Lespezi Hermitage, Posada

Lespezi Hermitage lies in Posada, a locality belonging to the town of Comarnic, Prahova County, on the right bank of the Prahova river at the foot of Pleșuva Mică mountain, in a beech forest. The hermitage buildings burned down; what survives is its former church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, one of the Cantacuzino foundations of the Prahova Valley. The church is a class A historic monument (LMI code PH-II-m-A-16589), dated 1661-1675, with alterations in 1798 and 1819. The founders are the spatharios Drăghici Cantacuzino and his son, the chancellor Pârvu Cantacuzino, painted on the north wall holding the model of the church together. Three dates are known for the laying of the foundation stone (1661, 1667 and 1674). Drăghici died on a journey to Constantinople, and Pârvu continued and completed the work between 1674 and 1686, a period that includes the reign of his uncle Șerban Cantacuzino. The fresco painting, attributed to the painter Pârvu Mutu, was executed in two stages at the end of the seventeenth century, under Constantin Brâncoveanu: first the upper part, then the lower part. From 1863, after the secularisation of monastic estates, the church served as a parish church. The hermitage's documents, taken for safekeeping to Poiana Monastery, were lost in a fire. The church was reconsecrated in 1906 by Metropolitan Iosif Gheorghian, and since 2006 the Comarnic Local Council and the Câmpina deanery have carried out renovation and restoration work. Today it is a parish church of the Câmpina deanery. The name of the place led to Posada being proposed as the site of the 1330 battle between Basarab I and King Charles Robert of Hungary. The researcher Florian-Nicu Smărăndescu identifies the hermitage, known locally as „Trei Lespezi”, with the monastery that the traveller Maciej Stryjkowski saw in 1575 on the site of the battle. The exact location of the battle has not been established, however, and the Prahova Valley is only one of the hypotheses put forward by historians.