Saint Ephraim, Patriarch of Serbia

Life

As the son of a priest, from childhood he strove for the spiritual and ascetical life. He fled to the Holy Mountain when his parents wished to marry him. Later he returned and struggled ascetically in the Ibar Gorge and at Decani. When disorder and rivalry arose in the state, and unfortunately in the Church as well, the Council elected Ephraim as patriarch in place of the reposed Sava in the year 1375. When the election was announced to him, he wept bitterly, but he could not refuse. He crowned Prince Lazar as emperor in 1382, then resigned the throne and gave it to Spyridon, and withdrew again into the desert; but after the death of Spyridon in 1388, Emperor Lazar entreated him and he again assumed his duties. He governed the Serbian Church during the difficult time of the Kosovo catastrophe and afterward until the year 1400, when he departed this life in the eighty-eighth year of his life and went to the Lord Whom he had loved. His relics rest in the Monastery at Pec.