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| St. Clement's monastery
"St. Pantheleimon"
St. Clement of Ohrid, its patron and protector, arrived to Devol, Ohrid, and Glavenica persuaded by the Bulgarian Prince Boris. The archaeological excavations revealed that for his needs St. Clement restored an older church and built onto it another church. There were a number of early Christian buildings on the site. That tells us that the ecclesiastical life was thriving even before the arrival of Clement to Ohrid. The restored small church was not enough for the needs of St. Clement. Therefore he built a new, larger church in a shape of an uneven rectangle. The tomb of St. Clement is located on the southern side of the church. The Archbishop of Ohrid, Theopilact in his extensive work "The Life of St. Clement" wrote that it was built by Clement himself. The tomb has been preserved. St. Clement, the miracle worker of Ohrid, was buried there in 916. According to Theophilact, during Clement's life two churches were used as archiepiscopal cathedrals. In XV century the Turks converted the church of St. Pantheleimon into a mosque. Later, the Turks allowed the ruined churches and monasteries to be restored. Thus, during the period of the Ohrid Archbishop Prohor in the first half of XVI century, the monastery of St. Clement was restored. However the restored church of St. Clement was ruined again, presumably towards the end of XVI or the beginning of XVII century. The assumption is that the reason for that was the extremely unfavourable situation the Ohrid church was in. On the foundations of the church the Turks erected the mosque "Sultan Mohamed" (Imaret), whose remnants exist even today. Archaeological excavations were carried out in 1943 and 1965. |
St. Clement's monastery "St. Pantheleimon" is located at Plaosnik
(known as Imaret during the Turks), southwards from the Samuel Fortress. This monastery is
the oldest Slavic monument of culture. It had an extremely important role in the education
of the Macedonians during the period of strong influence of the Byzantine Empire. 