Sümela Monastery is located in Maçka district of Trabzon province. It is located on the western slope of the Virgin Mary Stream, within the boundaries of the Altındere valley in the district. It is a collection of structures consisting of a Greek Orthodox Monastery and Church. Located at an altitude of 1150 meters above sea level, the Monastery is a place where monks retreat and devote themselves to worship. But no one knows exactly what happened inside.
The Legend of Sumela Monastery
According to the legend told for many years; Two Christian monks, who did not know each other at all and lived in remote areas, saw Mary, the mother of Jesus, in their dreams at the same time. The picture of Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms in the dream is where the Sumela Monastery is today. Thereupon, the monks come to Trabzon, unaware of each other. They meet there and tell each other about the dream they saw as a miracle of God, and they experience great astonishment. Because the picture they see is of great importance to Christianity. The person who made the painting is St. Luke, who is believed to have written one of the 4 chapters of the Bible. When the monks go to look for the place they saw in the dream, they find the picture. The monks dream again and the Virgin Mary asks them to build a church there. Thereupon, they begin to build the Monastery.
It is not easy to build a church by carving the hard rocks on the mountainside. But Sumela, one of the most extraordinary structures of Christianity, was built by these two monks. While the church was being built, very few villagers in the surrounding area also helped. People did it by carrying stones on their backs. In fact, when it was first built, it was just a church carved into caves on the mountain. However, it grew with the belief in its holiness, and over time it became one of the most important pilgrimage centers of the Christian world.
While the construction work of the church was in progress, one of the monks’ finger was injured. But at that moment, the water dripping from above immediately heals the injured finger. Considering that this water is holy, a holy spring is built there. The belief that the waterway around the monastery is sacred is also accepted by Muslims.
The Reason for Constructing the Monastery Between the Mountains
With the arrival of the Turks in Anatolia, the monastery gained even more value. The Ottoman sultans attached great importance to the priests, especially in the Sumela Monastery. Almost all the sultans made donations and enlarged the treasury of the monastery. When Fatih Sultan Mehmet took Trabzon, he gave autonomy to the monastery. Yavuz Sultan Selim gave golden candlesticks and various books to his library when he was a prince. The most help and support is the sultan II. Abdulhamid did it. Thanks to the lands given by Abdülhamit, the monastery became the owner of 15 villages around it.
One of the famous frescoes of the church is the picture of Mary, which is depicted with Jesus in her belly, which means Mary who fits the god who does not fit anywhere in the world. Many of the frescoes in the monastery do not have faces. The reason is that the people who lived around the monastery for many years, believing that these frescoes were healing for their eyes, removed them and boiled them in water and drank them.
The monastery, in its present appearance, was built in 1366 by the Emperor of Trebizond III. Reunited in the time of Alexius. Legend has it that the King, who fell from his horse while hunting in the forest, was found unconscious by a woman and was taken to the Monastery for treatment. That woman is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Upon this event, III. Alexius does various construction and relief activities.
The reason why the monastery was built between the mountains lies in the basis of Christianity. Churches and villages in the city centers could not serve the spread of Christianity. This task fell to those who were devoted to their faith and cut off from the world, in seclusion in places far from the center. The monks set up small churches on the lands they visited and allowed the villagers and travelers to worship there. With the spread of Christianity, these small and large temples began to lose their value and turned into churches by uniting.
Why Were the Monasteries Expelled?
During the enemy occupation of Anatolia, Sümela Monastery became one of the important centers of the Pontus, who wanted to establish an independent Greek state in the Black Sea. Dozens of Christian and Greek villages around the monastery ganged up and started persecution in the Black Sea. Thereupon, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk sent the monks living in the monastery from Anatolia and closed it in 1924.
From 1924 to 1953, the Monastery was a desolate building used only as a place for hunters and shepherds. With the agreements made by the Adnan Menderes Government in 1953, American soldiers were able to come to the Monastery officially. In 2010, the first mass after 88 years was held on August 15, which is accepted as the ascension day of the Virgin Mary by Christians.
It was closed to visitors again in 2015 and a 5-year restoration work was started, and some secret passages were discovered during the work. Following the secret passages, a place of worship accepted as holy by Christians emerged. Inside the chapel, there are frescoes that depict Heaven and Hell, death and life that have never been seen before. The answer to the question of why a chapel was built in this part and its connection with a secret passage has not been given exactly. In addition, ordeal rooms were unearthed during the restoration. It is thought that in the ordeal rooms, the monks held individual prayer sessions, repented and contemplated, and sometimes paid the price of their sins by inflicting pain on themselves in order to get rid of their sins.
