Vatopedi and the Chrysobull

In 1197 the abdicated Grand Župan, now the monk Simeon, made the remarkable journey of a former sovereign to Mount Athos, where he joined his son Sava at the Greek monastery of Vatopedi. Together, father and son sought and obtained a house of their own for the Serbian nation: in June 1198 the Byzantine Emperor Alexios III Angelos issued a golden-sealed chrysobull granting them the ruined monastery of Hilandar “to the Serbs as an eternal gift.” This file follows the journey, the reunion, and the imperial grant that made a Serbian foundation on Athos possible.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

The Journey of an Abdicated Sovereign

After taking the habit at Studenica (see The Tonsure and Saint Anastasija), the monk Simeon did a thing without close parallel: an aged former ruler of a state, in his eighties, undertook the long and arduous journey to Mount Athos to live out his days as a simple monk beside his son (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; Stefan Nemanja, English Wikipedia). The tradition dates his arrival on the Holy Mountain to about 1197 (Simeon the Myrrh-flowing, OrthodoxWiki, “joined his son Saint Sava… after two years”; Stefan Nemanja, English Wikipedia). The son he came to join was Sava — his own youngest child, Rastko, who years before had fled the court to be tonsured on Athos, and whose flight had first drawn the family toward the Holy Mountain (see St. Sava: The Prince Who Fled to Athos). The rupture of the son’s flight was thus healed and transfigured: the father who had once sent men to bring the runaway prince home now followed him to the Mountain to die under his guidance.

Reunion at Vatopedi

Simeon settled with Sava at the Greek monastery of Vatopedi, one of the senior and wealthiest houses of Athos, where Sava had been formed as a monk over the preceding years and had acquired the Greek language, the Athonite discipline, and the standing on the Mountain that would soon let the two deal with emperors (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; see St. Sava: The Prince Who Fled to Athos, on Sava’s seven years at Vatopedi). For a time father and son lived together in that community — the abdicated prince as an ordinary elderly monk, the son as the more seasoned Athonite — before they conceived the project that would be their lasting monument: to acquire and refound a house of their own, a Serbian monastery within the republic of the Holy Mountain (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4).

The Chrysobull of Alexios III (1198)

The decisive act was an imperial grant. The Byzantine Emperor Alexios III Angelos (r. 1195–1203), in June 1198, issued a golden-sealed chrysobull — the most solemn form of Byzantine imperial document — donating the derelict and abandoned monastery of Hilandar (Greek Chilandariou), on the southwestern side of the Athonite peninsula, to Simeon and Sava, to be held as an independent house for the Serbs “as an eternal gift” (Hilandar, English Wikipedia; and consistently in St. Sava: Founding Hilandar, which dates the chrysobull to June/July 1198). The grant made Hilandar not a mere cell or dependency but a full monastery of the Athonite federation, Serbian in personnel and endowment yet canonically secured within the Holy Mountain and, through it, within the most authoritative monastic order of the Orthodox world (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; see Mount Athos: The Ruling Monasteries).

[Disputed: The chrysobull is dated to June/July 1198; the exact month varies slightly across the sources, but the year 1198 and the imperial grantor Alexios III are secure (Hilandar, English Wikipedia; and St. Sava: Founding Hilandar). This collection follows the sibling collection’s dating of June 1198.]

Why the Emperor Gave the Grant

The chrysobull was not disinterested generosity but a piece of Byzantine statecraft, and it grew directly out of Nemanja’s own diplomacy (see Unification and Byzantium). Alexios III was connected to the Serbian ruling house by marriage: Nemanja’s son and heir Stefan, the new Grand Župan, was married to Eudokia (Eudokia Angelina), a niece of the emperor — the very marriage that had sealed the Serbian-Byzantine peace of 1190/1191 (Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans, pp. 41–42; and St. Sava: Founding Hilandar). In the fraught 1190s — Alexios had seized the throne by blinding his own brother Isaac II, and his reign would end in the catastrophe of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 — the Byzantine court had every reason to cultivate the allied Serbs, and the grant of a ruined Athonite monastery to a friendly dynasty cost Constantinople little and bought it goodwill on its northwestern frontier (Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans, pp. 41–42; Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). The transaction is a textbook instance of the workings of the Byzantine commonwealth: religion, kinship, and statecraft operating as a single fabric — and the fruit of the marriage alliance Nemanja had arranged to end his last war.

That the request could be made at all owed much to Simeon and Sava’s personal standing. Sava was a monk of Vatopedi of growing reputation, and Simeon was no ordinary petitioner but a former reigning prince and the father-in-law, at one remove, of the imperial house; between them they could approach the emperor directly and obtain what a lesser suit could not (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4).

From Grant to Foundation

The chrysobull secured the ground; the building of Hilandar as a living Serbian house — its rebuilding from ruin, its endowment from Serbia, its founding charter, and Simeon’s death within its walls — is the subject of the next file (see Hilandar and the Death Before the Hodegetria). What must be marked here is the shape of the achievement: an abdicated Serbian prince and his monk-son, standing on the most prestigious monastic ground in Orthodoxy, obtained from the Byzantine emperor a permanent, canonically unassailable foothold for their nation at the heart of the Holy Mountain. It was the last and, in its long consequences, perhaps the greatest of the projects Simeon set his hand to — the planting of the Serbian church within the republic of Athos, from which, as the tradition holds, Serbian Orthodoxy would first learn to read, to pray, and to remember its saints (see St. Sava: Founding Hilandar).

See Also

• Hilandar and the Death Before the Hodegetria — the refounding, the charter, and Simeon’s death
• The Tonsure and Saint Anastasija — the monk who made the journey
• Unification and Byzantium — the Byzantine marriage alliance that made the chrysobull possible
• St. Sava: Founding Hilandar — the same events from Sava’s side, with full documentary detail
• Mount Athos: The Ruling Monasteries — Hilandar’s place among the twenty houses

References

• Obolensky, Dimitri. Six Byzantine Portraits. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, chapter 4. On Symeon’s journey to Athos, the reunion with Sava, and the refounding of Hilandar.
• Fine, John V. A., Jr. The Late Medieval Balkans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987, pp. 41–42. On Alexios III, the Eudokia marriage, and the Byzantine-Serbian context.
• Hilandar and Simeon the Myrrh-flowing and Stefan Nemanja. English Wikipedia and OrthodoxWiki (used to locate the arrival at Athos c. 1197, Vatopedi, and the chrysobull of Alexios III, June/July 1198; pinned as tradition under METHODOLOGY §3.5).