• The Life of St Sava — front cover
  • The Life of St Sava — back cover
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St Nikolai Velimirovic

The Life of St Sava

The Life of St Sava

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St Sava is among the best known and loved Serbian saints. Born in 1173, as a young man he left the home of his father, the King of Serbia, went to Mount Athos, became a monk and founded the great monastic house of Hilandar. In 1219 he was appointed the first archbishop of the newly organized autocephalous Serbian Orthodox church. He died in 1236 and was later canonized as the spiritual enlightener of the Serbian people.

St Nicholai writes about St Sava in a simple, moving, and clear manner. He uses his sources to convey the atmosphere and history of the time. Often brief chapters are accompanied by his meditations on the meaning of particular events in the life of the saint. St Sava, he writes, “wanted only through the nationally organized church to make his people worthy members of the universal Orthodox family of Christ. He himself was permeated with the spirit of ecumenical Christianity. As such, he felt at home in every Orthodox community of every race and language.”


The Author: St Nicholai Velimirovich, the Serbian Orthodox Bishop of Zhicha (1880–1956) was the most influential and the most productive figure in Serbian church life in the twentieth century. In 1946, after spending the war years in the Dachau concentration camp, he came to the United States. He died in 1956 and was canonized in 2003.

From the Lychnos review

An editorial quotation from Lychnos magazine, Lychnos June 2024  July 2024. This is not a customer review.

THE LIFE OF ST SAVA

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THE LIFE OF ST SAVA
by St Nicholai Velimirovich
In the writings of the Church, it is not uncommon to
find gems of hagiography written by saints themselves.
Following in the traditions of such fathers as St
Sophronius, the biographer of the life of St Mary of Egypt,
and St Gregory of Nyssa, the author of the subliminal Life
of Moses, St Nicholai Velimirovich, a contemporary, 20th
Century champion of the Serbian Church, left for the
Orthodox faithful of all traditions this book, The Life of
St Sava.
Upon taking up this outstanding book, one is thrown into
a world of medieval intrigue filled with warriors, Zupans,
battles, heroes, foreign villains, internal foes and the
pressures of patriotic duty. Within this dark world of war,
poverty and ever-present threats, the author portrays the
life of a young boy called by God from an early age to
monasticism – to flee from his princely life of wealth and
comfort in order to cultivate a spiritual kingdom.
The life of St Sava is the life of a prince filled with a
sense of duty to his beloved Serbian people, a humble
and deeply sensitive monastic hermit, a builder of
magnificent churches, monasteries and lasting monastic
communities, an archbishop, a founder of the Serbian
Orthodox Church, an ecumenical traveller moving freely
within the melting pot of Byzantine cultures, a champion
of Serbia, a miracle worker and a civil peacemaker.
First published in 1951 by an important bishop of the
Serbian Church, the book is unusual in that, though it
starts with the birth of the Saint and ends in his falling
asleep, it does not read like a typical biography. It reads
like the observations of a grateful heir of the inheritance
of Serbian spirituality and nationhood. St Nicholai keeps
his chapters very short - no more than 3 pages each.
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He starts each chapter with a philosophical observation
(e.g. “No beauty can be compared with the beauty
of holiness”) before narrating a chapter in the life of
Saint Sava that flows from the opening observation.
Not one dull moment can be found in the pages of this
extraordinary biography.
The Life of Saint Sava is a deeply inspiring narration of
Serbia’s greatest saint. It throws the reader deep into
an unfamiliar world within which the Orthodox reader
can nonetheless somehow navigate (it is by no means
a historical treatise). Within that world, St Nicholai paints
the picture of a man with the same desires and struggles
so familiar to the contemporary Orthodox Christian. In the
Life of Saint Sava, one is forced to encounter one’s own
shortcomings and inspired to act on God’s ceaseless
calls to sainthood.
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