Our God-bearing father Naum of Preslav

Saint Naum of Preslav

The twenty-third of December is the feast-day of Saint Naum of Preslav, one of the Seven Great Saints of the early Slavs and a disciple of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Saint Naum is highly regarded among the God-fearing of all the East and South Slavic nations, but in particular among the Bulgarians.

Because Saint Naum belonged to the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and was a contemporary of Saint Kliment of Ohrid, much of their hagiographies are also his. He shared in their hard pastoral labours, suffered the same persecutions and deprivations, and glorified the same Christ all the while. He preached the Gospel to the Slavs in their own language. He endured with patience and hope, strengthened by Christ – the slights and the jeers, the beatings and the mockery of the pagans, as well as the political persecutions of the Frankish enemies of the Slavic tongue. Naum went together with Saints Cyril and Methodius to the court of Pope Hadrian in Rome, where the two elder monks made the case for their Liturgical use of the Slavs’ own language in their mission; while in Rome, Naum while in attendance upon Saints Cyril and Methodius aided and sped their prayers, and they worked many miracles for the poor and sick and invalid of Rome. In this way Pope Hadrian was convinced that theirs was a work of God and gave them his blessing to continue.

It was here in Rome that Saint Cyril stayed at a monastery and met his holy repose. Saint Naum returned to the Slavic lands together with Methodius. However, their Liturgical settings in the Slavonic tongue and their active opposition to the various hæresies and heathen resurgencies that had taken hold in the kingdom of Great Moravia brought down the wrath of princes like the wicked Svätopluk on the one hand, and Frankish priests like Wiching on the other. Saint Methodius suffered these persecutions along with the remaining faithful apostles. They were thrown into prison, but a great earthquake struck and toppled the prison walls – and like Saint Paul and the early Apostles the disciples of Saint Methodius walked free by the grace of God. Saint Naum, along with Saint Kliment, managed to arrive safely at the court of the saintly king of Bulgaria Boris Mihail, who invited the two of them to teach the Bulgarian people both the written Slavonic language in the alphabet that their saintly prædecessors had created, as well as the true love of Christ and the præcepts of the Christian religion. The two humble servants of the true King were all too happy to oblige this God-pleasing request of an earthly one.

Saint Naum founded a school at Pliska. Here, in addition to keeping the rule of the monks – praying, fasting and vigils – he bent his energies upon the training of minds of young people in literature and philosophy, as well as in the good news of Christ, whose love illumines every corner of the cosmos. Saint Naum’s school, blessed by God for this work, would later become the famous Literary School of Preslav. For seven years, between 886 and 893, he laboured here. When he was not teaching the young in Pliska and later in Preslav, he was accompanying his friend and fellow-disciple of Cyril and Methodius Kliment in his missionary ventures into Mœsia and Pannonia. After Saint Kliment was appointed bishop by Tsar Boris Mihail’s successor Simeon, Saint Naum was appointed to take his place at the seminary Kliment had founded in Ohrid. Here Saint Naum founded a monastery in 905, where he spent the final five years of his life in quiet contemplation. He reposed in the Lord on the twenty-third of December in the year 910, and his friend Kliment was the one who began promoting the cause of his glorification. Holy father Naum, excellent teacher and friend to the Slavs, bearer of Christ’s light into Eastern Europe, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Naum of Preslav, 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 Naum, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!

Saint Naum Monastery, Northern Macedonia