Etropole Monastery

The Etropole Monastery of the Holy Trinity (Bulgarian: Етрополски манастир „Света Троица”, Etropolski manastir „Sveta Troitsa”), also known as Varovitets (Варовитец), is a Bulgarian Orthodox monastery near the town of Etropole in west-central Bulgaria. The monastery was founded in the 12th or 13th century, its heyday being from the 16th to the 18th century when, thanks to its prolific scriptoria, it was the dominant literary centre of Ottoman-ruled northern Bulgaria. In its present form, the monastery includes a large mid-19th-century church and two chapels.

History

The Etropole Monastery is located 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) from the eponymous town, which lies to the north-east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. The closest inhabited place is the village of Ribaritsa, which is 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) west of the monastery. The monastery lies among maple woodlands at the foot of the Balkan Mountains.

The monastery was founded during the Second Bulgarian Empire, either in the 12th or 13th century. According to a stone inscription reportedly placed into the foundations of the church, the exact year of its foundation is 1158, during the Byzantine rule of Bulgaria. The medieval part of the monastery's history is documented in its commemoration codex (pomenik), which also includes lists of medieval Bulgarian and Serbian monarchs.

The Etropole Monastery reached its apogee between the 16th and 18th centuries, when it emerged as the most important literary and cultural centre of the northern Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule, with its own scriptoria and a calligraphic school with a characteristic style. Under abbots Anthony, Zachary and Raphael, who were in charge of the monastery from the 1620s to the 1640s, the Etropole Literary School was a major centre of production for chiefly religious manuscripts. Its influence spread throughout the Balkans...