Biography
Sava II of Serbia
About Sava II of Serbia
Sava II was a Serbian monk and archbishop from the Nemanjic royal family. Born Predislav, he was a son of King Stephen the First-Crowned and a nephew of Sava I, Serbia’s first archbishop. He followed his uncle into monastic life, and later succeeded Arsenius as head of the Serbian Church. The two saints named Sava were different people.
He was born around 1200 or 1201. His brothers Radoslav, Vladislav and Uros I each became king. Predislav took the monastic name Sava and lived at Hilandar on Mount Athos. He also made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Later, as bishop of Hum, he moved the episcopal seat from Ston to the church of Peter and Paul at Bijelo Polje, on the Lim River.
The brief medieval account preserved among the continuations of Danilo II’s collection presents his life through the language of monastic holiness. It describes his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and his return to Mount Athos, where he endured dangers from pirates. These episodes belong to a devotional narrative rather than a detailed itinerary. The account gives little practical information about the journeys or their dates.
The same narrative emphasizes responsibility. Its portrait of Sava as archbishop centers on safeguarding the faith, caring for the community entrusted to him and teaching through his own conduct. It does not offer a detailed record of decisions, disputes or administration. What survives is chiefly the religious memory of a conscientious bishop, expressed in the conventional language of a saint’s life.
The beginning of his archbishopric is uncertain. Predrag Puzovic places his succession in 1263, when illness prevented Arsenius from serving, while noting the alternative date of 1266. Puzovic also identifies the short biography as a work of a continuator, whose writing drew on another archbishop’s life. It should therefore not be read as an independent contemporary record of every detail.
The Orthodox Church in America follows the 1266 date and acknowledges several reported years for his death: 1268, 1269 and 1271. This disagreement limits the precision of a simple chronology. Its calendar commemorates him on February 8 and places his relics at Pec, the historic seat of the Serbian patriarchate.
Puzovic dates his death to February 8, 1271, at the monastery of the Pec Patriarchate. He was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles. His veneration continued in monastery frescoes and in a service composed by Metropolitan Mihailo Jovanovic for the 1861 Srbljak.
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