Beška Monastery
Description:
The monastery, located on the island of Beshka, made a significant contribution to the spiritual life of the ancient Slavic state of Zeta, since, like the monastery of Starchev Gorica, it was actively engaged in copying church books. In addition, the temples of this monastery today are valuable architectural monuments of the late Middle Ages.
Location: Municipality of Bara, Beška Island in the southern part of Skadar Lake.
Beshka Monastery owes its appearance to the Balsic dynasty, which left behind a large number of monasteries in the area of Skadar Lake. It is believed that the monastery was built at the end of the XIV century at the expense of George II Stracimirovich Balsic.
In the monastery there are two temples – the Church of St. George and the Church of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God. Both buildings reflect the high art of Zeta stonemasons and architects who managed to organically and beautifully fit these buildings into the island landscape. The main church of St. George is a one-nave building with a dome, a spacious prairie and a large bell tower in three rings. The floor of the temple is lined with stone slabs. A small church dedicated to the Virgin appeared on the island a little later by the efforts of Helena Balsic, daughter of St. Prince Lazarus and wife of George II, about this there is a corresponding inscription above the entrance to the church, dated 1440. It is also a one-nave temple, but smaller, decorated with fine stone carvings. Elena Balsic planned to use the church as her tomb, and after her death was buried in a chapel near the south wall.
The monastery of Beshka left a mark in the spiritual history of the country thanks to the rewriting of various church books. The most famous examples of this work are the “Six-day Elder Nikon of Jerusalem”, now kept in the Savina Monastery, and the “Goric Collection”, now located in the library of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art, which contains correspondence between Elena Balsic and her confessor Nikon of Jerusalem.