After being inactives for 150 years, in 1965 Ćokovac monastery on Pašman island was renovated and reopened. The Benedictine monastery on mount Ćokovac above Tkon is a first class category monument and the most valuable cultural monument on Pašman as well as in Croatian.
The name monk = monah, comes from Greek word monos, which means ‘alone’ and ‘one’.

Benedict was born in Nursia, Umbria, c. 480. His childhood was spent in Rome, where he attended the schools. He had fled from Rome to escape the evils of a great city; he now determined to be poor and to live by his own work. He lived in a cave nearby Subiaco. At first, he was alone, but when people, mostly monks, heard of him, they started coming to hear his monastic teachings. For those of them who obeyed the Rule, he built twelve smaller monasteries with their own abbots. He himself moved to Montecassino where he established a larger community with him as a prior until he died, around c. 547.

Benedict's work is known as  The Monk's Rule.
Benedictines in Croatia shared the same destiny as their people: the first monasteries arpse at the same time as Croatia was declared a state. The number of monasteries grew rapidly during at the golden age of the Croatian kingdom, but many communities, also disappeared as the Croatian dynasty and state independence was lost.

Decreasing of Benedictine communities was influenced by arrival of mendicant orders that were obtrusive with their novelty and spirituality and especially strict poverty. Many monasteries also vanished at the time of komenda, (from 14th until 19th ct.), when an outside prior was obtruded upon the communities. The last Benedictine monasteries of  monks in Croatia were closed at the beginning of 19th ct., at the time of French administration.
The Benedictine monastery of Sts. Cosmos and Damian (Sveti Kuzma I Damjan) on mount �okovac nearby Tkon on island of Pašman was built by Theodore (Teodorik), bishop of Biograd, on the foundations of an early Byzantine fort and early Christian Church.  

Ćokovac is the last active Benedictine monastery in Croatia and famous Glagolic centre.
After the Venetian destruction of Biograd in 12th ct., Benedictines came to Ćokovac and built a new monastery. In 14th ct., the monastery was damaged, but Benedictines  reconstructed it again and made alterations in Gothic style. The Church is decorated with Gothic crucifixes dating back from 15th ct.

In c.1808, the monastery was closed and reopened in c.1965. The name ‘�okovac’ comes from the word ‘Ćok’, which is dialect for blackbird.

In c.1347, with the Roman Pope Clement VI in consent, Czech King Karlo IV (Charles) founded the Benedictine abbey Emmaus in Prague. He invited Croatian Benedictines, probably those from the monastery of Sts Kuzma and Damjan from Ćokovac, to come in Prague to learn and spread Glagolic script and Slavonic language in Churches and among people.
When Church orders were restricted, Petar Pletikosić, the last Benedictine monk, bought back the monastery of Sts Kuzma and Damjan from Austrian government prefects in 1849, and gave it to the parish Church in Tkon just before he died. Well-known priest of Tkon Church, don Stipe Banov, made a contract with ‘Liburnija’, which took lease of the former monastery for a few years. ‘Liburnija’ had rented residential rooms of the monastery for its needs. The society had opened the first ‘tourist station’ in this old and (at the time) deserted Benedictine monastery on Ćokovac. In fact, this was also the first mountain and tourist house in Dalmatia. Beside this one here, two other houses were opened: one on the mount of St Ilija on pelješac, and another in the fort of St Mihovil above village Preko (island of Ugljan). There had been  plans to make a cableway – funicular railway for transporting mountaineers and tourists (92 m above sea level).
These days, six monks live on Ćokovac. Prior to the monastery, father Jozo conducted several restorations and activities concerning decorating the surroundings of the monastery. The floor of the Church has been replaced; access to the road has been arranged; a Glagolitic exhibition was set; and beautiful grasslands and gardens were planted within the monastery walls. During the past few years, during Easter holidays, hundreds of young people from the island and the whole region come to Ćokovac, where they celebrate Easter in a special way.
The monastery is opened for visitors every day from 4 PM until 6 PM, except on Sunday.