Intermission: Monasteries of Romania #2

Part Two: hermits and churches

Yesterday I shared my holiday snaps of some of the grand and often imposing medieval monasteries of Romania. Today I’m zooming in. As well as its living heritage of great monasteries, Romania also has a living network of small, local churches, some of them every bit as impressive in their own right. Small is beautiful, after all, and certainly more intimate. Usually, I think, it is more holy too.

I’ve always been a sucker for a local church. I’ve spent many hours of my life wandering through the medieval churches of England, the beauty of which continues to astonish me just as it did grumpy atheist Philip Larkin in his famous poem. For that reason, when we found this tiny church up a Transylvanian lane I did a double take. It looks for all the world like it could be in Suffolk. As I said to the Romanian friend who took us there, this could pass for an Anglo-Saxon church. Well, we have the same ancestry after all: