One of the curious attractions of the Rila Monastery is the wooden crucifix, which took the Monk Rafail 12 years to carve during the eighteenth century. The relic has a place of honor among the artefacts displayed in the smallish museum.
Engraved on the half-a-metre tall cross, there are 140 Biblical scenes with over 1,500 participants, some of which are the size of a rice grain. The microscopic figures cover both sides of the entire cross. The monk, in an inhuman display of patience, carved out the relic with a needle and, as a result, lost his sight.
The monastery’s museum also contains interesting church plate samples, documents certifying donations from Tsarist Russia and personally from Ivan the Terrible, as well as a fingerprint machine imported from Vienna. The images of devils trying to spoil people’s good deeds may not have great artistic value, but they are quite fun to look at.
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Engraved on the half-a-metre tall cross, there are 140 Biblical scenes with over 1,500 participants, some of which are the size of a rice grain. The microscopic figures cover both sides of the entire cross. The monk, in an inhuman display of patience, carved out the relic with a needle and, as a result, lost his sight.
The monastery’s museum also contains interesting church plate samples, documents certifying donations from Tsarist Russia and personally from Ivan the Terrible, as well as a fingerprint machine imported from Vienna. The images of devils trying to spoil people’s good deeds may not have great artistic value, but they are quite fun to look at.
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