Rmanj Monastery

The Rmanj Monastery (Serbian: Манастир Рмањ, romanized: Manastir Rmanj) is a Serbian Orthodox monastery dedicated to Saint Nicholas and located in Martin Brod in north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the left bank of the Unac River near its confluence with the Una. The original monastery is dated to the late 15th century, after which it underwent several disasters and having to be rebuilt.

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The exact year of the Rmanj monastery cannot be determined, although it was the westernmost Serbian Orthodox monastery at the end of the 16th century.^[1] The earliest mentions of the location of Rmanj are from the latter half of the 15th century as a town of the Lapčani, probably referring to the Rmanj Fortress, while the first reference to monks of Rmanj is in the Kruševo memorial book from the late 15th century and another reference dated to 1498.^[2]

After the conquest of this area by the Ottoman Empire, the monastery was temporarily abandoned in 1578. Bosnian Beylerbey Telli Hasan Pasha had the Rmanj Monastery renewed as a seat of his brother, Orthodox monk Gavrilo Predojević.^[3]

Rmanj was the seat of the Metropolitanate of Dabro Bosnia in the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century. It remained in that capacity for about 110 years. During that time, ten metropolitans served in it.^{[citation needed]}

The Turks burned down the monastery in 1663, but it was later rebuilt and occupied again in 1737.^{[citation needed]} It was burned again during the Austro-Turkish War of 1787–1791. The Ottoman authorities allowed the rebuilding of the monastery in 1863, and it was rebuilt in two years.^{[citation needed]}

It was badly damaged during the anti-Ottoman uprising in Bosnia in 1875 and 1876.^[2] The following year, Arthur Evans visited Rmanj (which he wrote as "Ermanja") and in one of his letters described the damage done to the monastery church by troops under the leadership of a Bosnian Muslim feudal lord.^[4]

The monastery was repaired again in 1883.^[2]

In World War II, a field hospital of the Yugoslav Partisans was organised at the monastery. For this reason,^[5] it was bombed by the Germans and completely destroyed on 23 April 1944.^[2]

In 1974, authorities of the Socialist Yugoslavia allowed the renovation of the monastery.^[5] Its church was completed in the 1980s,^{[citation needed]} and the foundation of the monks' dormitory was consecrated in 1993.^[2]

In 1995, during the Croatian Army's Operation Storm, the monastery was shelled and badly damaged.^[2] Afterwards, Croatian soldiers mined the monastery's church, but the mines were removed by British soldiers of the SFOR. The dormitory was completed in 2006, and in the following year, the monastery was inhabited by three monks.^[5]

In 2007, the Rmanj Monastery was proclaimed by KONS a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[2]