Monastery From a Wood, Valea Oltului

Monastery From a Wood - details and images

It is located about 25 km south of the city of Ramnicu Valcea and 12 km north of Babeni, Otasaului valley in the village Francesti. According to ancient local traditions, can be traced in the first decades of the sixteenth century, by building this place of rolling a single oak. It was built in honor of the Virgin Mary Icon, the icon that keeps the stone in the monastery church. Based on this tradition of monastic settlement here called Out of a timber.

The oldest monastery testimony was recorded in writing by Deacon Paul of Aleppo, who accompanied the Patriarch Macarius of Antioch in his travels through the Romanian countries between 1653-1658. He said that a monk would have found an icon of the Virgin Mary in the hollow of an ancient oak. At that moment he heard a voice that would be urged to build a monastery in the trunk of that tree.

Metropolitan of Wallachia, Neophyte Cretan monastery researching on July 29, 1745 wrote: "A shepherd named Radu Voda during the reign of Alexander (1568-1577), he dreamed about Icon of the Mother of God reminds Paul of Aleppo and cutting timber in which icon was found, made of wood of a church named for this reason From a Wood. "

Said the same thing in 1842 and poet Grigore Alexandrescu. The existence of secular oaks, and the icon, it is today the undisputed evidence for the truths enshrined in legend.

Built on the very spot icon bearing oak, probably in the middle of the sixteenth century wooden church is made of thick beams, concluded dovetail. The form dreptunchiulara, unhooked the altar apse, with a total length of 13 m, width 5.50 m and a height of about 4 m. It is surrounded with an outer waist torsade, carved in wood thickness, with a porch open, without a steeple.

The iconostasis, carved in lime wood in 1814, is a true work of art as well as many of the icons that adorn the wood inside the church.

Icon of Our Lady which is related to the existence of this holy monastic settlement, is kept with great veneration in the great church. It is impressive, being tall and 1.50 m wide by 1.10 m. In 1929, Andrei Grabar of the University of Strasbourg and visited the monastery, studying the icon, identified it as being painted in the fourth century Theothokos monastery in Greece, after a model which is said to have belonged to the Apostle Luke, who painted for the first time the Virgin Mary. According to tradition, the world still keeps three copies of the Monastery From such a timber.

Professor I.D. Stefanescu said that the icon was painted, but only in the second half of the sixteenth century. According a.m. Muzicescu icon should be worked before 1453, from Byzantium or Mount Athos, using an older model. The latter is the most plausible hypothesis, but the way the icon has come to us remains unknown.

From a Monastery Wood beginnings are linked, as we saw, some traditions or legends that undoubtedly preserve a part of the truth. First document that appears here bears the name of the monastic compound 20 April 1635.

In another written testimony on 27 November 1640, Matthew Basarab says he built the Monastery of isnoava de'ntemei. He strings among the monasteries they founded.

Inscription of the church wall, located above the main entrance, which dates from 1715, written at the behest of Stefan Cantacuzino (1714-1716), confirms those found in the document of 1640, namely: that the church wall was built by Matei Basarab. In fact pomelnicul monastery and written by Dionysius, Metropolitan of Bucharest Ecclesiarch 1804, after the one in 1715 attest to tab him as the founder number 6 Matthew Basarab.

Everything starts with Matei Basarab in 1845 and written by George pomelnicul Gherontie at Hurezi, the original document, found in the collection manatirii. However, Paul of Aleppo, who visited the monastery, as I mentioned above, during the years 1653-1658, so about 20 years after the foundation stone of the church, added to those recorded of tradition and written documents to local then that the monastery is built by a nobleman and a contemporary high backrest Matei Basarab.

Paul confirmed at the basis of Aleppo and in more recent documents, Radu Creteanu afima as "author of the second phase construction of the Monastery From a timber, a complex of stone buildings and church which is part of the wall can not be Preda Brancoveanu other than himself, and was higher than Culcer backrest, great magistrate, future money. "

The fact that some documents attesting Matthew Basarab him as founder of the stone church and others Preda Brancoveanu should not confuse the researcher. It is possible that this building to attend both the ruler, and his relative, the great nobleman Brancoveanu Preda. This picture is confirmed by the founders of the stone church narthex.

Today's church architecture outlines Matei Basarab. In terms of church architecture of the wall is triconic plan with octagonal sanctuary, narthex and ends with a porch on pillars. Besides the icon of the Holy Virgin, the monastery is about the past, retained the two chandeliers of Serban Cantacuzino and Mrs. Marica Brancoveanu kingly three large icons, as well as 36 other smaller icons painted in the years 1833-1840 by George Gherontie at Hurezi. In 1715 Stefan Cantacuzino fully restored monastery bell tower, located inside the main entrance of the Royal House.

After its restoration in 1938-1940, made by the Ministry of Air and Marine, the whole monastery became a symbolic shrine of worship for pilots and sailors.

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