Râșca Monastery

Râșca Monastery lies in the village of Râșca in the commune of the same name, Suceava county, about 15 kilometres from Fălticeni, at the foot of a wooded hill in the valley of the Râșca stream, a tributary of the Moldova. It is a monastery for monks, dedicated to St Nicholas (6 December). It traces its origins to the nearby Bogdănești Monastery, founded by Bogdan I and laid waste by the Tatars in 1510 and 1512 and by the Turks in 1538. After returning to the throne in 1541, Petru Rareș decided, at the urging of Metropolitan Grigorie Roșca, to build a new monastery across the Râșca river and move the Bogdănești community there. The building was entrusted to Bishop Macarie of Roman, the chronicler of Rareș's reign, and the church was consecrated on 9 May 1542. Between 1611 and 1617, the grand vornic Costea Băcioc and his wife Candachia added a massive porch, which almost doubled the length of the church, and a second tower, as recorded in the Slavonic inscription above the south entrance. The monastery was plundered several times by the Tatars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and gradually restored. Between 1823 and 1827, under Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi and Abbot Isaia, the church was altered: the wall between the narthex and the nave was removed, the windows were enlarged and the painting was redone. In 1844 Mihail Kogălniceanu was held for six months in a room in the bell tower on the orders of Prince Mihail Sturdza. After a fire in 1921, the complex was rebuilt between 1923 and 1931. The interior painting redone in 1827 follows the original models in places. On the exterior south wall are the Last Judgement and the Ladder of St John Climacus, in which Bishop Macarie also appears. The porch holds the tombstone of Bishop Macarie and the funerary slab of Lady Anastasia, mother of Prince Alexandru Lăpușneanu, buried here in 1558. The complex is a class A historic monument (LMI code SV-II-a-A-05630) and comprises the church, the bell tower, the nineteenth-century cells and the enclosure wall from the first half of the seventeenth century.