Lepavina Monastery

Lepavina () is a monastery of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the village of Lepavina, near the town of Koprivnica in the Republic of Croatia. It is dedicated to the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

From the Beginning Until World War II

According to an old local chronicle, the Lepavina monastery was founded around 1550, very soon after the emergence of the first Serbian settlements in this region. A monk from the Hilandar Monastery (on the Athos peninsula, Greece), Jefrem (Ephraim) Vukodabović, born in Herzegovina, together with two monks from Bosnia, built a wooden church here. They were soon joined by several other monks and the institution, according to the chronicle, acquired the status of a monastery.

In August of 1557, Turks and the Islamized inhabitants of Stupčanica, Pakrac and Bijela, under the leadership of Zarep-Agha Ali, burnt down the church and the monastic buildings, four monks were killed and two taken to slavery.

In 1598 Hieromonk Gregory, also from the Hilandar Monastery, came to Lepavina with two monks from the Mileševa Monastery, and they re-established the monastic community and rebuilt the edifices. In 1630 the Orthodox population of this region, due to their constant involvement in the fights against the Turks and their allies, received great privileges, which created the conditions for building activity on a larger scale.

Archimandrite Visarion (Bessarion) came to Lepavina in 1635 to become the head of the community, and under his auspices...
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