Charterhouse Pleterje

Pleterje | Slovenia | 2019-2023

The monastery is covered by a winterly crust. It is asleep. Into the darkness of my cell a light bell enters and invites with its long tender tolling to attend the nightly prayer. While in the cities true night life is only beginning, the monks wake up around eleven pm and start the morning prayers of the blessed Virgin Mary. First each in his own cell; still, whispering, standing up, kneeling down. »Stat crux dum volvitur orbis – the Cross is standing, but the world is turning.« Through shutters the stars are near, in the low iron oven from time to time a remnant of red crackling embers cracks. That’s the only source of a bit of warmth, otherwise it is cold.

I am creaking sleepily with my heavy tripod and photo-bag down the corridor. Long hallways and wooden staircases lead to the monastery church. I can’t find the light switch so from time to time the creepy shadows and rustling noises give me the creeps. Utter silence dominates in the cross corridor, an almost full moon is rising from behind the Gorjanci mountain ridge. Her light is already penetrating the stained windows and drawing patterns on the floor. It seems so close as if it was already in the monastery’s garden. In the corridor a smallish shadow stirs, coming closer. An older monk turns into the church through the dusk and starts to pull a thick rope. After a few pulls the bell sounds, calling the brothers to their common prayer. And promptly in the monastery doors begin to open.

I move quietly into the niche of the chapel, into utter darkness from where I catch the brothers by sensor with a 5 second exposition as they are hurrying to church one by one like white ants in almost complete darkness quietly, heads covered. Following a long, contemplative silence there is a knock and a loud creak from the organ loft, then all monks start praying in Latin. I can’t make out the words from afar, it’s all a murmur like a choir of bumblebees. I approach them from the back entrance. The church is in utter darkness. By the hinted shadows I can still decipher that everyone is facing the altar, where the tiny red flame of the eternal light denotes the place where bread and wine is transformed into Christ’s Body and Blood.

(Tamino Petelinšek, from diary entries, Pleterje 2020)