Hagiographia · Eastern Orthodox

Prohor of Pčinja

The 11th-century hermit of Mount Kozjak who, tradition says, told a hunter named Diogenes he would become emperor, and was proven right when Romanos IV Diogenes took the Byzantine throne. His relics are said to stream myrrh. In Serbia his day is 1 November.

Feast day November 1 / 19 October old calendar (Serbian Orthodox; a second commemoration 15 January)

Era 11th century (died 1067)

Region Mount Kozjak and the Pčinja valley; the Monastery of Sveti Prohor Pčinjski, near Vranje

Status canonical (venerable hermit; one of the four 11th-century Balkan hermit saints)

Patronage hermits and ascetics, healing (the myrrh-streaming relics; pilgrimage to his monastery)

Primary Sources

The Life of Saint Prohor of Pčinja (the saint's vita; summarized in Nikolaj Velimirović's *Ohridski prolog* / Prologue from Ohrid, 19 October entry)
Orthodox synaxarion for the Venerable Prohor of Pčinja (19 October / 1 November)
Wikipedia, 'Prohor Pčinjski' and 'Prohor Pčinjski Monastery' (with the fresco and building history)
The historical record of Romanos IV Diogenes (Byzantine emperor 1068-1071) and the Battle of Manzikert, 26 August 1071
John Sanidopoulos, 'Saint Prohor of Pčinja' (Mystagogy Resource Center, 2015), on the vita and the monastery

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A hunter went up Mount Kozjak after game and found a man instead. In a cave on the mountain lived a hermit, thin from decades of fasting, and when the hunter, whose name was Diogenes, came on him, the hermit told him something that made no sense: that he would one day be emperor. All the old man asked in return was to be remembered. The hunter’s name was Romanos Diogenes, and in 1068 he was crowned emperor of the Romans in Constantinople.

The hermit of Kozjak

Prohor was born, tradition says, in the first half of the eleventh century, near Ovče Polje in the region of present-day North Macedonia, to pious parents named Jovan and Ana. He is counted among the four great hermit saints of the Balkans in that century, with John of Rila, Gabriel of Lesnovo and Joachim of Osogovo, men who went out from the villages into the mountains to live alone with God.

Prohor went furthest of all into the wild. He settled in a cave on Mount Kozjak, south of Vranje, in the valley of the Pčinja, and lived there as a recluse for decades. The accounts differ on the exact count, some saying thirty years in the cave and some more, and putting his whole ascetic life at around sixty years; they agree that he lived alone a very long time, eating almost nothing, and that the animals of the mountain came to him without fear.

Remember me when you become emperor

The story that carries his name is a prophecy, and the tradition tells it like this. In the Life, the hunter Diogenes stumbles on the hermit’s cave, and Prohor tells him he will rise to the throne, and asks only that the future emperor remember him. Years later the emperor forgets, until Prohor, now dead, comes to him in a dream and rebukes him, you have forgotten me, an old man.

The emperor, at least, can be checked. Romanos IV Diogenes was a real man of the Byzantine military aristocracy. He was crowned in 1068 and led the empire’s armies east against the Seljuk Turks. In 1071 the sultan Alp Arslan captured him at the Battle of Manzikert, a defeat that broke Byzantine Anatolia. The reign is documented history; the meeting in the cave and the dream come from the saint’s Life, where the tradition offers them as the hidden hand behind it. It is one of the old prophecy tales, the kind we have looked at elsewhere among the prophecies that seem to come true, kept and retold rather than proved.

The monastery on the Pčinja

Tradition says the emperor searched Mount Kozjak until he found the cave and the relics, and raised a monastery over them, with one church dedicated to the Apostle Luke and another to Prohor himself. From the bones, the tradition holds, holy myrrh flowed, and the devotional memory calls Prohor the one saint of the Serbian Church whose relics stream myrrh without ceasing.

Did You Know?

The Monastery of Sveti Prohor Pčinjski still stands on the slopes of Kozjak above the Pčinja, near Vranje, one of the largest monastic complexes of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Its church keeps frescoes from the fourteenth-century renovation under King Milutin, the work of the circle around the Byzantine master Mihailo Astrapas, with later layers added over the centuries. A fire in 1841 cost the community one of the saint’s relics.

The saint’s day

In the Serbian calendar Prohor’s feast falls on 1 November (19 October on the old calendar), the day after the feast of Saint Luke, at the very end of the long run of autumn slavas. Many families keep it as their krsna slava, and the day belongs above all to the monastery, which fills with pilgrims who come to pray at the relics and to ask, as pilgrims have for centuries, for healing.

The reference behind our own image is an old fresco of the saint: an aged man with a long forked beard, hooded in the black schema of a monk, a small cross in his hand. It is the face the tradition settled on for a man who spent his life where almost no one could see it, in a cave on a mountain, and who is remembered now for the one time the world came looking for him, and found a prophet.

Sources

Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.

The Life of Saint Prohor of Pčinja (the saint’s vita; summarized in Nikolaj Velimirović’s Ohridski prolog / Prologue from Ohrid, 19 October entry)
Orthodox synaxarion for the Venerable Prohor of Pčinja (19 October / 1 November)
Wikipedia, ‘Prohor Pčinjski’ and ‘Prohor Pčinjski Monastery’ (with the fresco and building history)
The historical record of Romanos IV Diogenes (Byzantine emperor 1068-1071) and the Battle of Manzikert, 26 August 1071
John Sanidopoulos, ‘Saint Prohor of Pčinja’ (Mystagogy Resource Center, 2015), on the vita and the monastery

Common Questions

Who was Saint Prohor of Pčinja?

An 11th-century hermit of the Serbian lands, one of the four venerable hermit saints of the region alongside John of Rila, Gabriel of Lesnovo and Joachim of Osogovo. He was born near Ovče Polje, in what is now North Macedonia, and spent decades as a recluse in a cave on Mount Kozjak in the Pčinja valley. He is remembered above all for a prophecy, and for the monastery that grew over his grave, where his relics are venerated to this day.

Did he really tell a hunter he would become emperor?

That is the central story of his Life, told as tradition rather than as documented history. A hunter named Diogenes is said to have found the young hermit in his cave, and Prohor foretold that he would one day be emperor, asking only, ‘Remember me when you become emperor.’ The tradition identifies the hunter with Romanos IV Diogenes, who did take the Byzantine throne in 1068 and was captured by the Seljuks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The emperor is real and his reign is documented; the meeting in the cave belongs to the saint’s Life.

Why is he called myrrh-streaming?

Tradition holds that holy myrrh, a fragrant oil, flowed from Prohor’s relics after they were found, and the devotional tradition calls him the one saint of the Serbian Church whose relics continuously stream myrrh. It is a claim of the tradition, kept as part of his cult and tied to the healing that pilgrims seek at his monastery. The relics themselves have had a hard history; a hand-relic was lost in a fire at the monastery in 1841.

Where is his monastery?

The Monastery of Sveti Prohor Pčinjski stands in the far south of Serbia, on the slopes of Mount Kozjak by the Pčinja River, about thirty kilometres south of Vranje near the North Macedonian border. Tradition dates its founding to the emperor who found the relics; the surviving church carries medieval frescoes from the renovation under the Serbian king Milutin in the early fourteenth century and later layers. It is one of the largest monastery complexes of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and a major pilgrimage site on the saint’s day.