Saint Sava (1175–1235), the patron saint and national hero of the Serbian people, was born Rastko Nemanja in 1175, the son of Serbian Grand Župan Stephen (r. 1166–1196). Serbia was still a relatively young nation, having freed itself from the Byzantine Empire in the previous century. In 1077 Duklja became the first Serb kingdom, its founding being intimately interconnected with the establishment of the Roman Catholic Bishopric of Bar. Toward the end of the 12th century, the new state Raška, centered in what is now southern Serbia, rose as a second Serbian nation. Stephen Nemanja ruled Raška. In 1196 he, like his son Rastko before him, moved to the Eastern Orthodox monastic center on Mount Athos in Greece, where he was known as the monk Simeon. Soon afterward, he joined with his son to rebuild the ruined Monastery of Hilandar, on Mount Athos, which had been given to the Serbian people by the Byzantine emperor. Simeon died there in 1199. Sava organized after his return to Serbia the Serbian Orthodox Church and was consecrated the first archbishop of the Serbian church by Patriarch Manul I of Constantinople (r. 1216–1222), the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Sava died in 1236 after his unparalleled second pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Egypt and Mount Sinai, in Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria. He was later canonized and named the patron saint of Serbian schools and school-children.
In 1594, Serbs rose up against Ottoman rule in Banat, during the Long War (1591–1606)[24] which was fought at the Austrian-Ottoman border in the Balkans. The Serbian patriarchate and rebels had established relations with foreign states,[24] and had in a short time captured several towns, including Vršac, Bečkerek, Lipova, Titel and Bečej, although the uprising was quickly suppressed. The rebels had, in the character of a holy war, carried war flags with the icon of Saint Sava.[25]

The war banners had been consecrated by Patriarch John I Kantul, whom the Ottoman government later had hanged in Istanbul. Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha ordered that the sarcophagus and relics of Saint Sava located in the Mileševa monastery be brought by military convoy to Belgrade.[24][25] Along the way, the Ottoman convoy had people killed in their path so that the rebels in the woods would hear of it.[25] The relics were publicly incinerated by the Ottomans, on 27 April 1595, as it was placed on a pyre and burnt on the Vračar plateau, and the ashes scattered.[24] According to Nikolaj Velimirović the flames were seen over the Danube.[25]

On the 300th anniversary of the burning of Saint Sava's body, a group of Serbian Orthodox believers founded the Society for the Construction of the Cathedral of Saint Sava on Vračar with the idea of building a cathedral on the site. Initially a small church was constructed and the search began to find an adequate design.

The church is widely regarded as an important symbol of the Byzantine revival architecture, that dominated church architecture from Russia to the Balkans in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In particular, it had to serve Serbs as a symbol of the afterlife of the medieval Serbian empire. Especially in the context of Yugoslavia, a Serbo-Byzantine culture was favoured both by the Yugoslav king Aleksandar I Karadjordjević and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The adoption of a pattern that followed the prototype of the Haghia Sophia in Constantinople illustrates the idea that Serbs are legitimate heirs to imperial Byzantium. Belgrade was visioned as a new imperial center of Orthodoxy, which had a particular resonance in the context of the demise of Moscow being the communist capital when the church was planned.[10]
-WIki

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