MEDIEVAL MONASTERY CHURCH OF SAINT PETKA, 16 CENTURY

Overview

The Svoge Monastery "St. Petka" is located in the Iskar Gorge, at the northeastern end of Svoge. The easiest way to reach it is to leave the car on the right side of the road to Mezdra, a few hundred meters after the crossroads in the middle of Svoge, the monastery is a hundred meters from the road after crossing the railway line.
There is information that the monastery was founded during the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (XII-XIV centuries), what was its fate over the centuries only the legends tell. It is known that during the Turkish slavery the monastery church was destroyed twice.
The second time it was restored in 1860 by Grozdan Kitov, a native of the village of Breze - a teacher who later adopted the spiritual name Gerasim and became abbot of the monastery. He is also a priest and a teacher in the newly established church school in the monastery buildings. The foundation of the church school was aimed at preparing priests for this area. Father Gerasim, who lived to a very old age, died in 1904, whose grave and monument are preserved to this day in the eastern part of the yard of the church.
All public life before the Liberation and long after it took place in the monastery of St. Petka. After the Liberation, the church school became secular and until the school year 1908/1909 the educational work of residents of Svoge continued in the monastery annexes.
In 1870 the monastery was visited by Vasil Levski, and after the Liberation - by Ivan Vazov, who dedicated the poem "Dream in the old church" to him.
The monastery was active until a few years after September 9, 1944, the old monastery church gradually ceased to function, at the expense of its neighboring three-nave parish church "St. St. Peter and Paul ”, built in 1927.

Today, only the church of St. Petka remains from the former monastery, huddled and sunk into oblivion, behind the majestically rising new church. There is almost nothing left of the old monastery buildings where the church school was located, there is one building, but it is from more recent times.
The old church, measuring 12 x 5 m, is a small, single-nave, single-apse, domeless, with a narthex and fortified building with buttresses. The interior of the church is covered with frescoes painted in 1860, when it was restored older images that cannot be dated exactly without removing the above. The murals are in very poor condition and any delay in their restoration will be disastrous.

No less joyful is the arrangement of the iconostasis, in which surprisingly all the icons stand, was made during the Renaissance.

Based on the architectural features and some of the discovered old frescoes, the church was not built later than the XVI-XVII century.