It is the most important monastery
that Alexandru Lapusneanu, who reigned from 1552 to
1561 and from 1563 to 1568, built, being among the
greatest monastic buildings of Moldavia. As he reigned
in hard times, full of tribulations and turmoil, due
to the crimes of the treacherous boyars in the country
and plundered by the greed of the Ottomans from outside
the country, who humiliated him and made him destroy
the city fortress of Suceava, Alexandru Lapusneanu
tried, on a cultural level, to revive the magnificence
of the epochs of Stephen the Great and Petru Rares,
and he did it at Slatina, through the complex which
remains even today under the form of an impressive
fortress. It is made up of a vast quadric-lateral
enclosure fortified by high walls and corner towers
and by the tower gate while inside the enclosure there
are cells and the refectory as well as other structures.
In the center of the enclosure stands the church,
an edifice of large dimensions, whose plan has almost
the same distribution as the Church of the Ascension
in Neamt. The monastery was erected at the foot of
Mount Stinisoara, between 1554 and 1558, and it has
the same significance as Putna for Stephen the Great
and Pobrata for Petru Rares. It is a monument of great
value, impressive by its sumptuousness, refinement
and individuality. Inside the enclosure is the princely
house, a valuable example of civil architecture, characterized
by the stylistic treatment characteristic of the Renaissance
in Transylvania. The framings of the refectory and
towers are also built under the influence of the Renaissance.
Near the church is an ornamental fountain with a marble
base, which also has a Renaissance influence. The
wall surrounding the whole complex is massive, over
2 m thick and 7.2m high, with defense towers. As it
became a necropolis of the prince and his family,
Slatina is one of the monasteries that are as rich
as Putna and Pobrata, and just like them it is a rich
center of culture and Romanian medieval art. The church
of the monastery is built by the master architects
on the orders of Alexandru Lapusneanu following the
design of Pobrata, but it is of much larger dimensions.
Unlike Pobrata, the apses of the church at Slatina
are not marked on the outside, and on the inside they
are embedded in the thickness of the walls. The buttresses
too in the western corner and three on each of the
southern and northern sides and the small one in the
axis of the eastern apse, are not as massive as the
buttresses of other churches. One single row of niches
just below the protruding roof surrounds the plastered
church. The octagonal tower with decorations of niches
stands on a star-like base. Two doorways, placed on
the southern and northern sides of the porch allow
entrance into the church. According to liturgical
customs and Moldavian architectural practices, the
inner space is divided into the porch, the narthex,
the crypt, the nave and the altar. The porch is covered
by a semi-circular transversal vault. The light penetrates
into the church through three windows on the western
wall. The framings of the windows are Gothic in style.
Through a doorway in pointed arch surrounded by molding
one can go into the narthex, which is divided into
two by a transversal arch. The semispherical vaults
are supported by the common crossing arches. The wall
that separates the crypt from the nave was removed
in order to make the space larger. Above the nave
supported on pendentatives and arches stands the tower
that, as a peculiarity of the place, has niches on
the inside, which are placed in one single row under
the windows. At the Monastery of Slatina, the prince
founded a music school, where even young people from
Galitia came to study. He also founded a library with
manuscripts and printed books. He brought there the
monk Isaia, a scholar of the time, who copied the
Chronicle of Putna. Even today one can see the tower
of the library.
