SUCEVIŢA Monastery Adress:   Suceviţa commune, Suceava County. Dedication day:   The Lord’s Ascension - Easter.

The first foundation of Movila family, which was made before the current monastic establishment, was a smaller church, dating from around 1581. Under the rule of Petru Schiopul (1582-1591), the Movila brothers, having become the prince’s councilors and growing more affluent, started the construction of the vast monastery. The first structure of the establishment was the church, built between 1582-1584.

The Sucevita Monastery is located on the Sucevita rivulet valley, into the village with the same name, 18 kilometers southwest from Radauti town. The Monastery was built in the last decades of the 16th century at the expense of the whole Movila family (one of whom, Ieremia, ruled in Moldavia between 1595-1606). After his enthronement as the ruler of Moldavia in 1595, Ieremia Movila extended the church with two little porches by the church entrance, on the northern and southern sides. Ieremia Movila added the enclosing walls with towers, making the monastery like a medieval fortress.

A princely house’s ruins are still visible on the northern side of establishment, as well as cells for the monks. In that time the interior and exterior painting of the church have been done. The church, dedicated to the “Resurrection of Lord Jesus”, was built in the Moldavian architecture style which was consolidated under the rule of Prince Stephen the Great and Saint. Actually there is a harmonious blending of elements of Byzantine and Gothic art, extended with architectural elements of the old wooden churches in Moldavia. A characteristic of the painting at Sucevita it its prevailing narrative feature, as it presents complete cycles of the lives of such saints as : St. Pachomius, St. John the New of Suceava, St. Hierarch Nicholas, St. Martyr George, the Life of Moses, etc., depicted for educative purposes. The painters craft and gift are obvious especially in the treatment of elaborate perspectives, of the post-Byzantine artistic space in this part of Europe. The fresco painting was done by two Moldavian painters, Ioan Zugravul and his brother, Sofronie and it is preserved in its original form. The iconography of the interior and exterior painting sticks to the tradition developed in the early half of the 16th century - the time of Petru Rares. It also introduces some new themes, of a dogmatic-theological nature, such as the scenes in the nave shell, representing the liturgical hymn “Thou, One Born…” and other representations of the Holy Trinity. The votive painting, featuring the whole family of Ieremia Movila, unfolds on the left side of the nave door; on the opposite side there is the other votive painting, featuring Metropolitan Gheorghe Movila, who started the building of the church, as well as the father of the Movila brothers, Ioan Movila, who, before turning monk, in his old years, by the name of Ioanichie, had been a high chancellor. The nave painting features “The life of Jesus Christ the Savior- the Miracles and Passions”. The exterior painting of the Sucevita Monastery is the best preserved one of the group of Moldavian churches with exterior painting the only one that preserves its northern side, where “The Ladder of Virtues” is represented the most impressive scene, due to its wide scale and to the contrast between the order of the angels and the chaos of the hell. The scene features the fight between the good and the evil, man’s effort to step up toward perfection, in order to regain his figure, lost through sin. On the walls of the three apses, in seven registers, there unfolds “The Prayer of All Saints”, a singular theme n the Christian Orthodox art, a creation of the Moldavian painting school.  The southern side is decorated with “The Stem of Jesse” which is based on the ancient philosophers, “The Annunciation Hymn”, “The Burning Bush” and “The Veil of the Virgin Mary”. The mural painting at Sucevita, considered by French art researcher Paul Henry to be “the testament of the Moldavian Art”, rounds off the era of the great creations-the 16th century- whose monuments of exterior painting at Humor, Moldovita, Arbore and Voronet, represent masterpieces of the world art. In the burial chamber rest in peace the two brothers and princes, Ieremia and princes, Ieremia and Simion Movila, whose tombstones, carved in Romanian marble of Ruschita, represent artistic values of the Romanian medieval sculpture. The Sucevita Monastery possesses a collection of objects of real artistic and cultural value, on display in the current museum, formerly the monastery’s council chamber, on the western side of the precincts. Among the exhibits, outstanding are several embroideries of an exceptional value, dating from the 15th-16th centuries, from the time of Stephen the Great and Ieremia Movila, made in gold, silver, silk and pearls. The most important pieces are the portraits of Ieremia and Simion Movila and an epitaph with pearls, the Four Gospels in gilded silver binding, a casket donated by Metropolitan Gheorghe Movila. The iconostasis or the shrine screen that separates the sanctuary from the nave was carved in yew, in the baroque-rococo style, in 1801. In the cultural-artistic ensemble of the Sucevita Monastery, the visitor anxious to know the medieval art of the 15th-16th centuries finds also wood and stone carvings, embroideries, illuminated manuscripts and silver objects. Thanks to its complex value and especially to its cultural religious educative role, the fame of the Sucevita Monastery has long gone beyond the country’s frontiers. This splendid gem of the Romanian Orthodoxy stands finely among the world culture masterpieces. The Sucevita Monastery, that has for four centuries stood proof, by the mountain foot, to the Romanians ancestral belief and history, will endure over more centuries, keeping alive the torch of the Romanian Orthodox spirituality.