Through the Land of the SerbDurham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
History
Through the Land of the Serb
Durham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
Montenegro -- Description and travel; Serbia -- Description and travel
The whole interior of the church is elaborately frescoed. All the faces
that are within reach from the ground have been poked out, but those
above are very well preserved. The line of Nemanja kings that covers one
wall of the narthex is especially interesting. The magnificent old
Ikonostasis is of carved and gilt wood (cleverly restored). Its pillars
are all wreathed and twined with plants, birds, and beasts elaborately
coloured and carved in very high relief, and the whole mass of brown
gold and colour is very rich in effect. The floor is paved with white
and dull red marble, and the piers which support the roof are in several
instances monolithic. The tomb of the Sveti Kralj's sister Helena (also,
I believe, canonised) stands in the body of the church, and a big cross
from Russia, recently presented.
The two marbles from which the church is entirely built were quarried in
the immediate neighbourhood. It is thirty metres high to the base of the
cupola. Doors and windows are all elaborately and splendidly carved, and
the whole is in such a wonderfully good state of preservation that it is
small wonder that the people have deep faith in the protecting power of
the Sveti Kralj, and believe that in the whole world there is no
building quite so beautiful. The treasures of the monastery are all
dispersed, and its books and MSS. relating to the old kings of Servia
are scattered. The folk at the monastery are now miserably poor, and
toil in their few fields for a bare living. The feeding of the soldiers
quartered upon them strained their resources sadly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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