Patron of Serbia

St. Sava is the patron saint of Serbia and, distinctively, the patron of Serbian schools and education. His feast — the day of his repose — is kept on 14 January (Old Style) / 27 January (New Style) as Savindan, “Saint Sava’s Day,” which is at once a religious feast, the slava of every Serbian school, and a national day of education and culture, celebrated as such since 1840. No other figure occupies so central a place in the union of faith, nation, and learning in the Serbian world.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

The Feast of St. Sava (Savindan)

The principal feast of St. Sava is the day of his repose, 14 January in the Julian (Old Style) calendar, which corresponds to 27 January in the Gregorian (New Style) reckoning (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia: “venerated by the Eastern Orthodox Church on January 27 [O.S. January 14]”; see Death at Tărnovo 1236 on the date of his death). The day is known in Serbian as Savindan (“Saint Sava’s Day”). A second commemoration, of the translation of his relics, falls on 6 May; and the burning of his relics is commemorated on 27 April / 10 May (see The Burning of the Relics 1594). Savindan on 14/27 January is the chief and most widely kept of these.

[Note on the calendar: the Serbian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, so its faithful keep Savindan on 14 January Old Style, which currently falls on 27 January in the civil (Gregorian) calendar. The two dates are the same feast.]

Patron of Serbia

Sava is venerated as the patron and protector of the Serbian people and nation. This standing flows directly from his historical role: he is the founder of the autocephalous Serbian Church (1219), the maker of the holy Nemanjić dynasty, the giver of Serbia’s first law, and the architect of the symphony of church and nation (see Autocephaly 1219, The Cult of Symeon, and The Nomocanon). Because the church he founded carried Serbian identity through the centuries when there was no Serbian state, Sava became the personal embodiment of that identity — the saint in whom Serbian Orthodoxy and Serbian nationhood are one. The burning of his relics in 1594 only deepened this role, making him a symbol of national endurance (see The Burning of the Relics 1594), and the great Temple on Vračar stands as its modern monument.

Patron of Serbian Schools and Education

The most distinctive of Sava’s patronages is over education. As the founder of Serbian letters, the translator and lawgiver, and the builder of monastic schools — “the first Serbian educator” and the Enlightener (Prosvetitelj) (see Faith, Letters, and Learning) — Sava is honored as the patron saint of Serbian schools. Since 1840, his feast has been kept as the official slava of Serbian schools — “School Slava” — a day on which schools, universities, and educational institutions across Serbia celebrate Sava as their patron with a special church and school rite (Serbia.com, “Saint Sava Day”: “Saint Sava has been celebrated as the schools’ patron saint since 1840… also known as Spirituality Day and School Day”; Savremena Gimnazija, “St Sava’s Day: Celebration of the schools’ Slava and the first Serbian educator”). Savindan is thus, uniquely, both a feast of the church and a holiday of the nation’s schools — the hymn to St. Sava is sung in schoolrooms, and the day functions as Serbia’s day of education and culture. This fusion of the religious and the educational, rooted in Sava’s own work, has no exact parallel among Orthodox national patrons.

A Living Cult

The devotion to St. Sava is intensely alive in the contemporary Serbian world. Beyond the school slava and the Temple on Vračar (see The Burning of the Relics 1594), Sava is the patron of countless churches, schools, and institutions across Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, the Serbian diaspora, and the worldwide Serbian Orthodox Church; his name is among the most common given to Serbian parishes from Belgrade to America and Australia (parish records of the Serbian Orthodox Church worldwide; Balkan Insight, “Serbs Cherish Memory of Favourite Saint,” 2013). For the wider institutional history of the church he founded — through Peć, the Ottoman centuries, and the modern patriarchate — see the Orthodoxy Guide’s Serbia file. The fact most worth keeping in view is the one this file records: that the founder of the Serbian Church is also the patron of every Serbian schoolroom, so that faith and learning meet, in Serbian memory, in a single saint.

The Julian and Gregorian Calendars

The dating of Savindan requires a word on the calendar, because the Serbian Orthodox Church reckons its feasts by the Julian (Old Style) calendar while the civil life of Serbia follows the Gregorian (New Style) (see the note above; Saint Sava, English Wikipedia). The feast of Sava’s repose falls on 14 January in the Julian calendar; in the present era the Julian calendar runs thirteen days behind the Gregorian, so that 14 January Old Style corresponds to 27 January New Style. The two dates name a single feast, not two: when Serbian schools and parishes keep Savindan on 27 January in the civil calendar, they are keeping the church’s 14 January (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia; cf. Death at Tărnovo 1236 on the date of repose). The same arithmetic governs the other commemorations of Sava: each Old Style date appears, in the civil reckoning, thirteen days later. This is the ordinary situation of the Old-Calendar Orthodox churches, and it explains the doubled dates that recur throughout this collection’s treatment of Sava’s feasts (cf. Orthodoxy Guide: World Orthodoxy — Serbia).

The Three Feast-Dates

St. Sava is commemorated on three principal occasions in the year, each marking a distinct moment in the history of his cult (Saint Sava and Burning of Saint Sava’s relics, English Wikipedia; Serbian Orthodox Church, “The Burning of Relics of Saint Sava”):

  1. His repose — 14 January (O.S.) / 27 January (N.S.) — Savindan, the chief feast, the day of his death at Tărnovo and the day kept as the school slava (Saint Sava, English Wikipedia; see Death at Tărnovo 1236).
  2. The translation of his relics — 6 May — commemorating the bringing of his body from Tărnovo to Mileševa in 1237 (see Veneration at Mileševa).
  3. The burning of his relics — 27 April (O.S.) / 10 May (N.S.) — commemorating the destruction of the relics on Vračar in 1594 (Serbian Orthodox Church, “The Burning of Relics of Saint Sava”; OCA, “The Burning of Saint Sava’s Relics”; see The Burning of the Relics 1594).

Of the three, Savindan on 14/27 January is by far the most widely kept, both as a religious feast and as the national day of education. The two later commemorations belong more particularly to the history of the relics — their honour at Mileševa and their destruction at Belgrade — and together the three dates trace, across the liturgical year, the whole arc of the cult: the death of the saint, the enshrinement of his relics, and their martyrdom by fire.

The School Slava of 1840 in Context

The establishment of Sava’s feast as the official slava of Serbian schools in 1840 is best understood against the rise of Serbian national education under the newly autonomous Principality of Serbia (Serbia.com, “Saint Sava Day,” on the school slava since 1840; cf. Orthodoxy Guide: World Orthodoxy — Serbia on the modern Serbian state and church). In the decades after the Serbian uprisings of the early nineteenth century, as Serbia won self-government within the Ottoman Empire and began to build the institutions of a modern nation, the founding of schools and the cultivation of national letters were central tasks — and it was natural that the new educational system should place itself under the patronage of the saint remembered as the first Serbian educator and the Enlightener (Prosvetitelj) (see Faith, Letters, and Learning). The choice of Sava as the patron of the schools thus joined the medieval memory of the founder of Serbian letters to the modern project of national education: in adopting Savindan as their slava, the schools of the young principality claimed continuity with the work Sava had begun six centuries before. Since 1840 the day has been kept across Serbian schools, universities, and educational institutions as a combined church-and-school rite, “also known as Spirituality Day and School Day” (Serbia.com, “Saint Sava Day”; Savremena Gimnazija, “St Sava’s Day”). The fusion of the religious feast and the educational holiday, rooted in Sava’s own work as lawgiver and teacher, has no exact parallel among the national patrons of the Orthodox world.

The Hymn to St. Sava

Bound up with the school slava is the hymn to St. Sava, sung in Serbian schoolrooms and churches on Savindan — known from its opening words as “Uskliknimo s ljubavlju” (“Let us cry out with love”). The hymn celebrates Sava as the enlightener and protector of the Serbian people, and its singing is among the most characteristic observances of the feast: where the slava makes the day a holiday of the nation’s schools, the hymn gives it a common voice, so that generations of Serbian schoolchildren have learned to mark Savindan by singing of their patron (Serbia.com, “Saint Sava Day”; Savremena Gimnazija, “St Sava’s Day,” on the observance of the schools’ slava). The hymn thus carries the cult of Sava into the formation of the young, joining the religious veneration of the saint to the national and educational meaning of the day, exactly as the feast itself does.

Patron of Churches, Institutions, and the Diaspora

The patronage of St. Sava extends across an immense range of churches and institutions and follows the Serbian people wherever they have settled. Within the historic Serbian lands — Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the regions of the former Yugoslavia — countless parishes, monasteries, schools, and societies bear his name and keep him as patron; and with the great Serbian emigrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the cult travelled outward, so that St. Sava is among the most common dedications of Serbian Orthodox parishes in the diaspora, from Western Europe to the Americas and Australia (parish records of the Serbian Orthodox Church worldwide; Balkan Insight, “Serbs Cherish Memory of Favourite Saint,” 2013, on the living national devotion). For the Serbian diaspora in particular, the church dedicated to St. Sava has often served as the centre of community life — the place where the language, the faith, and the national memory are kept — so that the saint who founded the Serbian Church in 1219 remains, eight centuries later, the patron under whom Serbs gather across the world (Balkan Insight, “Serbs Cherish Memory of Favourite Saint,” 2013; cf. Orthodoxy Guide: World Orthodoxy — Serbia on the worldwide Serbian Church).

Sava in Serbian National Symbolism

Beyond the calendar of feasts and the dedications of churches, St. Sava stands at the centre of Serbian national symbolism. He is the figure in whom the Serbian people read the unity of their faith, their history, and their identity: the founder of the church that carried the nation through the centuries without a state, the maker of the holy dynasty, the giver of the law, the patron of learning, and — after 1594 — the martyr whose burned relics became an emblem of national endurance (see The Burning of the Relics 1594 and The National Saint and Scholarship). His image on the banners of the Banat rebels, his name on the schools of the modern principality, and the great Temple raised over the site of the burning all belong to a single symbolic language in which Sava signifies Serbia itself (Burning of Saint Sava’s relics, English Wikipedia; Serbia.com, “The Church of Saint Sava”). This centrality is precisely what the companion file The National Saint and Scholarship sets in critical context, distinguishing the historical figure from the national symbol; here it is enough to record that no other saint occupies so complete a place in the self-understanding of a nation, and that the union of faith, learning, and nationhood which Savindan celebrates is the living heart of the cult.

See Also

References

  • Saint Sava. English Wikipedia (used to locate the feast date, 27 January / O.S. 14 January).
  • “Saint Sava Day: Celebrating Education and Tradition in Serbia.” Serbia.com. On Savindan, the school slava since 1840, and Sava as “the first Serbian educator.”
  • “St Sava’s Day: Celebration of the Schools’ Slava and the First Serbian Educator.” Savremena Gimnazija (eng.savremena-gimnazija.edu.rs). On the school slava and its observance.
  • “Serbs Cherish Memory of Favourite Saint.” Balkan Insight, 25 January 2013. On the living national devotion to St. Sava and the diaspora.
  • Burning of Saint Sava’s relics. English Wikipedia. On the 1594 banners and the third commemoration (27 April / 10 May).
  • Serbian Orthodox Church. “The Burning of the Relics of Saint Sava” (arhiva.spc.rs); and Orthodox Church in America (OCA), “The Burning of Saint Sava’s Relics” (oca.org). On the commemoration of the burning (27 April / 10 May).
  • Church of Saint Sava (Temple of Saint Sava, Belgrade), English Wikipedia, and Serbia.com, “The Church of Saint Sava.” On the Temple on Vračar as the modern centre of the cult.