SVETI SAVA SRPSKI I SAKRALNE OSNOVE DRŽAVE NEMANJIĆA

Serbia’s drastic political rise in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, territorial expansion and newly acquired independence were accompanied by numerous initiatives to provide a sacral foundation for the nascent Nemanjić state. The ideational architect and implementer of this project was St. Sava, prince, monk and the first Serbian archbishop. The implementation of Sava’s vision took several directions, with his thought processes and actions reflecting current views and the loftiest civilizational norms of the era. In a bid to secure the attribute of the divinely chosen people, or the “New Israel”, for the Serbs, Sava carved two paths. The first was the “great and expansive path to Mount Athos”, which he achieved by taking the monastic vow and undergoing all stages of the ascetic endeavor on the hallowed ground of the Holy Mountain. The essence of this remarkable project was attaining virtue and spiritual perfection as a source of charisma and authority. The other, two-way path led to “Jerusalem and Mount Sinai and each place where the name of God is spoken”. Sava achieved this direct contact with sanctity during his pilgrimages and tours of the most renowned holy places in the Eastern Christian world. In all those places, he “left a record of himself and his [kin]” by undertaking acts of patronage and making generous donations, acquiring the blessings of the most distinguished hierarchs of the church and spiritual figures. Thus, he symbolically and materially mapped out parts of the Holy Land’s territory for his people. Aware of the theological teaching on the possibility of “translating sanctity”, Sava brought to Serbia some of the most revered Christian relics associated with Christ, the Mother of God, St. John the Forerunner, and other protagonists of the evangelical events. He donated the most valuable of those relics to Žiča, Serbia’s cathedral and coronation church, thereby transforming its Church of the Ascension into an emulation and symbolic substitute for the Holy Land in his fatherland. Sava sought to achieve this “participation in sanctity”, as an authentic Serbian contribution to the spiritual tradition of the Christian world at the time, by meticulously building the cult of his father, Simeon Nemanja, the dynasty’s progenitor. The cult took shape gradually and purposely, with a careful formulation of all the relevant hagiographic, liturgical, and material aspects. At its core stood the concept of ruler – monk – saint, and the source of the saint’s charisma was Simeon’s myrrh-gushing gift, unique in the Serbian cultic practice. The formation of St. Simeon’s cult involved multiple phases, from Nemanja’s tonsure (1196) and departure for Mount Athos, where he passed, to the revelation of his relics and their translation to Studenica (1207), where they revealed their myrrh-gushing and miraculous powers. The transfer of his relics laid the ground in the Serbian milieu for the translatio ritual, which in medieval Christian states represented a tried-and-tested tool of dynastic propaganda and sacral rooting of the state. The materialization of Sava’s visionary program was Studenica, the dynasty’s funerary church and the keeper of the holy progenitor’s myrrh-gushing relics, which would become a hallowed template for the subsequent Nemanjić generations. Another monastery that in the early Nemanjić period held the status of a Serbian holy place of the highest order was Žiča, to which Sava, in his capacity of archbishop, assigned the role of the cathedral, coronation church, and, via the relics it safeguarded, a symbolic evocation of the Holy Land. It was at Žiča that Sava managed projects of utmost national significance, e.g., forming a network of bishoprics and laying down the legal system. The sacral aura of the Ascension Church fully came to the fore at the grand ecclesiastical and political council in 1221. At this council, Sava proclaimed the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, establishing the orthodoxy of the Serbian Church and laying the theological and ideological grounds for Saint-Savian ecclesiastical autocephaly. On the same occasion, at the newly founded archbishop’s seat, Sava announced the dogma of apostolic succession, signaling that the Serbian Church, too, represented an authentic legacy of the original church of Christ. The same year, Žiča’s Church of the Ascension was the stage for an event of utmost sacrality – the coronation of Stefan the First-Crowned. Stefan’s royal title, “God-given sovereign king of Serbia” or “ruler and autocrat by the grace of God” not only affirmed his newly acquired status but also proclaimed the foundational principles of the early Nemanjićs’ ruling ideology. Among other things, these principles included their charismatic traits as a personal manifestation of the sacred, God-chosen nature of their rule. St. Sava of Serbia completed his program when he transferred the incorruptible body of Stefan the First-Crowned from Studenica to Žiča, bringing a national-level holy artifact of the highest order for safekeeping alongside the most venerable all-Christian relics. This was a way for Nemanjić Serbia to, by recognizable ritualization, join the European peoples and states in which the ruler’s inauguration was performed on the relics of the first-crowned “holy king”. The sacral epicenter and source of Studenica and Žiča were the holy relics of the state’s founders, and their role was to “edify their fatherland by various miracles”. A notable component in all of Sava’s undertakings was that they were cloaked in a miraculous aura. Known as a holy man, Sava was capable of undertaking acts “above human nature” and addressing the Deity with “boldness”. This divine inspiration was the true source of Sava’s initiatives, characterized by an impressive ideational format and unmatched creative drive. Sava is to be credited with fashioning the Serbs into the “perfect people” and “New Israel”. For this reason, contemporaries and posterity bestowed on him the loftiest of titles – “the fatherland’s prince of piety.”