On Sunday, 13 September, the Botun Monastery of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God marks 30 years since its restoration and consecration. Resurrection matins and the Holy Hierarchical Liturgy begin at 7:30, in the presence of Metropolitan Georgij of Debar and Kičevo, followed by a celebration.

The date is an anniversary, but the story behind it is older than thirty years and far less ceremonial. The monastery sits on the south-eastern slopes of Karaorman, almost two kilometres from the village of Botun, on a plateau overlooking every village of Lower Debrca. The latest research shows it was most likely destroyed during the Brsjaci Uprising of 1880-1881 - and not by accident.

A bridge, its guardians, and revenge

Botun held the only safe caravan bridge across the river Sateska. The villagers looked after it as derbendžii - appointed guardians of the pass - and were exempted from certain taxes in return. The bridge was part of the Debar - Prilep road, which crossed Malesija, ran through Debrca and continued to Demir Hisar. The Austro-Hungarian travel writer Ami Boué, travelling that route in 1838, spent the night in Botun itself.

That bridge meant control over a stretch of road worth having. Which is why the people of Botun contributed heavily to the armed resistance during the Brsjaci Uprising - and why, after it failed, the monastery was destroyed in revenge. The place names survived as testimony: the gorge below the monastery is still called Kaluđerdol, and the river running through it Kaluđerka.

The icon that survived

Only one thing was saved from the monastery: the icon of the Mother of God - Secarica. It is kept today in the church of St Athanasius, built in 1854 and renamed in her honour as the Church of the Most Holy Mother of God in 1895. In 2021 an inscription was discovered on the icon showing it to be the work of the renowned Trpo Zograf of Korçë, who painted it in November 1806 and donated it himself for his own salvation.

Reconstruction of today's church began in 1992, on the ruins of the old one - which was considerably larger than what stands there now. The villagers protected the spot where the holy altar table had stood with large stone slabs, and for decades they lit candles and prayed there, even though nothing of the church remained. Several graves from different periods were uncovered during the building work.

The church was completed in 1996 and consecrated on 6 October that year by the late Metropolitan Timotej of Debar and Kičevo. The frescoes and the large icons on the iconostasis are the work of the Serbian icon painter Lazar Lečić.

So what is being marked on Sunday is not a building. It is one of the rare stories in which something destroyed as punishment did not stay destroyed - because the people of the village would not let the place be forgotten, not even when there were no walls there at all.