In a message to the participants at a Symposium organised last week by Voroneț Monastery and the Archdiocese of Suceava and Radauti, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel said that the monastery, which was enlisted as UNESCO world heritage site 30 years ago, is a blessed gift from God and serves as “identity card of the beauty of the soul of the Romanian people.”
The Symposium that took place on May 26 marked 535 years since the beginning of the construction of the monastery.
The international symposium gathered specialists and researchers from different fields of activity, who offered their perspectives on topics related to the era of St Stephan the Great or the history of Voroneț Monastery.
Voroneț Monastery – a symbol of the Romanian soul
Voroneț Monastery is a blessed gift from God not only for the land of Bukovina, with its ancient monasteries and churches, with holy princes, hierarchs and venerable saints, who kept the unity of the people and its apostolic faith but also a blessed gift from God for the entire Romanian nation.
A foundation of the Holy Prince Stephen the Great (1457-1504), the church of Voroneț Monastery dedicated to the Great Martyr George marks this year its 535th anniversary since it was built in 1488 over the course of three months and three weeks.
Included on the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage along with seven other painted churches in northern Moldavia 30 years ago (1993), the church of Voroneț Monastery enjoys an outstanding reputation among medieval church art admirers, owing primarily to its exterior frescoes.
Although elements of exterior painting can also be found fragmentarily in other churches in the Orthodox area or even in the Christian West, the extensive Moldavian exterior painting is not a borrowed phenomenon but was created and developed in this space imprinted by the faith and spirituality of the monastics and the Orthodox lay believers.
The exterior painting of Voroneț Monastery obviously also has a decorative artistic role, but it cannot be reduced to an artistic, aesthetic act. It is primarily a means of confessing faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate, the Head of the Church and the Saviour of the world. The saints’ portraits depicted on the church walls call us to prayer and guide us to the Kingdom of Heaven; they are our teachers and intercessors.
The exterior painting of Voroneț Monastery represents the apogee or most significant achievement of Moldavian church pictorial art in the 16th century.
We congratulate and bless the organisers of the “Voroneţ, 535 years since its foundation” symposium, which pays tribute to this holy place from Bukovina, a valuable monument of Romanian Orthodox art and spirituality, an identity card of the beauty of the soul of the Romanian people.
† Daniel
Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church
Photography courtesy of the Basilica.ro Files
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