CAVE MONASTERY
Know yourselves, I urge you, children, know, and instruct your hearts, minds and thoughts in the path pleasing to God. For, although our evil is hidden from many and we are said to be good, not one of our deeds is hidden from the Lord, for it is said: “A man looks at the face, but the Lord looks at the heart”. Hear also the words of the Scriptures: “Do not do evil, and do not suffer evil.” Do good deeds and keep your body clean in your life, “for we are the temple of God.” Whoever destroys the temple of God, God punishes him”. St. Paul said. “Live like this, and God will be a reliable fortress for you.
Saint Nicholas Bishop of Myrliki
CAVE MONASTERY “SAINT NICHOLAS OF MYRLICIA”
About 2.5 kilometers above the present-day village of Peshtera in the present-day municipality of Zemen is the monastery “St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra”. It is now known as Peshterski, but in the past it was also called Orekhovski and Mrachki.
Once upon a time, the village itself was located near the monastery in the Gradishteto area, according to local people the first evidence dates back to 814. And the village was called Orehovo because of the many walnut trees in these places. The name Peshtera may have been established because of the caves in the rocks – Kalugerska dupka, Zdravički kamik, Radovan. They say that when water came to the ravine, coins from the oldest times were found. Charcoal was also made near the monastery, so the name Peshtera may also come from a furnace.
Crypt with relics of Saint Nicholas of Myra in Bari, Italy
Now the village is in the lowlands, the Treklyanska River divides it in two, and the monastery is on the hill. For many years it was sunk in ruin and oblivion. Somewhere around 2004, businessman Dimcho Dimitrov, now deceased, took care of the monastery church with his own funds. It was also at this time that he built a new temple in the center of the village, dedicated to St. Dimitar.
Under a project funded by the Rural Development Program 2014-2020, in 2019, a partial renovation of the temple and improvement of part of the surrounding area were carried out.
It is known that centuries ago this monastery had the highest-ranking benefactors. The first information about the monastery comes from the famous Mrachka charter of the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander from December 1, 1348, with which the ruler of the Bulgarian state donated many properties to the monastery. And Mraka or Mrakata is the name of this historical and geographical region around Radomir.
Four Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, with Tsarina Sara-Theodora and the children Ivan Shishman, Ivan Asen and …
Little is known about the history of the monastery and its inhabitants. It appears in the Ottoman tax registers of the 16th century and the taxes paid indicate that it was in its heyday. However, for a while it fell into disrepair and was only rebuilt at the beginning of the 19th century. The wandering priest Simon from the village of Leva Reka in Trani came to these places, who came to the monastery with his son and adapted a modest hermit’s hut to the surviving monastery church, which was the only thing left of the once magnificent monastery. But the authorities learned about the rebuilt monastery, caught priest Simon and hanged him, and his son managed to escape to the Rila Monastery after unprecedented torture in attempts to be converted to the Turks. Soon after the unfortunate incident, the princes of Peshtera and priests from the surrounding villages managed to obtain permission to add another building to the old monastery church. The new building was completed in 1842. The church was painted by the prominent representative of the Bansko art school Dimitar Molerov. The monastery was managed by grandfather Lazo Damyanov from Peshtera, and the service during the holidays was performed by priests from the surrounding villages. Around 1844, priest Theofan came here from Kratovo, who tonsured a monk and became the abbot of the monastery. After the latter, the monastery was managed again by grandfather Lazo, the Athonite hieromonk Raphael, hieromonk Justin, Rade Vilaetski from the Radomir village of Varba (a former employee of the Rila Monastery), and monk Prokopiy from the village of Radibosh. The latter later became the abbot, who died in 1879. His work is the construction of the two-story residential building, which is now in ruins.
The Gloomy Letter of Tsar Ivan Alexander
It is believed that the eastern part of the monastery church that has survived to this day dates from the time of Tsar John Alexander, although according to some experts, the architectural features do not allow a dating to the 14th century, because the triconch church is from the Athonite architectural tradition and is similar to Greek churches from the 16th-17th centuries, as well as to the church of the Poganovski Monastery, located today on Serbian territory, dated around 1500.
Of particular interest are the frescoes from the original monastery church, which were covered with plaster during the renovation of the church. In the second half of the 20th century, the late plaster was cleaned, as a result of which part of the beautiful medieval painting was revealed. After a complete conservation and restoration of the frescoes, carried out by the National Institute of Archaeology and History under the leadership of Boryana Dzhivdzhanova, the iconographic scheme, executed with a mixed painting technique, was also clarified. This happened before 1980 and there are almost no traces of this conservation now.
Almost nothing remains of the once rich monastery library, which the Cave Monastery is supposed to have had. A 15th-century psalter is kept in Zagreb. The one acquired in 1843/46 for the restored “Flower Triod” monastery from the first half of the 16th century has also been preserved. It is likely that a large part of the monastery’s book wealth was transferred to the “Zograf” monastery, considering the chrysovuls found there that were forged by the Serbs, directly related to the Cave Monastery. According to historian Vera Ivanova, one of the chrysovuls was forged in the monastery itself, probably by the monastic brotherhood, in order to prove its rights to the Ottoman authorities that had already arrived. Researchers are aware of three Serbian charters related to this monastery, but they are said to be forged. One is from Tsar Stefan Dečanski from 1330 and two are from Stefan Dušan from 1339 and 1342. They are mentioned in an article by A. Solovyov, entitled “The Monastery of St. Nicholas the Gloomy” ( “Appendices”, IX, 1929, pp. 1-18).
Tsar Ivan Alexander in Paradise
This sheds light on another very curious detail. It turns out that in those years people had a custom to rename the saints, patrons of their churches, decorating the property of the saint with something like a surname after the name of the village and the locality of the temple or monastery. If there were any documents and old books preserved in the monastery, they were taken away by the last nuns who inhabited the monastery. Or at least that is what the residents of Peshtera claim during ethnological interviews.
Around 1954, the monastery was a nunnery. According to preserved documents of the then Committee on the Affairs of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Religious Cults in the Central State Archives, there were three nuns in it at that time: Emilia – 40 years old with a completed 3rd grade of junior high school, Anilina (Atanasova Georgieva) – 60 years old and self-educated, Iustina (Hristova Bobacheva), who was then 45 years old and had completed 3rd grade of junior high school. There were no novices. According to these documents, at that time the monastery’s property was 59 acres of fields and 25 acres of meadows.
In the 1990s, local people said that one of the nuns moved to the Knyazhevsky Monastery and took with her the entire archive of the Peshtersky Monastery.
Holy Prophet King David and King John Alexander
What was in this archive is unknown. The Mrachka charter itself is kept in the Hilendar monastery on Mount Athos, where it was transferred after the destruction of the St. Nicholas monastery. The charter also indicates that the donated monastery properties were scattered throughout the Sofia, Radomir and Dupnitsa regions, but a local resident believes that the way the donated properties are described almost completely coincides with the names of localities near the monastery itself.
The Regional History Museum in Pernik keeps a stone icon from the Cave Monastery. It is made of yellow sandstone in an almost square shape with dimensions of 50 by 55 cm. It has a curved upper edge like a rocker, on which there is an inscription: “Applied by Lobosh Stoimen master for your soul”. Among the images is written the year 1853, when it was probably made and donated, as well as “St. Nicholas”. In the center in a circle, a double-headed eagle is depicted in relief, supported by two angels. Above the eagle between two churches is depicted St. Nicholas with a cross in his right hand, and below the circle are symmetrically placed two deer with trees next to them, such as there are next to the churches, and a vignette of flowers. The images are highly naive. It is quite possible that at that time St. Nicholas and the monastery dedicated to him near the present-day village of Peshtera were called Mrachki. In any case, local historians claim that this is not an isolated phenomenon, because in other villages in the region, the locals also gave the saints the name of their village as a nickname. The people themselves built the churches and monasteries, and then literary centers and schools arose near them, and it is no wonder that this is how they identified their spiritual and cultural achievements and their respect for the patron saint.
Researchers are also aware of other stone sculptures with a double-headed eagle from the mid-19th century. At that time, the double-headed eagle was already a kind of coat of arms of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the monastic community on Mount Athos.
Above the western door of the church “St. Ascension of the Lord” (1869) in the village of Vranya Stena, near Peshtera, there is a stone relief with a double-headed eagle. It is believed that it was made by the local master usta-bashi Marko Vargarov, who built the bakery in the Rila Monastery in 1866.
Byzantine coat of arms of Emperor Palaeologus
The brothers Velcho and Niko, who built the church of St. Elijah in the village of Divlya in 1865, are also from Vranya Stena. They decorated the western and southern doors with masterful stone reliefs of stylized floral elements, a double-headed eagle and a cross.
There are also tiles with sculptures of a double-headed eagle in the church “St. Archangel Michael” in the Pernik village of Studena, built in the period 1837 – 1846.
The double-headed eagle is one of the most recognizable symbols of Orthodoxy. According to tradition, its roots are at the very beginning of the first Christian kingdom – the Roman Empire. When Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337 AD) united the disunited Roman Empire and became its sole ruler, he introduced the double-headed eagle as a symbol of unity between the East and the West with two heads and one body. Later, this sign acquired another meaning – to symbolize the unity between the Church and the state, and the state itself was an Orthodox monarchy with a structure that represented an earthly image of the heavenly hierarchy. Secular power and the spiritual were closely connected and complemented each other. Therefore, the double-headed eagle is a symbol of this duality, but at the same time of their unity.
The kings of the Palaeologus dynasty during the late Byzantine Empire (1261-1453), under the influence of Western heraldry, used the double-headed eagle as the official coat of arms of the family, and this sign spread throughout the entire territory of their dominions, as well as throughout the Orthodox world.
The stone slabs with double-headed eagles served to mark the year of construction and completion of the churches. There are also inscriptions around them, which mention the names of the church’s founders. Sometimes these were marble slabs on the floor of the temples, but more often they were placed above the entrance. This practice was applied to the construction of all temples, regardless of when and under whose jurisdiction they were built.