This beautiful monastery church was built in the early 16th c. by Princess Milica Despina Branković, wife of the Duke Neagoe Basarab, Ruler of Wallachia... Milica was of Serbian origin, and closely related to Serbian noble houses of Branković and Lazarević...
Now there is an interesting legend about the building of the church. For some reason, the builders were not able to keep the church walls standing up. Whatever they build during the day, collapsed during the night...
Finally, the architect in charge of the build, certain Master Manole, was threatened with death by his employers if he didn't finish the church...
After much deliberation with his masons about what to do, Manole remembered an ancient custom of placing a living woman into the foundations of buildings in order to insure they don't collapse...
So he suggested that the first woman who came to the building site the following day, with the food for her husband, should be the one used as the sacrificial victim...
All the other masons, of course, warned their wives not to come to the building site then next day, except Manole. And so Manole was forced to sacrifice his own wife Ana. And that is how the church was built...
Interestingly, there is an identical legend about the building of the Fortress of Deva, also in Romania...
In this legend, a stonemason named Kőműves Kelemen – finds that the castle he’s trying to build keeps falling down, and is forced to sacrifice his beloved wife and mix her remains into the mortar in order to make the castle stand...
Another legend with the same plot is the legend about the building of the Bridge of Arta, a stone bridge that crosses the Arachthos river in the west of the city of Arta (Άρτα) in Greece...
According to the legend, the builders could not build the bridge, because, the foundations they built during the day, would collapse and were swept by the river during the night...
Finally "a bird with a human voice" informed the Head Builder that, in order for the bridge to remain standing, he should sacrifice his wife...He did, and this is how the bridge was built...
There is also an identical Serbian legend about the building of the Skadar fortress. The legend, in a form of an epic poem, was published for the first time in 1815 in a version recorded by Vuk Karadžić from the singing of a Herzegovinian storyteller named Old Rashko...
In 1824, Vuk Karadžić sent a copy of his folksong collection to Jacob Grimm, who was particularly enthralled by "The Building of Skadar" epic poem. Grimm translated it into German, and described it as "one of the most touching poems of all nations and all times"...
The poem describes the building of a fortress on the Bojana river at Skadar, today in Albania, in the 14th c. by the Serbian Mrnjavčević brothers (King Vukašin and his brothers Uglješa and Gojko)...
Whatever the brothers built during the day, was pushed into the river during the night by Vila (a mountain fairy).
Eventually, vila said to the king Vukašin, that if he wanted his fortress to stand, he would have to build a living person into the fortress foundations...
And, the Vila said, it will have to be one of the brothers' wives. Whichever one comes to the building site first the next day, with the food for the builders, will have to be sacrificed...
Vukašin and Uglješa both warn their wives, and so Gojko, the youngest brother, had to wall up his young wife alive within the walls of the fortress...
As his wife just gave birth to the twins, boy and girl, called Stojko and Stoja (Stoj means stand, be upright), she begged the builders to leave her breasts exposed, so she can feed her babies...
This relief, currently in Vienna, made in 1906 by Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, depicts the scene of the sacrifice...
You can find the full English translation of the poem (in a somewhat archaic English) here...
Anyway, I believe that this legend could be of Serbian in origin. The reason for that is that the custom of making blood sacrifices on the foundations of buildings, in order to make them stand, is still common among Serbs...
Not only that, According to Vuk Karadžić, there was a belief still strong during the 19th c. that it was impossible to build a large building without a human sacrifice...
Because, of course, you could't build people alive into buildings any more, builders "stole people's shadows and built them into the foundations or the walls"...
Vuk Karadžić claimed that people even avoided the building sites because they were afraid their shadow could be walled-up and they could die without it...
This belief and custom were recorded by ethnographers in many parts of the Balkans inhabited by Serbs. I talked about this belief and practice in my post "New house"...
But to me, very interesting thing about these legends is that the sacrificial victim is always a woman, the wife of one of the builders...
This gives a completely new meaning to the Serbian proverb: "Ne stoji kuća na zemlji nego na ženi" - The house doesn't stand on the ground but on the woman...I talked about this proverb in my post "Baba - the main beam that supports the house"...
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