Sava of Ohrid

Saint Sava of Ohrid was a medieval Slavic scholar of the first Bulgarian realm and one of the most prominent disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius. With them and with Saints Gorazd, Clement of Ohrid, Naum and Angelarius he is counted in the group of the Seven Saints (Sedmochislenitsi) of the Bulgarian Church. He was born between 810 and 840 and died between 880 and 920, according to other scholars at the end of the ninth century or the beginning of the tenth. He is commemorated on 27 July, and in the menologion calendar also on 9 August.

He was a priest and helped the two brothers in the enlightenment of the Slavic people and the strengthening of Orthodoxy in Moravia. In 868, at Rome, he and Saint Angelarius were ordained deacons by the bishops Formosus and Gauderic, while Gorazd, Clement and Naum were ordained priests by the same bishops. The Life of Saint Clement of Ohrid calls Sava one of the "chosen and leaders" among the disciples of Cyril and Methodius. After Methodius's death, he endured with the other disciples torments and persecutions: in 885 Pope Stephen V issued a bull forbidding the Slavic liturgy, and in 886 the ruler of Great Moravia, Svatopluk I, expelled the disciples of the two brothers. The route of Sava and the other disciples to the First Bulgarian Empire is not well known. They settled in Bulgaria, where Prince Boris I received them and gave them the task of founding theological schools. Where Sava found shelter is not known, and his fate after arriving in Bulgaria is unclear. No written work of his has survived.

His memory was kept in Bulgaria and Byzantium, where he is called "the Bulgarian scribe". His name was forgotten in later centuries, but the Synodikon of Boril places him beside Cyril, Methodius, Clement, Gorazd, Naum and Angelarius, who "enlightened the Bulgarian people" and "laboured much for the Slavic book".