Зрзе

This year, Orthodox Easter occurred one week later than Catholic Easter.  This was very convenient for us since we enjoyed a 4-day weekend for the holidays, which coincided with very spring-like weather of about 24 centigrades.

We had some friends visiting from Skopje, and we decided to visit Zrze, a nearby monastery, on Велики Петок, or Good Friday.  The monastery is closer to Makedonski Brod than it is to Prilep, so we hired a taxi to drive us to the town, and then climbed the asphalt road to the monastery.

More formally known as the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, it is rather modern with most of the buildings recently constructed for housing the monks.  The church is very old and dates back to the 14th century.  This church is one of only two churches which places Jesus’ image on the left and the Virgin Mary’s on the right.  It is said that the monks tried to correct this anomoly many times, but after each night the paintings would be switched.  It was assumed that Mary did not want to “keep her back to her son”, so the monks left the paintings in their divinely placed state (see images below).

Even though the church dates back to the 1300s, monks had inhabited the area since the 9th century, living in the caves currently situated below.  Unfortunately, we were unable to explore these caves ourselves due to ongoing excavation, but it was interesting to imagine a monastery in the form of caves along a cliff existing for 400 years.

The views of Pelagonija from Zrze were breathtaking, and the monastery was a beautiful backdrop for an afternoon lunch.  There were also a lot of adorable cats begging us for food and lying in the sun.  Besides this, Zrze lacked anything “suspenseful”, but it was a nice warm, spring day retreat.

Road to Zrze

Monastery

My favorite cat of the bunch, Срце