Sázava Monastery

Sázava Monastery is a former Benedictine abbey and a monastery in Bohemia (Czech Republic), established by Bretislaus I, Duke of Bohemia around 1032. It is situated some 30 km southeast of Prague, on the right bank of the eponymous Sázava river, a right tributary of the Vltava. The town of Sázava (Benešov District) grew around the monastery. The monastery is notable, long after its foundation by St Procopius of Sázava, for having followed the Byzantine Rite in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language in the 11th century. It was forcibly transferred to the Latin rite in 1097, but remained a monastery until its destruction during the Hussite Wars in 1421. It was again re-established as part of the re-catholization of Bohemia under Habsburg rule in 1664 and finally dissolved under the policy of Josephinism in 1785. The extant buildings mostly date to the Baroque period, with 19th-century neo-Renaissance extensions, with some remaining structures in the Gothic style of the 13th to 14th centuries, notably the unfinished three-nave Gothic basilica.