Saint Joanikije of Devic

Life

A Serb from Zeta. As a young man, seized by the love of Christ, he left his home and his household, and withdrew to the region of the Ibar, into the gorge of the Crna Rijeka, into a narrow cave in which, according to tradition, Saint Peter of Korisa had labored in asceticism before him. But when his fame began to spread among the people, he fled to Drenica and hid himself in the thick forest of Devic. Saint Joanikije spent years there in solitude, in silence, and in prayer. According to tradition, the Serbian prince Djuradj Brankovic brought to him his deranged daughter, whom the saint healed. Out of gratitude, Djuradj built a monastery on that site, known to this day by the name of Devic. There the holy and wonderworking relics of Joanikije repose. In that monastery there labored in asceticism almost up to our own times a renowned and God-pleasing hermitess, the nun Euphemia, better known in the Kosovo region by the name: Blessed Stojna. She reposed in the Lord in 1895.