The monastery was established after the Christianization of Bulgaria in the 9th century during the reign of Boris I (r. 852–889). It was destroyed in 971 by the Byzantines when they seized Preslav in the aftermath of the Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria and was repeatedly plundered and devastated by the Pechenegs and the Cumans in the 11th and 12th centuries during the Byzantine rule of Bulgaria. According to researchers, the monastery was an important literary centre during the First Bulgarian Empire and of the most important sites of the Preslav Literary School, there the disciples of the Saints Cyril and Methodius, Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav had worked.