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BISERICANI MONASTERY

19 February 2015 No Comment

IMG_4990_resizeThe monastery is located on Mount Pietrosu, at 650 m altitude, 12 km from Piatra Neamt. Access is by car on DN15, Piatra Neamt – Bicaz. Starting from Piatra Neamt, after about 7 km, on the right, way, up, (5 km) is paved, has many switchbacks and leave the traveler`s eyes to admire the exquisite beauty of Bistrita Valley.

Bisericani Monastery, founded by Bogdan Voda III, Prince of Moldavia (1504 – 1517) was built between 1508 -1512 on the foundation of a wooden church, dedicated to the Annunciation, built by the hermit Joseph and his disciples came from the Jordan desert. The wooden Church of Joseph (hermitage Bisericani) was burned and plundered in 1498 by the Tatars. After burning the church, Joseph and his disciples have decided to go to Mount Athos, but the departure to Athos was stop by a miraculous event by the appearing of Holy Mother of God, in an oak. In the reign of Stefanita Voda (1517-1527), grandson of Stephen the Great,  the monks at Bisericani succeedes, with its help, to raise a more enduring sanctuary of stone. . The monastery church has the footprint of changes made ​​by Petru Rares (1527 – 1538 and 1541 -1546) in the year 1535. The flowering that hermitage had reached in the eighteenth century, did it to become a convent. After Cuza’s land reform in 1864, the monastery enters a decline decreasing the number of its inhabitants. In 1885, King Charles I (1866- 1914) transforms it into a prison. In 1911 was founded a home for people suffering from tuberculosis who subsequently became TB Sanatorium. Extending the hospital, most of the monks left, the monastery regaining in 1920, hermitage belonging to the monastery Bistrita. From what once was, only a deserted church remained and the remembering of the old times, in which, those long ago put a lot of zeal and Christian feeling.The hospital ensemble still retains today, outside the church, and other items whose monumental aspect can be a valuable clue in assessing the pattern of the former monastery. The Big tower from the southwest corner, though it was horizontaly broken during consolidation from the year 1990, impresses with its thick walls, through the presence external buttresses and massiveness. In the former assembly of the monastery Bisericani in the year 1998, on the place that appeared to Joseph Mother of God, they built a chapel dedicated to The Veil of Mother of God  which includes the oak trunk, consecrated in 1999, on 3rd of October, at the anniversary of 500 years after the miraculous event.

Here is kept The Miraculous Icon of The Holy Oak.

See the accommodation possibilities from Neamt County

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