Sava II Branković

Saint Sava II Brancovici was Metropolitan of Transylvania from 1656 to 1680, a learned pastor and defender of Orthodoxy against Calvinist pressure. Born at Ineu in Arad County in 1615 (other sources say around 1620), he died at Alba Iulia on 24 April 1683 as a result of the sufferings of his imprisonment under Prince Michael Apafi. The Romanian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints in 1955, and the Serbian Church also honours him on 24 April.

Youth

He was born with the name Simeon into the Serbian Branković family of Ineu (Jenopolje), one of the foremost Serbian families of the Arad region, which from the late sixteenth century produced several soldiers and bishops. His parents were Jovan and Maria. He was tutored at home and then studied at Orthodox monasteries in Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria. He also went to his uncle, Metropolitan Longin Korenić Branković, at Comana monastery south of Bucharest, and stayed there to complete his education, reading avidly in history and Scripture in the metropolitan's rich library.

Returning home, he married at thirty and was ordained priest. His wife soon died; he, the eldest of four brothers, lost his father and two brothers to the plague, and his mother retired to a convent, leaving the youngest brother, Đorđe, aged ten. Simeon took his brother under his care at once. For ten years he served as priest and archpriest of Ineu, bringing many Muslims to the faith and winning back Christians who had embraced Islam. His brother Đorđe received a fine education and, like Simeon, became a polyglot: he wrote in Slavonic-⁠Serbian, Church Slavonic, Hungarian, Romanian and Latin and knew Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Italian and German.

Metropolitan of Transylvania

At the end of 1656 a council of clergy at Alba Iulia elected the widowed priest Simeon Metropolitan of Transylvania. He went to the church of Saint Nicholas-⁠Geartoglu at Târgoviște, where he was tonsured with the name Sava, and was consecrated on 16 September 1656 by Metropolitan Stephen of Wallachia, and Prince George II Rákóczi confirmed him as "bishop of all the Greeks, Serbs and Vlachs". He settled at Alba Iulia, taking his brother Đorđe with him.

His ministry was troubled by the Calvinist mission, which sought to win the Orthodox and was supported by Prince Apafi, while frequent wars threatened the peace of the land. Sava stood firm as defender of the Church and did not yield to the authorities' demands to establish Calvinism among the Orthodox, still less union with Rome. He was removed from his see between 1660 and 1662 for the zeal with which he strengthened his flock in Orthodoxy, but returned, more determined than before, and served without interruption until 1680. He corresponded with Metropolitans Dosoftei of Moldavia and Varlaam Moțoc.

The printer

To support the faithful he set up a printing house at Alba Iulia, in which he printed service books, guides for clergy and laity and catechisms. He preached from the writings of the Holy Fathers and from the lives of the saints. For more than twenty years he was a leading force in book printing in Transylvania and one of the first to print in Romanian. According to a Serbian source, in 1675 he issued a synodal order for the priests of Transylvania to give up Slavonic and serve in Romanian; other sources say he held to Slavonic. He initiated the printing of sermons for laypeople in Romanian, biblical texts in Church Slavonic and scientific books in Slavonic-⁠Serbian, Romanian, Greek and Latin. He wrote several books himself, which circulated in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia.

Trials and repose

His brother Đorđe, who was never charged with any crime, was later, after 1689, to spend thirty years in Austrian prisons, suspected of trying to unite the Serbs of the Balkans against the Turks. Both brothers sought to bind Orthodox Transylvania to outside help. In 1668 Metropolitan Sava travelled to Russia with eleven companions, Đorđe among them, to ask the tsar's support for the Orthodox of Transylvania. Tsar Alexis received him, and Sava told him that the Orthodox Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians were ready to free themselves from the Turks with Russian military help.

On his return the journey brought him trouble. Apafi and the Protestant leadership, displeased by his resistance to attempts to convert the Orthodox to Calvinism, began to persecute him, and in February 1669 the prince issued a decree imposing many duties and restrictions on the metropolitan and through him on most of the Orthodox. The Reformed bishop Péter Kovásznai, who saw Sava as an obstacle, was hostile to him. Đorđe was imprisoned for the same contacts. Apafi nevertheless made occasional concessions, though he demanded observance of the so-⁠called fifteen points of his predecessors and unconditional subordination of the Orthodox clergy to the Reformed superintendent. Sava steered shrewdly through these difficulties and remained in his see until 1680.

In 1680 he was suddenly thrown into prison, at Blaj castle. Among the possible reasons were the appointment of a new Calvinist superintendent, Mihály Tóföi, and, more seriously, the supposed participation of Sava and his brother in a recently discovered plot for a revolt against the Turks, which would have endangered Apafi's position. There he was cruelly whipped. Đorđe alerted their friend, Prince Șerban Cantacuzino of Wallachia, who intervened and helped Sava keep his see, making the Habsburgs respect the old custom, in force since Michael the Brave and Starina Novak, that the metropolitan of Alba Iulia be elected by the synod of Wallachia; this strengthened the unity of the Romanians and other Orthodox on both sides of the Carpathians. After his release he died on 24 April 1683 from the injuries received in Apafi's prison.

Veneration

The Romanian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints in 1955 (on 21 October according to some sources), counting him persecuted for the faith by Prince Michael Apafi. This view is held by the historian Petru Maior, who wrote the History of the Church of the Romanians, and the Hungarian chronicler Mihály Cserei, who adds that his accusers were bribed to charge him unjustly. Later Samuil Micu and Nicolae Iorga said he was persecuted for resisting Calvinism. A Bulgarian source notes that the Romanian Church long refused to canonize him, pleading abuses in the metropolis. Saint Sava is commemorated on 24 April by Romanians and Serbs, and on 7 May by the new calendar.