"A monastery buried for four centuries, risen twice from its own foundations"
Sase Monastery
Srebrenica, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sase Monastery sits in the hills between Srebrenica and Bratunac, a Serbian Orthodox house dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Founded in 1242 as an outpost of Hilandar on Mount Athos, it served medieval miners and then vanished beneath the earth for nearly four hundred years. Unearthed in 1850, damaged in war, and consecrated again in 2010, it persists in a landscape that knows something about endurance.
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Quick Facts
Location
Srebrenica, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Tradition
Site Type
Coordinates
44.1228, 19.3671
Last Updated
Mar 10, 2026
Sase Monastery was founded in 1242 by King Stefan Uros I as a dependency of Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, serving the Orthodox mining community in medieval Bosnia's silver-producing region. The site sits atop the Roman settlement of Domavia. After centuries of burial, the monastery was rediscovered in 1850, damaged in the 1990s war, and consecrated anew in 2010.
Origin Story
The village name itself tells a story. 'Sase' derives from 'Sasi,' the local term for the Saxon miners who came to work the silver deposits from the fourteenth century onward. But the mining tradition here is far older. The Romans established Domavia at this location, a settlement devoted to extracting the mineral wealth of these Bosnian hills. A tombstone from that era, unearthed during monastery excavations, now stands in the courtyard as silent witness to the site's deep past.
When King Stefan Uros I founded the monastery in 1242, he placed it within the orbit of Hilandar, the great Serbian monastery on Mount Athos founded by Saint Sava and his father in 1198. This was deliberate. Hilandar was not merely a monastery but the spiritual heart of Serbian identity. By establishing a metochion here, the king extended that heart into the working communities of his realm, binding the miners' daily labor to the prayers of Mount Athos.
Key Figures
King Stefan Uros I
Стефан Урош I
historical
The Serbian king who founded Sase Monastery in 1242 as a metochion of Hilandar. His patronage linked the Bosnian mining communities to the spiritual authority of Mount Athos.
Saint Sava
Свети Сава
saint
Founder of Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos in 1198, together with his father Stefan Nemanja. As the parent monastery of Sase, Hilandar's spiritual lineage flows through this site. Saint Sava is the most revered figure in Serbian Orthodoxy.
Bishop Vasilije of Zvornik and Tuzla
historical
The bishop who oversaw the post-war reconstruction and revival of monastic life at Sase, culminating in the consecration of 18 September 2010.
Spiritual Lineage
The lineage of Sase runs through Hilandar to Mount Athos, and through Mount Athos to the earliest centuries of Orthodox monasticism. This is not an abstract connection. Medieval metochions served as both economic and spiritual extensions of their parent monastery, channeling resources to Athos while receiving liturgical authority and monastic tradition in return. When worship resumed at Sase after the war, it resumed within this lineage, under the Eparchy of Zvornik and Tuzla, carrying forward a relationship between this valley and Mount Athos that is nearly eight centuries old.
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