The Chapel of St. Petka

I thought I should say a word or two about my new header. The church pictured in the header image is the chapel dedicated to St. Paraskeva-Petka located in the famous fortress in Belgrade known as Kalemegdan. We took a stroll through the park one day we were in town.

In Kalemegdan there is a church dedicated to the Nativity of the Mother of God (which is near St. Petka’s chapel; pictured on left). It is believed that this church was built during the reign of the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarevic (1402-27). On a side note, I believe it was Despot Stefan who assigned the Feast of the Ascension to be the Slava of the City of Belgrade. See here for pictures from this year’s Ascension Day Liturgy and Litya through the streets of Belgrade.

The exact place of the original church is unknown, nor is it known whether the church was built at that time or if it was built on an earlier foundation. When Turks captured Belgrade in 1521 the church was either destroyed or turned into an arsenal and it remained as such until 1867 when the Turks gave over the keys to the Serbs to the Belgrade Fortress to then Prince Mihailo Obrenovic. In December of that year the church was rebuilt.

It was damaged during WWI, especially in the fall of 1915 from Austrian artillery attacks from across the Danube and Sava Rivers.  A large number of Serbian soldiers lost their lives defending Belgrade there. The ruined church witnessed the liberation of Belgrade in 1918. Between the wars it functioned as a military church under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense.

After WWII the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of Church, commonly known as “Ruzica”, became a nonparochial church where professors of the Theological Faculty and teachers at the Belgrade Seminary preach and use to perform rites such marriage and baptisms, etc.

The Chapel of St. Petka, on the other, (the one pictured in the header) was built in 1937. Until that time there a cave chapel on that spot, through which the faithful could approach the Well of healing water of St. Petka. During Turkish rule the faithful would freely come to the Well to drink or take some of the water home. In 1917 the Well ran dry but then on the feast of St. Onesimus (28/15 February) the water reappeared. Subsequently, St. Onesimus is the protector of the Well.

The healing water from the Well is still available to this day. A church house was built also in 1937 and was destroyed during the American bombing of Belgrade in 1944. A new house was built on the same place in 1990. (I used Fr. Radomir Popovic’s little booklet about the St. Petka Chapel and the Kalemegdan Ruzica Church for most of the above.)

During our walk to St. Petka’s chapel we got some of the healing water for ourselves (in fact, Vaso is holding a bottle of it in the picture above.) In the picture directly below we are making our way out of the park. There was some sort of an exhibit. The church you see in the background is the Cathedral church in Belgrade which is directly across the street from the Serbian Patriarchate which, as you see, is practically across the street from the Kalemegdan park. The rest of the pictures are of the Kalemegdan fortresss.