There are no reliable sources on the construction of the monastery, on the basis of which data on the time of its founding, the founder and the course of construction would be determined. It was most likely built during the 15th or early 16th century. Written sources testify that the monastery Rujan in 1529 owned the first printing house in Serbia, which was acquired and worked by the monk Teodosije. In 1576, the Turks discovered a printing house, burned it down, and destroyed the monastery. The surviving monks fled to the Rača monastery, then our largest monastery in the area, and it is assumed that they influenced the formation of the Raca transcription school. The remains of the monastery were sunk after the formation of the artificial lake Vrutci in 1980. The new monastery was built from 2004 to 2006, and was consecrated in 2007, and monks have lived in it ever since.

In 1529, the first printing house on the territory of medieval Serbia started operating in the Rujno Monastery, and in 1537 the first book was printed – the Rujno Four Gospels in the Cyrillic alphabet with a Serbo-Slavic review. It is a primitive and then the only possible way of printing in woodcarving. This printing endeavor in Serbia took place less than a hundred years after the first copy of the printed Bible (1455), the first printed book in the world, was published in Gutenberg’s printing house. The monk Theodosius printed the Four Gospels by carving letters in wood, stacking them in a wooden frame and printing them on paper. For this endeavor, he used one mold and two paints, so he first applied black paint to the mold, so that after applying the print, the frame had to be washed before applying red paint. The introductory part of the Four Gospels states that “the divine book” was written “under the cover of a mountain called Ponikve, on a river called Beaska, in a village called Vrutci, near the temple of the holy and glorious great martyr and victor of Christ, George.”
Today, the only completely preserved copy of the Rujan Four Gospels with a total of 300 pages is kept in the National Library in Prague and is part of Safarik’s collection. In the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, another relatively damaged copy is kept, which is missing four sheets. The National Library of Serbia owned one copy that was destroyed in the bombing of Belgrade in 1941, so only one fragment (92 pages) has been preserved and is in the museum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and parts are kept in the Museum of Applied Arts – Gospel of Luke (quaternion 24 leaf 8b) and the Gospel of John (quaternion 29 leaf 8b).

The plan for the construction of a new monastery was made in 2003. In the period between 2004 and 2006, the monastery was renovated near the old one, on a hill above Lake Vrutci. First, the church was built, then the construction of lodgings and bell towers began. It was consecrated on May 5, 2007 and is inhabited by monks, led by hieromonk Teodosije, who has been the abbot of the monastery since 2018. The monastery has the appearance of a medieval basilica, which makes it unique in the Diocese of Zica.
Srpska Pravoslavna Eparhija Žička