Gregory of Gornjak

Saint Gregory of Gornjak (Gregory the Hesychast, Gregory the Silent, Gregory the Younger, Gregory the Sinaite the Younger) the venerable was a Serbian monk of the fourteenth century, a disciple of Saint Gregory of Sinai and of Saint Romylus of Ravanica, whose Life he wrote. He returned from Sinai and Athos to Moravian Serbia in the time of Prince Lazar and lived until the end at the Gornjak monastery. He is commemorated on 7 December, the day after Saint Nicholas.

Beginnings

According to the Athonite tradition and many Slavonic and Serbian synaxaria, he was a Serb by birth, born at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. From Constantinople he came to Paroria, the famous monastic colony in Thrace, where he met Romylus and his friend Hilarion, former students of Gregory of Sinai. After the death of Saint Gregory of Sinai (27 November 1346), Romylus and Hilarion moved from Paroria to Zagora, near Tarnovo. When the Bulgarian tsar John Alexander freed Paroria from the attacks of robbers, the two returned to the desert of Paroria, where Gregory came to them from Constantinople. Already at Constantinople, or perhaps earlier on Athos, Gregory had heard of the great Gregory of Sinai and had become his disciple. Hearing of the virtues of Romylus and his hesychast life, he came to him, as he says himself in the Life of Romylus: "At that time I, the most wretched of monks, came from Constantinople to that place and, hearing of their virtuous life and perfect struggle, bowed my head and submitted to the elder Hilarion, to whom the venerable Romylus himself was subject."

At Paroria he struggled beside Romylus until the region was attacked by the Hagarenes. Then with the elder Hilarion they had to go again to Zagora. Then Romylus went to the Holy Mountain, while Gregory and Hilarion stayed in Zagora. After Hilarion's death, Gregory also went alone to Athos, sought out and found Romylus and submitted to him with humility as to his spiritual father. They lived in a place called Melana, near the Great Lavra of Saint Athanasius. He speaks of their life there more fully in the Life of Saint Romylus, but out of too great humility he presents only the virtues of Romylus, while of himself he says he had sins and passions and that Romylus corrected him. As many monks and visitors began to come to them, they withdrew to a still more remote part of Athos. After the Turks killed the Serbian despot John Uglješa, who protected the Mountain, fear and confusion arose, and Romylus went to Albania, to Valona, then to Serbia, to Prince Lazar, at Ravanica, where he soon died. Gregory stayed on Athos, in a solitary cell, a quarter of an hour from the Grigoriou monastery, struggling in the stillness of prayer and silence, whence he was called "the Silent". It is most probable that in this time he became the final founder of the present monastery of Saint Nicholas, called after him Grigoriou, built between Simonopetra and Saint Paul.

Return to Moravian Serbia

The English sources say that Gregory returned with Romylus and a few other hesychast monks between 1375 and 1379 from Sinai (where he is said to have been a disciple of Saint Romylus too), because of the Ottoman advance, and put himself under the protection of Prince Lazar; they established a strong hesychast colony of Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek monks. According to the legend, Prince Lazar was hunting near the river Mlava when he noticed the monk Gregory on the other side of the water. He tried to speak to him, but the noise of the river prevented it. Gregory quieted the river so that he could speak with Lazar, and since then the Mlava has not made much noise at that place.

By the charter given by Prince Lazar at the beginning of 1379, Gregory received the monastery of Gornjak (anciently Zdrelo, in Braničevo). The charter ordered that after his death the monastery be governed by his fellow monks. Gregory took the charter to Peć, to the Serbian patriarch Spiridon, who confirmed it on 17 May 1379. Romylus stayed near the Ravanica monastery, while Gregory spent the rest of his life at Gornjak, where he was buried. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries his relics were moved to the Oreškovica monastery before being brought back to Gornjak. He was numbered among the saints and his service is held on the day of his death, 7 December.