Sisoes of Sinai

Venerable Sisoes the Sinaite (Sisoes of Sisojevac) was one of the Sinaite monks of the second half of the fourteenth century who came to the Serbian state in the time of the rule of Prince Lazar. He was hegumen at Hilandar, a contemporary and disciple of Roman of Ravanica, and was close to Prince Lazar; according to tradition, he was his confessor. Princess Milica mentions him in 1398 in a charter of hers. He lived in a village near Ravanica, so that it is believed that the village was named Sisevac, and the monastery Sisojevac, after him. Our source does not give the date of his commemoration.

Like the other Sinaites, Saint Sisoes was a hesychast, that is, he belonged to an old Christian tradition of prayer, then widely spread. The name comes from the Greek word hesychia, which means quiet. Those of this movement were accused of heresy by the monk Barlaam of Calabria. At the synods of Constantinople of 1347 and 1351 the accusations were rejected, and hesychasm was declared part of the Orthodox tradition. The hesychasts practised silence, but not passively, rather in prayer, bearing in mind that, in the words of Saint John of the Ladder, in silence watchfulness is needed, lest delusion and pride come about. According to Saint Gregory Palamas, the founder of hesychasm, the fruit of hesychasm is the vision of the Taboric light, which the apostles saw outwardly at the Transfiguration of the Lord, and which, after the establishment of the holy mysteries, all bear in the heart. For this reason all the monasteries built by the Sinaites (including the one at Sisevac) were dedicated to the Holy Transfiguration.

In September 1931 the director of the Belgrade museum, V. Petković, found the saint's tomb. It lay in the floor of the church, by the south wall, covered with an undressed slab without any inscription. In the wall above, a place for lighting candles was carved. In the tomb only a part of the relics was found, namely the bones of the shank. The other parts of the body, together with the skull, were found in another place, buried in the same area of the church, but on the right side, without any construction.

In the monastery church, dedicated to the Transfiguration, there is a fresco in which Venerable Sisoes is shown as ktetor, with a model of the church in his right hand. His grave is also in the monastery. His name is mentioned in 1509, when the monks of this monastery begged alms in Russia. His monastery fell into decay in the sixteenth century. The monks of Ravanica tried to restore it in the second half of the nineteenth century, but without success.