New Ukrainian Wood Church of Poienile de Sub Munte, outside. © Alan E. Sparks

"... the 'New' Ukrainian Wood Church of Poienile de Sub Munte, which has taken over the services of the even more famous 'Old' Ukrainian Wood Church, originally devoted to the Transfiguration but now devoted to tradition and tourism. This venerable church, like most here where East meets West in the Eastern Carpathians, must have experienced several transfigurations of its own. When it was first built sometime in the 1700s, most of the residents of Maramureş were Vlachs or Ruthenians (East Slavic dwellers in the northeastern Carpathians; see next chapter)—long disadvantaged Orthodox then living within the Catholic Habsburg Monarchy of Austria—who were facing intense pressure to join that bridge over the Great Schism, Greek Catholicism. In fact, the Orthodox Church no longer officially existed in Maramureş, or anywhere else in the Carpathians..."

— page 112, Into the Carpathians, Part 1
© Alan E. Sparks