Crasna hermitage in Schiulești, Orthodox monastery in Schiulești, Romania.

Crasna hermitage is an Orthodox monastery in Schiulești, Prahova County, built in the forest beside the Crasna river at the foot of the Ursoaia mountains. Its church, begun in 1824, is white-walled with small arched windows and a wide, low dark-brown pitched roof; a single tall drum with narrow arched windows rises from the centre, topped by a steep dark conical roof and a thin cross. To the left stands a smaller white building with its own dark roof and a tiny onion-shaped cupola, and a row of slender dark evergreens runs along the grass at the base.

A 1745 donation act first records a monks' hermitage with a wooden church here, probably founded by hermits from Văleni in the early 18th century. The present church was begun in 1824 by postelnic Constantin Potlogea for the refugees of Băjenari after the Turkish incursions of 1821. Consecrated in 1828, it became a monastery again with Potlogea as first abbot under the name Chelasie; secularization in 1864 reduced it to a few monks.

The name Crasna comes from the river beside which the hermitage stands. Its founder, Constantin Potlogea, took the monastic name Chelasie and donated his estate; his son Nicolae became the monk Nil and gave his own land. The abbot ran a school for children from neighbouring villages, who lodged in the hermitage dormitory at his expense.

The monastery lies in the forest by the Crasna river, at the foot of the Ursoaia mountains, in Schiulești, Izvoarele commune. It is about 50 km north of Ploiești on the road to Brașov via Vălenii de Munte and Cheia. The church stands among trees, with a smaller white building and a row of evergreens along its base.

At least four bishops ordained after 1989 came from this monastery: Teodosie Petrescu, Ambrozie Meleacă, Galaction Stângă and Ciprian Spiridon. The founder, Constantin Potlogea, took the monastic name Chelasie and became its first abbot, donating his estate and building wooden cells for monks brought from Cheia and Ciolanu.