Early Life and Formation
According to the tradition preserved in his later vita, Pimen was born on June 29, 1540, in Sofia, and christened Pavel after the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul. His parents were elderly and his mother had long been childless; tradition relates that the Theotokos appeared to her in a vision foretelling the birth of a son.
As a boy Pavel was placed under the hieromonk Toma (Thomas), an icon-painter who served in the ancient church of Saint George, and from him learned the Cyrillic letters, Holy Scripture, church singing, and iconography. After his parents died, he sold his inheritance and distributed it to the poor of Sofia before departing for Mount Athos.
Monastic Life on Athos
At the Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos, Pavel was tonsured a monk and took the name Pimen. His gentleness and humility reportedly earned him the affectionate name 'the young Abba' among the brethren, and he advanced quickly in monastic virtue.
At about the age of thirty, in 1570, he was ordained a hieromonk; the vita names the ordaining bishop as Pamfil Vodenski. Seeking to avoid vainglory, tradition relates that he withdrew to a simple hut nearby, living for some twenty-five years on chestnuts and wild plants.
Return to Bulgaria and Building Work
The vita relates that around the age of fifty-five Saint George appeared to Pimen in a vision and directed him to return to Bulgaria to serve as a spiritual leader. He travelled across the Bulgarian lands, accompanied by his disciple Pamfil, who is said to have recorded his life, preaching and undertaking an extensive program of ecclesiastical building and decoration.
Bulgarian tradition credits him with building or restoring approximately three hundred parish churches and fifteen monasteries, adorning them with frescoes and icons associated with the Balkan Tarnovo School. Named works include the Assumption Monastery at Cherepish and the Suhodol Monastery of the Holy Trinity. He is also remembered as a copyist and miniaturist.
The Cherepish Monastery of the Assumption, reduced to ruins in medieval conflicts, was restored in the early seventeenth century through his work; the earliest layer of frescoes in its church is dated to that period and traditionally attributed to Pimen himself. His restoration is credited with transforming Cherepish into an active spiritual and cultural center.
Traditional Accounts
The narrative details of Pimen's life survive only in later tradition; the account descends from the vita ascribed to his disciple Pamfil, and much of it is related as tradition rather than documented record.
Among the miracles attributed to him, the sources relate that he performed an exorcism, restored a brother to life after a serpent's bite, and extinguished a wildfire through prayer. Such accounts are transmitted as traditional rather than historically documented.
Death and Commemoration
Pimen settled at the Cherepish Monastery in his final years and died there in 1620, at about the age of eighty. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on November 3.
In Bulgaria his feast is also marked as the Day of Bulgarian Artists, icon painters, and restorers, reflecting his renown as a builder and iconographer. A portrait of Pimen Zografski by the painter Simeon Molerov survives. The Orthodox Church in America and OrthodoxWiki's list of Bulgarian saints both record his commemoration on November 3 while supplying no biographical detail.
