Bilintsi Monastery, Orthodox monastery in Bilintsi, Breznik Municipality, Bulgaria.
Bilintsi Monastery "St. Archangel Michael" consists of a church and abandoned residential and farm buildings. The church measures 13.20 by 3.90 by 4.25 metres: a single-nave, single-apse building without a dome, with a narthex merged into the central space. It is built of broken stone with mortar, and brick bands and arches use bricks and wooden tie-beams.
Bilintsi Monastery is thought to have begun operating in the late 11th or early 12th century, under Byzantine rule; tradition credits its founding to Milutin, a medieval lord of Yaroslavtsi, who obtained the emperor's permission to build. Archaeology shows a large fortified monastery already stood here in the 14th century. The first written record after the Ottoman conquest is from 1587, when Father Stefan represented the monastery on a mission of the Kyustendil bishop to Russia. It was devastated by the Ottomans and renewed in 1855 during the National Revival.
The monastery church is dedicated to St. Archangel Michael. Its frescoes were painted by masters of the western Bulgarian school of the late Middle Ages, in the 15th–16th centuries, and 17th-century paintings also survive. A spring captured beneath the altar space is linked to the site's choice, possibly a spring venerated since pagan times.
The monastery lies 1 km northeast of Bilintsi and 8 km northwest of Breznik, at the foot of the Crncha ridge in the Zavalska mountain range. The church is a single-nave, single-apse building measuring 13.20 by 3.90 by 4.25 m, with its entrance on the north side. The terrain is steep, and the west entrance is closed.
South of the church, traces of the medieval defensive walls remain, and the foundations of a defensive tower can be made out beside the residential wing. The church itself is small, measuring 13.20 by 3.90 by 4.25 metres, with a single nave, one apse and no dome.
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