Stuplje Monastery
Description
Stuplje Monastery is a Serbian Orthodox monastery of the Eparchy of Banja Luka, located in the village of Gornji Vijačani on the Manastirica stream, which flows into the Ukrina, on the border of the municipalities of Prnjavor, Čelinac, and Teslić. The church is dedicated to Saint Archangel Michael. It is mentioned in written sources from the 15th century, and was active until the end of the 17th century, when it fell into ruin and burned down together with Liplje Monastery during wartime conflicts. Manuscript books created in Stuplje were transferred to the Slavonian monastery of Orahovica, where they remained until 1991. The foundations were discovered in 1994 at the Crkvište site; official research began in 1997.
The original church was built in the Raška style, single-nave, about 14 × 7.5 m. The new Church of Saint Archangel Michael was completed in 2014, the residence in 2008, and the new residence with a dining hall in 2020. The iconostasis was made in the Byzantine style by the diocesan icon painter Velimir Klincov. It is registered as a cultural and historical monument of RS.
Discovery and restoration
For centuries, Stuplje Monastery was only a name in historical sources — without a known location. That changed in 1994, when two locals from Gornji Vijačani, Dušan Jotić and Milenko Malešević, informed the Eparchy of Banja Luka that stone foundations existed on the Crkvište plot by the Manastirica stream.
Excavations confirmed the foundations of the church and residence, thereby confirming what was stated in an old note from 1696: that the monasteries of Stuplje and Liplje had finally fallen into ruin and burned down during the wars of that time. Three hundred and twelve years later, in 2008, with the solemn enthronement of the first abbot, monastic life continued the tradition interrupted in the 17th century.
Books and heritage
The greatest value of Stuplje's monastic heritage is not the walls — it is the handwritten books. When the monks had to leave the monastery during the Great Migration of the Serbs at the end of the 17th century, they took the books with them to the Slavonian monastery of Orahovica.
They remained there until 1991, silent witnesses to the centuries-long spiritual work that took place in the Manastirica valley. In those books, preserved on the other side of the former Yugoslavia, generations of monks and abbots who lived in Stuplje were recorded. The books survived; the monastery was restored.
