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    STUDIA THEOLOGIA%20REFORMATA%20TRANSYLVANICA - Issue no. 1-2 / 2008  
         
  Article:   THE OUTER WALL PAINTINGS OF THE MOLDAVIAN MONASTERIES AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS OF THE 16TH CENTURY / DIE MOLDAUISCHE AUSSENMALEREI UND DIE GLAUBENSKÄMPFE DES 16. JAHRHUNDERTS.

Authors:  RUTH FABRITIUS. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:   This presentation deals with a large part of the iconographical program of the Moldavian monasteries, their outer walls fully being covered with paintings in the 16th century. It proves that these programs are due to the appearance and development of a unitary concept: the outer wall paintings of the Moldavian churches (resulting from a certain historical configuration) are a specific orthodox form of theological self-assurance, which in times of religious confusion and interconfessional conflicts satisfied the inner need of the Orthodox Church to make clear and visualize its position. Essentially, orthodox theology has its traditional bases in canonical liturgy-forms: the orthodox liturgy perceives itself as the ever newly staged quintessence of religious truths of the Eastern Church. Therefore, considerable parts of the outer wall paintings’ iconographical program are to be decoded as the visual conversion of the orthodox liturgy.
Particularly the largest composition of the Orthodoxy, according to its surface and number of characters, the hierarchically structured „Cin“ – also called all Saints’ procession –, will be systematically analyzed as the visual conversion of the Divine Liturgy and placed in the historical context of its appearance in the 16th century: this context can be defined on one hand by the collisions with the advancing Islam duringthe Ottoman expansion and on the other hand by the Western Church, which carried out its Reformation-initiated fights beyond Poland and Transylvania, reachingthe country that lies east of the Carpathians. At the same time with the interpretation of the outer-programs as acts of orthodox self-assertion, we will examine analysis- approaches of the older Romanian art-history, which has widely excluded aspects of theology and religious history.

Keywords: iconographical program, Moldavian churches, orthodox theology, orthodoxliturgy, interconfessional conflict. 		 
         
     
         
         
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