Saint Sava

In Christianity, a person that becomes a saint is one who did good things for the love of God, and performed miracles. Years after his death people remember his good deeds and miracles. After a certain amount of years the person becomes a candidate for a saint, and the process of becoming one, canonization, begins.

One of the most famous Eastern Orthodox saints was Saint Sava from Serbia. Saint Sava lived from 1175 to 1235 A.D. He was originally the youngest of three brothers who's father was a Serbian ruler. At a very young age he became a monk and changed his name from Rastko Nemanjic to Sava. He had many accomplishments which earned him great respect in Serbia. His accomplishments include spreading of education and literature, publishing the first civil laws of the newly formed Serbia to ensure order, although his greatest achievement was establishing the Serbian Church as an independent one in 1217 A.D. He also set up the Monastery Hilandar on Mount Athos which still exists today. His importance and contribution to Serbia is still visible today. The largest Easter Orthodox church in the world is named after him. The Saint Sava slava is celebrated throughout Serbia on January 27th and is the day when Serbian schools have assemblies the whole day celebrating Saint Sava.

Byzantine Empire

Out of the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine empire, the most advanced one was the Byzantine Empire. It was the empire that took all of the ideas from every civilization, especially the Roman and Greek, and combined it into one. They used the things which worked for all of the civilizations in the past, and they knew which things to avoid. The location of the capital city, Constantinople was great. It was safe from any attacks since it was located on a peninsula defended by a great wall. It was also located on the trading root that connects Europe to Asia, so the trade that took place gave the empire great wealth. The merchants traded things like spices, gems, metals, cloths, farm goods, furs, honey and slaves. The empire was also very educated, and there was a great respect for art and literature. The writers of the time wrote mainly about religion which was very important. However, they also copied down writings of ancient Greeks and Romans. They were smart enough to know that if they hadn't copied them down, they would be lost forever. Without them, we would not have many important works that tell us a lot about the past, and the way people lived back then. The Byzantine Empire also had developed laws, especially for women. Thanks to empress Theodora, women finally got some rights, like the right to own their own land. Overall, the Byzantine Empire was the most developed one since it combine all of the positive things of all the empires before it and incorporated it all into one empire.