Manasija Monastery: A History

If we consult the sources from the first half of the 18th century, we can find brief mentions of the Resava monastery in them. In 1734 in Ravanica, the hieromonk Sofronije bought a Bible for 6 ducats from "the priest Isaija, formerly in Resava" [SSZN 2631]; if the Resava mentioned here is the monastery and not the region, the seller may have been a former Resava monk. But besides such uncertain testimonies there are also more concrete ones. The exarch Jovan Mihailović, for example, made two official visitations of the Eparchy of Belgrade in 1734 and 1735, and his reports mention priests who had "studied letters" in the monastery of Resava: the priest of Trška, Dimitrije (Nestorović), who studied letters in Manasija Monastery under the spiritual father Arsenije [EB 105], and the priest of Kamenovo, Dimitrije Miloradović, a pupil of the monastery of Resava, who studied letters under the late proigumen of Resava, Sava [EB 107]. According to his notes, the spiritual father of the priest Pavle Jovanović, a native of Grabovac, who served in the parish of the monastery of Resava during 1734 and 1735, was "(H)Adži Stefan of Manasija" [EB 112]. According to the ledgers of the metropolitan fees for the Exarchate of Požarevac for 1733 and 1734, the abbot of Resava, Joasaf, paid 30 florins in fees for each of the two years [TAKS 129]; by way of fees, in 1733 and 1734 the Church authorities also claimed payments from the monastery of Resava for the villages belonging to the monastery parish - Grabovica, Popovići, Jeovac, Subotica, Đonci, Bobovo, Svilainica, Gložani, Vojska, Orašje, Srnjak, Panevac and Stenevac - a total of 218 households [TAKS 129, 133]; a similar list of the villages of the Resava parish is also recorded by Radković [IMR 152–153].³⁵ The sinđel Andrej Joakimović, administrator of the Eparchy of Valjevo in the period from August 1735 to January 1737, visited and examined the priests of his district; on March 7, 1736, he recorded in the protocol that Radosav, son of the parish priest of Bačina, Damjan Janković, aged 8, was being schooled in the monastery of Resava [POES 190–191]. According to surviving inscriptions, the copying activity in the monastery of Resava was also renewed in the first half of the 18th century. "The humble monk Jevrem" copied the Athonite book The Miracles of the Most Holy Theotokos, owned by Joasaf Stefanović, former abbot of Resava and at that moment (?) abbot of Bođani; the copy was completed on March 12, 1736, in the monastery of Resava or Manasija, as the copyist records [SSZN 2674], leaving yet another testimony that by the first half of the 18th century at the latest the name of the monastery that is more usual today, Manasija, had come into use,³⁶ and it soon supplanted the old name. The restoration of Resava, however, was soon interrupted.