Moldova has their own version of George Washington, and his name was Stephan cel Mare or Stephan the Great (Prince and Saint). He lived about 1450-1500 and fought to keep Moldova independent of the many other empires in the area. As you can guess, he fought a lot of battles, and he actually won a lot of them. As I understand it, after each battle that he won he would build a church or monastery in Moldova. So as a result there are a lot of (very beautiful) churches and monasteries dotting the country.
This is the first one we visited:
There was a modern church with an older one behind it being restored. Some volunteers, myself included, went into the basement/sanctuary of the older one to find some sort of a service in progress. The nuns there were singing in a choir, the music was very beautiful, and people were lighting candles in the dim light under paintings of saints. I was able to catch a couple of pictures of the nuns. I'm not sure what the difference in their habits are, but I think it is the older women who wear the ones in the second picture.
Also, if you happened to forget to wear a skirt that day, you could borrow one from where they were selling headscarves. Our language professor said that women are supposed to wear headscarves in order to discourage them from wearing fancy hairstyles at church.
The second monastery we visited was very nice. Here we met up with some guys from the capital (that spoke English) and told us they biked out there that day. I'm not sure where this monastery was, so I'm not sure how long of a bike ride it was, but good on them. Here I was able to snap a picture of some priests or monks, not entirely sure which they are. This monastery also had beautiful art inside.
This is the last one we visited and was also the one with the least amount of reconstruction done to it. You can see some scaffolding on the right side of the first picture. The second picture is of a nun manning the shop. Most monasteries here has some sort of a little shop where people can buy candles to light, cross necklaces, holy water, pictures of saints and the such.
Outside the grounds were a little worse for wear. It looked like not much landscaping had been done in a while here, while the first two monasteries had very lovely gardens. There was also one lonely headstone; I can't help but wonder who it belongs to.
There was also a gazebo/well with some art painted on the ceiling. You can see Mary holding baby Jesus. Now what I think is interesting is that Renaissance painters would paint children with adult proportions (whereas in real life babies have giant heads, just ask any woman who has given birth, they'll attest to this). In this picture you can see that baby Jesus has these adult proportions. Also in the gazebo we were given bread by some random guy who then walked off (we did eat the bread, we were all pretty hungry by then) and got a history lesson from a random theology student, who confirmed that this monastery was from the Renaissance era.
A lot of the churches and monasteries in Moldova are under reconstruction. During the Soviet era they were either boarded up and left abandoned or used for some other purpose. I can understand how some aspects of communism might work in theory, but I'll never understand why some people think it is okay to strip others of their religions and individuality.
Alright, so here you have some gorgeous pictures. Enjoy.
2 comments:
These are soo pretty. I love the art work. Is there a guy slaying a dragon in one of the murals?
Yup, but I think it's supposed to represent the devil.
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