgarian Empire. Wikipedia. (Tarnovo as “New Constantinople” and the fourteenth-century cultural flowering; Euthymius’s orthographic reform.)
  • Siege of Tarnovo; Euthymius of Tarnovo. Wikipedia. (The Ottoman fall of Tarnovo, 17 July 1393; Patriarch Euthymius’s leadership of the defense and his exile.)
  • Mara Branković. Wikipedia / kiddle.co; Mara Hatun, Mehmed: Fetihler Sultanı Wiki (fandom). (Mara’s biography, her standing at Mehmed II’s court, her patronage of Orthodox monasteries, and the appeal of the Rila monks.)