Lăpușneanu ordered work to begin on the monastery building in 1551, to replace an older church, the work being completed in 1562. The dedication was made by the monarch, his wife Ruxandra and his daughter Soltana as
ktitors, with Soltana also serving as the first head of what was then the Socola nunnery. 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. The decision behind this belonged to
Moldavian Metropolitan Veniamin Costachi, whose "primary objective", according to
American historian
Keith Hitchins, "was to improve the training of the clergy" as part of a "master plan to
modernize Moldavian education" and tone down "the influence of Greek and the Greek professors at the
princely academy in Iași." In the same period, Moldavia, like the southern
Danubian Principality of
Wallachia, witnessed a revival of monastic activity. In order for the seminary to start functioning, the nuns were moved to
Agapia Monastery, and the Agapia monks took their place. Socola became the focus of a major education reform in 1814, under the administration of Prince
Scarlat Callimachi and his adviser,
Gheorghe Asachi. In 1820, as part of the same trend, it received among its teachers a group of Orthodox churchmen from
Transylvania (at the time part of the
Austrian Empire). The initiative on par with other such encouraged immigrations, officially adopted as measures for improving the quality of teaching. The institution, known in
Neo-Latin as
Seminaria Veniamina, gained in prestige and hosted celebrated educators such as
Melchisedec of Roman,
Neofit Scriban and
Filaret Scriban. The institution was however restored, and it was here that, in 1859, the
Moldo-Wallachian union was celebrated by the newly elected
Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza. In 1886, five years after the proclamation of a
Kingdom of Romania, the monastery was subject to restructuring: the seminary was moved uptown, into the previous residence of former Prince
Mihail Sturdza, and a reputedly miraculous icon of the
Virgin Mary was moved into the
Metropolitan Cathedral. this situation changed again after the
Romanian Revolution of 1989, when it dedicated itself primarily to servicing the religious needs of patients at the affiliate hospital. ==Features==