Stjenik

Stjenik Monastery is a male monastery of the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Diocese of Žiča and is located under the Jelica mountain, below the Stjenik hill [1], in the village of Banjica not far from Čačak in the Republic of Serbia. The Feast of the Nativity and the Council of the Monastery is Ivandan. It represents an immovable cultural good as a cultural monument.

According to tradition, the monastery was built by the Mrnjavčević brothers before the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, in which they died. It is dedicated to the birth of St. John the Baptist.The current temple was built in 1802, at the request of the serfs of Čačak and Požega, sent to the Belgrade vizier, to restore the old one that had burned down. The erected church is of modest dimensions and architecture, almost without any decorations.

The monastery guards the relics of St. Jovan Stjenički, who was killed by the Turks in the 15th century. Nearby, under a large rock (in which there are caves that are supposed to have served as hermitages, because the whole area is steeped in monastic tradition), a very hot spring erupts. The people believe that it is very healing. The elders of the Stjenik monastery were: Julijan Bajić (1906—2002) and Pajsija Šljivić (from 2002) is the current abbot.

Controversies

By the way, the historian Miloš Timotijević included his study together with the views of the monk Herman in the book "Century of Doubt", which was published last year (2021) by the National Museum in Čačak.

Historical sources about Jovan Stjenički, his life, suffering and relics, are completely unreliable, contradictory, and one part of the evidence was found to be a forgery - said Timotijević, adding that the crucial role in creating the "cult of Jovan Stjenički" was played by priest Milisav Protić Gučanin (1910–1979) who served in the Podjelica parish from 1937 to 1955. Protić published a series of texts on the history of Stjenik, in which he enthroned the data that the monastery was built in 1337, and that St. John of Stjenica was born around 1382, and that the Turks executed him in 1462.

In August 1940, the Belgrade press published the news about the covering of the "monastery of St. John of Stjenica", and the text also mentioned the saint's miraculous powers.

Timotijević, on the other hand, disputes the foundations of the saint's life with his arguments. One was found in an inscription on the wall of the proscomidia (part of the altar), discovered only in 1951, when the church in nearby Ježevica was being renovated. Some priest Ilija, allegedly in 1474, engraved his note on the suffering of "Cyrus John" on the lintel.

Paleographic analysis of the inscription determined that it was carved only in the 19th or maybe even in the 20th century. Priest Protić then determined the time of the monastery's foundation on the basis of an entry from the "Ježević Four Gospels", since that book really dates from the 14th century. However, the mentioned inscription was made on torn pages of the book and was created in the Church Slavonic language from the 18th and 19th centuries, which means that it is much younger. In the end, it has never been reliably determined whose relics are kept in the sarcophagus of the monastery church - explains Timotijević, recalling a study by Leontije Pavlović from 1965 in which Jovan Stjenički is classified as a hermit and a section discussing 38 local cults that are not generally recognized because they often do not have all the necessary features: lives, relics, icons and miracles.

Timotijević does not dispute the "marvel miracles", but states that Jovan can be "only a candidate for a saint" because the Serbian Orthodox Church did not produce him in that status either.

In his letter, Herman "greets" Timotijević ("You did exactly what you accuse Milisav of, you 'assumed' your true tradition with even less evidence than him"), and states:

"Although the way of writing in the Gospel is strange to me, I do not see that anything has been proven. It would be good to analyze the ink with which it is underlined, and to determine the time based on that."

The polemicists, however, agreed on something important. Herman: "There are relics and an ark in Stjenik, and someone's certainly is. The people respect them, and there is a reason for that. " Timotijević: "Discussions about the authenticity of inscriptions and inscriptions related to Stjenik have remained in academic circles, without influencing the general public, which constantly respects both the source and the relics, believing that they are healing."

References

• Translated from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9C%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%80_%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%98%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA&variant=sr-ec&msclkid=36059f8dc6a311ecb491d9f9862b7269

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