Arbore Monastery

The legend of ARBORE Monastery is very interesting making it the most mysterious of all the monasteries in Bucovina.

Boyar Luca Arbore was the closest adviser of Voivode Stephan the Great and is famous for having been the Gate Keeper of Suceava (the head of the army and responsible for defending the Princely Court and the country capital). After buying several estates near Radauti, he took the liberty to have a church raised, although the building of such constructions was generally regarded as the attribute of voivodes. The village and the church (started in April 1503) took over the name of the landlord: Arbore. The church was dedicate dot the Beheading of St.John the Baptizer. It was a dedication of ill omen, but boyar Luca Arbore didn’t know it.

The death of Stephan the Great was the beginning of hard times for boyar Arbore. The grandson of Stephan the Great, Stephan the 5th ascended to the throme at the age of 11 and the State Council decided to set up a regency. Consequently, due to his moral authority boyar Arbore was entrusted to run the affairs of Moldova. But on the order of this child-voivode old boyar Luca Arbore was accused of high treason and beheaded together with his sons Teodor and Nichita, in April 1523.

The church paintings narrate the tragic story: murders, foreboding dreams and miracles.

The mural paintings were made almost forty years after its building, owing to a relative of boyar Arbore who had adorned the church with frescoes on her own expense. The paintings have been miraculously saved from destruction since the church lacked its roof for more than a hundred years. Anyway a great surface of outside paintings has fallen into disrepair. The church paintings narrate the tragic story: murders, foreboding dreams and miracles. The mural paintings were made almost forty years after its building, owing to a relative of boyar Arbore who had adorned the church with frescoes on her own expense. The paintings have been miraculously saved from destruction since the church lacked its roof for more than a hundred years. Anyway a great surface of outside paintings has fallen into disrepair.

Inside the church, in one of the corners of pronaos we could see the evangelist Luca, the patron saint of the unlucky founder Arbore. The murder is suggested by the votive picture in the funeral niche of pronaos. It shows Luca Arbore accompanied by his wife Iuliana and two of their children. In the other votive picture in the nave the artist painted all the five children of Luca Arbore. What would be the explanation of this inadvertence? The painting in the pronaos is a funeral one and is intended to remind us of the murder committed in 1523. The two sins in the picture are Teodor and Nichita. The clothes are those worn by the Moldavian boyars of that time: Luca Arbore is dressed in embroidered silk tunic and a sumptuous mantle with fur collar, and his wife Iuliana wears a Polish large brim hat and an orange costume with heavy embroideries.

Sheltered by a huge niche, the paintings on the western façade have been preserved almost unaltered. Only on the upper part of the wall the bad weather conditions has deteriorated fragments of the fresco, during the years when the church lacked the roof. Ana Arbore who ordered the paintings insisted on a spectacular scenic setting and less usual subjects. Looking from the distance the western façade seems a huge manuscript adorned with miniatures.