There are several legends related to the emergence of the natural bridge from Ponoarele, in Mehedinți county. One of them is related to Saint Nicodemus, the protector of Oltenia, founder of several monasteries and hermitages on the south and north of the Danube.
Saint Nicodemus was born in the 14th century in Serbia in a Wallachian family. As a child he had a penchant for monasticism, so he left early for Mount Athos, where he became abbot of the Hilandar monastery. It is said that Nicodemus received a dream from the Mother of God to build a monastery “at the cascades”, in a rocky and forested place, so he left the Holy Mountain in search of that place. He initially sought it south of the Danube, but, failing to do so, the saint would have crossed the river in the Romanian countries, stretching his mantle over the water. On his way to the place of the future Tismana monastery, the most beautiful and most lively of its creations, St. Nicodemus erected several monasteries and hermitages (Vratna and Mănăstirița in Serbia, Vodița, Gura Motrului, Topolnița, Vișina, Aninoasa in the Romanian Country and Prislop in the Country of Hațeg).
A legend says that around 1370, looking for the waterfall shown to him in the dream and above which a monastery was to be built, Nicodemus also passed through the Ponoare area. He stopped in the village of Nadanova, at a distance of 12 km from where the Bridge of God is now. Together with the priest in the village, he went through the neighbouring villages, along the rivers, through caves and through forests, in search of the place that had been shown to him in his dream. After three days of searching, the two arrived at a place called by the locals Valea Strâmtă (The Narrow Valley), where the water flowed noisily down the valley between two rocky walls. Finding a suitable place and believing it to be like a dream place, he decided to build his monastery here.
It is said that the locals opposed it, because they thought that when Nicodemus would build his monastery at Ponoare, they would pay bigger donations or lose some of their land. Considering that the area is calcareous and quite unfriendly to agriculture and that they will have to give for the construction of the monastery also the little land they had, they did not receive this news with joy. Some villagers secretly devised a plan to drive Saint Nicodemus out of their area: they put in his bag a hen with a cut neck and a knife, accusing him of theft. Today there is a place, in the middle of the distance between Ponoarele and the town of Baia de Arama, called Valea Găinii (The Hen’s Valley): here the locals would have caught Nicodemus with the hen cut in the bag, beat him and show everyone that he was a thief.
Then, in order to escape the wrath of the villagers, the saint would have left the Ponoarele, helped by God. Through an arched movement of the hand, God would have built the bridge at Ponoare, which would make it easy for the saint to move to Tismana, where he found a favourable place to build a monastery, now a Christian symbol of Oltenia. Annoyed and ashamed, before leaving the area, St. Nicodemus cursed the water of the Ponoarele: to make a noise, to be without fish and to be swollen by the earth. Hundreds of years later, the water of Ponoarele was swallowed up by the cave, 8 mills were built on it, but no fish lives here.
As a wonder, however, exactly 600 years after the death of Saint Nicodemus, when the foundation stone of a church was laid at Ponoarele, a rainbow appeared in the sky. The priests and the locals interpreted this phenomenon as a sign from God.
Bibliography:
• Mariana Borloveanu, “The Church of Saint Nicodemus from Ponoarele)”, 30 May 2013, http://ziarullumina.ro/biserica-sfantului-nicodim-de-la-ponoarele-81953.html
• Alexandra Georgescu, “The Legend of Ponoare: How God Chased away the Devil Hidden in the Cave”, 6 February 2015, https://adevarul.ro/locale/turnu-severin/legenda-ponoare-la-alungat-dumnezeu-dracul-ascuns-pestera-1_54d3c9ae448e03c0fd50941b/index.html
• Alexandra Georgescu, “How the local people from the village of Ponoare, Mehedinti, got rid of the curse of Saint Nicodemus”, 22 July 2018, https://adevarul.ro/locale/turnu-severin/cum-scapat-blestemul-sfantului-nicodim-localnicii-satul-mehedintean-ponoare-1_5b544cafdf52022f758045f2/index.html
• “Tismana Monastery, Gorj”, 10 April 2016, http://www.monumenteoltenia.ro/manastirea-tismana-gorj/