Arbore
Encyclopedia
Arbore is a commune located in Suceava County
Suceava County
Suceava is a county of Romania, in the historical region of Moldavia and few villages in Transylvania, with the capital city at Suceava.- Demographics :...

, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. It is composed of three villages: Arbore, Bodnăreni and Clit.

Church of Arbore

Arbore is best known for its church, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. Its painted church
Painted churches of northern Moldavia
The Churches of Moldavia are eight Romanian Orthodox churches in Suceava County, Romania in northern Moldavia, built approximately between 1487 and 1583.Since 1993, they have been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site...

 was the first Moldavian painted church to be included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The monastery and the commune are named after the boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....

 Luca Arbore who built the church in 1503. The construction of the church was completed in about 5 months. Its exterior paintings date from 1541 and were made by Dragoş Coman. Painting the church took about 40 years.

Conservation state of outside paintings

The outside paintings on the western wall are the most well preserved, as opposed to those on the northern facade, which suffered extensive weather-related damage. This damage arose mostly because the church roof was plundered by marauding Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

troops and melted in order to make bullets (the original roof was made of lead).

Church interior

Due to its more modest dimensions, the inside of the church consists of only 3 chambers: pronaos, naos and altar. The burial chamber seen in other Moldavian churches (gropnita) is merged with the pronaos. It contains the tombs of hetman Luca Arbore and his family.
The inside painting also includes two votive paintings, depicting hetman Arbore and his family offering the church to God through the intercession of Saint John the Baptist. The reason for having two (rather than one) votive paintings is not clear, although some speculate that they were necessary to depict all children in the boyar's numerous family (even so, some are still not included).
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK