Saint Sava I, Archbishop of Serbia

Sava, born Rastko, was the youngest son of Stefan Nemanja, ruler of Serbia. As a teenager he secretly left his father's court for Mount Athos and became a monk; later his father joined him there as the monk Simeon. Together they restored the deserted monastery of Hilandar and made it a Serbian house, and Sava wrote a rule for its monks.

In 1219, at Nicaea, where the Byzantine emperor and patriarch lived after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders, Sava was consecrated the first archbishop of a self-governing Serbian Church. He organized its dioceses and wrote the first Serbian Lives. Returning from his second pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he died in Tarnovo, the Bulgarian capital, in January 1236. His relics were taken to Mileševa; in 1594 the Ottomans burned them on the Vračar hill in Belgrade, where his great church now stands.