St. Basil of Ostrog

He was born in 1610 as Stojan, in the village of Mrkonjić in the Popovo Polje of Herzegovina, to a poor and devout family. Drawn from childhood to the things of God, he entered the monastery of the Dormition at Tvrdoš near Trebinje, where he was tonsured a monk with the name Basil and was in time ordained.

His holiness and zeal led to his consecration as Metropolitan of Zahumlje and the Coastlands. He labored without rest among a flock crushed between the Ottoman power and the pressure of the Latins, strengthening the people in the Orthodox faith, ransoming captives, building and repairing churches, and enduring slander and danger for the sake of his calling.

Persecution at last forced him to leave the lowlands, and he withdrew to the high cliffs above the valley of Bjelopavlići, in what is now Montenegro. There, in a cave-church carved into the sheer rock, he gathered a small brotherhood and established the monastery of Ostrog, giving himself in his final years to fasting, prayer, and ceaseless ascetic struggle.

He reposed at Ostrog in the year 1671. Some years later, the tradition relates, he appeared in a vision, and his body was found incorrupt and fragrant; it was placed in the upper cave-church, where it remains.

From that day the relics of St. Basil have been a fountain of healings and wonders without number, and the monastery of Ostrog has become one of the greatest places of pilgrimage in the Orthodox world — sought not by the Orthodox alone, but by Catholics and Muslims also, who come to the holy cliff to ask the prayers of the Wonderworker of Ostrog.