Socola Monastery

Socola Monastery or Schimbarea la Față ("Transfiguration") was a Romanian Orthodox establishment located in the eponymous quarter of southern Iaşi, Romania.

[1][2] The seminary was set up in 1803, during the reign of Phanariote Prince Alexander Mourousis, as the first secondary education institution to provide teaching in the vernacular (as opposed to Greek, Slavonic or other liturgical languages), and one of the first formal schools in the country.

[10] Six years later, Socola came to the interest of physician Alexandru Şuţu, who sought to generate the practice of modern psychiatry in Romania, on the basis of Western European models.

[2] He therefore proposed the building of a psychiatric hospital in close proximity to the monastery, a project approved by Parliament, but effected only in 1905 (due to poor allocation of funds).

[11] In its earliest state, the Socola Monastery church, built entirely in stone, was only as long as its present-day nave, featuring a single tower and narrow windows placed high on each side wall.

[13] Unlike other Romanian Orthodox churches, Socola lacks murals, and is decorated instead with framed paintings and the usual iconostasis (both made by the same anonymous painter in 1827).

[15] The Socola Monastery houses a cemetery which golds the remains of church officials, former seminary teachers, and heroes of the World War II Romanian campaign.