Manasija Monastery

… looking for a place to build the desired family, an abode for silence. Having found the most suitable and the best place to build the home, he said a prayer, set about his work and laid the foundations in the name of the Holy Trinity, universal Divinity. 
– Constantine the Philosopher, The Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević

By building the monastery with the temple of the Holy Trinity Despot desired when he was living, in to the tradition of the foundation of the Nemanjić and of his father, edified a mausoleum where he will be buried.   

After the battle of Kosovo, Serbia has been under the permanent threats of invasions of the Turks in the south and in the meantime, in the north to the pressure of Hungary. Princess Milica invested herself painstakingly, with wisdom, ability to maintain the State. Soon as her son reached majority, she ceded to him the Serbian throne and remote herself to the monastery, from where she continued to help him to run the country.

The young prince Stefan had to dedicate himself to the arrangement of the inner situation in the country, torn by conflicts between the nobles, but also tried to economically reinforce the country. As a vassal of the Turkish sultan, he took place in the Turkish war campaign.   

According to its disposition, its architectural gathering and numerous details, it belongs to the group of the monuments of the developed Serbian Moravia type. Two clearly distinguished parts – the Naos on the east side and the Narthex on the west side.

The plan of the Naos is rectangular. On the east side, it is ending by a tripartite altar space with semi-circular apses inside. Outside, the central apse is pentagonal and the lateral apses are tripartite – they are the endings of the proscomidium and the diakonicon.

The foundation of Despot Stefan Lazarević is one the very best realizations of Serbian architecture of the late middle ages. The fortification is a very special particularity of the monastery of Resava. It has been conceived according to all the rules of medieval fortification and built to defend the monastery community.

After the church, the residence was the most important and most monumental building in the monastery. The Refectory of Resava is located south from the Church, parallel to it, built as freestanding edifice with an extended rectangular plan.  Although greatly damaged in the upper zone, it is the best-preserved building of the monastic community.   

The Refectory in Resava is a building with an exceptional size 32m long, 16.8m wide, this is the largest Refectory in medieval Serbia, between 250 and 300 persons could be accommodated which could indirectly testify of the possible number of monks in the monastery.

The residence has two storeys – a ground floor and an upper storey. The ground floor, today recovered by soil up to 1.5m to the parapets of the windows, served as a store for food. The piece devoted to meals, the dining room was located on the first floor.    

The construction of the Resava monastery lasted more than ten years. Inside the monastic yard, surrounded by high fortifications and towers, was built the church of the Holy Trinity, the monumental refectory, the buildings with the cells of the monks, and maybe even the residence of Despot.

In the immediate vicinity of the western wall of the medieval Refectory, three mutually linked dome-shaped furnaces were discovered. It is reasonably assumed that these are furnaces unique to this area. Their discovery substantiated active trades and economic activity of the monastery in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Results of archaeological research in the south-western corner and southern part of the monastery courtyard are particularly important. Well preserved remains of the large stove and monastery kitchen were found there, and their importance for the life of the monastery community ranks immediately below the church and refectory. By its size and level of preservation, the discovered kitchen with the large stove is the only known example of building of this kind on the territory of medieval Serbia.

In the middle of the north and south walls of the Naos, are built choral apses- conches. Like the Altar apse, they are semi-circular from the inside and pentagonal from the outside.

The Narthex of the Church of the monastery includes the space on the west of the Naos of which it is separate by a wall. The Narthex has a squared base of which the height corresponds to the one of the Naos.  The upper vaulted construction is built, as in the Naos, in the shape of the developed engraved cross. Slightly elliptical arches support the main slightly elliptical vaults.

The disposition of frescoes is adapted to the architectural conception and to the sacral function of the inner spaces of the temple, with the application of the hierarchic principle “of the vertical and horizontal saint” in the repartition of the themes in the Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine artistic circle.

In the Serbian Morava region, in the principality of Despot Stefan Lazarević has been created a spiritual and artistic atmosphere where the classicist late Byzantine chef-d’oeuvre of the time of the Paleologues in Resava could be created.   

THE BEAUTY OF MANASIJA PAINTINGS PLACE THEM AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE MEDEIVAL SERBIAN PAINTING.

The Manasija paintings are not fully preserved. The inscriptions about the time of their creation are also missing.

It seems probable that it was already completed in 1418. That year, according to the writings of an unknown chronicler, on the Holy Trinity Day, Despot Stefan called the people to convene at his foundation on the occasion of its consecration.

Stefan Lazarević (1377-1427) is the elder son of Serbian Prince Lazar and Princess Milica. After the battle of Kosovo (1389), in which Stefanʼs father, Prince Lazar was killed, Stefan came to power when he was only twelve, and with the help of his mother ruled until he came of age (1393). As an Ottoman vassal, he successfully led the Serbian knights in the battles of Rovine, Nicopolis and Ankara.

After the battle of Ankara, he was awarded the title of Despot in Constantinople by the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1402). In early 1404 he became an ally of the Hungarian king Sigismund, who presented him with Mačva and Belgrade. Stefan turned Belgrade into his new capital.

Of the former paintings that adorned the entire interior walls of the church with the Narthex (about 2,000 m2), just over on third has been preserved to this day. The original paintings in the Narthex disappeared. During the conservation works, small, completely faded fragments were discovered, the contents of which can hardly be discerned.

One of the most preserved compositions in the monastery. Dressed in medieval knightly uniforms, the Holy Warriors are in movement, sending a very strong message of continuously spiritual movement.

The Resava fortification has eleven towers and a specially defended area on the eastern side, with the twelfth tower. The towers have identical defense and architectural features – all have the ground level, six floors and a promenade with battlements.

They are linked by the defensive walls – ramparts, with merlon cranelation. The connection between the towers and the ramparts is made through special passages on the 4th floor of each tower, allowing the defenders to easily move around and successfully defend the monastery. Only the Donjon (dungeon, keep) was built differently.

The towers and ramparts are equipped with machicolations –elements of defensive architecture of which very few have been preserved in our medieval architecture, so they are a rarity characteristic of the Resava monastery and some other places.

The ground floor of the tower is at the level of the entrance, i.e. 10.5m above the courtyard of the monastery. The size of interior space is 6*6m, and along the big walls has been made a low bench. Below the ground floor there is a circular room supposedly used as a granary.

It could receive more than 20 tons of wheat, which is enough to feed 100 persons during a year. Through the passage below the vault it could be possible to get out at the first floor of the tower by using built stairways, from where it was possible to arrive with a wooden stairway.

During the research and construction works in Resava has been executed the restoration of the dungeon surely the most important tower of the fortification of Resava.

On Saturday, 19 July (1 August), Despot Stefan Lazarević suddenly died while hunting near the Crkvina hamlet, between Stojnik and Markovac. His biographer noted that people prostrated themselves on the ground crying for him not only as their ruler but “as a well respected and beloved father”, and stated that “he was carried towards the tomb he had built for himself in Resava”.

During his life, Despot Stefan Lazarević built the mausoleum dedicated to the Holy Trinity, in the monastery of Resava. Of this testify Constantine the Philosopher in his biography of Despot Stefan Lazar Lazarević “ He built himself there a grave, where he soon was buried” and when he speaks, the transfer of the body of Despot 

“ […] they brought him to the grave […] he built himself in Resava […] to lay him at the place he ordered” and “because of the hurry, they arranged him quickly and laid him in the Church in Resava on the right of the entrance to the Temple.”

The data left by Constantine the Philosopher about the death of Despot, the transfer of his remains and his place of funeral are plainly confirmed by the result of archaeological excavations. The confirmation that Despot Stefan, after his sudden death on July 19th 1427, has been transferred and buried in his foundation “[…] at the place he ordered”, is proved by the anthropological and D.N.A analysis.

They corroborate the kinship between the father and the son, Prince Lazar and Despot Stefan Lazar Lazarević. So, 600 years later was solved the mystery of the burial place of Despot Stefan Lazarević.

The space next to the south wall of the west bay was exclusively aimed, in medieval Serbia, to the funerals of the founder. In this place were buried all the founders of the Nemanjić dynasty, and also the parents of Despot Stefan, Prince Lazar and Princess Milica. This custom hasn’t known any alteration of someone not being the Founder being buried next to the south wall of the west bay.

In a historical annal has been conserved the note saying that Kalojan Rusota died on April 16th 1437 and he was buried at the Monastery of Resava, were his whole body rested. It is considered that in the Narthex of the Monastery of Resava was discovered the place of the burial of Kalojan Rusota, custom-officer from Novo Brdo in Kosovo, who had an influence at the court of Despot Stefan, but also at the court of his successor Despot Djurdje Branković.