Saint Basil of Ostrog was a Serbian hierarch of the seventeenth century who labored in Herzegovina during the Ottoman period and ended his life as an ascetic at the rock-monastery of Ostrog in present-day Montenegro. Born Stojan Jovanovic in 1610 in the village of Mrkonjici, in the Popovo Polje region of Herzegovina, he came of pious parents, Petar and Ana, in a land then under Ottoman rule. He is commemorated on April 29, the day of his repose.
Sent in his youth to the nearby Zavala Monastery, where his paternal uncle, the hieromonk Serafim, was hegumen, Stojan studied Scripture and the teaching of the Church. He was afterward sent to the Tvrdos Monastery of the Most Holy Mother of God near Trebinje, where he was tonsured a monk with the name Basil. The sources relate that he became known for an unusually strict ascetic life, attained the rank of archimandrite, and spent a year on Mount Athos.
Basil was raised to the episcopate as bishop of the Herzegovinian church, with his seat at Tvrdos; tradition holds that he was consecrated by Patriarch Paisius of Pec. He served his scattered and impoverished flock under heavy pressure, amid Ottoman hostility to the Church and the constant threat of forced conversion. When his enemies pressed him severely and Tvrdos was destroyed, he withdrew to Ostrog accompanied by thirty monks, where he gave himself to a life of strict asceticism and ceaseless prayer in the mountain.
Saint Basil reposed peacefully on April 29, 1671, and was buried at Ostrog. His relics are venerated as incorrupt and wonderworking, and the cave-church that holds them became one of the most visited shrines in the region, drawing pilgrims who report healings of soul and body. By long tradition the faithful who come to his tomb include not only Orthodox Christians but Roman Catholics and Muslims, a breadth of veneration that the anchor record notes when it calls his relics a source of healing for pilgrims of every faith.
