: CORBII DE PIATRA Monastery

: Information : CORBII DE PIATRA Monastery

Romania is endless, Romania is boundless, just like the complete history of a place, it can't be coprissed with the mind.

Corbii de piatra (The Stone Ravens). That is the way this place was named before and an endless history protects it with a wing. Well, this way, here, in Corbi village you have the feeling that you get sunk in the past, that crowds of unclear shadows haunt these enigmatic realms, stangely mixing with the people from this place.

They feel nothing, they don't feel the shadows that are quietly mixing through them, these people are absorbed by the eternal second of this life and by the tiny victory of each moment,while the stones they step on are oozing, not with water, but with timeless memories. These places have always been lived and some of these old men still believe that here, at the cells, somewhere beneath the stone edge, God released the first human beings from His hands. The pilgrim feels, finds out and knows that some parts of this story are true. He knows that up there, above the dug in stone church, on the edge where the huge ravens were digging shelters with their beaks and with their claws, the traces of the first humans were found, he knows that these strange places bear chiseled in themselves the flood's memory, he knows that in other times, the carpi tribes were grinding their blades on the crumbly stone and he also knows that on the Middle realm, there are the foggy ruins of Gezidava, the magnificent fortress of the dacian king - Dromichetes about whom the legends tell that he was scratching the sky with his towers and that the sun was turning pale in front of his glittering riches. He knows that the huge, strangelly hallowed out stones on which he walks, were blood-stained sanctuaries before Jesus, he knows that the outstanding cellars of these ravens' edges have always served for worshipping an endless range of successive gods, that up there, above the river, there are the last stones of Voicu Corvin's castle, Serb's son and legendary Iancu of Hunedoara's father, the one who was to keep the raven's badge forever, turning it into a king's symbol. After the Bonfini's hungarian chronicle utters that Valachian Iancul Corvinul is one of christianity's greatest heroes, it also talks about his birth place from Wallachia Transalpina, corvini's native place.

The rupestral church Corbii de Piatra known with good reason an enigma, won't allow you to discover it, so you have to go and see it, to pay astonishment tribute in front of it's beauty. Embeded in stone, hidden as a cave in the mountain's wall, it doesn't resemble anything: neither the rupestral cells from Bozioru, nor the cave from Namaiesti, nothing. The earliest dating of the rupestral church, as an orthodox dwelling creed, date from the end of the II nd century A.D., when it is believed thet the church was perfectly adapted for those times of persecutions,beeing well hidden, having no connection with the outside, except for a small door towards North, which was well hidden and it could be entered only on all fours. The monastery's diptych mentions as it's first founder Voivode Basarab the I st, but the villagers go far earlier,talking about a certain Voivode Harabo, during the XIII th century, or even Voivode Vlad, towards the end of the XI th century.

The church, strangelly, but also beautifully keeps a great part of its paintig: Deisis, The Annunciation, Avraam's sacrifice, Christ's birth, Lord's meeting, Lazarus's resurection, Lord's Baptism, The Transfiguration, The Ascention, Archangel Gabriel, Military Saints, Jesus Emmanuel. The stylistic characteristics, the painting's quality, exclusivelly followed by Greek inscriptions, corroborated with documentary news, all allow the precise dating of this ensemble at the beginning of the XIV th century, reaveling "Corbii de Piatra" as the church with the oldest painting from our ountry.The rupestral ensemble from Corbii de Piatra is the final proof for the existence of some monastic centers of anachoretic type, long before the Muntenian church from the XIV th century was organized.

On the 23 rd of June, 1512, nun Magdalina(known as Musa in her laic life), daughter and boyar's wife, hereditary landowner of the estate from Corbi, (re)establishes the monastery, acquiring by this,t he statut of a lordly monastery, also being the first documentary attested nunnery, in our country.Later on, in 1658, deacon Pvel of Alep, accompanies Father Patriarch Macarie of Antiochia in Wallachia, also visiting the stone church from Corbi, about which he leaves testimony that "it was a small, but beautiful church, where you could still see on walls, the traces of the old paintig and which was reopened following a holy hermit's vision."

Corbii, caught between steep hills and valleys, is in fact the end of a world-a place from where start and finish all the roads which lead from Arges to Transilvania. The mountain has never separated, but it has been a secret way of passing, of connection, of harmony, a way of fraternity, through which the wandering Romanians from Jina came to Corbi at the beginning of the XVIII th century. They settled around the monastery, which, through years, made the Hesychasm loving monks look for their hearts'serenity, in the heart of the mountain, leaving the monastery to the new community. And soon after that the people left the church to become a victim of time, building a new one. Nearby, there is a blue house that belongs to Maria Vladescu, known as Mother Uta. The yard doesn't really look like a yard, but like a piece of heaven, with a lot of green-green grass, with a stream which treks the yard by the house, flowing down from the waterfall, through a huge stone cavity, a sort of stone scoop, which serves this woman instead of a fence and of shelter, just like a huge, stone tent. These are huge rocks, fell down in time immemorial, which lay spread all over; and high above, there is that water stream which flows down,scattering into thousands of translucent shivers. Maybe here, at the stone scoop's shelter, there used to be the famous crusaiders' training camp of Iancu Corvin, knights came from all over Europe to fight under the badge of the raven with the cross in its beak. Alexandru Odobescu - a researcher interested in "local antiquities"- being inspired by the local folklore, wrote down about the presence of another army around the monument, at the beginning of the XVIII th century, in a report from 1861: "At Corbi village,there is a dug in stone church, it is said that the mortal remains of Mihai Viteazul's army, were gathered up after the masacre from Turda."

A history impassioned dicovered on one of the gritstone scoop's walls, a giant's leg, fixed in stone, with his heel standing out and with with the thigh lying in an endless rest.Now, the right arm, can also be seen, and the fallen head can be noticed on the tile's floor. 'The Giant' has been simplified by the villagers. A shaped in stone head can also be seen. Could it be a dinosaur? Maybe.Or maybe it's Spielberg's E.T. Each person's imagination should decide.

Anyway, in the heart of Muscel, at "Corbii de Piatra", one can shot the greatest film about rocks and stones, about legends and giants, about hermits and piuos people -just like Elizabeth Rizea from Nucsoara - a poetical film, as a prolonged and quiet meditation, as a heart's beat, as a prayer.The memories, no matter how far they are, don't vanish once with the people, but they get attired in a tale's cloth, identifying with the place.

The STone Ravens. That's the way that place was called before. And a blessed mystery protects its history nowadays.

Note: This history is a compilation of the published articles from "Formula As" under the signature of the Mr. Sorin Preda and Horia Turcanu, corroborated with the elements provided by the professor Grigore Constantinescu and the priest Petre Grigorescu, and of the data collected from the National archives and from the writings of Mr. C-tin. Radulescu-Codin, historian, and of Mrs. Clara Laura Dumitrescu, criticize art.

Monk priest Ignatie G.

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