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Saint Nicholas’s Wooden Church, of the former Gologofta-Huşenii-Balica convent, Ivăneşti village, Balica neighborhood, Ivăneşti Commune, Vaslui County (code LMI 2004: VS-II-m-A-06850)
It was founded in 1774 by the hieromonk Ghenadie Cazimir, west from the old church of the convent (a. 1681) and radically repaired by the hieromonk Veniamin, in 1830.
The convent was still known by the name of Huşenii (from the name of an 18th century donator) or Balica (the same as the monastery in Iaşi to which it was subordinated). It became in 1816 a branch of Esfigmen Monastery on Mount Athos. It was disestablished after the secularization of monastery properties in 1863, and it turned into a parish church.
The church distinguishes by the mastership of the technical achievement of the vault system, and by the interior and exterior decoration.
It is a rectangular church, with a pentagonal altar apse, detached, provided with three octagonal steeples (subsequently added), south entrance, porch supported on dentate pillars. It is built of horizontal wreaths of oak beams, fixed in right assemblage, on a foundation of river stone and wood beams. The interior is covered in blind vaults of octagonal profile, on decorated cross ribs. The vault base and support beams are ornamented with “saw teeth”, X-shaped motifs, “twisted rope” and “dentils”. The brace dentate pillars separating the nave and narthex are surmounted by a frieze of railing posts which can also be found above the choir loft. The facades are ornamented with a median girdle, resembling the one in the vaults and niche frieze below the cornice. The portal and window framing are ornamented with vegetal motifs (haulm), floral and geometrical motifs made in bas-relief. The pyramidal tower roof and the Baroque steeple roof are supported on cantilevers carved in a “horse-head” shape. The dating inscriptions from above the narthex door and on the north façade are written in Cyrillic.
The oak door with its original closing system, the ironwork at the lighting system in front of the altar and the iconostasis, 18th – 19th centuries, oil on wood are still kept as evidence of those times. The old cult book is stored at the Huşi Diocesan Museum.
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