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The Three Hierarchs Monastery is the most impressive church in Iași, erected by voivode Vasile Lupu between 1637-1639.
The name is given by the three great priests of the Byzantine Empire in the 4th century – Basil the Great (from Caesarea of Cappadocia), Gregory the Theologist (of Nazianzus) and John Chrysostom. The Church’s plane and volumetric are the Moldavian ones typical for the 16th century: the building’s thin shape, the presence of the three lateral apses shaped as a cross, the over-posed vaults at the base of the octagonal towers and the tower’s tambour shaped as a star in 16 corners, symbol of the voivode crown, placed on a square base.
The edifice’s uniqueness is given by the exterior sculpted as a wonderful stone lace. The decorations are organized on 30 different horizontal stripes: niches, Russian colonettes, small Oriental porticos with accolade archways and different embedded flowers, Persian vases, Georgian or Armenian geometric motifs or the lily flower. The influence of Transylvanian Gothic is visible at the abutments, at the stone reinforcements of the windows, at the door framings cross cornices.
The inside original painting was completely remade in 1889, bringing new elements. The iconostasis was changed in the same period with one sculpted in Carrara marble and adorned with mosaïcs and enamels. In the pronaos there are funerary niches of Vasile Lupu’s family (left) and of Princes Dimitrie Cantemir and Alexandru Ioan Cuza (right), thing which makes this church to be a true pantheon of national history. In the nave, there is an altar initially destined for the relics of St. Parascheva, brought by Vasile Lupu in 1641, with marble niche adorned with mosaics. These represent aspects of the Saint’s life and the bringing of her relics from Constantinople to Iași. A powerful fire which damaged on the 26th of December 1818 the refectory which was temporarily sheltering the Saint’s coffin determined their permanent move to the Metropolitan Cathedral in 1889. In the beginning, the part in relief of the church was fully covered in gold foil, and the intermediate spaces in cobalt blue. It is said that the Turks would have set the church on fire to get the gold, but this thing couldn’t have been scientifically proven.
Inside the monastery, the first superior school of Greek and Paleo-Slavonic was founded in 1640, later on called the “Vasiliană Academy”, where the first book in Romanian was printed in Moldavia (“Varlaam’s Sermon”). The monastic ensemble also comprises the Gothic Museum or the Gothic Hall named this way after the interior vaults in pointed arch, marked by stone ribs. The bust of the poet Mihai Eminescu, who lived here for a while, was erected in the yard.
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The long road of Saint Paracheva’s relics to Iași
For the first time, the saint’s relics were placed in the St. Apostles Church in Epivat, in the east of today’s Bulgaria, where they accomplished many miracles. In 1238, they were moved to Târnovo, after which to Belgrade in 1396, and in 1521 they were placed in the Pammakaristos Church in Istanbul, transformed afterwards into a mosque. In 1639, the Prince of Moldavia, Vasile Lupu, built the Three Hierarchs Monastery and wished to endow his foundation with the Saint Parascheva’s relics. he received them as a sign of gratitude in 1641, after having pad the debts of the Constantinople Patriarchate. The moment of depositing the coffin at Three Hierarchs Church is displayed on a mosaic inside the church, where the Prince of Moldavia is depicted next to the boyar suite and the clerics.
4. Église Princière de Saint Nicolas