Veneration Today

St. Simeon the Myrrh-Gusher is venerated across the Orthodox world and above all in the Serbian Orthodox Church, commemorated on 13/26 February, the day of his repose. His cult is anchored at the two houses that hold his story — Studenica, where his relics rest, and Hilandar, where he died and where the vine still grows — and it is lived most fully in his pairing with his son St. Sava, the two celebrated together as the founders of Serbian Orthodoxy. This file traces the living veneration and Simeon’s place in the memory of the Serbian people.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

The Feast: 13/26 February

St. Simeon is commemorated on 13 February (Julian calendar), the anniversary of his death at Hilandar in 1199, which corresponds to 26 February on the civil (Gregorian) calendar for churches reckoning the fixed feasts by the old style (Simeon the Myrrh-flowing, OrthodoxWiki; see The Vine and the Myrrh). The feast was fixed by St. Sava himself when he established the cult, and it has been kept in the Serbian Church without interruption since the early thirteenth century (see The Relics and the Translation to Studenica; Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). On his feast the Church sings the service St. Sava composed for him, and honors him under his epithet: Sveti Simeon Mirotočivi, St. Simeon the Myrrh-streaming.

The Two Shrines: Studenica and Hilandar

Simeon’s veneration is bound to two places, each holding a different part of him.

Studenica, the marble mausoleum he built for his own burial (see Studenica, the Marble Mausoleum), holds his relics, brought home by St. Sava c. 1207 and resting there ever since. As the “mother of all Serbian churches” and a UNESCO World Heritage site, Studenica is the principal shrine of the saint in Serbia and a center of pilgrimage, where the founder of the dynasty lies at the heart of the tradition he began (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; Simeon the Myrrh-flowing, OrthodoxWiki).

Hilandar, the Serbian monastery on Mount Athos that he and Sava refounded (see Hilandar and the Death Before the Hodegetria), holds the place of his death and first burial — and the vine that grows from his empty tomb, whose grapes are sent to childless couples the world over (see The Vine and the Myrrh). Ranked fourth among the twenty ruling monasteries of Athos and the only Serbian house on the Holy Mountain, Hilandar remains a living center of the saint’s cult and of Serbian monasticism eight centuries after he laid its stones (see Mount Athos: The Ruling Monasteries; Chilandari Monastery (Athos), OrthodoxWiki). The two shrines together — relics in Serbia, vine on Athos — express the double homeland of a saint who was Serbia’s founder and Athos’s monk.

Venerated with St. Sava

Simeon is most fully venerated not alone but with his son St. Sava, the two celebrated together as the founding pair of Serbian Orthodoxy (see The Holy Dynasty and Serbian Orthodoxy). In hymnography, in church dedications, and above all in iconography the two are shown side by side — Simeon the prince-monk and Sava the monk-archbishop, the origin of the dynasty and the founder of the church — and Serbian churches and frescoes regularly depict the pair as the twin pillars of the tradition (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). St. Sava’s own feast (14/27 January) is the great national-ecclesial celebration of the Serbs, and Simeon stands always beside him as the father from whom the whole holy line descends; to venerate Sava is, in the Serbian tradition, always to remember Simeon (see St. Sava: Patron of Serbia).

Simeon in the Memory of the Serbian People

Beyond the liturgical cult, Simeon occupies a foundational place in Serbian national and cultural memory. He is remembered as the founder of the medieval Serbian state, the architect of the dynasty that carried Serbia to its height, the builder of Studenica and Đurđevi Stupovi, and — through Hilandar and its charters — a father of Serbian literacy and letters (see Hilandar and the Death Before the Hodegetria; Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). In the long centuries when there was no Serbian state, it was precisely this fusion of founder-king and founding-saint, transmitted through the church, that helped carry Serbian identity forward (see Orthodoxy: World Orthodoxy — Serbia). His name is borne by churches, monasteries, and institutions across the Serbian world, and his image — the crowned prince become the poor monk, dying before the Hodegetria, his tomb sprouting the vine — remains one of the most beloved in Serbian Orthodoxy.

A Sober Assessment

Written from within the Orthodox Church (per METHODOLOGY §4.1), this collection venerates St. Simeon while telling the whole of his story. He was a hard and effective medieval dynast who came to power over his brothers, warred for decades, and suppressed heretics with the coercion of his age (see The Path to Grand Župan; The Council Against the Bogomils); and he was a man who, at the height of his power, laid down everything to die a poor monk on Athos, whose renunciation the Church received as genuinely holy and whose cult has borne fruit for eight hundred years (see The Great Renunciation; Hagiography Weighed). The Church glorifies the second without denying the first; the veneration of St. Simeon is the veneration of a real and complicated man received, on the whole and in his final orientation, as a saint. That honesty — neither hagiographic celebration nor debunking — is the truest homage the collection can offer him.

See Also

References

  • Obolensky, Dimitri. Six Byzantine Portraits. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, chapter 4. On the paired cult of Simeon and Sava and Simeon’s place in Serbian memory.
  • Simeon the Myrrh-flowing and Chilandari Monastery (Athos). OrthodoxWiki (used to locate the feast of 13/26 February, the shrines at Studenica and Hilandar, and Hilandar’s rank; pinned as tradition under METHODOLOGY §3.5).
  • METHODOLOGY.md §3.5 (attestation-pinning) and §4.1 (confessional standpoint), this repository.