Dragomirna
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The Dragomirna Monastery, built during the first three decades of the 17th century, 15 km from Suceava, in the Dragomirna village, part of Mitocu Dragomirnei commune. It is the tallest medieval monastery in Bucovina, renowned for its intricate architectural details, mostly carved into stone. It lies among mild and forest-clad hills, where we can hardly notice that the fir-trees mingle with oak-trees. The history of the monastery started in 1602, when the small church in the graveyard was built and dedicated to Saints Enoch, Elijah and John the Theologian and continued in 1609, with the dedication of the larger church to the "Descending of the Holy Spirit". Like in no other foundation, there is no votive inscription at Dragomirna.
The year in which it was built and the names of the founders were discovered only after study of the documents of the time. The founders were the same as for the small church in the graveyard, the scholar, artist and Metropolitan Anastasie Crimca, the high chancellor Lupu Stroici and his brother, the treasurer Simion Stroici. Born in Suceava as the son of merchant Ioan Crimca and of the princess Carstina, Anastasie became a monk at the Putna monastery when he was young. There he would build up his personality as a prelate, patriot, and scholar and, above all, as an artist, that showed through his whole life. He acceded to the highest ranks in the Orthodox Church and became, in 1608, the Metropolitan of Moldavia. During the summer of 1600, he took the oath of faith to Michael the Brave (also known as Mihai Viteazu), who entered the princely seat of Moldavia without fighting and succeeded in joining together the three Romanian lands for the first time.
According to the inscription above the bell tower, in 1627, during the rule of Miron Barnovschi, because of the frequent invasions by the Turks and Tatars, the establishment was endowed by the prince with a defensive wall, which make it look like a fortress. In the four corners there are narrow square towers. On the western and northern sides there are the cells, built between 1843 and 1846 and transformed on the occasion of the general reconstruction. Inside the precincts, on the right side of the entrance, there is the vaulted refectory, built in the Gothic style, which now shelters the Dragomirna museum of old art. The large church's plan is a much-elongated rectangle, without side apses and it impresses mostly by its magnificence. It seems to be built up to defy the heights, to look for more light; it seems to be a mysterious prayer soaring from the bottom of one's heart towards the holy sky.
"Seeing it is a joyful surprise" wrote the great historian Nicolae Iorga. "It's a tall and narrows like a fine casket with holy relics; an architectural jewel which adorns the ancient woods of Bucovina". The church is mostly built of raw, unpolished stone, except for the pillars, which end with buttresses made of polished stone. At the windows, one may see Gothic-style frets with intersected bars, and high up, under the cornice, there are two bands of friezed arcatures. The church is encircled with a stone belt of three alternately woven bands. This belt, a symbol of the Holy Trinity, also contains an allegorical message from the bishop, who lived to see the union of the Romanian-speaking peoples accomplished by Michael the Brave: to urge the coming generations to guide the national and faith unity through the Holy Church.
The tower of the church, very tall and slender, decorated throughout, gives a vertical appearance to the whole building; the total height, up to the Cross, is 42 meters. The sculptures decorating the tower represent a vast repertoire of ornamental motifs, geometrical and vegetal - which is uncommon for the epoch of Michael the Brave and Petru Rareş. The interior consists of the following spaces: the portico, the bema, the nave and the altar. The portico is elevated above the churchyard and then, from the portico to the altar, there are seven steps which enhance the feeling of ascent and create a difference of value among the chambers of the church. The element that arrests the attention is the lace of ribs that cover the vaults, a western Gothic procedure, which however evinces here the artistic interpretation of the Metropolitan himself. Likewise, there is almost no surface on the vault, a single arch or an intersection of walls not to be underlined by motif of the braided rope. Dragomirna has no funerary chamber; but there are five tombs in the portico and one in the bema, which, in all probability, may be that of the main founder himself, the pious metropolitan Anastasie Crimca.
The church at Dragomirna is decorated with splendid frescoes, but they are to be found only in the altar and the nave; no one knows whether the bema and the portico were also painted and the painting vanished over the years. The paintings represent yet another innovative element, a new way of choosing and dealing with the themes, but also new painting techniques, strictly connected to iconographic and miniature art. The Dragomirna museum is the repository of precious evidences of the Romanian medieval civilization: embroideries, bookbindings fitted with gilded silver, most of them made by Grigore Moisiu, crosses carved in cedar and ebony, the candle that was lit on the occasion of the dedication of the Big Church, the Homiliary of Metropolitan Varlaam, gold and silver embroidered garments, other ecclesiastical objects and sacerdotal attire.
At Dragomirna, the metropolitan Anastasie Crimca started school for a miniaturists and calligraphers, which became "a last blossoming and glittering of the Romanian art of miniature".[1] There are still five manuscripts of the school of Dragomirna kept in the old museum of the monastery: two copies of The Four Gospels, two missals and a psalter, copied and illustrated by Anastasie Crimca and his disciples, which demonstrate the originality and the talent of the Moldavian miniaturists. As a centre of Christian and ancient culture in the Romanian past, the Dragomirna monastery guards within its walls a great part of the artistic treasure of this land, as a living evidence of the agitated Moldavian past, the love for beauty and skillfulness of the people of these places.
The Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit is unique in all of Romania for its unusual proportions. It is by far the tallest and narrowest church ever built. Its walls are not painted, but decorated with stone carvings. In 1609 Bishop Crimca had built a the church, with the aid of Great Chancellor Luca Stroici. The church, dedicated to the Descent of the Holy Spirit, is incomparably taller, unique not only to Moldavia, but also to all of Romania, and even to the whole Orthodox world. The relation between the width, length and height of the church is most unusual. The church is nine metres wide, which is an average width, but the height of more than 40 metres up to the top of the lantern tower, makes it seem extremely narrow. The church gives the impression of being a ship, the old symbol of the Christian Church. The façades are built of rough yellow sandstone.
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