Jugoslovenski Rotar

Europe. The founders were careful in choosing the site for their monastery, they endeavoured to enrich it with property as much as possible, so that their church with its buildings and lands might delight their bodies and souls in this short life on earth, and that in the life to come it might serve to them as a worthy resting-place resounding with everlasting prayers of pilgrims. One of the most beautiful of these monasteries founded by the Nemanjié dinasty is Visoki Deéani in the west of Metohija. There are many monasteries which in one thing or another surpass the monastery of Deéani, which does not even belong to the oldest endowments. This monastery was founded in the first hal? of the XIVth century when also its church was erected. At that time there existed already a whole series of famous earlier monasteries from the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. Deéani is not the largest monastery either; the patriarchate of Peć, Gračanica and some others are larger. It is not the most bizarre; the monasteries built in the Bysantine style are more interesting in this respect. It is not so famed for its frescos as Nerezi, Nagoričino or Lesnovo; nor is it adorned by such beautiful carvings as Sv. Jovan Bigorski or Sv. Spas at Skoplje. But still the monastery of Dečani is unique in its way. It is situated at the foot of the Prokletija mountains, in the shade of highland pine-trees, at the end of a river valley through which even during the summer dog-days passes a current of fresh mountain air and through which flows a mighty mountain torrent, Decanska Bistrica, rich in trout, and at the same time at easy reach of the warm Metohija in which there is never any snow and over which stretch out the fertile fields and vineyards of this monastery. All this beauty, riches and comfort has to serve for ever to the royal monastery of Visoki Deéani, as it has been decreed by the founder king Stefan UroS III of Deéani. The stone material which was used for the building of this church is the fine onyx-travertine which is still today quarried not far from Deéani. This monastery is unique also because its church has remained intact so that today, apart from insignificant damages, it stands such as it was conceived and executed by its architect the catholic friar Vito from Kotor. By the fusion of two styles — of the romanesque stone basilica displaying all the refined elegance of this late mature style with the central Byzantine structure adorned with frescos in the interior, — the Dalmatian friar Vito gave a lasting proof of the vital assimilating force of the Balkan element.

Still more to the south, beyond Metohija, beyond the mighty Sarplanina and the mountains Pastrik and Koritnik, stands out the mountain of Korab with its main peak Golemi Korab, next to the Triglav the second highest peak in Yugoslavia. The tectonic of the Dinarie Alps is developed here to huge dimensions. The Korab and the neighbouring DeSat are nothing else but mighty mountain plateaux which precipitate down their steep slopes into the deep ravines of the rivers Radika and Crni Drim. The same formation displaying geometrical planes is a distinguishing feature of the massive mountains of the south, of the high Perister above Skoplje, the mountain of Babuna, Sele¢ka and Nidze with the peak of Kajmakéalan, famous from the fights on the Salonica front.