Nicula Monastery

Nicula Monastery is an Orthodox monastery for monks, dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, on the hill by the village of Nicula, Fizeșu Gherlii commune, about 5 km south-east of Gherla, in Cluj County. It is one of the main pilgrimage sites of northern Transylvania. The monastery grew up around the icon of the Virgin and Child painted in 1681 by the priest Luca of Iclod. According to the inquiry held at the time, the icon wept between 15 February and 12 March 1699, and the place became a pilgrimage site. It was a Greek Catholic monastery until 1948, when the Greek Catholic Church was banned, and has been Orthodox since then. The stone church was built between 1875 and 1879, under the Greek Catholic bishop of Gherla Mihail Pavel. The old wooden church burned down in 1973 and was replaced in 1974 by a 17th-century wooden church from the hamlet of Năsal-Fânațe, which had itself been brought there from the village of Gostila (Sălaj). According to tradition, the name of the place comes from a hermit called Nicolae who is said to have lived here in the 14th century. The wonder-working icon sits at the centre of the limewood iconostasis of the stone church, carved in 1938. The precinct holds the wooden church, the monastery's new church, begun after 2001, and the abbot's house, which keeps a collection of old icons on glass and wood and old books, among them the Cazania of Metropolitan Varlaam from 1643. Nicula is linked to icon painting on glass: the icon's image was copied by the village icon painters, and the monastery regards it as the first school of this kind in the country. The poet Ioan Alexandru is buried in the monastery cemetery. It is reached from Gherla on the local road to Nicula. The wooden church of the Dormition in the precinct is a historic monument, LMI code CJ-II-m-A-07722. The monastery belongs to the Archdiocese of Vad, Feleac and Cluj. Did you know that the largest pilgrimage at Nicula takes place on the Dormition of the Mother of God, 15 August, the monastery's feast day? According to the monastery, the faithful used to come on foot, with church banners, singing "Am venit, Măicuță, să ne mai vedem" ("We have come, dear Mother, to see you again"). As early as 1767, Pope Clement XIII granted a plenary indulgence to pilgrims who came here on the feasts of the Virgin.