Object description

The Lomnica Monastery is a Serbian Orthodox monastery dedicated to Saint George and located near Šekovići in the region of Donji Birač in the eastern Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The monastery's church and dormitory are built on a narrow flat area on a hillside beside a stream called Lomnica, from which the monastery received its name. In the local accent, the consonant pair mn is often pronounced as vn, hence the form "Lovnica". As lov means "hunt" in Serbian, this gave rise to legendary accounts of the monastery's foundation that connect it in some way with hunting or hunters. According to one of the legends, the area of Lomnica was a hunting ground of the Serbian King Dragutin Nemanjić, and it was he who built this monastery. The region of Donji Birač contains many medieval necropoleis with the characteristic stećak tombstones and other archaeological artifacts.