John of Rila is the most revered ascetic of the Bulgarian Church and is honored as the heavenly protector of the Bulgarian people. By the received tradition he was born in 876 in the village of Skrino in the district of Sredets (the region of present-day Sofia), and was orphaned at a young age. Reduced to poverty, he hired himself out as a cowherd before withdrawing entirely from human society to pursue a life of solitude and prayer.
After a period as a hermit on a barren hill, where he subsisted on wild plants, John retreated deeper into the wilderness of the Rila mountains. The synaxarion relates that he passed twelve years in a desolate cave, fasting, praying, and weeping incessantly, and that he afterward dwelt for seven years on a rocky crag, sheltering in a hollow tree and sustaining himself on grass and on beans that grew near him. His reputation for holiness drew disciples to the mountain in his own lifetime, and a monastic community gradually formed around him, with a church built at his former cave. This was the origin of the Rila Monastery, which became the foremost monastery of Bulgaria and a center of its spiritual and literary life.
John was the first Bulgarian hermit to be venerated as a saint within his own time. Five years before his repose he composed a 'Testament to his Disciples,' counted among the finest works of Old Bulgarian literature, in which he set out his spiritual instruction for the community he left behind. He reposed on August 18, 946, at the age of seventy.
His relics became one of the great treasures of medieval Bulgaria and were translated repeatedly over the centuries — carried to Sredets (Sofia), removed for a time to Hungary, brought to the capital at Trnovo, and at last returned to the Rila Monastery in 1469, where they remain. He is commemorated principally on August 18, his repose, with a further commemoration on October 19 marking the translation of his relics.
