Saint Vasilije Ostroski
Saint Vasilije of Ostrog (or Serb: Sveti Vasilije Ostro?ki, Свети Василије Острошки) known as Saint Basil in the West was born in Popovo Polje on 28 December, 1610, a region in Hercegovina of simple and God-fearing parents. He is a miraculous saint.
From his youth, he was filled with love for the Church of God and when he reached maturity, he entered to the Monastery of the Dormition (Assumption) of the Birth-giver of God in Trebinje and there received the monastic tonsure. As a monk, he quickly became renown because of his genuine and rare ascetical life. Saint Basil took upon himself mortification upon mortification each one heavier and more difficult than the last. Later, against his will, he was elected and consecrated bishop of Zahumlje and Skenderia. As a hierarch, he first lived in the Monastery Tvrdos and from there, as a good shepherd, strengthened his flock in the Orthodox Faith, protecting them from the cruelty of the Turks and the cunning ways of the Latins (Catholics, mostly Venetians). When Basil was exceedingly pressed by his enemies and, when Tvrdos was destroyed by the Turks, he moved to Ostrog, where he lived an austere ascetical life, protecting his flock by his ceaseless and fervent prayer. He died peacefully in the Lord in the sixteenth century, leaving behind his incorruptible relics; incorruptible and miracle-working to the present day. The miracles at the grave of St. Basil are without number. Christians and Muslims alike come before his relics and find healing of their most grave illnesses and afflictions. A great people's assembly (pilgrimage) occurs there annually on the Feast of Pentecost.
The Ostrog monks used to speak of a handwritten book they kept at the monastery which included a hagiography of St.Vasilije. The volume disappeared at the time of the raid on Montenegro by the Ottoman Turks in 1852-3. The hagiography allegedly said that St. Vasilije was born on 28 December, 1610 and that his (secular) Christian name was Stojan. Vuk Vrcevic put it down by the people's oral record that St.Vasilije was forty years old when he left Tvrdos for Ostrog. As this is known to have taken place in 1651, the lost hagiography appears to have been fully correct. Additionally, there is strong evidence that the Saint was named Bishop as a very young man, as he was Metropolitan of Zahumlje as early as 1639.
Very early he became Metropolitan of the western parts of Herzegovina and as soon as 1639 he signed himself in the Chronicle by John Zonara as "humble Metropolitan of Zahumlje Vasilije."
In 1671, it was written: "Vasilije, the Bishop of Zahumlje and Skenderija, has gone to God, to rest in his holiness." "And when he passed away," archimandrite Nikodim Raicevic recounted it to Vuk Karadzic, "his body was interred below the monastery, in the orchard ground. Seven years after his death, the Zupa monastery abbot, who was then at Ostrog, saw in his dream one night late Bishop Vasilije, asking to be unearthed. He dreamed the same dream once more?Bishop Vasilije appeared in his dream for the third time?As he told his dreams to other brothers at Ostrog?they took hoes, picks and shovels?and unearthed it. In it was Bishop Vasilije, his body whole, untouched and holy. Then they placed him into the holy casket at the church of the upper monastery, where it has been ever since and is today."
