Monastery TVRDOŠ

Monastery TVRDOŠ        www.tvrdos.com

Monastery Tvrdos is dedicated to the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos and was built upon the stone formations of Tvrdos along the right side of the banks of the Trebisnjica River, four kilometers west of Trebinje. 

Referring to Tvrdos, our historians considered it sufficient to say that it is a monastery dating back to the “Middle Ages” and that it is famous as a monastery in Trebinje.  However, according to legend which is a fact relatively recently documented, Monastery Tvrdos was founded by the Czar, Saint Constantine, and his mother Saint Helen. Further after it was destroyed and abandoned, it became the endowment of the Serbian King Milutin at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century.  A thorough restoration in 1509 was made by Metropolitan Visiarion I of  Trebinje.

The monastery was for two centuries, if not more, the see of Hum-Herzegovina, the then-known Metropolitanate of Trebinje. During the Turkish-Venetian War, the Venetians in 1694  the entire church and the entire monastery blown up by explosives as was decpicted by the Herzegovian Vladimir Corovic, who was responsible for, among other things, the historical description of most Herzegovian monasteries.

The church was only then restored by the new endower, Nikola Runjevac, the wealthy Trebinian from America at that time the smaller old konak  was repaired and a newer and larger konak was built. A great awakening and the intense renovation of the monastery was experienced from 1955 which still continues until the present day.
Upon the destruction of Monastery Tvrdos at the end of the 14th century, many priceless spiritual and precious cultural items from Tvrdos were transferred to Monastery Savina near Herceg Novi.  The lifeblood of this monastery was continued not only in Savina, but more so in the nearby Metoch-Monastery Duzi. In October of 1992 the holy hand of an unknown saint was brought from Duzi to Tvrdos. It was most probably that of the Saint Helen, the Queen mother of Milutin and Dragutin (as it used to be present in the monastery according to the record in the journal of the monasteries of Trebinje which is currently found in Savina.

In an old epic folk poem the monastery Tvrdoš and its cellars, or monastic closets filled with wine are mentioned. In the dark times after the collapse of the medieval Serbian state, Serbian monks in monasteries preserved a seed of the Serbian spirituality and culture, and the tradition of Serbian winemaking. After all, just the same as in the entire Europe, in our winemaking the greatest credit for the transfer of knowledge on growing grapewine and producing wine belongs to monasticism. Many famous wine houses of France, Italy, Spain and Germany were established at the old monastic estates or as the successors of their tradition. There are many Serbian monasteries that saved the winemaking reputation to this day: Visoki Dečani, Ljubostinja, Tvrdoš .

The monks of the monastery Tvrdoš started ten years ago a new chapter in the story of the monastic wine-making in our country. They took care of the grapevine in Trebinjsko polje, where the old plantations of the Vranac are located on 70 hectares of land and even built 60 hectares of young vineyards in Popovo polje.

Today the monastery has two cellars. In an old stone cellar from the 15th century, in hundred-year-old oak barrels Vranac matures, and only ten meters away, next to the Trebisnjica, a new cellar is dug, equipped with the latest technology, but perfectly integrated into the existing complex.
Modern technological solutions include also a gravitational transport of wine during processing, enabled by height differences between different levels of cellars.