Gregory II of Ras

Saint Gregory II was a Serbian monk and scribe, later bishop of Ras (Raška), born around 1250 and died in 1321. His activity as a writer extends from 1282 to 1321. The Serbian Church honours him as a saint within the Synaxis of the Holy Serbian Enlighteners and Teachers, on 30 August by the old calendar (12 September by the new).

He was a monk of the Hilandar Monastery, which had for a century been a centre of the Serbian book, and his name had been made well known by earlier scribes of that house. One source says that he was bishop of Ras in the time of King Milutin, from 1282 to 1321, that is in the years of the king's reign. The Serbian source, however, states that he was elected bishop of Ras after Bishop Philip, between 1 September 1304 and 31 August 1305, and that he remained bishop until 1313. The two sets of dates do not say the same thing: the first belongs to the king's reign, the second to his episcopate.

He was an unusually conscientious copyist. In 1305 he copied at Ras, in his monastery of the Holy Apostles, the Nomocanon of Saint Sava, that is the Krmčija, and donated it to Hilandar. In his note he says that he collated it three times, word for word, with the original he received from the archbishopric. The manuscript, preserved in full, is physically divided and today lies in Moscow, in the State Historical Museum and in the Russian State Library. Gregory is also known for the verses composed on a silver cross which he made together with King Stefan Milutin.

The great silver cross, with a small piece of the wood of the Cross of Christ, was a gift of King Milutin to the bishopric of Ras. In 1421 it was pledged in Dubrovnik by Nikola Gruyović. In 1437 it was given to the newly built Dominican church of the Holy Cross in Gruž, and in 1618 it was brought for safekeeping to the Dominican monastery in Dubrovnik. From then on it was solemnly carried every year from Dubrovnik to Gruž for the feast of the church. In 1697, during such a carrying, a friar broke off a small particle from the wood of the Cross of Christ in this cross and gave it to Baron Philip Napuljac, who gave it to Empress Amalia, wife of the Austrian emperor Joseph I. The empress set it in a splendid cross adorned with precious stones, and later received, through General Frano Šiškov Gundulić, a testimony of the Dominicans of Dubrovnik that the particle was from the cross of the Serbian bishop Gregory II. To protect it from further such damage, the cross was no longer carried to Gruž from 1714. A silver copy of the cross was made for the church of Gruž, with a particle broken off from the old wood set in it, and the original is kept to this day in the Dominican treasury in Dubrovnik.