Glozhene Monastery

The Glozhene Monastery from the outside

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The entrance to the Glozhene Monastery

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Some of the buildings of the monastery

The Glozhene Monastery is an Eastern Orthodox monastery located on the northern slopes of Stara Planina in Bulgaria, near the village of Glozhene and the Cherni Vit river, 12 km from Teteven.

History

According to the legend, the monastery was built in the 13th century (1224), when Ukrainian knyaz Georgi Glozh settled in the area with Ivan Asen II's approval. The knyaz founded a monastery carrying the name of St George, whose icon he had brought with himself. The icon then disappeared numerous times only to be found on a hill not far from the village of Glozhene, which was interpreted by the monks as a divine sign to move the monastery there. This was eventually done near the end of the 14th century. The two monasteries existed in parallel for a short time, being connected by a tunnel to each other, but the tunnel, used many times by Vasil Levski during his secret missions, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1928.

The monastery church was erected after the creation of the monastery in the 14th century, but was destroyed by another earthquake in 1913 along with its frescoes. The modern church was constructed in 1951 on the grounds of the old one.

Set On Fire

On Monday 4th August 2008, Petar Kostadinov of English daily SofiaEcho.com reported of an incident in which according to the title of the article the police were pressing charges against father superior who set the monastery on fire twice.

According the article "Father Pankratii, father superior of Glozhene Monastery, in the Stara Planina mountain-range near the town of Teteven, was charged with setting property on fire that did not belong to him and hooliganism, Bulgarian Focus news agency quoted prosecutor Nikolai Ponchev on August 4 2008.

Pankratii was detained for 72 hours on August 3 after lighting premises of the monastery twice in the course of six hours.

According to the police, at about 20 minutes after midnight on August 3, police-officers responded to a tip-off about a fire that had started in the monastery.

When policemen arrived at the scene, they found that the 50-year-old father Pankratii had been in an argument with a group of visitors. So, as a result, he set the office of the monastery on fire.

According to Bulgarian-language news website mediapool.bg, the father even fired a shot with an eight-millimetre Zaza gun and fled the scene in his car in the direction of the nearby Golyam Izvor village.

Minutes later, he set the vehicle on fire and left it in Predela vicinity. The vehicle was completely burnt out, police said.

At about 6am on August 3, father Pankratii came back to the monastery and set the office premises on fire for the second time. Both fires were quickly put out by local firefighters and did not cause a lot of damage."

Honour

Glozhene Cove in Smith Island, South Shetland Islands is named after the settlement and the monastery of Glozhene.

External links

• Images from Glojene monastery
• Glozhene Monastery Set On Fire