Rakovica Monastery

This guide to Rakovica Monastery, on Belgrade's wooded southern edge, follows the monks of an Orthodox house caught between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires in the eighteenth century. It begins in seventeen thirty-nine, with a flight north to the Fruška Gora hills and a merger that was proclaimed on paper. It then turns to Sofronije, the abbot who gathered local Serbs when war returned in seventeen eighty-eight. Best heard in the courtyard, facing the old church.