Ohrid is a city on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid in the Republic of Macedonia. It has about 42,000 inhabitants, making it the seventh largest city in the country. The city is the seat ofOhrid Municipality. Ohrid is notable for having once had 365 churches, one for each day of the year and has been referred to as a "Jerusalem". The city is rich in picturesque houses and monuments, and tourism is predominant. It is located southwest of Skopje, west of Resen and Bitola, close to the border with Albania. In 1979 and in 1980, Ohrid and Lake Ohrid were accepted as a Cultural and Natural World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. In fact, Ohrid is one of only 28 sites that are part of UNESCO's World Heritage that are both Cultural and Natural sites.
Saint Panteleimon is a monastery in Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia situated on Plaošnik. It is attributed to Clement of Ohrid, a discipleof Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. Archaeologists have come to believe that the monastery was the site where the first students of the Glagolitic alphabet (used to translate the Bible into Old Church Slavonic) were taught.
St. Clement's monastery "St. Pantheleimon" is located at Plaosnik (known as Imaret during the Turks), southwards from the Samuel Fortress. This monastery is the oldest Slavic monument of culture. It had an extremely important role in the education of the Macedonians during the period of strong influence of the Byzantine Empire.
St. Clement of Ohrid, its patron and protector, arrived to Devol, Ohrid, and Glavenica persuaded by the Bulgarian Prince Boris.
The archaeological excavations revealed that for his needs St. Clement restored an older church and built onto it another church. There were a number of early Christian buildings on the site. That tells us that the ecclesiastical life was thriving even before the arrival of Clement to Ohrid.
The restored small church was not enough for the needs of St. Clement. Therefore he built a new, larger church in a shape of an uneven rectangle.
The tomb of St. Clement is located on the southern side of the church. The Archbishop of Ohrid, Theopilact in his extensive work "The Life of St. Clement" wrote that it was built by Clement himself. The tomb has been preserved. St. Clement, the miracle worker of Ohrid, was buried there in 916.
According to Theophilact, during Clement's life two churches were used as archiepiscopal cathedrals.
In XV century the Turks converted the church of St. Pantheleimon into a mosque. Later, the Turks allowed the ruined churches and monasteries to be restored. Thus, during the period of the Ohrid Archbishop Prohor in the first half of XVI century, the monastery of St. Clement was restored. However the restored church of St. Clement was ruined again, presumably towards the end of XVI or the beginning of XVII century. The assumption is that the reason for that was the extremely unfavourable situation the Ohrid church was in. On the foundations of the church the Turks erected the mosque "Sultan Mohamed" (Imaret), whose remnants exist even today. Archaeological excavations were carried out in 1943 and 1965.
Apart from the monastery's many reconstructions during the Ottoman empire, it has recently undergone extensive reconstruction and excavation. Reconstruction started on December 8, 2000 and the physical church was fully reconstructed by August 10, 2002. Most of Saint Clement's relics were returned to the church
A partially ruined bell tower was restored on the right side of the monastery and the floors of the interior of the church have been reconstructed with marble. Reconstruction was carried out by hand using materials used to build the original church in order to preserve the original spirituality of the monastery. Machines were only used to polish the interior during the reconstruction of the monastery.The first excavations of the monastery were carried out in 1943 by Prof. Dimche Koco. Excavations inside the monastery have revealed underground tunnels and crypts. Further excavations have been planned to uncover more remains under the monastery, including more ruins of the Roman basilicas that stood there (the pillars outside the monastery support the idea of more remains).
On October 10, 2007, a depot of approximately 2,383 Venetian coins was discovered by archaeologists while excavating the monastery. A prominent archaeologist of the Republic of Macedonian, Pasko Kuzman, stated that the coins are of special significance because they indicate that Ohrid and Venice were commercially linked.
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