20 Roubles Polotsk Spaso-Euphrosyne Metropolitan Convent

The Spaso-Euphrosyne Convent in Polotsk, founded by Euphrosyne of Polotsk in the twelfth century, is the oldest surviving monastic complex in Belarus. Euphrosyne — born Predslava, a princess of the Polotsk dynasty — renounced her noble position to become a scribe and then a nun, an unusual trajectory that earned her canonization by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1547. The convent she established became a major center of manuscript copying and religious education in medieval Rus.

Belarus has issued commemorative silver in this series intermittently since the 1990s, systematically working through sites of national Orthodox significance.