Death at Tărnovo (1236)

Returning from his second pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Sava — who had resigned the archbishopric to a chosen successor — stopped at Tărnovo, the capital of Bulgaria, where he fell ill and died in the winter of 1235/36, on 14 January (Old Style). He was buried in the Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs at Tărnovo. Some months later his nephew King Vladislav of Serbia obtained the relics and translated them home; on 6 May 1237 they were enshrined at the monastery of Mileševa, where, the tradition reports, they were found incorrupt and fragrant.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

Resignation and the Last Journey

In his last years Sava did something rare for a founder: he resigned the archbishopric. Having built the autocephalous church and ordained its hierarchy, he handed the see to a chosen successor — Arsenije (Arsenios) I — so that the church could perpetuate itself in the manner the autocephaly provided, while he returned to the monastic and pilgrim life (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia). It was on the return from his second pilgrimage to the Holy Land that he came, in the winter of 1235/36, to the Bulgarian capital of Tărnovo (Trnovo), the seat of the Bulgarian Tsar and patriarchate, with which Sava had long maintained relations (see Journeys to the Holy Land and the East).

Death at Tărnovo

At Tărnovo Sava fell ill — the tradition says after celebrating the feast of Theophany and catching a chill — and died. Domentijan records that he died in the night between Saturday and Sunday, on 14 January (Julian) (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia: “Domentijan accounted that he died between Saturday and Sunday, on 14 January 1235”). He was honorably buried in the Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs at Tărnovo, the great church of the Bulgarian capital, by the Bulgarian Tsar and patriarch (Holy Forty Martyrs Church, Veliko Tarnovo, English Wikipedia; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia).

[Disputed: The year of Sava’s death is given as both 1235 and 1236. Domentijan’s notice of “14 January” with the day-of-the-week detail has been calendrically reckoned by some to 1235 and by others to 1236; the Serbian Church and much scholarship give 1236, while the figure 1235 appears in the early Life and some reference works. The collection follows the common 1236, noting the variant (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia, “14 January 1235”; Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4, and the Serbian Orthodox Church, giving 1236). The feast of his repose is kept on 14 January Old Style / 27 January New Style — see Patron of Serbia.]

The Translation to Mileševa (1237)

Sava’s burial at Tărnovo was not allowed to be permanent. His nephew King Stefan Vladislav of Serbia — son of Sava’s brother Stefan the First-Crowned — sought the return of his uncle’s body, and after negotiation with the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Asen II (Vladislav’s father-in-law), the relics were released and carried in solemn procession from Tărnovo to Serbia. On 6 May 1237 they were enshrined at the monastery of Mileševa, Vladislav’s own royal foundation in the Serbian lands (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia: “the relics of Saint Sava were transferred from the Holy Forty Martyrs Church to Mileševa on 6 May 1237”; OrthodoxWiki, Sava of Serbia).

The Lives report that when the casket was opened at the translation, the relics were found incorrupt and exuding “an ineffable fragrance” — the sign of sanctity, just as had been reported of Sava’s father Symeon (Serbian hagiographical tradition; pinned as tradition per METHODOLOGY §3.5). The incorruption is what the sources attest at the translation; it is reported here as the tradition’s account, not as adjudicated fact. With his enshrinement at Mileševa, Sava entered into the cult he had himself created for his father — the saint-maker now venerated as a saint, paired with St. Symeon as the founding patrons of the Serbian Church (see Veneration at Mileševa and The Cult of Symeon).

The End of the Pattern

Sava’s death and translation complete the shape of his life with a striking symmetry. He had brought his father’s relics home from a foreign land (Athos) to enshrine them at a royal Serbian monastery (Studenica); now his own relics were brought home from a foreign land (Bulgaria) to be enshrined at a royal Serbian monastery (Mileševa). The man who had made his father the first saint of the holy dynasty became its second, and the cult he had built received him. From Mileševa the veneration of St. Sava would radiate across the Serbian world — until, three and a half centuries later, the Ottomans would burn those very relics on a hill in Belgrade (see The Burning of the Relics 1594).

Serbia and the Second Bulgarian Empire

Sava’s death at Tărnovo cannot be read apart from the close and carefully tended relationship between Serbia and the Second Bulgarian Empire, then at the height of its power under Tsar Ivan Asen II (r. 1218–1241). Asen had made Bulgaria the dominant power of the Balkans, his authority reaching across Thrace, Macedonia, and much of the former Byzantine lands, and his court at Tărnovo had become a center of Orthodox ecclesiastical and political life rivalling any in the region (Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans; Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). For the Serbian house of Nemanjić, good relations with so formidable a neighbor were a matter of survival, and they were sealed in the usual medieval manner — by marriage.

Sava’s nephew King Stefan Vladislav had married Beloslava, a daughter of Ivan Asen II, binding the Serbian crown to the Bulgarian imperial house and making the Tsar of Bulgaria the Serbian king’s father-in-law (Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans). This dynastic tie is the indispensable background to the events at Tărnovo. When Sava, the king’s uncle and the most venerable figure of the Serbian church, fell ill and died in the Bulgarian capital, he did so among kin: in the city of his great-nephew-by-marriage’s grandfather, under the eye of a Tsar bound to the Serbian crown. The honor shown to Sava in death — burial in the chief church of the capital by Tsar and patriarch — and the eventual release of his relics alike flowed from this alliance (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia).

The Patriarchate of Tărnovo

There was an ecclesiastical dimension to the Tărnovo connection as well. In 1235, very near the time of Sava’s last journey, Ivan Asen II secured the elevation of the Bulgarian church to the rank of an autocephalous patriarchate, its primate seated at Tărnovo and recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch and the other Eastern patriarchs (Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia). This was the culminating achievement of Bulgarian ecclesiastical ambition, and it ran exactly parallel to the work Sava had accomplished for Serbia a generation earlier — the winning of an autocephalous national church, here raised a further step to patriarchal dignity. Sava, the architect of Serbian autocephaly and a churchman of pan-Orthodox standing, can hardly have been indifferent to the elevation of the see in whose city he would die; the tradition and the proximity of dates invite the supposition that the affairs of the Tărnovo church were among the concerns that brought him there (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; pinned per METHODOLOGY §3.5). What is certain is that Sava died at the seat of a newly minted patriarchate, the latest fruit of the same movement of Slavic ecclesiastical self-assertion that his own life had so largely advanced.

The Circumstances of the Death

The tradition is precise about the manner of Sava’s death, even as it surrounds it with edifying detail. Having come to Tărnovo on his return from the East, Sava was received with honor by the Tsar and remained over the feast of Theophany (the Baptism of the Lord, 6 January Old Style), which he celebrated in the Bulgarian capital. The Lives report that it was in connection with the Theophany services — by tradition, after the cold of the great water-blessing — that the aged archbishop caught a chill and fell mortally ill (Domentijan and Teodosije, Lives; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia). Worn by the rigors of the long pilgrimage and advanced in years, he did not recover. The detail of the Theophany chill is transmitted by the hagiographers and is reported here as the tradition’s account (pinned per METHODOLOGY §3.5); the bare fact that Sava died at Tărnovo in the winter of 1235/36, shortly after Theophany, is well attested. He made his end as a monk and a pilgrim, far from his own land, in the city of his nephew’s imperial kin.

The Negotiation for the Relics

Sava’s first burial, in the Church of the Holy Forty Martyrs at Tărnovo, was a high honor — the great church was Ivan Asen II’s own foundation and the dynastic shrine of the Bulgarian imperial house — but in Serbian eyes it could not be allowed to stand (Holy Forty Martyrs Church, Veliko Tarnovo, English Wikipedia; OrthodoxWiki, Sava of Serbia). The body of the founder and first archbishop of the Serbian church belonged in Serbia, at the heart of the cult and the dynasty he had served. The recovery of the relics fell to King Stefan Vladislav, and here the marriage tie proved decisive: it was as the son-in-law of Ivan Asen II that Vladislav pressed his suit, and the tradition records that the Tsar at first resisted, reluctant to surrender so great a treasure from his capital, before yielding to his Serbian kinsman’s persistence (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia; OrthodoxWiki, Sava of Serbia). The negotiation was thus a family affair conducted at the highest level of two states, and its success was as much a triumph of Serbian diplomacy — the very art Sava had practiced in life — as of filial piety.

The Procession and the Enshrinement at Mileševa

With the Tsar’s consent obtained, the relics were lifted from the Holy Forty Martyrs Church and carried in solemn procession from Tărnovo across the Bulgarian and Serbian lands to Mileševa, the royal monastery Vladislav had founded as his own burial church (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia; OrthodoxWiki, Sava of Serbia). On 6 May 1237 the relics were enshrined there with great ceremony, and the Lives report that when the casket was opened the body was found incorrupt and exuding a sweet fragrance — the customary sign of sanctity, reported here as the tradition’s account and not as adjudicated fact (Domentijan and Teodosije, Lives; Serbian hagiographical tradition; pinned per METHODOLOGY §3.5). Mileševa, a foundation of the third Nemanjić king, now became the shrine of the dynasty’s holiest member, and from it the veneration of Sava would spread across the Serbian world.

Canonization and the Paired Cult

The translation to Mileševa was, in effect, the act of canonization. Sava was venerated as a saint from the moment his incorrupt relics were enshrined; no formal process in the later Western sense was required, the recognition of his sanctity by the church and the people being expressed in the cult itself (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; OrthodoxWiki, Sava of Serbia). The symmetry with his father’s translation gave the event its full meaning. Sava had brought the relics of his father Symeon home from Athos to enshrine them at Studenica, and had built around them the cult of the holy founder of the dynasty; now Sava’s own relics were brought home from Bulgaria to Mileševa, and the saint-maker took his place beside the saint he had made (see The Cult of Symeon). St. Symeon and St. Sava became the paired patrons of the Serbian church and nation, father and son, the founder of the dynasty and the founder of the church, venerated together as the two pillars on which holy Serbia rested. The man who had given his people a saint had become their greatest one.

See Also

References

  • Obolensky, Dimitri. Six Byzantine Portraits. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, chapter 4. On Sava’s resignation, his death at Tărnovo, and the translation to Mileševa.
  • Fine, John V. A., Jr. The Late Medieval Balkans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. On Ivan Asen II and the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian–Bulgarian marriage tie (Vladislav and Beloslava), and the patriarchate of Tărnovo (1235).
  • Domentijan and Teodosije. Lives of Saint Sava, 1253/54 and c. 1290–1320. On the death (14 January) and the incorrupt relics.
  • Saint Sava. English Wikipedia (used to locate: Domentijan’s notice of 14 January; burial in the Holy Forty Martyrs Church; translation to Mileševa 6 May 1237).
  • Holy Forty Martyrs Church, Veliko Tarnovo. English Wikipedia. On Sava’s burial at Tărnovo.
  • Sava of Serbia. OrthodoxWiki. On the translation of the relics to Mileševa.