Celic Dere Traditional Cache
Mioritics: time to archive
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Difficulty:
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(regular)
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If you travel in south est of Romania, the road from Tulcea to Braila it's a must. The road 'flows' along the Danube river; the scenery is so beautiful.
Initial cache content:
- 1 dice
- 1 baby glove
- 2 toys
- 1 turkish 'eye' talisman
(about the place...taken from 'www.romanianmonasteries.org')
The Celic Dere Monastery is situated in Frecatei Commune, in Tulcea County and is one of the most well known monasteries in Dobrogea, considered the center of Orthodoxism of the area.
It is named after the nearby river, which translated from Turkish means “River of Steel”. According to the existing documents, the first church was built here at the beginning of the 19th century by the bishop Athanasie Lisivencof. Today, a cemetery can be found on this land. The people that built the church were priests from Transylvania and Basarabia, who had lived on the Athos Mountain, in Greece.
The little church burnt around the 1840s, the sultan Abdul-Medgid (1839-1861) from Constantinople approved to the building of a new church. Thus, in 1846, the first church was built, with “The Assumption of the Holy Virgin” as its dedication day and a chapel with “The Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel” as its dedication day.
After a short time, the monks were moved to Saon, where they built another monastery. At Celic Dere the monks were replaced by nuns. In time, the hierarchs of Lower Danube supported the efforts of the nuns and thus, in 1901 the bishop Partenie Clinceni started to build the monumental church with semi-basement. For some time this served as a winter chapel. The construction, whose architect was Toma Dobrescu, was only completed in 1932, and was dedicated on the 22nd of October of the same year. The interior was painted by Gheorghe Eftimiu, and the altar screen covered in gold, was done by Ion Dinea.
During the next years, a studio for religious painting, a primary school for adults under the age of 40, a workshop for rugs and traditional sewing, were founded under the care of bishop Nifon.
Pilgrims come to this place to bow with great hope in God’s power. One of the most important icons is the one representing our Lord Jesus Christ, brought here around 1806 – 1812. It can be seen in the Chapel Church and bears the name of “The icon that cleans itself” because at one point the icon was blackened by the passing of time but then, as a miracle, the Savior’s face lightened.
The legend says that the icon was brought by a soldier. He told the monks that even though it looked like that, one day it would clean itself, and the eyes of Christ would open. After almost 200 years from that day, more than half of this icon is now lightened.
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