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The Monastery of Dragomirna
 

Surrounded of hills to the soft and very wooded slopes, or them fir trees intermingle with the oaks, located at 12 km of the old capital of Moldavia Suceava, rises the monastery of Dragomirna.

The history of the monastery starts in 1602 with the construction of small church of the cemetery, dedicated to the saints Enoh, Elie and holy Jean it theologist; it continues by the dedication, 1609 of the large church having for votive festival "the illumination leaves the Holy Spirit".

Contrary to the habit of the time, in Dragomirna there is not of votive inscription.

The year of the construction of the monastery and the names of its builders have summer discovered following the study of the documents of the time.

Builders were the scholar artist and métropolite Anastasie Crimca, the logothète Lupu Stroici and the brother of this one, the treasurer Simion Stroici. Originating in Suceava, wire of the merchant Ioan Crimca and the noble one Carstina, the Anastasie young person takes the dress with the Monastery of Putna.

It that it was going to form its personality is expressed here later in all the activity of its life of hiérarque, patriotic, man of culture and especially artist.

After having climbed all the levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it in 1608 Métropolite of Moldavia became.

In 1600 it lent to oath of fidelity to Michel the Brave man, entered without combat in the Moldavian capital the voïvode linked for the first time the three Rumanian countries.

The inscription of the bell-tower mentions that in 1627, during the reign of Miron Barnovshi, following the increasingly frequent invasion of the Turkish armies and Tartars, the building was surrounded by a wall which gives him the aspect of a fortress. With the four corners narrow towers rise square. In the enclosure, of the entry to be on the right the old one Gothic refectory with the vaults which shelters the museum of art today old of Dragomirna.

The plan of the large church rectangular is very lengthened, without apses side, impressing especially by its size. Defying the heights the church springs towards the light it is an architectural jewel which decorates drills secular of Bucovine.

The church is built in its greater part out of rough stones; only the pilasters finished by buttresses are cut.
The windows have crossed rod framings, of invoice Gothic; under the cornice two lines of blind arcades with planks are. In the medium a stone cord with three interlaced arms which symbolize Holy Trinity.

Thus the métropolite pilot builder of the union achieved by Michel the Brave man exhorted his successors to preserve by the intermediary church the unit of the nation and faith.

The tower of the very high and slender, entirely covered church ornaments confers an aspect of verticality on all the building, its height total I usqu' have the cross is of 42m.
 

The carved decoration of the tower includes/understands a rich person range of reasons decorative, geometrical and floral, representing an innovation by report/ratio with the style of the time of Etienne the Large one and of Pétrus Rare.

The interior of the church is composed of a gallery, a pronaos, a naos, and the saint furnace bridge.

The gallery located above the level of the court, since the gallery I usqu' with saint furnace bridge seven steps accentuate the tendency to rise, separate compartments of the church.

The element which draws the attention of the entry is the network of veins covering the vaults specific to Western gothic script, but adapted according to the taste of Métropolite. The reason braided cord underlines almost all surfaces of the vault, as well as the arcs and the corners.

Dragomirna does not a death chamber, in the gallery it y however five tombs, while in the pronaos a sixth shelters some belonging according to all probabilities' to the principal builder, it Métropolite Anastasie Crimca.

The church of the monastery has splendid frescos in the saint furnace bridge and the naos; have does not know if the pronaos and the gallery were also painted and if painting it is unobtrusive with the length of the centuries.

To realize by the painters Cracium, Ignat, Maties and Gligories, painting constitutes one another element of innovation; by the choice of the colors of the matter of which topics approached like by the new means used, concerned with the iconography and of the miniature.

The museum of the monastery of Dragomirna preserves invaluable temoigniages of Rumanian civilization medieval: embroidery, books crimped in vermeil by Grigore Moisiu, crosses carved out of wood of ebony or cedar, the candle lit at the time of the dedication of the large church, Cazania - delivers sermons writes by Métropolite Varlaam, of the clothes out of silk embroidered of wire of gold and money and another object of worship.

In Dragomirna Métropolite Anastasie Crimca founded a school of miniaturists and copyists. Works create has the school of Dragomirna attest originality and the talent of the Moldavian miniaturists
 

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