Church of St Michael (Macedonian Cyrilic: ''Свети Архангел Михаил''), also called Fitija (''Фитија'') is the most valuable medieval monument of

Štip Štip ( mk, Штип ) is the largest urban agglomeration in the eastern part of North Macedonia, serving as the economic, industrial, entertainment and educational focal point for the surrounding municipalities. As of the 2002 census, the city ...

North Macedonia North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Socialist Feder ...

The church was built as the central feature of a monastery in 1332. Its endower was

protosebastos The title of ''protosebastos'' ( el, πρωτοσέβαστος, ''prōtosébastos'', "first ''sebastos''") was a high Byzantine court title created by Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. History Although the title first appears in a document of 1049, wher ...

Hrelja, a nobleman of Serbian kingdom that ruled

since 1282. It is located next to the road linking the suburb with the castle Isar. In 1334 Hrelja, with consent of king Stefan Dušan, donated the church to

Chilandar The Hilandar Monastery ( sr-cyr, Манастир Хиландар, Manastir Hilandar, , el, Μονή Χιλανδαρίου) is one of the twenty Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Mount Athos in Greece and the only Serbian monastery there. It wa ...

, the Serbian monastery in Holy Mount Athos. The donation was confirmed in 1381 by the new lord of Štip Konstantin Dejanović with a charter. In Ottoman times the church was turned into a mosque and lost its frescoes. St Michael has a cross-in-rectangle base with a dome above it. The outer decoration shows all the signs of fine

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

architecture with facades in layers of bricks and stone. Today the church is just a chapel (''paraklis''). Until recently it had an old

iconostasis In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis ( gr, εἰκονοστάσιον) is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a Church (building), church. ''Iconostasis'' also refers to a portable icon stand t ...

with icons by Georgi Zoografski but in 2000 it got a new, marble one, painted by Pero of Skopje.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Church of St. Michael, Stip 14th-century Eastern Orthodox church buildings Buildings and structures in Štip Eastern Orthodox church buildings in North Macedonia