Isaiah of Ostrog

Venerable Isaiah of Ostrog (Isaiah of Onogošt) was a Serbian monk and ascetic who lived in a cave on the site of the future Ostrog Monastery, between the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. He is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church. His commemoration is on 11 May by the new calendar. Our sources give no act of canonization; his veneration seems to belong, for now, to the monastery and the Serbian Church in Montenegro.

Very little is known of his life. It is preserved that he was born in the village of Popi, near Nikšić, that he became a monk and withdrew into the rocky heights of Ostrog, probably fleeing the Ottoman occupation. There he built a small church dedicated to the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, where he remained until his death. Soon afterwards the Turks burned his relics at Planinica, between Ostrog and Nikšić, to suppress his veneration as a saint.

Saint Basil of Ostrog later chose the site of Isaiah's hermitage on which to build the Ostrog Monastery, in the seventeenth century. Isaiah's grandson became a hieromonk, taking his grandfather's name. On an inscription at the church of the Holy Cross at Ostrog, Isaiah is mentioned as "our holy and venerable father Isaiah of the village of Popi".

Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral said in the Ostrog monastery that Isaiah was the first to serve the Lord here in secret, that to this day we do not know where he came from, whether from the Boškovići of Orja Luka or from Onogošt, but only that he struggled here and prepared the place for Saint Basil, and that the Turks burned his relics at Planinica, as they burned the relics of Saint Sava on Vračar. From the flame of his relics, said the metropolitan, the holiness of Ostrog shone forth. Isaiah did not come here to be glorified, but to hide from the eyes of the world and to be seen only by the living God.

The first service in his honour was held on 11 May 2015, at the consecration of a small chapel dedicated to him at Upper Ostrog, where services to him have been held every year since.