Sâmbăta de Sus monastery
The Sâmbăta de Sus Monastery ( Romanian : Mănăstirea Sâmbăta de Sus ) is the most important Romanian Orthodox pilgrimage site in Transylvania . It is located near the village of Sâmbăta de Sus in the Brașov district , near the city of Făgăraș (Fogarasch) , directly on the northern foothills of the Transylvanian Alps . It goes back to a foundation of the voivod of Wallachia , Constantin Brâncoveanu , in 1697, but was dissolved under Habsburg rule in 1785 and fell into complete disrepair in the 19th century. The current monastery complex was later rebuilt in the old style and rededicated in 1993.
The monastery bears the patronage of the Assumption (Rum .: Adormirea Maicii Domnului ), since the founder Constantin Brâncoveanu died as a martyr on August 15th .
history
The Sâmbăta Monastery is located in the historic Fagaras region, a region in southern Transylvania that was not inhabited by the Transylvanian Saxons . Located between the Alt river and the Fagaras Mountains , this region was mostly populated by Romanians and therefore a center of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania. The extent to which a hermitage (Rum .: sihăstrie ) already existed on the site of today's monastery in the Middle Ages and early modern times is, however, controversial among historians. Pertinent assumptions are based on the person of the nobleman (voric) Ivașcu, who was the owner of the estate around Sâmbăta de Sus in the second half of the 16th century. However, the sources only became more compact in the 17th century, when Preda Brâncoveanu came into possession of the estate in 1654. It is believed that there was a wooden church there during his lifetime . In this context, a hermit named Athanasios is also mentioned, who is said to have settled here with seven students in 1655.
founding
When Austrian troops occupied Transylvania from 1686 after the second Turkish siege of Vienna and finally ended Ottoman suzerainty , a power struggle for denominational dominance ensued. The Habsburgs under Emperor Leopold I try to persuade the Orthodox Romanian population to renounce the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople and to recognize the supremacy of the Pope in Rome. At the same time, the Calvinist Hungarian nobility, for example under Michael I. Apafi and later Emmerich Thököly , endeavored to expand the influence of their denomination. In 1700 a large part of the Transylvanian Orthodox clergy under the Metropolitan of Alba Iulia , Atanasie Anghel, finally accepted a union with the Catholic Church and the Greek Catholic Church was formed , which retained the Byzantine rite , but was now united with Rome.
However, this met with the resistance of the then voivod of Wallachia, Constantin Brâncoveanu, who, as the grandson of Preda Brâncoveanu, was also the owner of goods north of the Carpathian Mountains, including the property around Sâmbăta. Around 1696 he had a stone and brick church built in Sâmbăta de Sus, which is considered the nucleus of the monastery. Due to the lack of original inscriptions, the existence of a monastery at this point is dated by a Triodion handed down from Buzău . In the Easter ritual book, according to the old Orthodox calendar, a monastery in Sâmbăta de Sus is mentioned for the year 7209 after the creation of the world (corresponds to the year 1701 AD).
In addition, Brâncoveanu promoted other monasteries in Transylvania to prevent their falling away from orthodoxy. Sâmbăta de Sus was to develop into the most important Orthodox monastery in the region. When Constantin Brâncoveanu started political negotiations with Austria and the Russian tsar, he aroused the suspicion of the Turks. He was arrested with his four sons and executed in Constantinople in 1714 . According to tradition, despite torture, he refused to give up his belief and convert to Islam . He is therefore considered a martyr in the Orthodox Church and was canonized in 1992.
Denominational power struggles
As a result, there were power struggles between the Uniate clergy and the Orthodox monastery in Sâmbăta, which was still under southern influence. The uniate dean of Fogarasch, Constantin Ioanovici, complained from 1751–1752 to the church consistory of Blaj about the abbot Visarion, who interfered in the affairs of the village priests. The uniate vicar of Blaj, Petru Pavel Aaron, then made a visitation trip to the Fagaras region and tried to convince both the local population and the village priests, but also the monks of the Sâmbăta monastery, to join the uniate church.
In 1761, during the reign of Maria Theresa as Princess of Transylvania, church unity was to be established by military means. The imperial general Bukow was given a list of Orthodox monasteries that were to be dissolved. In the Fagaras region, where Nikolaus (Miklós) Bethlen was responsible for carrying out the order, orthodox wooden churches were burned down and all non-Uniate monasteries were dissolved; only Sâmbăta was spared, probably through the intervention of the Brâncoveanu family, who still owned the village of Sâmbăta des Sus.
After that, however, the political and religious conflicts calmed down. In 1768, the United Bishop Athanasius Rednic made a visit to the region, during which he also visited the Sâmbăta monastery and met Abbot Visarion. He carried out renovation work on the monastery church with donations from boyars Nicolae and Manolache Brâncoveanu. The names of the fresco painters Ionașcu and Pană Mihai, who painted the Orthodox Church of Avrig (Freck) in addition to the Sâmbăta monastery, have also come down to us from this period .
Dissolution under Joseph II.
In 1772 the Brâncoveanu family lost the Sâmbăta des Sus estate due to high debts and could no longer hold their protective hand over the monastery. This had particular consequences when, after Maria Theresa's death, her son Joseph II took over rule in 1780. This radical reformer, influenced by the Enlightenment, granted full religious freedom to Orthodox believers for the first time in the Tolerance Patent in 1781 , but he was a staunch opponent of both Catholic and Orthodox monasteries. In the patent dated December 12, 1782, the Viennese court issued the order for the secularization of all monasteries and nunneries in the Habsburg Empire , which were only dedicated to the contemplative life and did not provide any social service to society. Despite Wallachian interventions, the monastery was finally dissolved in November 1785. Hegumenos Visarion, who had headed the monastery as abbot since 1746, had to resign, the buildings were abandoned and partially demolished. On his deathbed in 1790, Emperor Joseph II withdrew most of the laws of his anti-clerical policy , but the Sâmbăta monastery was abandoned.
Restoration attempts in the 19th century
After the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars , the orthodox nun Maria Borșoș from Fogarasch tried to rebuild the monastery in 1817 and asked Emperor Franz I in Vienna for financial support. However, the Transylvanian Court Chancellery invoked the patent from 1782 and recommended that the request not be granted. On November 15, 1817, the emperor in Vienna endorsed the proposal of the court chancellery and granted no funds. The remains of the monastery buildings continued to fall into disrepair. Later, Andrei Șaguna , the Orthodox Metropolitan of Transylvania, visited the ruins, but was unable to raise funds for repairs. However, a description of the parts of the building that still existed at the time was preserved through his visit.
In 1889 the former Metropolitan Vicar Ilarion Puşcariu visited the former monastery, which was now overgrown by forest. He described the substance of the monastery church still largely preserved, only the column entrance and the altar area were more heavily damaged. The Greek Catholic protonotary Ioan Turcu also visited the site and was able to decipher the fresco inscriptions from 1696 and from the time of the renovation in 1766. This information is only passed down through his notes and those of Andrei Șaguna, as the frescoes later continued to deteriorate. The Romanian writer and historian Nicolae Iorga also visited the ruins at the turn of the century.
Renovation in the Kingdom of Romania
After the First World War and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , Transylvania came to the Kingdom of Romania . In the course of the land reform of 1922, the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan of Sibiu was awarded the former lands of the Brâncoveanu family around Sâmbăta de Sus. Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan, who wanted to revive the monastic tradition in Transylvania, advocated the rebuilding of the monastery. Renovation work on the monastery church began in the summer of 1926, but was delayed by the global economic crisis that followed. The work could only be completed after the Second World War . The church was consecrated again on August 15, 1946, shortly before King Michael I was deposed , who is therefore the second founder of the monastery and whose portrait is immortalized as a fresco in the entrance area of the church. However, the communists' seizure of power in the country in 1947 prevented further expansion of the monastery. From 1940 to 1949 the theologian and painter Arsenie Boca was abbot (rum .: stareț ) of the monastery.
The monastery in the communist era
In the first phase of communism in Romania, the regime was heavily centered on Moscow and promoted atheism , if not as intensely as in the Soviet Union . In 1959, Decree 410 meant that most of the monks in Sâmbăta and throughout the country had to leave their monastery. The repressions against religion were later relaxed, and renovation work could be carried out again between 1962 and 1963. When Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power in 1965 , religious policy changed again. Ceaușescu swung more and more on a strongly Romanian-nationalist course and therefore began to promote the Romanian Orthodox Church, while the Greek Catholic Church in particular was suppressed more and more severely. During this time, the renovation work of the existing buildings was pushed ahead and the monastery complex was rounded off by the construction of additional buildings. Under the patronage of Antonie Plămădeală, Metropolitan of Transylvania, careful attention was paid to building everything in the historical Brâncoveanu style .
The work was partially interrupted by the Romanian Revolution in 1989 , but the construction work was finally completed in 1993 and the monastery was re-inaugurated.
photos
Gate to the monastery district
Exterior view
Old monastery church
Entrance gate
Cloister
patio
Healing fountain
Iconostasis of the old church
Interior of the new church
Web links
- Website of the monastery (Romanian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Teodora Ionas: Manastirea Sambata de Sus at produsin.ro ( Memento from April 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (October 28, 2009, Romanian)
- ↑ sambatadesus.ro: Mânăstirii Brâncoveanu , tourist website (Romanian)
- ↑ a b Mănăstirea Brancoveanu: Istoricul mânăstirii Brâncoveanu , Romanian
- ↑ Andreas von Schaguna: History of the Greek-Oriental Church in Oestreich , translated by Z. Boiu and J. Popescu, printed by Josef Drotleff, Hermannstadt, 1862 (page 54, point 6: The monastery of Obersambata )
Coordinates: 45 ° 41 ′ 24.5 ″ N , 24 ° 47 ′ 40.9 ″ E