Domnița Bălașa Church, part two

The cute phoenix

If the functional identity of the Domnița Bălaşa church, as a real shrine, even as a royal shrine is unquestionable, my haste to label it a neo-Byzantine fossil was much less justified than it seemed. The towering dull, ponderous, communist structures, surrounding the church’s lovely plot, when compared to the church itself shining like a brand-new car fresh off the assembly line, basically ageless and in high-performing mode, already show wear far beyond their age. Give them another 25 years and they will undoubtedly called fossils. Off the record, the church just got a massive expensive facelift thanks to the lavish contribution from the C.E. which the locals claim is the major cash-cow provider for cultural endeavors, the sports betting industry, and significant political corruption.

My obsession with taxonomy, always seeking the right name for everything, failed by a hair to land me into trouble. Even before arriving on-site, I called the church architecture’s neo-Byzantine relying on some uncensored information I took from a cheap guide much more readable (but reliable?) than the boring hefty ones. I also believe that 99% of all Romanian churches. exhibit some generic hallmarks of the Byzantine style. This assumption was silly as I must admit that I haven’t seen more than 0.1% of Romanian churches in my restless wandering life. Only in my drowsy, dirty, small, and ugly hometown, lying in the middle of nowhere, there were about 100 churches and at least as many pubs. Alas, many of the morning customers of the first set of facilities, were getting into a BUI (behaving under the influence) syndrome after a prolonged and intense visit to the second set in the late afternoon. However, I didn’t step into more than two or three honorable precints out of a pool of a hundred because of my altricial unrecommendable conduct of agitated brat, bloody jew, and precocial atheist…Let’s say that I didn’t probably feel the call!

Imagine my embarrassment when I was informed, I forget by whom, that Domnita Bălaşa was actually “cast” into a Neo-Romanesque and Gothic Revival style. Both! After the shock, I resolved that at my age I wouldn’t come to grips with new architectural styles, that could be as insignificant as some worthless variations on Goldberg Variations. So, I will visit the

church on my right foot, trusting my insight, and emphasizing its Byzantine character and aura. The invasive architectural features, which I can say from the beginning are not structural or the unfortunate straying from the classic Byzantine canon will be briefly reported to avoid extra confusion to eventual readers.

I see the church built of traditional bricklayers, [1]using semicircular arches only, having fine columns with elaborate capitals, and proudly exhibiting a crisp quincunx of five domes, a distinctive mark of the Byzantine style. [2]Four domes, one at each corner top four cylindrical towers, called lanterns, while a major dome (no joke) hovers upon the crossing, the area defined by the encounter of the church’s nave and transept spaces.

The finely articulated church space setting preceded by a moderate steps flight comprises an open western columnar porch, a unique nave composed first of functional space -the narthex, second of the nave proper, and third of its expansion after the crossing into a choir. A complex, shining, flashy, and light reflecting rood screen (iconostasis) separates the crossing from the altar housing choir that ends within the main eastern apse space. Finally, two smaller apses are flanking the northern and southern sides of the crossing. The iconostasis together with the clerestory type piercing of the walls (mehr licht), the sparing use of marble enhancing doors and window frames, and the opulent running corniche girdling the ensemble should encourage one, me for example, to claim neo-Byzantine loudly. Alas, the obvious in a matter of style can be very treacherous.

The Domnita Bălaşa church interior is gorgeous and dreamlike. It emanates faith and elevation and it is lavishly decorated with quality cult images of the artifact type more than fine arts that encourage piety and trust in God, at least during the holy

days. The staff is polite, soft speaking, even slightly unctuous, gently relating to parishioners and visitors equally. Even on a mundane day, the confession booths were rarely vacant indicating that mischief is still occurring around and the institution’s propensity to offer free-of-charge (think of the cost on a psychiatrist’s couch) psychological support for various types of sin.

I must admit that the church does not have a sine-qua-non Byzantine Greek cross-ground plan and lacks the mandatory wall mosaics typical of Byzantine architecture. Sincerely dismayed to see my keen analysis falling flat and short overmatched by partisan local historians I decided that the main issue of the post is not style but the church’s ontogenesis, the various phases of its coming into being, its wanning and waxing episodes. Therefore, I conclude that the church’s uniqueness relies on its complex story, akin to a Phoenix holy bird rising from ashes, on the dramatic tale of its founder, and the striking quality of the statuary.

Princess Bălaşa, the church’s founder, was the daughter of the prince Constantin Brȃncoveanu who ruled Walachia for twenty-six years from 1688 to 1714. It was a rare long reign as the Turks who controlled the principality believed that good money should change hands often. They were generally selling the throne two or three times during a decade for 2000 gold purses for each run. Consequently, the mountainous Romanian gold veins became a remote souvenir. Being Papa Brȃncoveanu a particularly shrewd and skilled politician, he stayed a long time in charge, enjoyed a prolonged peace period, fathered eleven children, fostered a refined (neo-byzantine of course) architectural style, got full gas into construction mode, especially religious edifices, and built a dense network of friendly relationships with the European policymakers.

Of course, in-between he accumulated a fabulous fortune. In 1714 the Turks rightly suspecting Brȃncoveanu of collusion with the Russians before, during, and after the battle of Stanilesti (1710), arrested him and his four sons, and seized the visible part of his fortune. [3]All this seems fair enough from the Turkish side and ethics, being them what they were, but the motive for the delay is still mysterious. Why did they wait three years before crushing the poor prince for the high treason crime? Never mind, the Turks chronically suffering of Auri Sacra Fames brought the prince and his sons to Constantinople, brutally tortured them until fed up by the stubborn refusal of the Wallachs to divulge the whereabouts of the prince’s famous hidden treasure hacked them to pieces, and threw the dismembered bodies in the Bosphorus waters. Shortly after, Brȃncoveanu’s wife and daughter were also arrested. The young girl, Princess Balasa was detained first at Ceauş Emini, the women’s prison, and then at the Sultan’s Harem at Topkapi. At her turn, she was submitted vainly to the question, what suggests that the Turkish were not practicing genre discrimination on torture matter and convinced me, that there was not any hidden treasure whatsoever, because too many people died without to pip a word.

Ransomed by relatives and friends, the princess returned to Bucharest where she and her husband Manolache Lambrino (Rangabe) built the first church on their estate. A facility for family use only, the church may have had three naves, was likely built by Italian workers, got ruined by repetitive earthquakes and Dâmbovița’s river floodings, and was demolished in 1871. In 1750 the childless widowed princess Bălaşa proceeded to construct a new church, by the side of the old one, open to the community now. Built on the same shaky and soaked ground in the so-called Wallachian style, a neo-Byzantine variant, this church had to be demolished in 1838. By then, Princess Bălaşa who passed away in 1751, was a long time gone, but her contribution to the community, which included beyond the staunch religious projects a home for old people and a grammar school for the very young, continues to speak on her behalf and keep alive her memory until today.

She was followed by Safta Brȃncoveanu, another outstanding woman, the generous and unique sponsor of the third version of Domnita Bălaşa church achieved in 1842. The church built in Gothic Revival style was a larger edifice than the previous ones and it had, it sounds familiar, to be torn down in 1881. Safta, a widow at the rise of the church, was married to Grigore Brancoveanu, the last male descendent of the Constantinople martyr and saint, Constantin Brancoveanu, the father of Princess Bălaşa. Equally dividing her attention between spiritual needs and material necessities, Safta founded the large Brȃncovenesc Hospital (1838). The hospital was demolished after being renovated in 1984, by Ceausescu’s “mistake” or “whim”. Mistake it was and a massive one because Safta inserted in her testament a terrible curse aimed at whoever will imperil her outstanding philanthropies for the sake of which she liquidated her entire huge fortune and lived as a nun in a monastery cell for the last 17 years of her life. Do not mess with Safta boy! The sour end of Ceausescu is the ultimate proof of the irreducible and irremediable quality of the malediction.

The raising of the new church (and for the moment last), began immediately after the 1881 demolition and the new Phoenix was “on the spot” by 1885 already. By this time Romania was valiantly stepping into modernity. A great team of architects and artists participated, Romanian and foreigners, in both construction and decoration. Let’s now, in an ecumenical frame of mind, check the architectural features suggesting or even justifying a stylistic profile going beyond my initial neo-Byzantine appellation.

As Gothic Revival is the matter Domnita Bălaşa church displays a gable roof, a small nice rosette within the western wall, and a rich sequence of stained glass windows made in Germany. However ogival arches and flying buttresses the sine-qua-non Gothic style features are missing. Does the Gothic Revival appellation rely on this tiny rosette recalling, no offense intended, a bull-eye? I prefer not to elaborate, as I will not elaborate on the magnificent high-perched side pulpit that had a quite torturous historical development in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Alas, for reasons of compulsive sharing and political correctness, the modern liturgical officiants avoid climbing up and separating from the dear flock!

If somebody insists, and for equilibrium reasons only, I may suggest that the semicircular arches I pretended previously to be of Byzantine origin, could be (why not?) some cute embodiments of the neo-Romanesque architectural language, that started in Germany as Rundbogenstil (round arch style) on the eve of the XIX century. Its major representative, God only knows why, was a certain Mr. Hübsch (meaning cute in English). And isn’t “cute” the best qualifier of Domnita Balasa church? To stay on the safe side I propose again to consider the architectural outcome as a stylistic potpourri, which is between us, no offense intended, the hallmark of the Romanian Culture as a whole.

Even if I am not sure about how the funds were channeled and if they were state money or personal money it is certain that the royal family, especially the king, was deeply involved in a much more ambitious scenario than the previous ones. In 1881 Carol I, the most successful of all the Hohenzollerns, until then prince of Romania, became king. Armed with a silver trowel and flanked by the beautiful queen Elisabeth, aka Carmen Sylva, poetess, and national idol, he lays the cornerstone. The king and the queen, seemingly “de facto” and “de jure” founders, got forever a couple of stalls at the left of the altar Of course, they proudly planted upon the Hohenzollern’s coat-of-arms conferring the church a Royal Chapel aura.

As you can learn from the Duchess of Sussex who sells house goods through her company American Riviera Orchard the coat-of-arms is nowadays replaced by the logo brand. And her logo brand is second to none! I am glad to know that royalty and trading became, so to say, good bed partners. I am still puzzled about whose behinds would be honored to land on King Carol I and Queen Elizabeth’s seats right now! Prince Radu ex Duda and wife?[4] So far so good the church functions, full gas, as a prestigious cult platform for the community at large, and as a specific ritual facility for the elite only, provided the beneficiaries are alive. For funerary services, one should seek another venue.

[1] If pressured I will avow that I have seen the bricklayers, a hallmark of the Byzantine style, much more with the mind’s eyes than with my external scrutinizing peepers. It could very well be the case but I cannot swear that the fairly horizontal laying of the bricks is structural (i.e. supporting weight) like in the old churches or decorative, i.e. laid upon a much more reliable modern concrete wall. O tempora o mores!

[2]Parrots, women, and architecture are the three great loves of my life. Two major achievements of architecture – the daringly curved ceilings and flying buttresses – struck a chord in my heart. I avow unbound admiration for the dome if the choice isn’t multiple. The passage from a flat ceiling to a curved ceiling, vault, or dome, isn’t a simple technological improvement. It instantiates a conceptual evolution, a qualitative leap in the architectural language. Byzantine architects didn’t invent the dome but its quasi-ubiquitous use and its persistence, after the end of the Empire, made the dome a hallmark of Byzantine culture. The dome at the factual level is a curved ceiling and at the symbolic level, is a stylized embodiment of the celestial vault. Its great aesthetic appeal is the result of the dialectic confrontation between its enormous quasi “floating” mass and the invisible upward soaring force that brought and kept it there. Most of the time the dome tops a square surface such as the frame of a church choir. The passage from the square shape to the dome’s circular base through a combination of round arches with curved triangles called pendentives is a fact of beauty It would provide the alert visitor with a spiritual apprehension of inert materials in tense relation, the eventual recognition of some sacred and lay scenery, often with a feeling of dizziness, and rare sensuous enchantment with, of course, a mandatory condition. Look up for God’s sake and to God’s glory.