Description
Patron Saint’s Day (Slava) is a holiday dedicated to a Christian saint whom the family takes as its patron and protector. The celebration of the Patron Saint among Serbs dates back to the time of Saint Sava. Today, the majority of Orthodox Christians in the territory of Serbia celebrate the Patron Saint’s Day as a significant holiday in which individual families and their guests – members of the extended family, spiritual relatives, neighbours and friends– participate. As bearers of a unique Orthodox tradition, Serbs perceive Patron Saint’s Day as a way of expressing their Christian and national identity.
Slava is a vital element of the intangible cultural heritage of the Serbian people, and in 2014 it was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Venerable Mother Paraskeva was born in the middle of the 10th century, in a wealthy and pious Byzantine family in a town on the coast of the Sea of Marmara. She was pious since childhood, and after the death of her parents, her love for God took her to Palestine, to worship holy places, and then to the Jordan desert, where she lived in strict asceticism until old age. Towards the end of her life, she returned to her native Epibates, where she presented herself unto God, but as she did not reveal who she was to anyone, she was buried in the part of the cemetery where unknown people were buried. Legend has it that, during the burial of a drowned person, they dug up the saint›s grave and found her remains uncorrupted, so they laid the relics in the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Epibates.
Two centuries later, the Bulgarian emperor Jovan moved the relics to Tarnovo, where they remained until the Turkish conquests, after which they were transferred to Wallachia and, in 1396, upon advocacy of Princess Milica Hrebeljanović, they were transferred to Belgrade, to the chapel of Saint Petka, which was built on Kalemegdan fortress. The relics were then transferred to Constantinople in 1521, but the Venerable Mother Paraskeva remained one of the most respected and beloved saints among out people. Saint Petka is celebrated on October 27, and in terms of the number of people who celebrate her as their Patron Saint, it is one of the biggest Slavas in Serbia.
Artistic realisation of the issue: MA Marija Vlahovic, academic graphic artist
