Early Life and Monastic Formation
By tradition he was born in 1714 in Majdan (in the area of Mrkonjić Grad), Bosnia, and given the baptismal name Nicholas (Serbian sources record his parents as Maksim and Marija). Around the age of eighteen he traveled to the Holy Land, where he took monastic vows at the Monastery of Saint Sava the Sanctified near Jerusalem; sources place his tonsure in 1738, by which he received the monastic name Bessarion (Visarion).
He served for about seven years as a hierodeacon at the Monastery of Pakra in Slavonia, where he was later ordained a hieromonk, and is also said to have visited the monasteries of Mount Athos. For a time he withdrew to live as a hermit in a cave.
Mission and Confession in Transylvania
The Serbian Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanović Šakabenta commissioned Bessarion to travel into the Banat and Transylvania to strengthen Orthodox resistance to the Uniate church and to preach against union with Rome. The communities he visited welcomed him with processions, candles, and the ringing of church bells.
He preached in numerous localities, including Lipova, Dobra, Deva, Orăștie, Sebeș, Miercurea Sibiului, and Săliște. In 1744 the Habsburg imperial authorities arrested him and interrogated him at Sibiu.
He was then moved through a series of places of confinement — among them Deva, Timișoara, and Raab (Sankt Ruprecht an der Raab) — before being imprisoned in the Kufstein fortress in the Tyrolean mountains, where he is presumed to have died of the sufferings of his captivity.
Canonization and Veneration
The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized Bessarion as a Confessor on February 28, 1950; his solemn proclamation took place on October 21, 1955, at the cathedral in Alba Iulia. The Serbian Orthodox Church confirmed his veneration, dated by Serbian sources to June 14, 1962.
Both churches commemorate him on October 21 (Julian calendar). The Orthodox Church in America notes that liturgical texts, including a troparion and kontakion, exist for him.
