The Vine and the Myrrh

When St. Sava carried his father’s relics away from Hilandar to Studenica, he left an empty tomb — and from that empty tomb, the Athonite tradition holds, a grapevine sprang forth and grows to this day against the wall of the monastery church, its dried grapes sent to childless couples the world over, who conceive through the saint’s intercession. This is the collection’s clearest §3.5 case: a beloved and living Athonite tradition that is not documented in the earliest Lives and must be pinned honestly as monastic tradition, not asserted as twelfth-century fact. This file sets out the vine, the myrrh, and the discipline of reading them.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

The Vine of Hilandar

The most famous of the traditions surrounding St. Simeon is the vine of Hilandar. When Sava translated his father’s relics from Hilandar to Studenica (c. 1207; see The Relics and the Translation to Studenica), the tomb at Hilandar was left empty. The Athonite tradition holds that from the stone of that empty tomb a grapevine miraculously sprang forth — growing outside the southern wall of the katholikon (the main church), opposite the place where Simeon had lain — and that it has grown there, bearing fruit, ever since (John Sanidopoulos, “The Miraculous Vine of Saint Symeon the Myrrhgusher at Hilandar,” johnsanidopoulos.com; Hilandar Monastery, “The miraculous vine tree of St. Simeon Mirotočivi,” preservehilandar.org). The monastery’s own tradition adds that St. Simeon appeared in a vision to an abbot of Hilandar — named in the tradition as Abbot Methodios — and foretold that a vine would grow from the stone on which his tomb had rested, and that the vine appeared as he had said (John Sanidopoulos, “The Miraculous Vine,” 2018; preservehilandar.org).

The Intercession for the Childless

Bound to the vine is a specific and living devotional practice: the vine’s fruit is held to heal barrenness, and its grapes are sent to childless couples who pray for a child through St. Simeon’s intercession. Each year the monks of Hilandar gather the grapes, dry them, and send them — with a portion of the vine — to those who write to the monastery asking for the saint’s help; the couple consume the grapes with prayer, while the brotherhood keeps a forty-day round of prayer for them, and the tradition holds that many childless couples have conceived and borne children after receiving the grapes of the vine (Hilandar Monastery, preservehilandar.org; “The Wonderworking Vine from Hilandar Monastery Brings Healing from Barrenness,” obitel-minsk.com; John Sanidopoulos, “The Miraculous Vine,” 2018). The children so born are, in the Serbian and Athonite tradition, counted among the fruits of the saint — a quiet, continuing testimony to his intercession that has made the vine of Hilandar one of the best-loved shrines of the Holy Mountain.

The Myrrh-Gushing

The vine is joined to the older tradition of the myrrh (see The Relics and the Translation to Studenica). Myrrh — a fragrant oil — was reported to flow from Simeon’s tomb, first at Hilandar and later from his relics at Studenica, and it is from this that his epithet Myrrh-streaming / Myrrh-Gusher (Mirotočivi) derives (Simeon the Myrrh-flowing, OrthodoxWiki; and St. Sava: The Cult of Symeon). The myrrh and the vine together make Simeon a saint of fruitfulness in the most literal register: oil from the tomb, grapes from the vine, children from the intercession — the dead founder become, in the tradition’s imagination, a source of life. It is a theologically resonant image for a man whose sanctity was itself a kind of fruitfulness: the founder of a dynasty and a church, whose renunciation of earthly generation was crowned by a heavenly fecundity.

Reading the Vine: The §3.5 Discipline

Here the repository’s attestation-pinning method (see METHODOLOGY §3.5) must be applied with care, because the vine is precisely the kind of beloved tradition that invites the collapse of tradition into documented fact — and the honest course is to refuse that collapse.

The vine is not documented in the earliest Lives. The foundational witnesses to Simeon’s sanctity — St. Sava’s Life of St. Symeon (c. 1208), Stefan the First-Crowned’s Life (c. 1216), and the Lives of Domentijan and Teodosije — attest the myrrh and the wonders of the tomb, but the vine tradition, in the form now told, belongs to the later and living monastic tradition of Hilandar rather than to these earliest texts. Its written attestations are late and, in the popular accounts, undated; it reaches us as the monastery’s own oral and devotional tradition, elaborated over centuries and flourishing today, not as a twelfth- or thirteenth-century documentary record (John Sanidopoulos, “The Miraculous Vine,” 2018; preservehilandar.org). The vine grows, historically, from the moment the relics left Hilandar — a tradition of the empty tomb — and its shape as we have it is the fruit of the monastery’s long veneration.

This is not a diminishment. To say that the vine is living Athonite tradition rather than documented twelfth-century fact is not to deny it but to place it correctly. As the repository holds throughout (see St. Xenia: Hagiography vs. History), the existence and shape of a cult can be firmly established even where the documentary record behind a particular claim is thin or late; and the vine of Hilandar is a genuinely living cult, its grapes really sent, its prayers really offered, its answered petitions really testified to by the faithful today. What §3.5 requires is only that the collection say what kind of thing the vine is: a venerated and continuing Athonite tradition, pinned to the monastery that holds it and the modern accounts that report it, not a fact certified by the earliest sources or by historical inquiry (per METHODOLOGY §3.5).

[Apocryphal / living tradition: The miraculous origin of the vine of Hilandar from Simeon’s empty tomb, the vision to Abbot Methodios, and the intercessory power of its grapes for the childless are pinned here as living Athonite tradition, not as documented twelfth-century fact. They are not attested in the earliest Lives (Sava, c. 1208; Stefan the First-Crowned, c. 1216) but reach us through the later and continuing tradition of Hilandar Monastery and modern devotional accounts (John Sanidopoulos, “The Miraculous Vine,” 2018; Hilandar Monastery, preservehilandar.org; obitel-minsk.com). The vine itself and the practice of sending its grapes to childless couples are a real and present feature of the monastery’s life; the collection reports the tradition as the monastery holds it and does not adjudicate the miraculous claims.]

Why the Tradition Endures

The vine endures because it does something the documentary record cannot: it makes the saint present and useful to ordinary people across eight centuries. A childless couple in the twenty-first century who write to Hilandar and receive three dried grapes are placed in living contact with the twelfth-century founder of Serbia — not as a figure of history but as an intercessor who acts. This is the logic of the whole cult of relics and holy places, and the vine is one of its most tender expressions: from the empty tomb of a man who renounced earthly fatherhood grows a vine whose fruit gives children (John Sanidopoulos, “The Miraculous Vine,” 2018; preservehilandar.org). The collection reports this as what the tradition is and does, with the §3.5 honesty that names it tradition — and with the recognition that, for the faithful who have received the grapes and borne the children, the naming changes nothing.

Feast and Commemoration

St. Simeon the Myrrh-Gusher is commemorated on 13 February (Julian calendar), the day of his repose at Hilandar in 1199, corresponding to 26 February on the civil (Gregorian) calendar for those churches that reckon the fixed feasts by the old style (Simeon the Myrrh-flowing, OrthodoxWiki). He is venerated across the Orthodox world but above all in the Serbian Orthodox Church, and most intimately at the two houses that hold his story: Hilandar on Athos, where he died and where the vine grows, and Studenica in Serbia, where his relics rest (see Veneration Today). He is very frequently venerated together with his son St. Sava, the two celebrated as the founding pair of Serbian Orthodoxy (see The Holy Dynasty and Serbian Orthodoxy).

See Also

References

  • John Sanidopoulos. “The Miraculous Vine of Saint Symeon the Myrrhgusher at Hilandar.” johnsanidopoulos.com, 2018. On the vine, the vision to Abbot Methodios, and the intercession for the childless.
  • Hilandar Monastery. “The miraculous vine tree of St. Simeon Mirotočivi in Hilandar.” preservehilandar.org. The monastery’s own account of the vine and the practice of sending grapes.
  • “The Wonderworking Vine from Hilandar Monastery Brings Healing from Barrenness.” obitel-minsk.com, 2021. On the devotional practice and testimonies.
  • Simeon the Myrrh-flowing. OrthodoxWiki (used to locate the epithet, the myrrh, and the feast of 13/26 February; pinned as tradition under METHODOLOGY §3.5).
  • METHODOLOGY.md §3.5 (attestation-pinning of hagiography), this repository.