Life
Saint Romylos of Vidin (also known as Romylos of Ravanica) was a Bulgarian or Serbian hesychast of the fourteenth century, one of the most significant representatives of the Palamite hesychastic movement in the Balkans, and a spiritual son of Gregory the Sinaite — the great father of hesychasm on Paroria and Athos.
Romylos was born in Vidin, probably of mixed Bulgarian-Greek parentage, during the first half of the fourteenth century. From his youth he was drawn to the monastic life and deep prayer. The decisive encounter was with Saint Gregory the Sinaite, who had established a great hesychastic center at Paroria (in Bulgaria) and attracted numerous disciples from across the Balkans. Romylos entered Gregory’s brotherhood and there received not only the theoretical foundations but the living practice of hesychasm — the Jesus Prayer, inner silence (hesychia), watchfulness (nepsis), and the way of genuine union with God through the uncreated divine energies.
After Gregory the Sinaite’s death (around 1346) Romylos began an extended wandering through the hesychastic centers of the Balkans and the Mediterranean: from Paroria to Athos, from Athos to Serbia, from Serbia to Mount Mela near Thessaloniki, and back to Athos. Everywhere he found communities of hesychastic monks, and everywhere he left his mark as a man of deep prayer and unusual spiritual authority.
In the last years of his life Romylos came to Serbia, where Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović received him with great honor. Romylos settled near the monastery of Ravanica — the great foundation of Prince Lazar — where he gathered his own circle of disciples and lived as a hermit in the spirit of the desert tradition. The proximity of Ravanica gave him access to the monastery’s liturgical life, while the surrounding wilderness provided the solitude he needed for the work of prayer.
He reposed around 1375, shortly before or shortly after the Battle of Kosovo. His hagiography was written by the Gregory of Serbia who was himself a disciple of Romylos, and it is one of the most significant hagiographic documents of Serbian literature of the late Middle Ages, testifying to the rich hesychastic culture that flourished in Serbia in the second half of the fourteenth century.
Romylos of Ravanica is a witness to the close bond between the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek hesychastic movements. He received the tradition from Gregory the Sinaite, who was himself influenced by the hesychastic tradition of Sinai and Athos, and passed it on in the Serbian soil, where it bore the fruit of a remarkable flowering of monastic culture.
Tropar (Tone 1)
O venerable Romylos, hesychastic dweller and prayerful lamp of Serbia, disciple of Gregory the Sinaite and intercessor for the people of God — thou didst illuminate the Balkan wilderness with the light of prayer. Intercede with Christ God to save our souls.
About the Feast
Saint Romylos of Ravanica is not commonly celebrated as a patron feast among the Serbian people, but he is venerated in monastic communities, especially those following the hesychastic tradition. The monastery of Ravanica, where he spent the last years of his life, is the place most deeply connected with his memory.