Bogdana Monastery is a

Romanian Orthodox The Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC; , ), or Romanian Patriarchate, is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox Christian churches, and one of the nine patriarchates in the Eastern Orthodox Church. S ...

monastery in the town of

Rădăuți Rădăuți (; ; ; ; , ''Radivtsi''; ''Radevits''; ) is a town in Suceava County, north-eastern Romania. It is situated in the historical region of Bukovina. According to the 2021 census, Rădăuți is the second largest urban settlement in the ...

, northern

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

. Its church is the oldest still standing religious building in

Moldavia Moldavia (, or ; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ) is a historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River. An initially in ...

. The monastery was built by

Bogdan I of Moldavia Bogdan I, commonly known as Bogdan the Founder (), was the first independent ruler, or voivode, of Moldavia in the 1360s. He had initially been the voivode, or head, of the Vlachs in the Voivodeship of Maramureș in the Kingdom of Hungary. Howe ...

(1359–1365) sometime around 1360.

Burials

It was to become his and some the Mușatini

voievod Voivode ( ), also spelled voivod, voievod or voevod and also known as vaivode ( ), voivoda, vojvoda, vaivada or wojewoda, is a title denoting a military leader or warlord in Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe in use since the Early Mid ...

necropolis A necropolis (: necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'' (). The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distan ...

. Here are buried all the rulers of Moldavia from Bogdan I to

Alexandru cel Bun Alexander I, commonly known as Alexander the Good (; – 1 January 1432) was Voivode of Moldavia between 1400 and 1432. He was the son of Roman I and succeeded Iuga to the throne. As ruler he initiated a series of reforms while consolidating ...

. There are ten graves inside the monastery's

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

: * seven in the naos: ** Bogdan I (in the south-eastern corner) ** Lațcu Voievod (besides the same wall as Bogdan I) ** an unmarked grave supposedly Maria's–Bogdan I's wife, or Ana's–Lațcu's wife; the grave is at ground level and not above it as the other ones ** Ștefan I (on the northern wall) ** Roman I (on the northern wall) ** Bogdan, brother of

Alexander the Good Alexander I, commonly known as Alexander the Good (; – 1 January 1432) was Voivode of Moldavia between 1400 and 1432. He was the son of Roman I and succeeded Iuga to the throne. As ruler he initiated a series of reforms while consolidating ...

(on the northern wall) ** Bogdan, son of Alexander the Good (on the northern wall) * three in the

pronaos A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultu ...

: ** Doamna Stana, wife of Bogdan III cel Chior and the mother of Ștefăniță Vodă (on the northern side) ** Anastasia, daughter of Lațcu (on the northern side) ** Bishop Ioanichie (died 1504) (before the pronaos door) The graves were attended to, and marked properly by Ștefan cel Mare. The rocks on top of the graves were created by Jan (c. 1480) at the order of Ștefan cel Mare, "in a style that is different in principle from the oriental decorative sculpture" (P. Comărnescu). They are decorated with Byzantine-oriental ornaments like palmata–a stylized palm plant leaf and local motives like leaves of

beech Beech (genus ''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to subtropical (accessory forest element) and temperate (as dominant element of Mesophyte, mesophytic forests) Eurasia and North America. There are 14 accepted ...

ash tree ''Fraxinus'' (), commonly called ash, is a genus of plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae, and comprises 45–65 species of usually medium-to-large trees, most of which are deciduous trees, although some subtropical species are evergr ...

leaves,

elm tree Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus ''Ulmus'' in the family Ulmaceae. They are distributed over most of the Northern Hemisphere, inhabiting the temperate and tropical-montane regions of North America and Eurasia, p ...

leaves.

Paintings

The first internal painting of the church is from the times of Alexandru cel Bun (14th century). In 1558 Alexandru Lăpușneanu started the restoration of the original painting and following year enlarged the church building. Other restorations happened in the 18th and 19th centuries: between 1745 and 1750, in the time of Bishop Iacob Putneanul and in 1880 when Epaminonda Bucevschi, a Bukovinean painter, created the current

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. ''Tempera'' also refers to the paintings done in ...

External links

*
www.bogdana.ro
* https://web.archive.org/web/20070702155726/http://www.manastiri-bucovina.go.ro/bogdana.htm, https://web.archive.org/web/20070630212414/http://www.manastiri-bucovina.go.ro/bogdana-eng.htm (English version with less information) {{coord, 47, 50, 33.36, N, 25, 55, 2.69, E, display=title, type:landmark_scale:5000_region:RO-SV Romanian Orthodox monasteries of Suceava County Historic monuments in Suceava County Christian monasteries established in the 1360s 14th-century establishments in Romania Burial sites of European royal families 1360s establishments in Europe Rădăuți 14th-century Romanian Orthodox monasteries