One of the greatest Serbian saints who was a prince, monk, diplomat, and the first archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church is celebrated in January in all the schools throughout the country.
Rastko Nemanjić, the youngest of the great Stefan Nemanja sons was born in 1169 in Miščići village in the Deževo area near Novi Pazar. A temple dedicated to St. Sava is under construction in the small Deževa settlement while the largest Orthodox church in the Balkans is built in Belgrade to mark the place where his bones were burned.
Rastko became a monk at a very young age when he was just over 20 in Saint Athos and came back to Serbia about 15 years later to reconcile his quarreled brothers. He left behind numerous written documents and managed to negotiate the independence of the Serbian church with the Byzantine Tzar in 1219. Saint Sava was initially buried in Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje but the Ottomans took his bones and burned them at the end of the 16th century in Belgrade's neighborhood Vračar.
Saint Sava Day is celebrated in all the schools on January 27th marking the date he died in Trnovo, Bulgaria as he was an originator of Serbian literature and education protector.