Vrata manastira se nikada ne zatvaraju The doors of the monastery are never closed
one elderly resident, the raising of a monas- tery dedicated to St Nikolai Velimirovich be- gan. Also arriving at that time, from Germany, was Sybille Lehr, granddaughter of Alexander von Lehr, the commander of the German Ar- my E group, which participated in WWII mili- tary operations in the Balkans, including the bombing of Belgrade. - Sybille, then a trainee nun, helped in the construction of this sacred place, cooked for the tradesmen and lived alone in the house. ItwasattheHimmelsthürConventandMon- astery near Hannover that she first entered an Orthodox church and attended Holy Liturgy, which was then served by Bishop Lavrentije. She was attracted by the beauty of Ortho- doxy, which ultimately determined her life’s path. Having become a nun ten years ago, she today has the monastic name of Sister Jova- na and has devoted her life to the Orthodox faith – says Professor Cvetojević. The doors of the monastery are never closed, and it is visited annually by around 100,000 people who come from around the world. In addition to the monastery, there is also a large library and reading room, a mu- seum with exhibits representing the area’s past, an art gallery, a watermill, artificial lake, two residences etc. Soko Grad is located on a plateau of the Sokolac mountains that form part of the range of the Drina-basin-Valjevo mountains, which extends as an unbroken mountain chain from Gučevo in the west near Loznica, to Belgrade’s Avala in the east. In medieval times this moun- tain range formed the border of the Serbi-
an state and the Hungarian Kingdom’s ad- ministrative military division - the Banate of Mačva, while it is now the natural bounda- ry between three areas, Rađevina (Krupanj Municipality), Azbukovica (Ljubovija Munici- pality) and Podgorina (Osečina Municipality). The precise date of the emergence of Soko Grad is unknown, as is the timeline of its development phases, with archaeologi- cal excavations having never been conduct- ed at this site. - What is known is that it was nev- er conquered militarily and that it was among the last bastions of Ottoman rule in Serbia. The earliest known reliable source of information about Sokolac dates back to 1392, but we can conclude on the ba- sis of the fortifications themselves that Soko Grad is much older than that, be- cause the sediment of the walls point to the fortifications having been built dur- ing the Roman or prehistoric period – notes Cvetojević. What is known reliably is that in 1459 Soko Grad came under the control of the Ottoman Empire. - It proved unconquerable until as late as 1862, when the Turks surrendered it to the Serbs under the pressure of world powers, in accordance with a decision of the Sublime Porte. It was mined prior to being handed over and the fortification fell into oblivion. This remained the case until as recently as 1989, when Bishop Lavrentije began building the monas- tery on this site.
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator