‘Humble Month’?

I have seen some Orthodox Christians recently begin talking about the possibility of making June ‘Humility Month’ or ‘Humble Month’. The idea is that, as the secular culture around us is celebrating gay pride (including the advocates of secular culture from the sadly predictable usual quarters), we should seek to exalt instead the virtue of humility as an antidote to pride of all kinds. Speaking as an Orthodox Christian layman, I’m here to say that ‘Humble Month’ is a bad idea… but not for the reasons you might think.

Two days from now, in the Orthodox Church, we will celebrate the feast of the fullness of the revelation of the Holy Spirit in history. We will celebrate the Last and Great Day, the dawning of the great fire, the holy fire which descended upon the heads of the Apostles as they gathered together ‘in one place’, in the Cenacle at Jerusalem. It is the last of the great feasts in the Church, and it marks the historical beginning of the Church in the world.

Let us be absolutely clear about the meaning of this feast. It is a day upon which the Gospel of salvation went forth by grace into the hearing of all peoples. A new word, indeed the Word of Truth, was proclaimed even in the tongues of the most despised barbarians.

The Book of Acts mentions several nations which heard this word in their own native language: Parthians and Medes (speakers of Iranian languages); Elamites (speakers of an extinct language isolate); Mesopotamians (speakers of Aramaic, with Akkadian still in liturgical use); Judæa (Aramaic and Hebrew); Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia Minor (dialects of Greek); Phrygia (Phrygian); Pamphylia (Greek); Egypt (Coptic); Libya (Tamahaq, Greek and Latin); Rome (Latin); Crete (Greek); and Arabia (Arabic). These languages were all explicitly sanctified in Scripture by the Holy Spirit. And even those which were not explicitly sanctified here were blessed in the Great Commission. (As a result, it makes better sense, following the logic of Pentecost, for Orthodox Christians to celebrate June as Indigenous History Month the way they do in Canada. The languages of those who were here first are similarly blessed. But I digress.)

The fire that descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost was not a destroying fire. It was not the fire that consumes. It was the same as the fire that Moses beheld in the Burning Bush—a fire which illumines, is the essence of creativity. This is the fire of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost calls us to a creative and self-giving relationship to the world. What better evidence could there be of this, than of the Word being preached in the tongues of all the nations present in Jerusalem? It ought to go without saying, though, that Pentecost also calls us to be humble. As Saint John of Kronstadt said: ‘The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who fills the whole universe, passes through all believing, meek, humble, good, and simple human souls, dwelling in them, vivifying and strengthening them.’ Pride has no place at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit finds no place to dwell in those who are filled up with themselves, their own ‘me’-ness.

So ‘Humility Month’ gets at least this one thing—and it is quite an important thing—right. Humility before the Holy Spirit is very much needful; without it, we are nothing. On the other hand, though, the whole ‘Humility Month’ business strikes me as a purely reactive posture. It takes as primary, not the witness of the Orthodox Calendar and the Liturgical cycle ordained by the power of the Holy Spirit… but instead the imitative liturgics of the surrounding secular culture. It bases its witness not on Pentecost, but on an evil or a privation to be opposed. This is, to put it bluntly, almost an anti-Pentecost approach.

If such reaction is at times a deep and understandable temptation in an age where identity politics and ‘woke’-ism seem to have gone completely amok, we should nonetheless understand the impulse as temptation, as a passion in the Patristic sense. Orthodox Christians should certainly not strive to mimic the culture in opposition—in other words, to posture as a set-theoretical not-X to the culture’s X. There is so much that is truly good, that is original in the Orthodox culture—what I should say is, the Orthodox cultures that were sanctified at Pentecost, be they Greek, Arabic, African, Persian, Syriac, Latin, or any of the cultures that were baptised afterward—that there should be no need for us to make a commemorative ‘Month’ that is simply the stated opposite of what a weak, shallow and exhausted consumerist culture finds ‘good’.

Let us be truly humble, then, if that is our aim. Let us proclaim the Pentecost in whatever language we can find to hand—surely that language will by no means exhaust the Holy Spirit’s glory. Let us be creative and self-giving as the Apostles were then. Let us make more than a Month of it, for the Pentecost is the fiftieth day, the fullness of time in the new creation. Let us be proclaimers of Christ Risen and Ascended. Let us be seekers of the Father’s abundant mercies. Let us be witnesses of the Holy Spirit’s work in the world.

Portrait of a monk

One of the books I’ve taken care to read this Lent, on the advice of my father-confessor, has been The Monk of Mount Athos by Saint Sophrony of Essex, who was glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2019. It is a spiritual biography of Venerable Silouan of Athos, a monk who lived for most of his life in the Saint Panteleimon Monastery on the Holy Mountain. I found it to be an intensely powerful portrait of a spiritual struggler, and an important exposition on the importance of humility and love for enemies.

Bearing in mind that this is a book which was written by a monk, about a monk, it has a usefulness which extends considerably further than a small audience of Orthodox monastics. Humility is, after all, one of the virtues which is accessible to all regardless of their lot in life. In addition, the idea of what it means to be a person (any person) is explored at great depth in this work, making its appeal to a certain degree universal.

Saint Silouan was born in 1866 with the name of Semyon, very soon after the emancipation of the serfs, to the peasant Antonov family. His father Ivan, a gentle and hospitable man, was a formative early influence on his son’s spiritual growth. Of his father, Saint Silouan said:

‘I have never reached my father’s stature. He was quite illiterate: he even used to make a mistake in the Lord’s Prayer which he had learned by listening in church. But he was a man who was gentle and wise… When I think of my father, I say to myself: “This is the sort of staretz I would like to have.” He never got angry; he was always even-tempered and humble.’

Saint Silouan recalled to Sophrony two stories which illustrated his father’s character—one in which he spent a night in fornication with a girl he liked, and the next morning his father didn’t scold or beat him, but merely asked after him and told him that his heart was troubled for him. This mild rebuke from Ivan Antonov caused the young Semyon more mortification than either yelling or blows would have done. In another instance, Semyon gave his father some pork to eat on a Friday, and his father waited until six months later to correct him on that point, out of care for him.

Semyon, as can be seen from these stories, never became an atheist or a ‘freethinker’, but he passed his youth in a somewhat careless way. He was strong, tall, handsome and a bit over-sure of himself. However, he had a troubling vision of himself swallowing a snake, and heard the voice of the Theotokos calling him to repentance in the wake of this dream, after which he was never quite the same. He joined the military at his father’s behest, but his true desire was to become a monk. After finishing his term of service, he visited the church of Saint John of Kronstadt, where in a letter he besought the priest’s prayers for him as he journeyed to Mount Athos.

He joined the monastery of Saint Panteleimon as a novice, and his struggle to master himself began in earnest. He went to work carrying heavy sacks of grain up to the mill to be ground into flour for the monks’ nourishment. He recounts how on the journey he was tormented the entire way there by visions and sensations of the flames of hell. He endeavoured long to cleanse his heart, in order to escape from these visions, but ultimately it was only an act of grace from above which delivered him—a vision of Christ. This grace came to him, and left him again—leaving him to struggle against the demons. However, he received this wisdom from the visions: ‘Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not.’

This wisdom was salutary for Saint Silouan, and the proof that it came from God consisted in this: that it didn’t stoke his pride, but rather helped him to cultivate a spirit of humility. When he kept his mind in hell, it spurred him to compassion for those around him whose salvation he desired. The true mark of humility, Saint Silouan came to realise, was to be found in love for enemies. His prayers were therefore directed not only to his own salvation, but to the salvation of the world. One can see this in such episodes that Saint Sophrony relates:

I remember a conversation between [Father Silouan] and a certain hermit who declared with evident satisfaction:

‘God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.’

Obviously upset, the Staretz said:

‘Tell me, supposing you went to paradise and there looked down and saw somebody burning in hell-fire—would you feel happy?’

‘It can't be helped. It would be their own fault,’ said the hermit.

The Staretz answered him with a sorrowful countenance.

‘Love could not bear that,’ he said. ‘We must pray for all.’

And again:

Among the stewards was a capable monk, Father P, who was outstandingly capable, yet somehow always unlucky—his initiatives usually met with no sympathy among the fathers and his undertakings often ended in failure.

One day, after one such enterprise had resulted in disaster, he was subjected to harsh criticism at the stewards’ table. Father Silouan was present, but took no part in the ‘prosecution’. One of the stewards, Father M, turned to him and said:

‘You are silent, Father Silouan! That means you side with Father P and are indifferent to the interests of the monastery. You don’t mind the damage he has caused the community.’

Father Silouan said nothing but quickly finished eating and then went up to Father M who by that time had also left the table.

‘Father M—how many years have you been in the monastery?’

‘Thirty-five.’

‘Did you ever hear me criticise anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you want me to begin with Father P?’

Disconcerted, Father M replied shamefacedly:

‘Forgive me.’

‘God will forgive.’

And yet again:

Father Silouan’s attitude towards those who differed from him was characterised by a sincere desire to see what was good in them, and not to offend them in anything that they held sacred. He always remained himself, convinced that ‘salvation lies in Christ-like humility’, and in the strength of this humility he strove with his whole soul to understand every man at his best. He found the way to the heart of everyone—to his capacity for loving Christ.

I remember a conversation he had with a certain archimandrite engaged on missionary work. Hearing from the latter’s own lips how severe he was in his sermons, how harshly he pronounced judgement upon other faiths, the Staretz said to him:

‘Father, people feel in their souls when they are doing anything right, so that if you condemn their faith they will not listen to you. But if you were to confirm that they were really doing well, and then gently point out their mistakes and show them what they ought to put right, then they would listen to you. God is love, and therefore the preaching of His Word must always proceed from love, and both preacher and listener will profit. But if you do nothing but condemn, the soul of the people will not hear, and no good will come of such preaching.’

As we can see from such passages, the visions which Father Silouan was given when he was younger, far from turning him harsh or prideful, instead developed in him those qualities which he had so loved in his [biological] father: meekness, tenderness, and an open heart ready to condole the suffering. He retained these qualities all his life, being able to turn his thoughts back upon Christ with a movement of the mind downward and inward, but at the end of his life he said sadly of himself: ‘I have not yet learned humility.’

I found that this book was also of interest on account of Saint Sophrony’s meditations, in reflecting upon the life of Saint Silouan, on the Orthodox Church’s vision of humanity. Because the human being is made in the image of God, and God is Three Hypostases in One Essence, it follows therefore that ‘according to the second commandment, Love thy neighbour as thyself, each of us must and can comprise all mankind in his own personal being, in the same way as each of the three Persons of the Godhead contains the fulness of Divine Being’. The cold, callous individualism of a Jordan Peterson or a Joel Osteen finds no daylight with the self-emptying, neighbour-seeking, fellow-suffering spirituality of a Saint Silouan. ‘Each time we refuse to take on ourselves the blame for the common evil, for the deeds of our neighbour, we are repeating the [sin of Adam] and likewise shattering the unity of Man.’

At the same time, attaining to the second commandment in its plenitude as shown in this spiritual biography, is a lifelong struggle for most. Only those who are perfect, those who are entirely like Christ, may be called human beings in the full theological depth of the word; most of us are in fact human becomings. The image of God is stamped indelibly upon us, and therefore we are capable of receiving grace. This capability is deserving of its full measure of respect, even if it is abused or neglected. But we still struggle to attain the Edenic likeness of man to God in this life, and we find we are not capable of it on our own. Yet many who are in the Orthodox Church, and even the leadership of the same Constantinopolitan jurisdiction which glorified Saint Sophrony three years ago, are seeking to downplay or obviate this ‘hard saying’—in order to conform the Church’s anthropology to a model more amenable to secular accounts and discourses of rights.

(It can be an understandable reflex to take refuge in a language of individual rights in order to safeguard against secular-statist tyrannies. However, the experience of the last forty-five years of economic history in the West shows that this reflex does not and cannot answer the increasingly urgent and dire challenges that arise to the dignity of the person from powerful and unaccountable non-state agencies. More so than from the state, the human person is nowadays in the most danger from: banks; multinational energy, pharma, telecom and food corporations; social media platforms; and media monopolies which cater to emotions over reason. These do not operate by means of legal threats or open encroachments on rights; they operate on a more insidious level of stirring the passions at a subconscious level, rendering legal threats unnecessary.)

Going back to the point about this writing from Saint Sophrony being applicable to more than just monks, I’m finding that this monastic portrait ‘pairs’ quite nicely with the book I’m currently reading, The Prayer of a Broken Heart by Fr Paul Abernathy of Pittsburgh. The Prayer of a Broken Heart speaks of the spiritual tradition of the descendants of African slaves in the Americas, and makes particular note of how the intuitive nature of that spiritual tradition, finding redemption in the midst of physical and moral and political suffering, ‘rhymes’ in many ways with the witness of the Orthodox Church. (Fr Paul Abernathy even quotes directly from Saint Sophrony’s biography of Saint Silouan!) The importance of humility, forgiveness and enemy-love to the African-American spiritual tradition, far from being a ‘weakness’ of the ‘white man’s religion’, is in fact one of the major sources of spiritual strength which black Americans continue, as generations of their ancestors have done, to draw upon.

I will review Fr Paul Abernathy’s book in the very near future, as it deserves its own space for discussion. I find, however, that The Monk of Mount Athos is a very worthy read. If for no other reason, than that it shows me how much further I have yet to climb in order to begin to love my neighbour—and to spur me to action in making that effort.

Holy and Righteous Jovan Vladimir, Prince-Martyr of Duklja

Saint Jovan Vladimir of Duklja

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we commemorate a young man of blameless life, the Serbian prince Jovan Vladimir, who ruled the principality of Duklja – what is now Montenegro – around the turn of the eleventh century. A young ruler who was killed unjustly for political reasons, his life mirrors those of the Russian princely martyrs Boris and Gleb, the Bohemian ducal martyr Václav and the Old English atheling Éadweard.

Jovan Vladimir [Srb. Јован Владимир] was born in the year 990. Having been raised according to Christian principles by his father Peter [or Petrislav] of Duklja, he ruled the principality from his childhood, and upon his majority he was already considered to be a thoughtful, peaceful and just ruler – and was described as such by the Byzantine historian John Skylitzēs. He ruled from a hill named Kraljič, which is currently the village of Koštanjica in southeastern Montenegro. It was his misfortune that he was born during a period of protracted warfare between the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine Empire. His father had been approached by Emperor Basil II ‘the Bulgar-Slayer’ for support against the Bulgarians; although Peter did not send any soldiers, the diplomatic relations between Duklja and Byzantium remained cordial under Jovan Vladimir. The Bulgarian Tsar Samuil attacked Duklja in the year 1009, in order to head off a possible alliance that could undermine him. Jovan Vladimir retreated with his armies to Oblik, which was infested with venomous snakes. Offering a prayer to the Lord, he asked for Christ’s aid. As a result, the snakes became tame and did not attack his soldiers.

Samuil lay siege to Oblik, and Jovan Vladimir, not wishing to cause his people any further suffering from violence and starvation, surrendered himself into the hands of the Bulgarian Tsar. He was taken in chains to the Tsar’s capital at Prespa (today Little Prespa Lake in Greece), and thrown into the dungeons. What happened afterwards became the basis for one of the truly great High Medieval romances.

Samuil had a daughter whose name was Teodora Kosara. This young woman was deeply pious and minded to follow Christ; upon hearing that her father had taken many captives in Duklja, she asked his permission to go with her maids and wash the feet of the captives in imitation of Our Lord. Seeing no harm in granting this wish, her father allowed it. Kosara descended into the dungeons and began to carry out her good work. She began to wash the feet of a young man of her own years. Looking up at him, she found him handsome. Engaging him in conversation, she found him to be sweet and gentle and modest in character, and full of wisdom and knowledge of holy things: ‘to her his speech seemed sweeter than honey and the honeycomb’.

Having fallen for her father’s hostage, Kosara went straight back to Tsar Samuil and asked to be given to Jovan Vladimir in marriage. Samuil found this proposition expedient, as it would allow him to retain control over Duklja without having to resort to force of arms. (Samuil seems to have been led by the nose by his daughters in this respect. His elder daughter Miroslava had similarly pled for the hand of the Armenian prince Ashot of Taron and was granted it.) He freed Jovan Vladimir from prison, married his daughter to him, and placed him as his vassal over the lands of Duklja.

Jovan Vladimir and Teodora Kosara had one daughter together, who ended up marrying the Serbian prince Stefan Vojislav. When Samuil died of a heart attack in 1014 following a military defeat at the hands of the Greeks, his son and Kosara’s brother, the chivalrous Gavril Radomir, ascended to the throne of the Bulgarian Empire. However, he did not reign long. The following year, however, his cousin Ivan Vladislav assassinated Gavril, and then usurped power for himself. Seeking to stamp out any further threats to his consolidation of power, Ivan Vladislav then made a plot to cut off Kosara from political consideration by murdering her husband. He issued an ‘invitation’ to the Serbian prince to join him in Prespa.

According to Skylitzēs, Jovan Vladimir would have gone himself, but his wife insisted on going in his place and making a demand for his safe passage. Vladislav welcomed Kosara and offered her a golden cross to take back to Vladimir as a token, but Vladimir refused it, saying that he would accept instead a wooden cross similar to the one that Christ was crucified on, from the hands of a priest. Vladislav sent two bishops and a hermit with the wooden cross which he had taken an oath on, and Jovan Vladimir kissed it and took it with him to Prespa. He went into a church to pray, and as he was leaving the church, he was taken by Vladislav’s soldiers and beheaded on the very church steps. In this way he met his death in a Christlike way at the hands of a political rival.

His wife, Teodora Kosara, never remarried. She transported the remains of her beloved husband from Prespa back to Duklja and had them buried at the Prečista Krajinska Church close to Jovan Vladimir’s main court. She herself became a nun and entered a community of monastics nearby. When she herself reposed, she requested that she be buried at her husband’s feet. The relics were translated from thence by the Despots of Epirus, from which they fell into the hands of the Arberian warlord Karl Topia in the late 1300s; he had a church erected in Saint Jovan’s honour in Elbasan in central Albania.

Saint Jovan Vladimir was the first of many Serbian princes to be recognised as a saint, as many of the descendants of Saint Stefan Nemanja, including most notably the glorious Saint Sava, were cut from a similar God-fearing cloth. Holy martyr Jovan Vladimir, blameless sufferer and believer in the saving Cross, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Jovan Vladimir, Tone 3:

Your holy martyr John, O Lord,
Through his sufferings has received an incorruptible crown from You, our God.
For having Your strength, he laid low his adversaries,
And shattered the powerless boldness of demons.
Through his intercessions, save our souls!

Church of St Jovan Vladimir, Bar, Montenegro

Righteous Tsar Boris Mihail, Equal-to-the-Apostles, Enlightener of the Bulgarians

Tsar Saint Boris Mihail of Bulgaria

Christ is Risen!

Today is Holy Pascha, the Feast of Feasts, the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate the holy eucatastrophe, the inversion of the logic of the fallen created order – in short, we celebrate the defeat of death. Rejoicing is a difficult thing for me right now, but still I rejoice in this: that human beings and systems will not have the last word, and that human faltering and failure are not the sum total of our existence, and that even death, which seems to be all-powerful and all-consuming in this world, is broken.

It also happens to be – and he would be a shame to ignore now, given just the fact of how fascinating the guy is – the feast day of Tsar Saint Boris Mihail, one of the pivotal figures in mediæval European history. To understand why he was so important to the shape of Europe of the 800s, it’s necessary to understand his historical and political surroundings.

First of all, there was the political crisis of the east-west division of Christendom, which had been a long time in the brewing. Although Empress Eirēnē of the Eastern Roman Empire had upheld the faith that was proclaimed in both West and East and officially ended iconoclasm by convoking the Second Council of Nicæa, in 800 Pope Leo III nevertheless anointed the Frankish king Karl the Big as ‘Roman’ ‘Emperor’ on the rather misogynistic legal pretext that the Roman Empire could not be ruled by a woman. (Ulpia Severina, Augusta of Rome after the death of her husband Aurelian in 274, may well have had a few things to say about that.) This political manœuvre, as well as justly infuriating Empress Eirēnē, further alienated the Church in the West from the Church in the East, and created a long power struggle between the Frankish kingdom and Eastern Rome that would shape many of the subsequent political conflicts in Central Europe.

Second, there was the unification of the Western Slavic tribes to Bulgaria’s northwest under Mojmír, which took place amidst the power vacuum left by the defeat of the Pannonian Avars by the Franks. This confederation was Great Moravia. And although the Moravians were technically a vassal state of the Carolingian kingdom, in practice they turned out to be far more independent than the Franks liked.

And third, there was Bulgaria itself. Upon his accession to the khaganate, Boris had inherited from his prædecessors Krum the Fearsome, Omurtag the Builder and his father Presiyan a sprawling, massive territory that stretched from Ohrid to the Dneister, and from the modern-day site of Budapest to the Black Sea. This territory, as any student of Balkan history can tell you, is difficult at the best of times to keep united and well-defended, and Boris was always going to have an uphill row to hoe when it came to protecting it all from incursions by Eastern Rome, by the Serbs, by the Croats, by the Pannonian Slavs, by the Magyars and by the newly-arrived Moravians. What’s more, under Presiyan – as prophesied by Saint Boyan-Enravota – the various tribes of Slavic peasants ruled by the Turkic Bulghar lordly class had already begun converting to Christianity. The new khaghan needed, as much for political and diplomatic reasons as for spiritual ones, to unite his people around one faith.

So. Enter Boris [Bg. Борис].

Boris, the son of the aforementioned Presiyan, had no sooner come to power in 852 than his rule was tested by numerous border wars with Greeks, Serbs, Croats and Franks… wars in which he tended to come off a bit the worse for wear each time. These wars lasted almost until the end of the 860s. He was first an ally and then a rival of the saintly King Rastislav of Great Moravia. He turned his attention between the Frankish Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire as both of them kept pressuring him along his borders.

Boris, thankfully for the Bulgarians, was no fool. He understood well enough that in order to keep the Slavs he commanded from rebelling against him or being subsumed into the kingdoms around him, he would need to convert to Christianity eventually. He understood quite astutely the nature of the rivalry between the ‘Roman Emperor’ in the West and the Roman Emperor in the East, and managed with remarkable political adroitness to ‘play both sides’… even when he was on the losing end militarily. At first, the khaghan leaned pretty heavily toward Rome rather than Constantinople. Needing to counterbalance against Rastislav’s Moravians combined with Karloman in revolt, Boris asked for an alliance with Louis the German – a provision of which would have brought Frankish missionaries into Bulgaria, and Bulgaria effectively into the Western Roman political-ecclesiastical ambit. However, in 863, the Eastern Roman Emperor Michael III launched a surprise attack into Bulgarian-controlled Thrace, and forced Boris to come to a peace agreement.

Fatefully, Boris decided to adopt the Eastern Liturgical rites of Emperor Michael III as part of this peace agreement. However, there are indications that he was already preparing to set his face eastward. For one thing, Boris’s half-sister Anna had already converted to Christianity in the Constantinopolitan style, having been held hostage in the Eastern Roman court for several years. For another thing, the Christianity of the Slavic peoples he ruled – coming as it did from the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius – already followed the Constantinopolitan rubrics and used a language, Slavonic, whose status in the West was notably in dispute. Whatever his ultimate motive (or mixture of motives!), the khaghan Boris agreed to be baptised in secret along with his family at his capital at Pliska. The Byzantine Emperor himself was his sponsor, and he took the Emperor’s name in baptism as his own: Mihail.

Boris Mihail’s baptism provoked an immediate and violent response from the Turkic Bulgarian aristocracy. They saw the Christian faith as an affront to their nomadic traditions as well as their legitimacy. In 865 the pagan boyars staged an open revolt against the newly-christened khaghan. Boris managed to crush the revolt. But despite having been recently baptised, he wasn’t all in on the whole peace, love and forgiveness aspect of Christianity yet. Nope: he went full Shang Yang on the behinds of the defeated rebels. Boris ordered the executions of fifty-two boyars, their wives and their children, exterminating their entire families. To complete the turn away from paganism, Boris Mihail abdicated the Turkic title of khaghan and adopted the Slavic title of knyaz ‘prince’, and the Greek-derived title of tsar ‘emperor’.

There was also the much more delicate matter of ecclesiology, which Boris handled with a much defter and lighter hand. The missionaries which arrived from Constantinople in Bulgaria all served the Liturgy in Greek and commemorated the Patriarch of Constantinople as the head of the Church. But Boris’s ultimate aim was to establish a Slavonic-speaking church that was beholden neither to Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire, nor to Rome and the Western ‘Roman’ ‘Empire’. In this aim, he was perfectly happy to keep playing both sides against each other. Despite having had a Constantinopolitan baptism, he sent a very polite envoy to Rome with a list of 115 ecclesiological and legal questions addressed to Pope Nicholas I; he received back a famous reply of 106 answers. The Pope also sent Latin and Frankish missionaries into Bulgaria, headed by Formosus, the ambitious bishop of Porto.

This action produced no small amount of consternation in New Rome, where it was regarded as an encroachment on Constantinopolitan jurisdiction. Archbishop Photios of Constantinople took several steps in answer to the Latin missions in Bulgaria. He produced his own letter to Boris in 866, ‘On the duties of princes’. At the request of Boris’s Moravian neighbours to the northwest, he also sent among them Saints Cyril and Methodius and encouraged the adoption of a Liturgical rite in the Slavonic language. And he began attacking Latin missionaries in general – but Formosus in particular – for adding the filioque clause to the Nicene Creed. Photios’s combative approach to Rome was one decisive factor leading to the ‘Photian schism’ of 867. Boris was able to take deft political strides in the middle of this schism, and by turning his face again to Constantinople in 870 he was able to secure a promise of autocephaly for the Bulgarian Church, with its primate holding the rank of Archbishop.

In Great Moravia, the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius was meeting both with success and with jealousy. The mission was baptising critical numbers of Slavs, who could now hear the Gospel of Christ spoken in their own tongue. However, this aroused the wrath of the Frankish bishops who sought Moravia as their own jurisdiction. When Rastislav was betrayed to his blinding, confinement and death at the Franks’ hands by his traitorous nephew Svätopluk, the resulting Frankish-controlled Moravian government, at the instigation of the Frankish bishop Wiching, began ruthlessly persecuting the disciples of Methodius, subjecting them to exile, torture, slavery and likely death.

Boris Mihail, never blind to a good opportunity, welcomed the survivors of the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius into Bulgaria in 886 – in particular Saints Kliment and Naum. He instructed them to build schools and encouraged them to teach native clergy as well as teach any student who wanted the Slavonic letters. They also built up the first major corpus of Liturgical works, hagiographies and other documents in the Slavonic language.

The first Tsar of Bulgaria followed the example in old age of many mediæval princes and kings who had first embraced Christianity in their prime… and here again we see these incidental linkages (as with the eremitical saints in each) between the Church in Britain and the Bulgarian Church. Like Saints Elaeth ‘Frenin’ and Custennin of Strathclyde, Judicaël of Brittany, Ceolwulf of Northumbria, Æþelræd of Mercia and Sigeberht of East Anglia, Tsar Boris Mihail abdicated his throne in favour of his son Vladimir, and entered the monastic life.

Sadly, Vladimir’s faith was not as firm as his father’s. He began destroying the Christian churches, driving out the Christian priests, and proclaiming a revival of paganism. This met with a lukewarm reaction among the boyars (most of whom by now had already converted), and with a much colder reaction from the populace which were already strongly Christian. And it also enraged Boris, who came out of his monastic seclusion in order to raise an army with which to defeat his own son. Boris had Vladimir blinded and thrown into a dungeon, and set up his second son Simeon as Tsar before retiring again to his monastery. Two years later Boris emerged again from his monastery. This time, he helped his son raise an immense army to fend off an invasion of Bulgaria by the pagan Magyars. They defeated them decisively at the Battle of Southern Bug. He then returned to his monastery again, this time permanently, and he reposed in the Lord on the second of May, 907.

As with many of the kingly saints I treat here, Tsar Boris Mihail may not, on first glance, appear very saintly. In particular, his treatment of the pagan boyars after their rebellion and defeat seems unduly harsh. However, the importance of his conversion to the Christian faith of his subjects cannot possibly be overstated. Neither can his insistence on an independent Slavonic-speaking Church, an insistence which the ecclesiology of Constantinople found it could more readily accommodate than that of Rome. And although his conversion to Christianity may have had one or more motives which reek of political advantage, the fact that he forswore all political power after 896 and spent the last decade of his life in solitary contemplative prayer speaks to the influence that the Christian doctrine eventually had upon him. Holy Tsar Boris Mihail, apostolic guide of the Bulgarian people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Boris Mihail of Bulgaria, Tone 6:

Full of the fear of God, and enlightened by holy baptism,
Thou becamest a habitation of the Holy Spirit, O right-believing King Boris;
And having established the Orthodox Faith in the land of Bulgaria,
And set aside the scepter of kingship,
Thou madest thine abode in the wilderness,
Didst flourish in ascetic struggles,
And found grace before the Lord.
And now, standing before the throne of the Most High,
Pray thou, that He grant unto us who entreat thee salvation for our souls.

Holy New Martyr Lazar the Shepherd of Bulgaria

Saint Lazar of Bulgaria

The twenty-third of April, which is the feast-day of Holy Greatmartyr George in the Orthodox Church, is also the feast of another greatmartyr for Christ from the nation of Bulgaria. Saint Lazar the New Martyr of Bulgaria was not a hierarch, not a monk, not an ascetic, not a priest, not a great prince and not even a soldier. He was a simple layman and a shepherd, one of the common folk of the Bulgarian people. But he is more than the equal of any prince and any soldier, and among the greatest of martyrs, when one considers the bravery he showed under questioning and his refusal to forsake Christ even in the face of the worst tortures.

Lazar [Bg. Лазар] was born in the year 1774 in the municipality of Gabrovo in north-central Bulgaria. His parents were simple but God-fearing folk. However, at a young age he was compelled to leave Bulgaria and went to the town of Soma, in the Ægean region of modern-day Turkey. Here he worked as a manual labourer – a shepherd – in the fields.

While tending the flocks of his master one day, he sat down to rest and fell asleep. While he was sleeping, a Muslim woman passed by on the road, and Lazar’s dog attacked her. Lazar woke up to the dog’s barking, and ran up to save her from the dog – he managed to calm the dog down and save the woman, but her skirts were slightly torn and her person somewhat exposed. This infuriated the woman, who went home and told her husband that a low-class Christian had attacked her and tried to rape her. The woman’s husband, equally piqued, went out himself to confront Lazar – but since he did not know Lazar to look at him, he lay hold of another man and beat him nearly to death. In order to cover up his crime, the husband had his wife’s relatives go before the vâli and have Lazar charged with attempted rape.

Lazar heard of this charge in advance, but he did not flee or go into hiding, knowing that he was innocent of the charge. He appeared in court on the seventh of April, 1802. At once he was charged and thrown into prison. The woman’s relatives, in the meantime, pled to the judge that Lazar must either convert to Islâm or suffer the death penalty for the dishonour he had inflicted upon a pious Muslim woman. They even bribed the judge with 1,000 kuruşlar (silver coins each roughly equal in weight to a Spanish silver dollar) if he could manage to convert Lazar to Islâm.

As such, the judge had Lazar regularly beaten over two weeks in prison, until the twenty-second, to make him more amenable to conversion. While he was in prison Orthodox Christians attempted to visit him, to give him gifts and words of encouragement, but Lazar himself told them to leave because they were putting themselves in danger. The vâli grew more and more angry, because the bribe of 1,000 silver pieces was slipping through his fingers and Lazar was no closer to converting to Islâm despite all of the judge’s threats, tortures and flattery.

The judge then appropriated the flock of forty sheep he looked after, and on the twenty-second of April he ordered that more tortures be applied to the unfortunate Lazar. After his tormenters got drunk, they started burning Lazar’s body with red-hot irons. Then they subjected Lazar to peine forte et dure, placing heavier and heavier stones upon his chest. All the while Lazar refused to forsake Christ, but called upon Saint George the Greatmartyr to help him and grant him strength. The torturers then burned out his tongue; and since he was no longer able to speak they told him to use sign language when he was ready to convert. They also prepared a red-hot band of iron which they placed around his head, causing him excruciating pain.

There was a Greek merchant from Zagora in Thessaly, whose name was John, who also served as a medical doctor and a physician to the judge’s family. He went to the window of the prison and saw Lazar sitting on the floor. Despite having been subjected to the iron band, he was clear-headed and lucid; and despite having his tongue burned out, he was able again by the grace of God to speak clearly. John, who was Orthodox, spoke to Lazar in Turkish – because Lazar being Bulgarian and John Greek, neither knew the other’s mother tongue. John encouraged Lazar to endure to the end. Lazar in turn assured John that he would never convert, but that he feared the torturers would just get tired and stop instead of putting him to death.

Upon learning that Lazar could speak, the judge flew into a rage and summoned the torturers, whom he thought had given him a false report. But seeing for himself the marks of the torture on Lazar’s head and tongue, he was convinced that the torturers had indeed done their jobs. Trying to make Lazar convert one final time, Lazar again rejected all worldly riches and honours that he was promised, and told him: ‘I have one God in three Persons; Whom I worship and adore. I was baptised as an Orthodox Christian, and as an Orthodox Christian I shall die.’ The judge then ordered that he be put to death by hanging.

En route to his place of execution, Lazar endured the mockery of the Muslims who jeered at him for the foolishness of dying for Jesus Christ. And when they arrived at the killing-ground, Lazar willingly placed the halter around his own neck and stood on a basket, before the executioner kicked it out from under him. Thus the holy martyr of God earned the laurels equal to those who died under the early persecutions of the faithful. He entered into the company of the saints where he glorifies eternally the one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which he confessed to the judge on his final day –the Feast of Saint George, the twenty-third of April, 1802.

The relics of Saint Lazar of Bulgaria came to rest at the Monastery of Saint Ignatios on the island of Lesvos in Greece, and also at the Chapel of St Kseniya of Russia in the town of Mandra-Eidyllias in Attica. A Church Service in honour of Saint Lazar was composed by Saint Nikēphoros of Chios. Holy martyr Lazar of Bulgaria, despiser of earthly treasures and willing sufferer for the living God, pray unto Christ for us sinners!

Apolytikion for Saint Lazar of Bulgaria, Tone 3:

Your holy martyr Lazar, O Lord,
Through his sufferings has received an incorruptible crown from You, our God.
For having Your strength, he laid low his adversaries,
And shattered the powerless boldness of demons.
Through his intercessions, save our souls!

Leimonos Monastery of Saint Ignatios, Lesvos, Greece

Holy Righteous Prince Boyan-Enravota, Protomartyr of Bulgaria

Saint Boyan-Enravota of the Bulghars

As well as being the Sunday of Saint Gregory Palamas this year, the twenty-eighth of March is also the feast-day of Saint Enravota, the first Bulgarian martyr for the Orthodox Christian faith. He is also called Saint Boyan, an epithet derived from the Slavic word for ‘warrior’. Saint Enravota is known for being a friend to the captives and merciful to his enemies, though these are not traits one normally thinks to look for in a Turkic chieftain. His conversion to Christianity and his prescient, Divinely-inspired prophecy of Orthodoxy’s spread in Bulgaria led to his martyrdom at the hands of his own family.

Saint Enravota, or Boyan (Bg. Енравота or Боян) was born probably in the early 800s. He belonged to the ruling family of the Old Bulghars, the Dulo clan, which claimed descent from Attila the Hun. The khaghan Asparukh of the Dulo clan, who had originally hailed from the banks of the Volga, migrated south and west along the Black Sea coast, and founded the first Bulgarian state in Thrace in the year 681. This state had a Turkic-speaking, Tengri-worshipping Bulghar ruling class – kin to modern-day Chuvash, Bashkir and Tatar peoples – and a commoner class comprised mostly of Slavs and Thracians, who had for the most part not yet begun the process of Christianisation. It is noteworthy that Saint Enravota is one of the Orthodox saints who is regularly portrayed in traditional iconography, as in the icon above, with Asian features.

Enravota was the eldest son of the Bulghar khaghan Omurtag the Builder, and the grandson of the great khaghan Krum the Fearsome (known for his immense territorial expansions; his strict-but-fair law code which had, for its time, generous welfare provisions for state assistance to beggars; and – oh, yes – fashioning drinking vessels out of the skulls of his fallen enemies). Enravota was of a considerably different temperament than his father and grandfather, which may be one reason why he was passed over for consideration as Omurtag’s heir in preference to his youngest brother Malamir.

The Bulghars were at this point in time constantly at war with the Eastern Roman Empire. This was the old nomadic style of chronic warfare which took the form of harassing one’s neighbours, stealing their chattel and occasionally carrying off captives. During Omurtag’s time this was the norm – the Bulghars would stage raids for cattle and slaves into Byzantine-held territories. One of the captives that was taken by the Bulghars in such a raid was a Christian bishop named Kinamon. When it was learned that Bishop Kinamon was literate and knowledgeable, Omurtag hired him as a tutor for his children – however, Kinamon began teaching them not only reading and writing and the seven liberal arts, but also began to teach them the præcepts of the Christian religion and encourage in them the Christian virtues. Kinamon also refused to take part in the pagan ceremonies of the Bulghar state. Omurtag, under pressure from his boyars and enraged at this corruption and ‘softening’ of his children, had Kinamon seized, tortured and thrown into a dark pit, where he remained as a prisoner for many years.

Malamir had not listened with particular attention to Bishop Kinamon. The elder brother, Enravota, had, and among the first requests he made of Malamir when he became khaghan was to release Kinamon from captivity. This request was granted, and Kinamon was released to Enravota as a slave. But Enravota listened further to Kinamon as he taught him about Christ and the good news of mankind’s salvation and reconciliation to God. Ultimately, Enravota chose to accept baptism and become Christian himself. He was filled with a love of prayer and fasting, and his younger brother took notice.

Malamir demanded that his brother renounce Christianity at once and return to the pagan worship of the Bulghars, but Enravota steadfastly refused. Malamir then ordered – taking upon himself the sin of Cain – that his elder brother be killed. The eleventh-century chronicler Saint Teofilakt of Ohrid gives us a record of the prophetic speech he gave to his brother Malamir before the sentence was carried out:

This faith, which I now die for, will spread and increase across the whole Bulgarian land, although you may wish to oppress it with my death. In any case, the Sign of Christ will establish itself and churches of God will be built everywhere and pure priests will serve the pure God and will deliver ‘sacrifice of praise and confession’ to the life-giving Trinity. Idols, and priests as well, and their ungodly temples, will crumble and will turn into nothing, as if they had not existed. Besides, you alone, after many years, will cast away your ungodly soul without receiving anything in reward for your cruelty.

Saint Enravota was then put to death by the sword, and he joined the ranks of the holy martyrs. This happened in the year 833. It was not long before his prophecies began to be fulfilled, for the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius was about to begin among the Slavic peoples of Europe. As for Malamir, he died some years later, childless and heirless. The khaghanate passed to his and Enravota’s nephew by the middle brother Zvinitsa, named Presiyan. Presiyan’s son, Saint Boris, would be the one who invited the two remaining of the Seven Saints into Bulgaria – Saint Kliment and Saint Naum. And, just as Saint Enravota predicted, from their efforts the Sign of Christ did establish itself in Bulgaria, churches were built everywhere, and priests were lifted up from among the Bulgarian people to serve and praise God in gladness and singleness of heart. Holy protomartyr Enravota, bearer of God’s Good News to the Bulghar people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Boyan-Enravota of Bulgaria, Tone 3:

Your holy martyr Boyan, O Lord,
Through his suffering has received an incorruptible crown from You, our God.
For having Your strength, he laid low his adversaries,
And shattered the powerless boldness of demons.
Through his intercessions, save our souls!

Venerable Roman of Tărnovo, disciple of Saint Teodosii

Saint Roman of Tărnovo

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church, the seventeenth of February, is the feast day of Saint Roman, the disciple of Saint Teodosii the Hesychast of Tărnovo, who was in turn one of the disciples of Saint Grēgorios of Sinai, the father of the mediæval hesychast movement in the Orthodox Church. Much of the information that we have on the life and deeds of Saint Roman the Hesychast comes from the hagiography of his mentor and spiritual father.

Saint Roman [Bg. Роман] was born in the early 1300s in Tărnovo, the capital of Bulgaria. His family came from one of the Turkic Old Bulghar stems which formed the basis for the first Bulgarian state – the Old Bulghars were related to the Bulghar Khanate to which Saint Abraham of the Volga belonged, and from which descend the Kazan Tatar, Bashkir and Chuvash peoples of Russia. His parents raised him to be a nobleman, but he had little interest in the martial disciplines of his upbringing. Instead he retired to a monastery in Tărnovo and became a novice.

Saint Teodosii arrived in Tărnovo to beg the help for the second time of Tsar Ivan Aleksandăr, that he might put to flight the Muslim bandits who were raiding the monastery of Saint Grēgorios in Paroria. When he heard that Saint Teodosii was in Tărnovo, the young novice Roman, who was seeking a deeper and holier life of quietude, came out from his monastery to meet the elder hesychast and threw himself at his feet, begging to be taken as a disciple. If Teodosii did not accept him, Roman pleaded, he would go and be slaughtered by some wild beast or throw himself from the rocks of Tărnovo – deeper than the thirst of the deer for spring water, was Roman’s thirst for Teodosii’s wisdom and guidance in Christ. Well might we imagine that the elder Teodosii still saw a bit of noble arrogance in these rash pronouncements. But the elder, who was acquainted with Roman from his youth, took pity on the lad, and brought Roman back with him to Paroria. Saint Grēgorios also took a liking to the young Bulgarian nobleman, and agreed to keep him on at his monastery.

At Paroria, Roman distinguished himself by a superlative meekness and obedience to his elders in all things, obeying them in imitation of how Christ obeyed His Father. He stayed at Paroria monastery until Saint Grēgorios reposed in 1347. The monks sought to make Teodosii their abbot, but Teodosii, who had no desire to lead men in a monastic community, made plans to leave for Mount Athos in secret. Roman discovered his plans and begged to be allowed to come with him. On Mount Athos the two monks studied and struggled to apply in their lives of prayer the methods of hesychasm. Again, however, they were driven from their home by the Turks, and they fled again into Bulgaria. Tsar Ivan Aleksandăr again welcomed them warmly, and gave Teodosii and Roman a plot of land at Kilifarevo where they could set up a hermitage.

Three years Saints Teodosii and Roman laboured at Kilifarevo, and through their earnest hard work and life of prayer and vigil the hermitage prospered. What’s more, they could not keep the secret of their presence from the folk of Bulgaria for long, and soon the hermitage was thronged with people from all walks of life seeking help and advice, which they did their best to give. And what’s more, many young men of Bulgaria sought to join Saint Teodosii and join the hermitage as novices and disciples. Soon enough there were fifty men living at Kilifarevo, and Teodosii and Roman were compelled to construct a monastery there to house them all. Despite Saint Teodosii’s determination not to become an abbot, God clearly had called him to be there.

Throughout all his endeavours, Saint Roman had been Saint Teodosii’s tireless and uncomplaining companion, helpmeet and supporter, and engaged in polemics against Judaïsers and anti-hesychasts in Bulgaria. Saint Teodosii eventually retired to Constantinople, and left Saint Roman as his prior in charge of the monastic brotherhood – he reposed in Constantinople in the year 1363. By this time, Saint Teodosii’s and Saint Roman’s monastic community had been established at Ustieto near Tărnovo, where the monastery was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Here Saint Roman continued to promote hesychasm and to carefully shepherd his monastic flock faithfully as his mentor would have done.

During his last years Saint Roman developed a chronic illness that we recognise today as whooping cough. However, he did not alter in any way his prayer routine or his vigils. He slept only during the dawn hour, keeping the whole night for prayer. The one thing he did in response to this malady was to alter his daily fast only to include one small daily cup of wine. He did not complain or pay attention to his illness, but continued to advise the monks and give spiritual comfort to the laity for as long as God would allow. In the end, Saint Roman was given to know by God when he would repose. He gathered all of his monastic brothers around him, told them how much he loved them, exhorted them to continue to strive for Christ and to imitate one another in meekness and kindness and obedience, and celebrated the Liturgy with them one last time. He reposed at peace with God and with his brothers on the seventeenth of February. The monks grieved long over his loss, and buried him with all the honours due to a beloved spiritual father and abbot of their house. Holy and venerable Roman, steadfast student of the prayer of the heart, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Roman of Tărnovo, Tone 8:

In you, Father, we have an example of how to care for our salvation:
You took up the Cross and followed Christ,
And taught us to despise the flesh for it is transient,
And care for the soul which is immortal.
Therefore, O Venerable Roman, your spirit rejoices together with the angels!

Holy Trinity Monastery at Ustieto, Bulgaria

Righteous Petǎr, Tsar of Bulgaria

Saint Petǎr of Bulgaria

Today is the birthday of our nation’s greatest president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And in the Orthodox Church, it is also the Synaxis of the Three Holy Hierarchs, as well as the feast day of Tsar Saint Petǎr I of Bulgaria. Saint Petǎr was a mild-mannered, sweet-tempered, peace-loving man who enjoyed a long rule over Bulgaria; and even though it was not a period of military conquest and glory, Bulgaria still enjoyed a period of prolific church growth and general prosperity under his enlightened rule.

Saint Petǎr was born around the year 903, presumably in what was then the Bulgarian capital at Preslav. His father, Tsar Simeon I, was a fierce and warlike ruler who made war upon the Eastern Roman Empire as well as the Magyars and the Serbs. The Tsar married twice, and Petǎr was the Tsar’s son by his second marriage, to Maria the sister of Georgi Sursuvul. Petǎr was of a very different temperament than his father, and this was evident early on in his life. When he was perhaps ten years of age, he went on a pilgrimage to Constantinople together with his elder brother Mikhail. However, despite the differences between himself and his father, he evidently earned his father’s favor enough to be named heir instead of Mikhail, whom Simeon forced to become a monk.

Tsar Simeon died of a heart attack in 927, leaving the 24-year-old Petǎr as king over a great Bulgarian Tsardom at the height of its territorial expansion. At this time, Petǎr’s closest advisor, friend and regent was his uncle Georgi Sursuvul, who was of like temperament to the new Tsar. Petǎr had inherited several territorial wars from his father, including those in Croatia and Eastern Rome, which he desired to bring to an end. Therefore, in utmost secrecy, Georgi Sursuvul sought to forge a peace treaty and a dynastic alliance with Eastern Rome. Petǎr gladly agreed to this.

In 927, a delegation of Bulgarians including Georgi Sursuvul and several of the Bulgarian Tsar’s kinsmen arrived in the City and met with the Roman Emperor Rōmanos I Lakapēnos, where they hammered out a peace agreement that also entailed the young Petǎr’s marriage to the Emperor’s granddaughter, Maria Lakapēnē, who was renamed Eirēnē at the wedding to signify her importance to the new peace.

The new Bulgarian Tsar and his uncle forged peace with Eastern Rome on terms quite favorable to the Bulgarians, speaking to the military brilliance of Petǎr’s father. The Roman Empire formally recognised the ruler of Bulgaria as a ‘Tsar’, and the marches between Eastern Rome and Bulgaria were fixed according to the treaties of 897 and 904. The Roman Empire paid a yearly tribute to Bulgaria as well, something similar to the contemporary danegeld which England paid to the Norse rulers. More importantly, the Bulgarian Church won its autocephaly, with its primate being given dignity equal to the Patriarchs of the Five Ancient Churches.

Petǎr unfortunately faced several rebellions from his brothers Mikhail and Ivan in the following years, which he was forced to quell, as well as several invasions by the Bulgarians’ ancient and cruel tribal enemies the Magyars. However, it soon became clear to all that his natural preference followed his uncle’s desire for peace. He waged no offensive wars during his reign, but he kept the peace within his borders quite firmly. As a result, Bulgarian society not only prospered, it flourished.

Much of this prosperity flowed to the Church, and Tsar Petǎr himself was a particularly eager benefactor of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria, giving funds for the construction and adornment of many grand cathedrals and churches throughout his Tsardom.

It was during Petǎr’s reign that the Gnostic-Manichæan hæresy of Bogomil first appeared in the Bulgarian realm. This was the result of a number of factors. The resettlement of the Paulician sect from Armenia under the Emperors of Eastern Rome was one such; as was the still low level of literacy (let alone knowledge of right doctrine!) among the Slavic Bulgarians. Another unwitting factor may have been Tsar Petǎr’s lavish gifts to the Church, which gave the appearance of corruption. Tsar Petǎr did combat the new hæresy as well as he was able, however the first documentation we have of it comes from after his reign, from the hands of the Orthodox priest Kosmas. He retired from his throne in 969 and reposed in the Lord, having sought the solace of the monastic tonsure, on the thirtieth of January 970.

Though modern sources have not necessarily been as kind to Saint Petǎr as they ought, in the period immediately following his reign, he was considered to have been a ‘good king’ who was peaceable and orderly and generous, of the same ‘type’ in this era of historiography as Éadgár the Frithsome and Saint Václav of Bohemia. May God see fit to have mercy upon our many sins and grant us (though we do not deserve) leaders such as these in our own time! Holy Tsar Petǎr, peaceable ruler and generous benefactor of the Orthodox faith, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Church of St George, Kyustendil, Bulgaria, possibly dating to the reign of Saint Petǎr

Holy Hierarch Evtimii, Patriarch of Tărnovo and All Bulgaria

Saint Evtimii of Tărnovo

Today in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day of Saint Evtimii of Tărnovo, another of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s great mediæval luminaries. Saint Evtimii is perhaps the greatest of the Bulgarian saintly patriarchs of his time; like Saints Teodosii (his teacher) and Romil, he was also a firm and vocal (er, so to speak) supporter of the Hesychast movement in the Orthodox Church spearheaded by the great Saint Grēgorios of Sinai, who had settled and reposed in Bulgaria. Saint Evtimii was also an accomplished linguist and a formidable scholarly mind, and he did much to uplift the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in his time as Patriarch.

Saint Evtimii [Bg. Евтимий] was born around the year 1317 in Tărnovo. He was Bulgarian, and his parents likely belonged to the eminent Tsamblak family of that city. He received a fine education from the monastic schools in Tărnovo, and around the age of thirty he chose to become a monk himself. He was tonsured and accepted into the monastery at Kilifarevo, which had been founded by Saint Teodosii. By dint of his humble attitude and his steadfast obedience he earned the trust of Saint Teodosii, who appointed him his assistant in 1363. Together they travelled to Constantinople and stayed at the Studion Monastery which had been founded under the rule of Patriarch Saint Gennadios, which was renowned for its library. It was here, shortly afterward, that Saint Teodosii reposed in the Lord.

Saint Evtimii distinguished himself among the monks at Studion for his obedience, for his willingness to learn, and the rapidity with which he soaked up the wisdom of the holy place. At some point he moved from Studion to Athos, where he established himself at the Monastery of Saint Athanasios the Athonite. Here he was influenced by Saints Grēgorios of Sinai and Iōannēs Koukouzelēs. He was punished with exile by the Emperor Iōannēs V Palaiologos and sent to the isle of Lemnos, possibly for speaking out against the emperor’s submission to the Pope of Rome. At length he was permitted to return to Athos. When he did he entered the Bulgarian Monastery of Zographou and stayed there for a brief time.

He returned to his native Bulgaria in 1371. Here he founded a monastery with attached school dedicated to the Holy Trinity in Tărnovo, and applied himself to a great linguistic task of educating the people… continuing and deepening the work that had been begun by the Seven Holy Saints of the South Slavs. On Athos, he had been exposed to, and discussed, a number of sacred texts in the original Greek, and had found that the Bulgarian equivalents he had grown up with had been poorly transcribed in an irregular manner, such that they gave cause to confusion and rise to disputes. Saint Evtimii set to work reforming Church Slavonic orthography to render it more intelligible to ordinary people. He also committed himself to a massive amount of work in translating and redacting works into Church Slavonic from Greek. The texts transcribed and redacted by Saint Evtimii still serve as the basis of the great bulk of the Liturgical texts still in use in the Slavonic setting, in Russia and the South Slavic nations. For this reason, Gregory Tsamblak, his biographer, compared his work to that of Holy Prophet Moses and of the Ægyptian Pharaoh Ptolemy I.

Saint Evtimii succeeded Patriarch Ioanikii as the Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church upon the latter’s repose in 1375. Keeping true to his teacher Saint Teodosii and to the præcepts of the Orthodox Church even in a time of widespread hæresy and disputes, Saint Evtimii became the foremost supporter of the Hesychast movement in Bulgaria. He applied his wisdom and his skill as Patriarch to the rectification of moral order in the Orthodox Church and to the proper division of the word of Truth.

Saint Evtimii was in charge of commanding the Bulgarian forces at the disastrous Siege of Tărnovo in 1393, when the city was overthrown and razed by the rapacious Turks under the command of Süleyman Çelebi. Saint Evtimii had been left in command by Tsar Ivan Shishman, who was off with the main army defending Nikopol. For three months Saint Evtimii encouraged the Bulgarian forces to hold out against the Turkish foe, however – as Gregory Tsamblak suggests – Tărnovo may have been betrayed from the inside by members of one of the non-Christian neighbourhoods inside the city. The Turks entered and engaged in wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants, including 110 of the boyars and prominent citizens of the city, and desecration of the churches. Saint Evtimii was spared from this holocaust and sent into exile in Bachkovo Monastery in Thrace. Saint Evtimii reposed perhaps around the year 1402. Unfortunately, we do not know where he is buried. The death of Saint Evtimii and the destruction of Bulgaria by the Turks tragically spelled the end of the Tărnovo Patriarchate, which was subsequently subjugated to Constantinople. Only in 1870 were the historical rights of the Bulgarian Patriarchate restored. Holy hierarch Evtimii, holy hesychast and great teacher of piety to the Bulgarian people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Evtimii of Tărnovo, Tone 4:

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,
An image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;
Your humility exalted you;
Your poverty enriched you.
Hierarch Father Evtimii,
Entreat Christ our God
That our souls may be saved.

Patriarchal Monastery of the Holy Trinity, Tărnovo, Bulgaria

Holy Hierarch Ioakim, Patriarch of Tărnovo and All Bulgaria

Saint Ioakim of Tărnovo

The eighteenth of January in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day and commemoration of another great mediæval South Slavic holy man, Patriarch Saint Ioakim I of Tărnovo. Saint Ioakim was a stalwart defender of the Orthodox faith in the Bulgarian lands during troublous times, as well as being a firm friend of the poor, the widows and the orphans. He was known in particular for his opposition to the death penalty and his intercessions with the Bulgarian Tsars on behalf of condemned prisoners.

Saint Ioakim [Bg. Иоаким] was born toward the tail end of the twelfth century, and was a ‘native Bulgarian’ according to the hagiographical account. Little appears to be known about his early life, but he committed himself to the monastic life of ascetic struggle, and spent much of his early life on the Holy Mountain of Athos. Stern towards himself but lenient toward others, Saint Ioakim became renowned for his rigorous rule of prayer, fasting and vigils – as well as for his selfless obedience to the Athonite fathers he served, and for the persistence and consistency in applying himself to the struggle against the passions. His humility and piety became renowned on Athos, and monks began to seek him out.

After ‘a long time’, according to the hagiography, Ioakim returned to his native Bulgaria. The hagiography itself gives no reason for this, but later Bulgarian commentators suggest that it may have come from a humble desire to flee vainglory and his own fame as a spiritual elder, or perhaps from a righteous desire to enlighten the land where he was born. He settled in a place called Krasen near the banks of the Danube – which is probably somewhere near Cherven at the source of the Rusenski Lom in northeastern Bulgaria. He established the Church of the Holy Transfiguration, and settled there with three disciples: Diomid, Atanasii and Teodosii.

He was approached by Tsar Ivan Asen II, who was desirous of the counsel of the holy man, and wished to speak with him on the topics of salvation. As a gift the Tsar brought with him a great deal of gold. The hermit Ioakim used this gold to hire workers, and they built a great rock-hewn monastic complex near Ivanovo, which is still standing today, and which is famous for the beautiful frescoes which adorn the inner walls. This monastery Ioakim built so that it could house all of the postulants and seekers who came to him seeking the word of Truth, and here he kept to the rules of prayer and fasting that he had observed his entire monastic life.

According to the Life of Saint Sava of Serbia, on December of the year 1234 the great Saint Sava of Serbia visited Tărnovo, and was greeted with hospitality and enthusiasm by both the Tsar and by Saint Ioakim. Together Saint Sava and Saint Ioakim concelebrated the Feast of Theophany. When Saint Sava fell ill and died some days later, Saint Ioakim himself cared for the saint on his deathbed, presided at the saint’s funeral, and had him interred with great honour in the Church of the Forty Martyrs.

The following pages of his hagiography are sadly no longer extant. These pages deal, perhaps, with the (re)establishment of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in 1235 with its primary see at Tărnovo. This happened at a Church council convoked in Lampsakos in Asia Minor. It was here, perhaps, that Saint Ioakim was proclaimed Patriarch of Bulgaria at Tsar Ivan Asen II’s express request, and with the blessing of ‘the bishops of the whole Bulgarian land’, and was confirmed and granted the omophorion by the Œcumenical Patriarch Germanos II of Constantinople.

As Patriarch, Saint Ioakim ‘blessed and enlightened the whole of the Bulgarian land’. His hagiography also lays particular stress on the fact that he showed ‘mercy to the orphans, gave to the needy and to the poor, visited those in prison; and he offered unceasing prayers at every hour; and saved many who were sentenced to death, and saved many who resorted to him from the wrath of the Tsar’. The hagiography of Saint Sava refers to the ‘honest and holy’ Patriarch Ioakim of Bulgaria. Saint Ioakim came to the end of his earthly life on the eighteenth of January 1246, probably when he was of a very advanced age. He was given to know in advance of his impending death; therefore he gathered his disciples and the clergy around them, exhorted them to uphold the Orthodox faith, begged their forgiveness for any wrong that he had done them, and forgave them all in turn. He reposed peaceably in the Lord. So fondly did his contemporaries remember him, that the thirteenth century had not ended before Ioakim was glorified in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as a saint. Holy hierarch Ioakim, friend to the poor and intercessor on behalf of the guilty and condemned, stand too before Christ our Lord on behalf of us sinners and beseech His great mercy!

Apolytikion for Saint Ioakim of Tărnovo, Tone 4:

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,
An image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;
Your humility exalted you;
Your poverty enriched you.
Hierarch Father Ioakim,
Entreat Christ our God
That our souls may be saved.

Rock-hewn Churches of the Ivanovo, Bulgaria

Venerable Romil the Hesychast of Ravanica

Saint Romil of Ravanica

Today in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day of another of the shining lights of mediæval hesychasm, Saint Romil of Ravanica. Saint Romil was one of several of the disciples of the great teacher of hesychasm Saint Grēgorios of Sinai, along with Saint Teodosii of Tărnovo, who shone forth in Southeastern Europe in what was a fairly dark time for the Orthodox Church as a whole. To him let us look as to a lodestar in our own dark times.

Saint Romil [Bg. Ромил, Srb. Ромило] was born by the name of Ruško in the city of Vidin in the year 1330. His parents were wealthy and well-born: his father was Greek and his mother was Bulgarian. They gave him a sound education, and Ruško impressed his teachers with his quickness and eagerness to learn. Ruško was not, however, like the other children his age. He did not play games or indulge in idle pursuits, being of a much more serious-minded bent. His parents worried for him, and began to arrange a marriage for him. Fearing to be trapped in such a scheme, Ruško fled his parents’ house at the age of fourteen and ventured from Vidin into Tărnovo, asking to be accepted as a novice at the Mother of God ‘Who Shows the Way’ Monastery in that city. He was admitted and took on the monastic name of Roman. He distinguished himself as a monk by his humility and his obedience to his abbot.

This happened at around the same time as Saint Grēgorios of Sinai arrived in Bulgaria, having been exiled there by Muslim persecutions and hostile governors. He was welcomed by the pious Tsar Ivan Aleksandăr, and was allowed to settle in the Strandža, and establish a monastery near Paroria – now a national park in Bulgaria. It was not long before the great father of the hesychasts began attracting followers to him from throughout southeastern Europe. One of them was the young monk Roman, who asked his abbot’s leave to journey to Paroria, to dwell there and to learn from the great Saint Grēgorios.

At first, his abbot was loath to let him go. Not only was Roman an exceptional monk whose loss would be keenly felt by the Mother of God Monastery, but the abbot also displayed that wise, loving and prudent caution regarding his spiritual sons that all men of advanced spiritual achievement would do. He feared for Roman’s soul, that he might be tempted into delusion. But it soon became apparent to the abbot that Roman’s spiritual thirst was a genuine and healthy one, and so at last the abbot gave his leave to the young man, and offered him provisions for the journey to Paroria.

At Paroria, Roman became one of Saint Grēgorios’s most devoted disciples. He had come to the monastery with a fellow-monk named Ilarion, who was of a weak constitution. Seeing this, Grēgorios assigned to Ilarion the lighter and easier tasks around the monastery, while to Roman he assigned the heavy and menial work: chopping wood, drawing water, hauling stones and earth, serving in the kitchens. He was also assigned to the infirmary to tend to the sick. But not one word of complaint passed Roman’s lips, and whatever he did he tended to it with great attention and love. Sick men became well under his ministrations. Very soon he came to be called ‘Roman the Good’ by his fellow monks.

Saint Grēgorios observed this, and approved. He began instructing Roman in the hesychast method of inner silence and the prayer of the heart. When the saint reposed, Roman grieved day and night for the elder. He was loath to remain at Paroria while not under the supervision of a spiritual elder. His fellow-traveller Ilarion had already subjected himself to another elder, and Roman soon joined him. Again Roman placed himself under obedience to him just as he had to Saint Grēgorios.

Paroria was, at that time, subject to attacks by brigands and by Muslim princes who were hostile to Bulgarians as a matter of course. Having robbed the three monks of food and shelter, Roman, Ilarion and their spiritual elder were forced to flee Paroria to Mokren. Here Roman parted from the company against the elder’s wishes, seeking a desert place where he could live by himself. However, soon after this the elder died, and Roman, penitent for his act of disobedience, returned to Ilarion and flung himself down at the other monk’s feet. In repentance, Roman demanded to be allowed to place himself under Ilarion’s obedience. At first Ilarion refused, knowing Roman to be his better in spiritual attainment, but after seeing Roman’s sincere and heartfelt remorse Ilarion agreed to Roman’s request.

Tsar Ivan Aleksandăr had gone in force to Paroria and cleared it of bandits, and for a short time Roman and Ilarion returned and lived there as master and disciple. Roman took on the Great Schema and the monastic name of Romil. However, the bandits returned and again Saint Romil was forced to flee. He set up a small hermitage in a remote place, but other monks who were jealous of Romil’s peace began to whisper against them, and rather than contend with them Romil went instead to Athos. Seeking deeper and deeper solitude he settled at last at Melana, and then to the spare, forbidding northern slopes of Athos. But even in these remote places, spiritual elders would send Saint Romil pupils and spiritual children of theirs whom they thought to be in need of correction. Romil advised them on ways to be loving and humble, and ways to love God in greater perfection. Keeping in mind his own sins, Romil humbly encouraged those who came to him always to be obedient, just as Christ obeyed His Father.

After the Serbian despot Uglješa Mrnjavčević fell in battle against the Turks at the disastrous Battle of the Marica River in September 1371, the impious Turks were emboldened to mount attacks on the Holy Mountain itself. Saint Romil was among those who were forced to flee the Turkish assaults on the island, and he wound up first in Vlorë on the Adriatic Sea coast in what is now Albania. Once again he sought solitude, and once again it eluded him. Many monks and laymen sought him out in his hermitage for spiritual advice and healing. However, the unjust governors in Vlorë and the poor catechesis among the priesthood there precipitated his move from there to Ravanica in Serbia.

In Ravanica there was a newly-built monastery which Prince Saint Lazar had dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokos, and Saint Romil set himself up in a cell near to this monastery. Here he lived for the remainder of his days, before he reposed in the Lord on the sixteenth of January, 1385. When he was buried, it was said that his tomb gave off an ineffable sweet fragrance. Many wonders of healing and exorcism attended Saint Romil’s burial and took place over his relics. Holy and venerable Romil, humble hermit and luminous beacon of hesychasm, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Romil the Hesychast, Tone 8:

By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
And your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
O our holy father Romil, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!

Ravanica Monastery, Serbia