Originally known as Prince Rastko Nemanjić, Saint Sava became the first Patriarch and Archbishop of Serbia, serving from 1219 to 1233, and remains one of the most important saints of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
In his youth, around 1192, saint Sava left his royal life and secretly went to the Orthodox monastic community on Mount Athos. There he took monastic vows and received the name Sava. His spiritual journey first led him to a Russian monastery and later to the Greek monastery of Vatoped. In 1197, his father, King Stefan Nemanja, joined him on Mount Athos.
A year later, in 1198, the former prince and his father restored the abandoned Hilandar Monastery, which soon became the heart of Serbian monastic and spiritual life.
King Stefan Nemanja took monastic vows under the name Simeon and passed away at Hilandar on February 13, 1200. He was later canonized as Saint Simeon. After his father’s death, saint Sava withdrew to a life of deeper asceticism in Kareya, where he built a small hermitage in 1199. He also wrote the Kareya typicon, setting spiritual rules for both Hilandar and the ascetic community.
Through his wisdom and diplomacy, saint Sava persuaded the Patriarch of the Byzantine Orthodox Church to appoint him as the first Serbian archbishop in 1219. This historic act established the independence of the Serbian Church.
Saint Sava is honored as the founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church and is also revered as the patron saint of education and medicine among the Serbian people. From the 1830s onward, he became the patron saint of Serbian schools and students.
During one of his journeys, after taking part in the blessing of the waters ceremony, saint Sava fell ill with a cough that developed into pneumonia. He died on the night between Saturday and Sunday, January 14, 1235. He was first buried in the Cathedral of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Trnovo. On May 6, 1237, his holy relics were transferred to the Mileševa Monastery in southern Serbia.
Three hundred and sixty years later, Ottoman authorities exhumed his relics and burned them in the main square of Belgrade, an act meant to suppress Serbian faith and identity.
The Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade stands on the very site where his relics were burned. Planned in 1939 and begun in 1985, the church today is a powerful symbol of faith, sacrifice, and the enduring legacy of saint Sava.