In Belgrade, we visited Kalemegdon Park, above the confluence of the River Sava and the Danube. It is an ancient fortress used and renovated by Celts, Romans, Byzantines, Turks, Austro-Hungarians, and other conquerors.
Next to the Kalemegdon Fortress, there are two quaint churches: Ruzica (Nativity of the Most-holy Theotokos) and St. Petka (St. Paraskeva). The Turks had once turned the church of Ruzica into a powder magazine. The icon screen was erected through the efforts of Neo-martyr Raphael Momcilovic (+1942). The picturesque chapel of St. Petka was built over a healing spring to which, to this day, the Serbian faithful come in hopes of receiving healing.
Early in the morning of October 20, we left Belgrade and traveled northwest. Several hours later, we came to Fruska Gora, Serbia’s Mt. Athos, where there are 15 monasteries, dating from the 15th to the 18th century. We were able to visit only three of the 15 monasteries: Krusedol, Grgetek, and Novo Hopovo.
The Monastery of Krusedol is the repository for the relics of Tsar Stefan and his wife Angelina, who lived in the 16th century. The Serbs greatly revere Angelina, whom they touchingly refer to as “majka Angelina.” There also rest the remains of the royal couple’s children Maxim and Jovan.
The main cathedral of the Grgetek Monastery is dedicated to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. There is an exact copy of the “Three-Handed” Icon of the Mother of God, greatly venerated among the Serbian people, in that monastery. We arrived there just as the Akathist before the Icon was beginning. The nuns offered that I read the Akathist. Unfortunately for me, the text was in Serbian. At the cemetery at Grgetek, we served a Panikhida for the Serbian and Russian monastics who had gone to their rest there. Fr. Zoran, who had come from Novi Sad to greet us, concelebrated with me. Fr. Zoran had previously served in Washington.
The Monastery of Novo Hopovo is especially dear to Russian hearts, for it is tied to the famous Lesna Monastery, which now continues its existence near Paris. Before World War I, it numbered up to 700 nuns. Established in the Kholm region of Russia by St. John of Kronstadt, this monastery operated a network of educational institutions for peasant girls.
In 1915, war forced the nuns to leave the Kholm region of Russia. In 1920, King Alexander of Serbia granted permission to welcome all 70 nuns, and gave Hopova Monastery on Fruska Gora into their charge. In the mid 1930s, 35 children, ranging in age from 3 to 8, were being raised there, in preparation for entry into secondary school. During a 20-year period, about 500 children were attentively brought up by the nuns.
Russian nuns, under the direction of Abbess Ekaterina (in the world Countess Eugenia Borisovna Efimovskaya) participated in the revival of women’s monasticism in Yugoslavia. Mother Ekaterina is buried in a prominent place near the gates of the picturesque 16th century Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.
The same day, we went to the region of Vojvodina, to Sremski Karlovci, the second historical capital of the Serbian patriarchate, and the birthplace of our Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. The picturesque town of Sremski Karlovci, today having up to 10,000 residents, lies on the right **** of the Danube, some 11 kilometers from Novi Sad, between two peaks of Fruska Gora. There, in the Patriarchal Palace, the 1st and 2nd All-Diaspora Sobors of the Church Abroad were held. The residence of Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky was also in the Palace.
That same evening, we arrived in Novi Sad, and immediately went to the city cemetery, where Alexei Borisovitch Arseniev, a remarkable Russian television engineer, was waiting for us. He had gathered together and published a wealth of materials regarding Russian émigrés in Yugoslavia in general, and Novi Sad in particular. At the Novi Sad cemetery, he showed us graves of famous Russians, and later took us to the Diocesan House, where on the 2nd floor he showed us the Church of St. Basil the Great in which in his youth Bishop Basil Rodzianko had served and in which the Russian populace of Novi Sad prayed. (An interesting article about the Russian parish in Novi Sad was printed in the November 1998 issue of the Russian-language Orthodox Russia, No. 17.)
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