Stuplje Monastery

The Stuplje Monastery is a Serbian Orthodox monastery dedicated to Archangel Michael and located in the village of Gornji Vijačani near the town of Čelinac in north-western Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Folk tradition attributes the establishment of Stuplje to King Dragutin, a member of the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty, as is the case with other Serbian monasteries in northern Bosnia. The earliest mention of Stuplje is found in a chronicle dated to the second half of the 15th century. The monastery was probably founded before 1450, and thus before the Ottoman conquest of the Kingdom of Bosnia in 1463. This conquest did not include north-western Bosnia, which then became part of the Kingdom of Hungary, to be conquered by the Ottomans in 1527 and 1528. During the 17th century, the monks of Stuplje were active in transcribing religious books. At some point during the Great Turkish War, the monastery was burned down by the Ottomans. Surviving monks fled north across the Sava River and found refuge in the Orahovica Monastery in Slavonia. They brought with them a number of their manuscript books, which thus became part of the Orahovica library. ()