- Talking about the rupestral church in Corbi, the historian C.D Aricescu states that ‘’It must have been a cave, a shelter where the first Christians celebrated the Christian mysteries and spread the evangelical morality.’
- Upon closer inspection of the church around 1900, N. Iorga asserts that the church is 1000 years old.
- In accord with Iorga, the art critic Carmen Laura Dumitrescu states in one of the best studies dedicated to this church that the church architecture is specific to 10th century Byzantine art.
- In the same study the prominent researcher asserts that the painting which adorns the church walls is made towards the end of the 13 th century or the end of the 14 th century by painters brought from Constantinople.
- This opinion is shared by most researchers some of whom declaring that this painting is much older.
- Initially, the church used to have two altars, a characteristic which stands for the unicity of this church.
- The possibility put forth by some ignorant people that one of the altars might have been Catholic and the other one Orthodox is sheer phantasy. Both altars were Orthodox being created according to Byzantine tradition. Moreover, the church is typologically related to a number of rupestral churches in Capadocia, the little church architecture typologically originating in two altar hall churches with two patrons, which characterizes the 10 th century Byzantine world.
- The first documentary certification dates from the 2nd of June 1512 when the nun Magdalina, in the world Musa, a descendant of the famous Craioveanu boyar family and the aunt of the Ruler- Prince Saint Neagoe Basarab, reopens the 1st monastery of nuns in the country.
- Nun Magdalina dedicated the monastery to her nephew, the Ruler Prince Saint Neagoe Basarab who entitled it princely monastery.
- The local tradition relates that the Ruler- prince Saint Neagoe Basarab celebrated the dedication day of the ‘’Assumption of the Virgin’’ with all his retinue and that he would hold council at the refectory which was carved in stone and still visible today next to the church.
- In 1515, Ruler Prince Saint Neagoe Basarab also dedicates the Corbi monastery to his close-to-heart foundation, Argeș monastery, turning it into a succursal monastery.
- In 1658, th monastery was visited by The Patriarch of Antiochia, Macary the 3rd , accompanied by his nephew and chronicler Paul of Alep, who testifies that the church ‘’was small but beautiful, being said to have been hidden and then discovered by a holy hermit, who had seen it in a dream and who opened it’’.
- Mrs. Carmen Laura Dumitrescu considers the legend of the rediscovery of the church to be the echo of a reality connected with either the beginning of the monastic settlement, when a natural cave might have been turned into a sanctuary by a travelling hermit or a moment, following the breaking of the 1st monastic settlement, but prior to the foundation stage at the beginning of the 16th century.
- In the last half of the 18th century, the monastery becomes a parochial church following the settlement in its proximity of a large colony of Romanian orthodox people, over 100 families coming from Jina Sibiului, who left their native places due to the religious persecutions they had been subject to for rejecting the union with Rome.
- At the beginning of the following century, the church was modified, looking the way it is nowadays.
- Then, Bishop Joseph of Sevasta, the one who brought the jinari at Corbi, offering them the church and all its possessions, decides to enlarge the church, too small for the new community, by carving in stone a 5,5m/4,5m Narthex with a northward entrance to the Nave. The wall separating the two altars was pulled down giving place to the new holly table still in use today and a new iconostasis is built, which will be painted by Stephen the Painter (Ștefan Zugravul) on the 6th June 1819. At about that time the church receives one more patron: Saints Peter and Paul, the Apostles.
- Shortly after the jinari built their own church and the rupestral church has fallen into disuse up to now, divine services being held in it only once a year, on the feast day.
- Research done beginning with 2007 led to the greatest discovery in the history of the monastery, concluded that the first scene painted on the right of the entrance to the Nave, which has been thought to represent Eucharistic Jesus Christ is actually the votive painting of the monastery representing the Ruler- Prince Basarab the first the Founder between his two sons.
- Today, at Corbii de Piatra, through the good offices of his Eminence, Calinic Archbishop of Arges, monastic life, interrupted more than 200 years ago started again in 1996 de jure and in 2003 de facto, the purpose of this approach being to start for the construction work of a complex made up of a cell building, chapel and outbuildings, as well as the beginning of the restoration work of the church.
- All these actions are expected to invest this famous place of worship with its famous splendor.
- Monastery of monks, two residents
- Abbot: Hiermonk Ioanichie Sturzeanu
- Dedicated to: Assumption of the Virgin, Saints Paul and Peter and Ruler Prince Saint Neagoe Basarab