Chelandari
The monastery Chelandari, dedicated to the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and fourth in the hierarchy,
was founded, as a result of a chrysobull issued by Alexios III Komnenos (A.D. 1198), on
the ruins of an earlier monastery of the same name which existed here already before A.D. 1015.
Its founder was saint Sabbas (secular name Rastko) with the support of his father the King of
Serbia, Stefan Nemanja, the later monk Symeon. The monastery received fabulous wealth and
gifts from the Serb rulers in the l4th century and from the Russian tzars and the voivods of the
Danubian principalities under the Ottoman occupation. It made a great contribution to the spiritual
awakening of the Serbian people. The high quality of the wall-paintings in the katholikon of
the monastery links them with the artistic production of Thessaloniki during the first decades of
the l4th century and particularly - according to one view - with the activity of the anonymous
painter who worked on the church of Saint Nikolaos Orphanos in Thessaloniki.