The Life and Work of Dositheus II of Jerusalem (1641–1707) by Saint Demetrius Staniloae
[Disclaimer by Kaleb: The following work is the Dissertation of Fr. Demetrius Staniloae, who the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized on 12 July 2024. The work, linked here, is translated from Romanian. The following work is not professionally translated, but I’ve done my best
The reason I have chosen to publicize this in English, though it may be a poor translation, is twofold:
- Patriarch Dositheus is a Saint before the face of God and is the Fourth Pillar of Orthodoxy after Saint Photius the Great, Saint Gregory Palamas, and Saint Mark of Ephesus. I want more people to know about how he defended our faith against the Protestants and the Papists, and I want his veneration to spread all over the world. At the very least, that begins with people knowing a little about his life.
- It is valuable for people to know more about Church history in whatever form it appears. Surely, some would like to know more about the circumstances surrounding the 1672 Council of Jerusalem and the life of the Orthodox in Jerusalem, Romania, and Constantinople during the Turkish oppression of the Church.
In-text additions by me will be bracketed.]
The Life and Work of Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem and His Connections with the Romanian Lands
Doctoral Thesis in Theology
With a preface by Basil Loichița, Dean of the Faculty of Theology in Cernăuți
PREFACE:
It was first printed in the magazine Candela from Cernăuți and appears today in the brochure.
The fact that, in our Church historiography, the prominent personality of the Patriarch of Jerusalem Dositheus from the end of the 17th century, as well as the important role he played in the life of the Orthodox Church of that time, are only briefly and not sufficiently well known, fully justify the appearance of this work.
Thoroughly knowledgeable of classical languages as well as of modern ones, Fr. Demetrius Stăniloae was able to research and use, with the critical spirit and precision of a serious historian, the original sources collected with the diligence of a bee during his study trips, and, based on them, present us in a thrilling synthesis, the turbulent and fruitful activity of Dositheus’s sure anchor, in the lightning-fast defense of the foundations of Orthodoxy against the avalanche of Protestant and Catholic proselytism, — which seeks to conquer us, especially since the appearance of the pseudo-Orthodox Lucarian Confession in Geneva, henceforth, as well as the network of his multiple connections with the Romanian Lands at the threshold of the flourishing days of the consecrated monasteries, as many peaks of light of our impressive pious life from our lively past. The continuous documentation of any statement and the quick orientation in judging and using the studied source, as well as the fragility and vivacity in the exposition, increase the scientific value of Fr. Demetrius Stăniloae.
Our Faculty of Theology, of which he was a distinguished student, awaits with confidence and with beautiful and well-founded hopes the future scientific work of Fr. Demetrius Stăniloae.
Cernăuți, June 15, 1929.
- BASIL LOICHIȚA.
CONTENTS:
Bibliography (V)
Introduction (1)
1. Dositheus’s youth (2)
2. Dositheus’s first trip as Patriarch (6)
3. The Synod of Jerusalem (9)
4. The journey after the synod in Jerusalem (18)
5. Greek Printing House from Iaşi. (22)
6. Patriarch Dositheus’s relations with Prince Şerban (27)
7. Greek schools in Iaşi and Bucharest (34)
8. Greek Printing House from Bucharest, Snagov, Râmnic + Relations of Dositheus with Constantine Brâncoveanu (43)
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Introduction:
Dositheus, the Patriarch of Jerusalem from the end of the 17th century, played, in his time, without a doubt, the leading role in the life of the Orthodox Church. The Church was torn internally by Latinizing and Protestantizing parties, each of which sought to drag it to its extremes. Jesuit propaganda was more intense than ever. The Patriarchs of Constantinople, the natural leaders of the Church, were the slaves of the Phanar cliques and the Turkish government, which changed them even weekly. The Church in Russia, disturbed by the fight between the Emperor and the Patriarch Nikon, as well as the agitations of the Raskol¹, was not able to concentrate on the fight for the defense of the faith.
In these circumstances, the zeal and energy of such a bishop, which was present everywhere through his travels after the alms gathering and surrounded everywhere by a quasi-obedient veneration for the celebrity of his See, could do the most for the public good of the Church.
Dositheus scattered — through his dogmatic formulations — the last remnants of the equivocation in which the Protestants were content to look at us.
His own theological activity, especially through the publication of anticatholic theology, significantly reduced the propaganda of the Catholic Church.
Inside the Church, he put an end to the oscillations between Catholicism and Protestantism.
To a large extent, the center for his activity was formed by the Romanian Lands.
Here, the theological polemic arose; here, in the two princely schools, it found its Catholicizing nursery from Rome: the college of St. Athanasius, the corresponding reagent.
However, apart from the Church-Universal significance that the activity of Patriarch Dositheus had in the Romanian Lands, it also had effects on their very lives.
By sending groups of bishops and monks to the consecrated monasteries, which he continued to multiply, urging and advising on the establishment of the two schools, to which he sent teachers and students, establishing the printing houses in Iaşi and Bucharest, he contributed not a little to the Greekization of life in the strata superiors of the Romanian Lands.
His activity coincides with the beginning of an era which, to a large extent, he determines.
The present work is far from being a complete icon of Dositheus’s activity, which refers to the Romanian Lands. The direct sources have apparently been kept to a relatively reduced extent. A rich new contemporary literature can be found scattered through the Libraries of Răsărit and in that of the Romanian Academy. Time does not allow me to use it. However, it refers more in general to the Greek cultural life from Brâncoveanu’s Court and not directly to the activity of Patriarch Dositheus.
I thought it appropriate to give someplace in the work to the Jerusalem Synod because it forms the basis of the subsequent dogmatic discussions that were also held in the Romanian Lands and is an inseparable part of Dositheus’s activity. I hope that the present work will arouse interest and lead to more in-depth research of that era of Church and National History.
Chapter 1. Dositheus’s youth:
Dositheus was born on May 31 (All Saints Sunday) 1641 in Arahova, a village near Corinth. His godfather was the bishop of Corinth, Gregory Galanos. An old man of his, also Gregory, became a monk under the name Germanus in the monastery of the Holy Apostles in Corinth. These two took the place of his parents after the early death of his father.
The upbringing he received from her was decisive for his life. We have no evidence that he was also a student of Nicholas Kerameus during the time he spent in Athens. The subsequent spiritual relations between them are not sufficient proof. His erudition displays having been self-taught too much to assume systematic training.
The content of this erudition was formed by Orthodox theological literature, starting with the Holy Fathers and continuing until his days.
Among the newer theologians, he particularly liked Meletius Syrigos.
Among foreign languages, he knew Turkish and vulgar Arabic well. He did not know Latin; his Ancient Greek was mediocre.
Thanks to his self-taught zeal, he became one of the most erudite Greek scholars of the time, as his writings and editorial activity prove.
At the age of 16, he was ordained a deacon by the Metropolitan of Corinth and left for Constantinople to find a place in the service of the Church there. In Constantinople, the seat of the Turkish government, the question of the Places of Worship in Jerusalem was often debated at that time. The Latins and Armenians wanted to snatch them from the hands of the Orthodox, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem fought to keep them.
The latter, having to spend a large part of his time in Constantinople for that, had founded here, in some houses given by the Cantacuzino, a Metochion² of the Holy Sepulchre.
Dositheus was employed by Patriarch Paisius I (1645–1660) as a deacon of Metochion.
The Church in Jerusalem was going through hard times then. From 1517 to 1634, the Latins and Armenians fought with all their might to win the Places of Worship for themselves. In the mentioned years, however, the Orthodox obtained full confirmation from the Turkish government of the rights they had over them. Their maintenance, however, had become extremely difficult, again due to the tenacious attacks of the heterodox. Their gradual loss had begun. The fight was hopeless. The Armenians, wanting to remove the energetic Paisius at any cost, made accusations against Paisius to the Sultan of dealing with the Russians against the Empire. It was easy to believe, given the journey that Paisius had undertaken in 1649 in Russia, across Moldova, and the correspondence he maintained with Emperor Alexis Mikhailovich. Paisius was thrown into prison, and his death was being prepared, as had happened to the Ecumenical Patriarch, Parthenius III, who was hanged on Easter Saturday³ in 1657, for about the same reasons.
While the Patriarch spent time in prison, his deacon took care of him “barefoot.” Paisius’s struggles were a good practical example for Dositheus in the future. Paisius escaped from prison.
The Patriarch left, accompanied by the deacon, to Jerusalem, where he went for the first time. From there, after repairing some monasteries, they left all together through the Orthodox countries in order to help the Church in Jerusalem. On his way back, close to Iope, Paisius, worn down by battles and old age, gave his soul on 2 December 1660 at the knees of Dositheus.
The sad news was brought by him to Constantinople, where on 25 January 1661, in an assembly of clergymen and laymen distinguished among the rulers and the Lords of the Romanian Lands, the learned monk, Nectarius, the Abbot of the Sinai Monastery, was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Dositheus was sent together with Gabriel, the Metropolitan of Philippopolis, to carry the message to the newly elected, which will not have contributed a little to immediately reaching the right hand of Nectarius, a gentleman fond of books and solitude and, therefore, unfit for leadership in those circumstances.
After a short stay in Jerusalem, they both set off in 1662, and after a journey full of adventures, they arrived in September 1663 in Iaşi, where they stayed until April 1664.
During this time, he deals with the regulation of the administration of the consecrated monasteries. Prince Eustratius Dabija, “a warm supporter of Hellenism and Orthodoxy represented by the pious guests from the East,” received him very well and also all the boyars, now including the treasurer George Duca, the future great supporter of Dositheus. He will be known at the court of Dabija and the Bishop of Roman⁴, his namesake, as a connoisseur of the Greek language with the same scholarly tastes as him. Close relations will be established between them when one becomes Patriarch and the other Metropolitan.
From Moldova, Nectarius and Dositheus make a short trip to Muntenia, to Gregory Ghica (Sept. 1660 — Dec. 1664). “His help is shared very little or almost everywhere.” Here, too, he deals with the regularization of the administration of the monasteries. Through a deed dated September 1664 from Bucharest, Nectarius installs the monk Macarius as abbot at the consecrated monastery, Rachovița, ordering him to give 25 grosi⁵ each to the Holy Sepulchre, and after that, he will be replaced, or another gram will be released to him. He has to hand over the money to the Abbot of Saint George Monastery from Bucharest in exchange for a receipt.
Back in Moldova, Nectarius has to deal with the issue of Patriarch Nikon from Russia. The Emperor had summoned him [Nectarius] to take part in the synod to judge him [Nikon], but Nectarius, fearing the fate of the Martyr Parthenius and not knowing who to give justice to — the Emperor or the Patriarch — avoided going.
They stay for some time in Iaşi “in the cells of Saint Sava, the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre where Nicholas Kerameus was teaching Greek,” and then he leaves, at the beginning of 1665, to Andrianople.
From here, Nectarius sends Dositheus back to the Romanian Lands, and he goes sick to Constantinople.
Dositheus found him here and on his way back, leaving then (1666) to Jerusalem with rich gifts collected from the Christian countries and especially from the Romanian ones. What surprised everyone was “a human-sized cross” made in Iaşi only from gold and silver plates. It was placed in the Church of the Resurrection, and the Patriarch ordered that it be always taken out before the holy gifts.
While remaining in Jerusalem, Dositheus was ordained on September 23, 1666, as the Metropolitan of Caesarea⁸, which meant that he was destined for the Patriarchal seat of Jerusalem. In this capacity, he was sent to the Romanian Lands as an exarch of the monasteries dependent on the Holy Sepulchre.
He went to Adrianople from Moldova, where he would regulate some matters concerning the Places of Worship and obtain permission from the Sultan to repair the Church in Bethlehem. Meeting Nectarius in Constantinople, he learns, to his great surprise, that Nectarius wants to resign from the Patriarchal seat, being tired of the fights with the Latins and desperate from the heavy debts that pressed Holy Sepulchre.
Dositheus should look for the Sultan in Larisa to ask — helped by the new, for the second time, Lord of Moldavia, George Duca — for permission for the summon of a synod in the election of the new Patriarch. In the synod of January 23, 1669, presided over by Nectarius, Dositheus, who was not yet 28 years old, was elected as the successor to the Patriarchal seat.
There were also some unpleasantly surprised by this choice because the young Dositheus had shown himself to be unyielding from the beginning in keeping the faith clean and in applying the canons. These were the adherents of the Latinizing party: the students of the college of St. Athanasius of Rome and elsewhere, adherents of Protestant ideas, princes, and admirers of the confession of Cyril Lucaris.
Paisius Ligarides, cleve of Leo Allatius, outwardly appeared to be Orthodox and was thusly made the Archbishop of Gaza, but secretly he was a Catholic priest. He wrote to John Cariophilus from Russia upon hearing of the election: “Not being a man in Israel, Deborah ruled.”
Within this sting hides the offended ambition of Ligarides, who wanted the seat of Jerusalem for himself. On the other hand, he was angry that Dositheus had unmasked him and urged Nectarius to send the bribe to Moscow.
Ligarides and all those like him were right to be dissatisfied.
Chapter 2. Dositheus’s first trip as Patriarch:
Now that he was elected Patriarch, Dositheus made a short trip to Jerusalem to find out the most urgent needs of his Church. In the little time he spent there, he dealt with the reorganization of the “Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre,” to which he gave a detailed status, preserved, with small changes made by different subsequent Patriarchs until today. He named the Patriarch-Emiritus Nectarius as the trustee of the Patriarch: the representative of the almost always absent Patriarch. To him, the leadership of the Monastery of Holy Archangels, together with its maintenance income, is given over to him.
The Church in Jerusalem owed 100,000 așprii, the payment of which the only source was the donation of the Orthodox community. He had to start, but he, too, like his predecessors, in endless pilgrimages through the Orthodox countries. These trips brought a significant benefit to the Church in general “because wherever I went, the principle thing was to preach the gospel without payment, to direct Christians to Christian life, to support them to remain in the true faith, to fortify them in front of heretics, and all the good I share.” Thanks to these trips, the Patriarchs of Jerusalem became the advisers of the Churches and princes throughout the East if they also happened to be distinguished personalities. This would happen especially during the time of Dositheus when the Patriarchs of the Ecumenical throne were erased and replaced in a flash, before which they had no authority.
Dositheus started in the period after barely two or three months of stay in Jerusalem. Passing through Adrianople and the Balkan peninsula, he arrived on January 23, 1670, in Silistra and, in February (Lent), in Bucharest. The lord at that time was Anthony of Popeşti (March 1669-March 1672), who was brought by the party of the Cantacuzino after the expulsion of the Greek Radu Leon. Dositheus stayed in Bucharest until May. During Holy Week, he prepared a considerable amount of myrrh, distributing it to the Orthodox from Hungary, Moldavia, and across the Danube. For this act, however, he was made to explain before Methodius III, the Patriarch of Constantinople (1667–1671).
What Dositheus writes about this incident is of a vehemence that, judging rightly, lowers him compared to the conciliatory spirit of Methodius.
“And Methodius of Constantinople was upset that they did not call one of his bishops (those from Ungrovlahia so that they could also take money from there for the boiling of Holy Myrrh). He wrote to me shamelessly and in a cheeky way, many, very ignorantly, concluding that only he was entitled to this.
(I answered) that Holy Myrrh can also be prepared by a simple bishop, and it is even necessary to be so because the dignity of a Patriarch is not from the beginning. Who prepared Holy Myrrh before there was a Patriarch?
Receiving a proper answer and seeing that I did not work against the canons but very righteously, taking care of the community of the Church, he answered me, crushed by the truth, in the following way: ‘You write to me, Brother, about the matter of Holy Myrrh. What is there to say? I found it sad and unbearable, that’s right. Seeing suddenly, without you notifying me, that something had been done, which, according to the canons, belongs to the one who has the jurisdiction of the place, thus showing me disrespect, it was very difficult for me. If you had been silent, how would you have been judged? Therefore, in order to avoid future imputations, let’s say that it was done without my consent and without my knowledge so that I would not be accused of being unworthy of the honor of the Throne and not seeking to defend its rights.’ — Such things (he wrote to us) Methodius, who allowed Christians to be baptized without myrrh. Wherefore, he ought to be content with those who take care of his own, especially as they do so without harming him. Thus justifying me, he declared that he forgives.”
From Bucharest, Dositheus left in May and, passing through Buzău and Focşani, arrived in Iași in the same month. There, Prince Duca, “a hard man and cruel to the boyars, but pious, generous to the holy things,” was just finishing building the “elegant monastery of the Citadel, made according to the model of the Three Hierarchs, surrounded by a belt of sculptures” and placed on the hill of above Iaşi. Characteristic of the beauty of the Citadel is the following incident, related by C. Daponte: “When Sultan Mohamed passed through the siege of Cameniții in the summer of 1672, he visited Iaşi and the Cetățuia monastery, which had recently been completed, and he liked it very much. He asked Prince Duca how much it cost him to raise it, and his answer was that only 30 bags of așprii; he did not believe this, saying that even 100 bags are not enough for such a work. If he did not pay more, it means that he wronged the craftsmen and the workers, not paying them properly. Because he knew Duca to be a greedy man.”
Dositheus arrived just in time and performed the consecration on the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. For the time being, the Duca dedicated it to the Ecumenical Patriarch, but as early as January 1671, Methodius III gave it, at the request of the founder, to the Holy Sepulchre. In this monastery, with the grace of the Holy Apostles, the Patriarchs of Jerusalem established their residence for the time they stayed at Iaşi. Also, there is the Patriarchal Printing House.
At the same time as the Cetățuia, Dositheus also received from Prince Duca the Hlincea monastery, which had been built in 1660 by Prince Stephen, son of Basil Lupu and dedicated to the “Andriano” monastery from Arghirocastron, in Epirus. Prince Duca took it from the Epirotes and submitted it to the Cetățuia, compensating those, in the next reign (Nov. 1678–4 Jan. 1684), with the Church he built in 1682, dedicated to Saint John the Goldenmouth.
In autumn, Dositheus leaves Moldova for Constantinople, where he stays until February 1671. In January, he received in a synod — as I mentioned— Cetățuia, and at the request of Prince Duca, Archbishop Ananias of Sinai, who was on his way to emancipate his diocese under Jerusalem, was excommunicated. Jerusalem’s rights over Sinai were strengthened again. In April, he arrived in Jerusalem, taking with him, apart from the earnings of the two monasteries, 20,000 așprii. Once there, he immediately began the work of repairing the Church in Bethlehem, personally supervising everything and even exposing himself to being killed by the heterodox enemies.
The Patriarch Paisius still wanted to renew this Church, which had been lying in ruins for a long time, and for this purpose, he had received from Prince Constantine Cârnul 7000 așprii. But he didn’t manage to fulfill his idea, just like Nectarius didn’t get to, to whom the patron of Greek culture, Manolache the Castorian, had put large sums at his disposal.
Only Dositheus realizes it. In the spring of 1672 (March), the Church would be consecrated. With this celebration, Dositheus connects a great event.
Chapter 3. The Synod of Jerusalem:
The Confession of Cyril Lucaris — a product of the struggles between Catholics and Protestants, both seeking to present the doctrine of the Orthodox Church as being closer to theirs, had been condemned in various synods immediately after his death, and the teaching of the Church had been formulated in the “Orthodox Confession” of Peter Mogila. In the agitation surrounding it, however, two extremist currents immediately emerged. One friendly to Catholics, represented by Cyril Kontaris — the enemy of Lucaris and condemned for his Catholicizing ideas — and by the students of the college of St. Athanasius of Rome: Leo Allatius, Peter Arcudius, Demetrius Pepanos, Athanasius the Cypriot, Paisius Ligarides, Nicholas Comnenus Papadopulos, Hilarion Tzigala and further.
They, helped by the Catholics, sought, through writing and speech, to lead the Church towards Catholicism, taking advantage of the reaction that arose against the Confession of Cyril Lucaris. Matthew Cariophilus, one of them, wrote the book in this regard: “Against the Confession of Lucaris.”
Leo Allatius, exactly contrary to what the Confession teaches, wrote: “De ecclesiae occidentalis atque orientalis perpetua consensione (On the perpetual agreement of the Western and Eastern Churches),” stating that only two or three ignorant people wrote and believed in the Eastern Church differently than the Western Church believes.
After ten years, the famous “Targa” appeared from the Jesuit camp, with about the same content, which was spread throughout all the Orthodox countries.
The Ecumenical Patriarch, Parthenius IV Moghilalul (1657–1662 for the first time), ordered all Christians to buy it and to burn it. Opposite to this trend was another one, also fed from outside: the one friendly to the Protestants. Its most important representatives are Theophilus Coridaleu and John Cariophilus. On the occasion of the enthronement of the Patriarch Parthenius I, the Elder (1639 -1644), Coridaleu, he delivered a sermon in which he affirms that the Confession of Cyril Lucaris is the “pillar of our faith” and that the Orthodox Church rests on it, and says “whoever does not confess it is a heretic.” He especially emphasizes the 17th chapter of the Confession, rejecting the term “transubstantiation” and, at the same time, the term and the real presence. On the following Sunday, the First-Chanter Meletius Syrigos, his colleague from the professorship and the pulpit, fought him in the face of his sermon. Coridaleu escaped only by fleeing from the wrath of the faithful.
Coridaleu’s theories were repeated by his distinguished student, John Cariophilus, director of the Patriarchal School after Meletius Syrigos (1646–1654). Even before taking the leadership of the School, launched in 1644–1645, at the urging of his teacher, he produced a pamphlet ostensibly against the term “transubstantiation,” but in reality against the real presence. Patriarch Parthenius II, the so-called Young Goliath, threatened him with excommunication if he did not retract what he wrote. Cariophilus fled to Moldova (1645) but later retracted and received the leadership of the Patriarchal School and the dignity of the ecclesiarch. But, although in public, he did it for a long time, in secret, according to his custom, he paid his way to the simple ones. Meletius Syrigos and Nectarius fought him repeatedly but without naming him. In 1664, he left the management of the School, leaving his student Alexander Mavrocordat as his successor, and went with his friend Radu Leon, the new Lord of Muntenia, to Bucharest as Grand Treasurer. There, he also met Ananias, the excommunicated Archbishop of Sinai, who came from Russia, and together, they encouraged each other in their plans. A little later, he again began to preach his heresies publicly, which were condemned in a synod in Constantinople in 1691.
As you can see, the rigorous Orthodox were fighting against these two currents, who wanted to put an end to the oscillations between Catholicism and Protestantism once and for all. Meletius Syrigos and Nectarius were at the head of them. In truth, even though these were not entirely free from Latin influence, this was reduced more to the form of exposition and terminology.
Dositheus, their admiring student, also shows a strong predilection for the Western theological method and literature. On different occasions, he asks his friends to translate Catholic writings, and once he writes (February 19, 1696) to those in Jerusalem: “Send us also the book ‘On the Holy Trinity’ by Saint Augustine. But wrap it in a cloth and worry the Fathers that if something happens to them, God forbid, they can lose anything, just not the book.”
But Dositheus was the disciple of the two in everything, so also in the tendency to precisely highlight the Orthodox teaching both against the Catholic and against the Protestant one. Circumstances demanded and offered the opportunity to, for the time being, begin the fight against the latter, supported by and applauded by the first; it remained to start a violent campaign against them later.
In France, there was always a polemic between Jansenists and Calvinists. The latter, even though they had been proven the opposite on so many occasions, used the Confession of Cyril Lucaris to show that the Orthodox Church believes as they do.
On the Calvinist side, F. Claude, a preacher in Charenton near Paris, argued the polemic, and on the Jansenist side, P. Nicole and A. Arnauld. The discussion culminated around the term “transubstantiation,” which, the Calvinists said, was also rejected by the Orthodox Church through Cyril Lucaris. The Catholics, therefore, had every interest in provoking an official statement from the Orthodox Church that would deny the Calvinist views. However, it was a suitable occasion for the Orthodox Church to formulate its point of view to avoid misunderstandings both internally and externally.
Count Olivier de Nointel, the French consul in Constantinople and a warm supporter of Catholicism, officially asked our Church in writing (around 1670) what it thought about certain dogmatic issues, including the Holy Eucharist. The question was addressed both to the Synod of Constantinople and to other distinguished theologians of the Orthodox Church.
The Synod of Constantinople responded in 1672, during the time of Patriarch Dionysius IV Seroglan or Muselin (1671–1673 for the first time). Among the answers of the theologians, Nectarius’s should be mentioned. Both are based on the Confession of Peter Mogila. Dositheus also composed an answer based on Meletius Syrigos’s writing: “Combating the Chapters and Questions of Cyril Lucaris,” a writing that was composed after the synod of Iaşi at the urging of the Patriarch Parthenius I and Basil Lupu.
Although all these answers were directed against the Calvinists, they continued to regard the Confession of Lucaris as the official Confession of the Orthodox Church.
Two things had to be definitively clarified:
- In the Orthodox Church, the infallibility of the Church is not communicated to the Patriarch of Constantinople as it is in the Roman Catholic Church. The Patriarch can be wrong. Therefore, his personal confessions do not fully encapsulate the Church. In the present case, regardless of whether or not Cyril Lucaris is the author of the Confession in question, it is not the Confession of the Orthodox Church.
- Certain teachings of the Church had to be fully formulated for its internal peace and to take away from Catholics and Protestants any opportunity for exploitation.
This was the mission of the 71 bishops gathered in the synod under the presidency of Dositheus.
Addressing the Orthodox everywhere, the Synod shows the reasons for the convocation and immediately moves on to the rejection of the Calvinists, who “deceive the simple, and spread the rumor that the Eastern Church has Calvinized and believes like them.” The Synod declares that “The Eastern Church differs from them in the most important matters” and enumerates them. She formulated her teaching through Jeremiah II and Peter Mogila. But because they continue to rely on the Confession of Lucaris, the Synod wants to declare: “First: That she never once knew Cyril as the opponents say he is, nor does she know that writer of the chapters. The second: Even if, by hypothesis, they were his, he gave them completely in secret, without the knowledge of any of the Easterners, so not even the Orthodox Church. Third: The Confession of Cyril Lucaris is not the Confession of the Eastern Orthodox Church.” The Synod seeks to show that Cyril Lucaris is not the author of the Confession, and even if he was, “he wrote it not in his official capacity as Patriarch, because in the case that one should have subscribed it to the bishops and it should have been registered in the official codices of the Patriarchates.” However, although he does not consider him the author of it, he still considers him worthy of condemnation only because he did not write against them.
Later, the Synod enforces the Confession of Dositheus. Both this and the minutes are almost identical to “The Enchiridion,” published in Bucharest in 1690. It differs only by a few corrections and additions.
The Catholics looked kindly upon the Confession of Dositheus, and they immediately rushed to publish it in print.
Protestants considered it influenced by Catholicism.
The fact is that it is not entirely devoid of inaccuracies. In ch. 18, he speaks about the provisional state of souls after death in a way that leaves the impression that purgatory is recognized. Dositheus himself recognizes this in the preface to the edition of the Confession, and it is corrected: “It should be known that in the Enchiridion entitled of the Synod of Bethlehem, the author wrote wrongly about this chapter. Now it has been corrected, and the matter has been developed extensively.”
In Russia, it was published with only a few corrections.⁶
The Latin influence on the Orthodox confessions of the 17th century, especially regarding the method and terminology, comes partly from the fact that they were directed against the Protestants, against whom the Catholics, forced by circumstances, had developed terminology that the Orthodox Church did not have.
Much has been attributed to Dositheus by the term “transubstantiation,” introduced by him for the first time in an official confession of the Church.
Those who reproached him overlooked that Dositheus did not claim to philosophically explain the method of change with him; that is, he did not borrow the term and the Catholic teaching related to him at the same time. “Transubstantiation” did not mean for him a change of the substance of the Eucharistic elements in opposition to the accidents that remained unchanged. This ontological philosophical theory, so suitable to explain the mystery of the unperceived change, is not found in the explanatory text of the term.
By “transubstantiation,” Dositheus expresses more decisively what the previous terms also vaguely explained: the perfect and real change of the Eucharistic elements in an unskillful way, without distinguishing between substance and accident. This is precisely the mystery. With this term, he wanted to avoid the possibility of a spiritual interpretation of the old terminology: μεταβολή metaboli (transmutation), μεταποίησις metapoiísis (transformation), μεταῤῥύθμησις metarrythmisis (transorientation), the power of which they include in themselves. By the term “transubstantiation,” we do not want to show the way in which the bread and the wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of the Lord because this is incomprehensible…, but that the bread and the wine after the consecration (are transformed) not physically, nor as by icon, but truly and real and essential (οὐ τοπικῶς, οὐδ’ εἰκονικῶς, ἀλλὰ ἀληθῶς καὶ πραφείλῶς καὶ οὐσιοδῶς).”
The reaction against the term “transubstantiation” was quite serious. Dositheus had to fight much after the synod to impose it.
Our testimony is a preserved correspondence between Dositheus and his nephew Chrysanthus on the one hand and, on the other hand, Sebastius the Trapezuntine³³ of Kimina, director of the School in Constantinople until 1689, and from then until 1702 of the one in Bucharest.
Metropolitan Basil of Anhial published one of these letters — the only one he knew of — in EA. It is a small treatise — entitled “About Transubstantiation in Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist,” written by Sebastius of Kimina and sent on 5 Oct. 1687 to Chrysanthus, who had asked him for his opinion on this matter on the authority of Dositheus. The letter is very interesting for the subtlety with which it treats the issue. It offers us proof that the number of those who opposed the term “transubstantiation” or of those who misunderstood it was not small.
“Many are perplexed about the transformation (transubstantiation) of bread and wine into the true Body and true Blood of the Lord. Namely, some reject the term “transubstantiation,” while others accept it, believe it, and preach it, but in a different way. Some say that the transmutation (μεταβολή metaboli) is to be understood as in the physical ones, with the difference that in those, the matter remains, and here the being of the two elements is transformed, and only accidents remain.
Others say that there is no change (μεταβολή metaboli) of the bread and wine, but they are, under the cover of accidents, withdrawn by the power of God, and in their place, flesh and blood are presented without any turning (τροπή tropi) or change (μεταβολή metaboli), but only a withdrawal (of the bread and wine) and an appearance of the Body of Christ under accidents.
This is the exposition of the problem: that faith is one thing, and scientific proof is another; the reason is something else, and what is above it is something else. With this, he entered the core of combating the theories that claim to somehow explain the way of changing. “There is another way of changing in the Eucharist and another in the physical ones.”
Sebastius of Kimina finally asks Chrysanthus “to examine the present sketch as it should be and if he thinks it is useful, to spread it, and if not, to forget it.” In Codex #96 of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople is a response from Chrysanthus to a letter from the Kiminan regarding the Eucharist — I don’t know about this or the other — and a reply from the latter. In the correspondence indicated above, there is also an “Objection” — Ένστασις — to Dositheus, to some points from a work by Sebastius, and also with a reply from Sebastius. I regret that I cannot circumscribe the point made and the course of the discussion more closely, not having had the opportunity to study the respective texts.
The direct resistance against the term “transubstantiation” was maintained for the time being secretly, and later openly, by the mentioned John Cariophilus.
In 1689, when a hieromonk from Ioannina came to Constantinople to ask him, as one who enjoyed the reputation of being too wise, about certain theological issues, he, clarifying the questions, added: “It is a great obstacle to the salvation of Christians, to preach is someone about transubstantiation in the Holy Eucharist.”
Dositheus, who was then in Adrianople, wrote him to stop propagating such errors. Cariophilus, however, was far from calming down and almost immediately started preaching against “transubstantiation.” He wrote “The Pamphlets,” in which, as in the “brochure” from 1645, he not only rejected the term “transubstantiation,” but in reality, even the real change in the Holy Eucharist. These “sophistically composed” tracts seemed to some “simpler” ones to be orthodox, and they began to transcribe and spread them.
Cariophilus, asked by some what he thought the Eucharistic bread and wine to be after the consecration, once he rejected the term transubstantiation, he answered: the Body and Blood of the Lord. Asked further what the believer eats, he answered: the Body and Blood of the Lord. But the sinner, they asked again: so simple, was the answer, thus showing that he does not believe in real change, but only in an imaginary change.
This time, Dositheus did not let go of his hand. On the first Saturday of the Easter Lent in 1691, Callinicus II Acarnan (1689–1693 for the second time) convened a Synod at Dositheus’s exhortation and concurrence. Cariophilus, at that time Great Chancellor of the Church of Constantinople, called to defend himself but did not want to answer. The synod issued a Gramota, which condemned the teaching of the “The Pamphlets,” failing to name the author and offering an apology for the term transubstantiation. Cariophilus also signed the Gramota based on the office he held. Things seemed to be reconciled. On the next day, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, Dositheus cursed and tore the books from the pulpit and threatened with anathema all those who possess the Pamphlets and do not burn them. Cariophilus, however, did not calm down. When some pretenders went to visit him, he said to them: “Have you seen what the Synod said on the Feast of Saint Theodore? And did you see how I did? As Christ did before Pilate and the crowd.”
A new Synod was convened. Presently summoned again to speak, he took the floor and began to defend himself with quotes from the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers. But it was immediately seen that he was explaining wrongly to them and about the more recent theologians, who he said had sinned by using the term transubstantiation.⁷
At the urging of the Synod, however, and out of fear of excommunication, he promised not to spread his heretical ideas.
But he did not keep his promise. Immediately after the Synod, he wrote a pamphlet to the Metropolitan of Adrianople entitled: “Syntagmation,” in which he claimed that even the laity could perform the mysteries.
But the charged atmosphere around him made him take refuge at the Court of Constantine Brâncoveanu¹⁶ (1693), with whom he was on friendly terms. Thus, the Prince of the Mountains¹² also saw himself mixed up in this dogmatic quarrel. He wrote to Dositheus to calm down his excessive zeal in persecuting a man who, after all, is not so guilty. However, Dositheus, forgetting the abundant gifts with which the Prince of the Mountains had given him, answered him with words whose brutality and mockery are the charm of strength: “The laws of God were not given on the mountains of the Romanian Lands, nor by the Princes of the Romanian Lands, but in Constantinople, by the Emperors and Synods; if Cariophilus has something to say, let’s go together to Constantinople and speak there.”
Cariophilus stayed in Bucharest, where he was greatly honored. At the request of Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino, he published some theological issues that were printed in Bucharest in 1694. In Bucharest, he died (Sept. 1694) and was buried in the metochion of Prince Radu on Holy Athos. The “Epitaphion” (Service of the Epitaph) was composed by the doctor John Comnenus.
In the synods of Constantinople and, definitively, with the death of John Cariophilus, Dositheus liquidated the Protestant current and imposed the term transubstantiation.
The Council of Jerusalem was a blow to the Protestants. He must now turn against the Catholics. This was occasioned by the attacks of the Latins for winning the Places of Worship and their proselytizing action in all the Orthodox countries. The fight will be waged mainly through the printing and distribution of a gift of polemical Orthodox writings.
Chapter 4. Travels after the Council of Jerusalem:
Soon after the Synod, Dositheus starts again in the period and, on the usual road, arrives in Muntenia in May 1673. Lord Gregory Ghica (March 1672 — Dec. 1674) had arrived there with the help of the dragoman Panagiotis Nicusios. Dositheus’s friendship with Nicusios urges him to be more careful with the powerful hierarch and to honor him in two monasteries: Caluiul and Ungra. Perhaps Dositheus had also helped him with the advice in the spring of 1672 when Ghica had gathered a Synod, composed mostly of the Greek bishops from across the Danube, in which the Metropolitan of the Cantacuzino party, Theodosius Vestemeanul³⁹, had joined. From Muntenia, Dositheus made — in a single month, June — a road trip to Iaşi, through Buzău and Focşani, and back.
The Prince of Moldavia was Ştephen Petriceicu Hasdeu (16 Aug. 1672 — Oct. 1673). Dositheus’s protector, Prince Duca, had been taken by the Turks and could barely save his life with a lot of money. In Petriceicu, with a new Prince and in times so troubled by the wars between the Turks and the Poles, the Patriarch could not find a great helper.
These unfavorable circumstances also delayed the work of Metropolitan Dosoftei¹⁰. Although he had come under the influence of the Patriarch of the same name, who advised him in matters of dogma and canons, he had begun the realization of his plan to give the service book in Romanian to the priests, “defending himself against the Orthodox typists with the well-known words of the Apostle Paul.” His supporter was and will be Prince Duca, who saw no difficulty in helping the religious-cultural manifestations in both Greek and Romanian. Duca himself wrote on 26 November 1671, of course at the urging to Dosoftei the Metropolitan, to the “brothers” of Lemberg, to print “400 Psalters according to the book, I add here, written in Slavonic letters, but in the Romanian language, so that the people who do not know Slavonic can understand more easily, and a book ‘Cazania’ with questions and answers in Romanian script…” Not being able to satisfy his desire in Lemberg, he turned to Uniev¹¹, and the monks there printed it in 1672/3 — after his fall, Duca, in the midst of the turmoil caused by the Turkish-Polish war, “the wonderful book of verses, The Psalter of Dosoftei, alone was able to ensure his literary glory.”
But this was only an “educational book.” Dosoftei wanted to move on to “working” [liturgical] books. The monks from Uniev had sent them at once with the Psalter and a Romanian “Book of Akathists,” which includes the Supplication of the Mother of God, the Canon of Pascha Saturday, with the entire evening service in Romanian, the “Canon to All the Saints in the Supplication” and Prayers of Preparation for Communion.
He couldn’t go any further for now. In June — while the Patriarch was making his way from Bucharest to Iaşi — the Metropolitan was in the camp of the Turks, together with the Bishop of Roman, Theodosius, and John of the Hussites. Ştephen Petriceicu, “a lover of Christians,” believing in the coat of arms of the Polish armies, went over to the Poles during the battle from Hotin. But they could not hold Moldavia - and their faithful Petriceicu - for more than two months: Dec. 1673-Jan. 1674. At the retreat, together with Petriceicu, the Metropolitan, who had been complicit in his deed, had to flee. When the latter returned during the time of Demetrescu Cantacuzino (Nov. 1673 and Jan. 1674-Sept. 1675), he found Theodosius, Metropolitan of Roman. He should pass “as an honorable man” in the monastery of Saint Sava and Cetățuia, the Metochion of Jerusalem, defended by the authority of its presiding Patriarch. He spent this time in pious meditation; on June 23, 1674, composed in Cetățuia, the prayer for rain, printed in “Prayer Book” from 1681. He was able to leave the monastery to occupy his throne only with the arrival of Anthony Ruset to the Lordship (Sept. 1675- Nov. . 1678), who was on good terms with the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
He, having returned from Iaşi, will have stayed a little longer in Bucharest and then left for Adrianople and Constantinople, where he was in the fall of 1673, fighting to be rejected by the Turkish government, the request of the Count of Nointel for the transfer of the Places of Worship to the Latins. In December of the same year, he set out again through the entire Balkan peninsula — perhaps also in the Romanian Lands — visiting it until 1674. In the autumn, he was again in Adrianople, giving the Sultan a request contrary to the one that the Count of Nointel had given a little before, in the same case of places of worship. The applications were discussed on 5 Feb. 1675 in a great meeting of the Court of Justice, at which both sides appeared in large numbers. Dositheus wins the trial through his oratorical talent. As a result, on Oct. 26, 1675, he obtained through P. Nicusios a firm that once again strengthened the rights of the Orthodox over the Places of Worship. At the end of the year, he went to Jerusalem to solemnly proclaim the rights confirmed. He didn’t stay there until Pascha of the next year when he had to flee because of some attempts on his life. He arrived in Bucharest through Rusciuc during the Christmas holidays (1676). Here, the Prince had arrived, with the help of the Roselites from Constantinople, his protege George Duca (Dec. 1674-Nov. 1678), under whom he could return from exile or release the Cantacuzunes from prison. They dedicated to Dositheus the monastery of the Holy Archangels from the Margineni, which had been inherited from their maternal ancestors, the Filipeşti, and is now renovated by them. In the “Sigilion” of the Constantinople Patriarch Dionysius IV (1676–1679 for the second time), by which the worship is confirmed, the father of the worshippers, The Postman Constantine Cantacuzino, the one killed by Gregory Ghica, in Snagov, in 1663 is mentioned.
We don’t know how long Dositheus stayed in Bucharest, but in June of the same year, he sent a sealed letter from Iaşi in which he spoke about the Caşin monastery dedicated to the Holy Archangels. Prince Stephen, Basil Lupu’s successor, had built this monastery, and it was closed by the Holy Sepulchre through his brother and his wife, Basil the Logophat and Lady Safta. Among the villages belonging to the monastery were Buțuleşti and Roznov. Stephen’s successor, however, Ştefăniță, son of Basil Lupu, under the word that Prince Stephen expelled his father and looted his wealth, robbed the monastery of more wealth and the two villages and gave some of it by selling them. The matter reached the Constantinople Synod, where Ştefăniță’s deed was harshly reprimanded. If he had something to claim from Prince Stephen, he could take them from private assets but not from the assets that, once consecrated, belong to God. Dositheus received a letter from the Synod that all those who had bought or received as a gift something from the monastery’s assets to return them under threat of excommunication and of being able to claim the purchase price from the seller, if not, “to suffer the damage because they bought them illegally.” The two villages had been given by Ștefăniță, the first to the late Chancellor Iftodi Racoviţă and the second to his son, the Chancellor Nicholas Racovită. They immediately rushed to return them to the monastery. But because the monastery was left without working cattle, Dositheus concludes with the present deed, a transaction with Nicholas based on which he keeps the village of Roznov with all its wealth and gives the monastery 200 sheep, 30 cows, and 20 oxen in return, “all beautiful, healthy and chosen.”
The Prince of the country, Anthony Ruset, is also mentioned in the Gramota. Now, Metropolitan Dosoftei must also have given the Pobrata monastery to the Patriarch, who had become the new founder and had been renovating it since he was Bishop of Roman. In the act of worship, Bishops Seraphim of Rădăuți, John of Roman, and Calisiru of Huş are placed in line with him. Prince Anthony Ruset, “the honest,” is also remembered of Lady Zoe and “their beloved sons.”
It seems that the Patriarch remained in the Romanian Lands for a long time because he was still there in April and July 1678.
In the fall, we meet him in Constantinople and Adrianople in the matter of Places of Worship, a little later in Jerusalem, where he provides sultanic permits for the repair of some monasteries. He stayed there until June 1679, repairing the monastery of Saint Elijah, and again came to Constantinople regarding the Places of Worship.
During his travels, he did not neglect his literary activity either. He was an avid collector of manuscripts. In 1680, he completed the beautiful “Legal Collection,” which includes many church law documents collected from the archives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He lacked them when writing his Church History. In 1680, he founded the famous Metochion Library of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople. Also this year, he founded The Printing House from Iaşi.
Chapter 5. Greek Printing Houses from Iaşi
With the foundation of the Greek printing house from Iaşi, the extended era of Greek printing in Romania was inaugurated in the Romanian Lands, an era that would last for more than a century and a half.
These, together with the Greek schools, were the basic elements of the Greek culture in the Principality. It is interesting that as the Greek prints are crowded, so are the Romanian ones. A.D. Xenopol⁹ regards Greek influence as one of the causes of the introduction of the Romanian language into the Church and thus explains this paradox:
After the Fall of Constantinople, Greek monks raided the monasteries of the Romanian Lands, which were the centers of Slavonic culture, and replaced them with Greek ones.
Over time, that is to say, gradually, the connoisseurs of Slavonic literature gradually disappeared. The same thing happened with the monasteries in the Balkan Peninsula, from where Slavonism could have been fed in the Romanian Lands. Even Matthew Basarab asked in 1638 for the printing of some Slavonic books, and a connoisseur of Slavonic books, Francis Kiprovatschi, the pope’s envoy to Bulgaria, not being able to find one in all of Bulgaria, sent the priest Raphael from Croatia.
Since there were no more Slavic speakers in the monasteries, priests in the future would have no place to learn Church ordinances. The Churches are thus left without priests. Greek monks were forced to disperse to Churches without priests. But those only went to the richest. That is why Matthew Basarab and Basil Lupu were forced to introduce the Romanian language into the Church. They did this out of necessity, not with joy. Because there is a belief that you cannot pray to God in any language other than the consecrated ones, this measure was resorted to only provisionally until there was a rebirth of Slavonic culture in some way. For this, they founded the Slavonic schools in Iaşi and Bucharest. But with these schools, the dead could no longer be resurrected. They soon Greekized. In the poor Churches, the Romanian language gained ground, while the same thing happened with the Greek language in the rich Churches in the cities. Thus, Hellenism and the Romanian book progress in parallel.
On 15 May 1680, Dositheus arrived in Iaşi through Muntenia, and — let’s say in his own words, “seeing that the Moldavians have printing, and the Greeks don’t, my heart burned. However, God, the initiator and doer of good things, brought us a Wallachian, a hieromonk, named Metrophanes, and we gave him 600 grosi, and he prepared a new typeface for us.”
The Moldavian Printing House he is talking about is that of the Metropolitan Dosoftei. This one, after he had printed his Psalter and Akathist at Uniev, wanted to have his own printing house to print service books in Romanian. Troubled times had prevented him from doing this before the return to the throne of the one under whom he had worked, Prince Duca (16 Nov. 1678–4 Jan. 1684). With the Prince’s money, “which helped him with everything,” he had now received from Joachim, the Patriarch of Moscow, through Nicholas Milescu “the letters small, round Russian ones, brought by the deacon Joannicius of Bila… with a chariot the printing of Romanian books began in 1679, by the Russian craftsman Basil Stavniţchi, who was helped in the wood excavations by the Romanian blacksmith or Gypsy-Romanian Stancul and further by a Metrophanes from the new monastery by the parishioners and by his disciples, Ursu, Nicholas, and Andrew.”
In 1679, the first Liturgy in Romanian was printed in Iași like this: “Dumnedzăiasca Liturghie” (Divine Liturgy) translated from Greek, not from Slavonic as usual. It was a “gift to the Romanian language” and, at the same time, a help book for priests “who are not Serbian or Hellenistic.”
The Greek Printing House made for Dositheus the Patriarch, the same Metrophanes - who worked on the Romanian one - was of great significance for the Greeks because there was no other in the whole East. Cyril Lucaris had established one in Constantinople — the first Greek printing house; the one in Iaşi is the second in the East, but it only started to print two or three polemical writings and was thrown into the sea by the Turks due to the intervention of Jesuit money.
The Greek books that appeared in Western printing houses were not suitable for polemics with the Catholics.
Until then, only Slavonic or Romanian books were published in the printing houses of the Romanian Lands. Only the “Gramota” of Patriarch Parthenius I was published in Greek after the Synod of Iaşi (20 Dec. 1642), by which he condemned the Confession of Cyril Lucaris. With this Greek writing, Basil Lupu’s printing house was inaugurated, and it was never printed again in Greek.
Patriarch Dositheus wanted, like Metropolitan Dosoftei, especially since both had found Prince Duca a supporter, to have their own printing house from which to spread not service books but theological polemics to all Orthodox cults. The clarifications of the Orthodox faith between bishops and theologians made at the Synod in Jerusalem and before wanted to reach the common good.
His publications, therefore, do not have a scientific character. Perhaps, especially here, his autodidacticism is noticeable. In the prefaces of his editions, we do not find the indications of the manuscripts used, a ranking and a selection of them; the text is not provided with any critical apparatus, everywhere we do not find any trace of effort for what is called “reconstitution of the text.”
For each writing, he does not seem to have used more than a single copy. The printing house with the name “Patriarchal and Princely Printing House” was placed in his residence in the Cetățuia. The first printed book, “Fit to open fire” against the Catholics, is a short “Rejection of the things brought by ‘brothers’ from Jerusalem, through their leader Peter, for supporting the papal primate.” It is a work of the former Patriarch Nectarius, written when he spent time in the monastery of the Holy Archangels. He left the printing press in July 1682. Hieromonk Metrophanes was the printer. Sebastius of Kimina, in an elegiac treatise, expresses the joy of seeing through print the rebirth of the Greek language. In a preface letter, Dositheus thanks the Prince for helping “well and with all his heart” in the establishment of the Greek printing house that will show every Orthodox Christian “the light of the evangelical faith.” The book was distributed as a gift.
The thing seemed sweet to Dositheus, who was in Constantinople. That is why he hastened to send Metrophanes paper and a manuscript of the writings of Symeon of Thessalonica for printing. At the same time, he also sent a letter to Prince Duca urging him to bear the expenses of the printing. The book appeared in October 1683 with the following content:
“Dialogue Against Heresies and About Our Faith; The Only True Faith of Christians and About the Holy Ordinances and Mysteries of the Church; About the Divine Church, the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in it and About the Vestments with Which Each of Them Wears; About the Holy Liturgy; The Explanation of the Symbol of the Orthodox Faith of the Christians; and About the Priesthood.”
It is a complete edition of the works of Symeon of Thessalonica. La Migne is reproduced without change (155, 25–1004). Only a few prayers and smaller writings, unpublished even today, are missing.
The “Explanation of the Church Order” by Mark Eugenicus the Ephesian, was also printed in the same volume. It was also reprinted in Migne (PG 160 pg. 1163–1193). The printer was also Metrophanes, now Bishop of Huși. John Molivdul from Heraclea or Perint served as caretaker and corrector.
The book was opened by two letters from Dositheus addressed from Adrianople, March 1683, one to Duca and the other to the lecturers. To the latter, he said, “Symeon of Thessalonica, who summarized the Scriptures, also stole the Fathers for easy teaching to the unlearned, for good understanding to those who strive and for easy retention in the memory of to the wise… this spiritual sun of the Church of God, which illuminates both the wise and the simple with the rays of his teaching… was until today like a closed garden and like a sealed spring, unknown to the many. But the very good and brilliant and faithful Prince Duca brought it to light, ordering it to be printed at his own expense.”
A copy of the book was sent later, in 1886, to the Lichudis brothers in Moscow to publish a Slavonic edition against the Jesuits with whom he was working.
During these years, both printing houses operated in Iași: the Romanian one and the Greek one. Towards the end of 1683, the political upheavals abolished the Moldavian printing house and suspended the activity of the Greek one. After the sacking of Vienna, the Poles invaded Moldavia during the Christmas holidays and raised Prince Duca, who had also returned from the Turkish camp from the siege of Vienna. In his place, they left Stephen Petriceicu, who, however, could not hold out for more than three months (January 4, 1684-March 4, 1684).
In Petriceicu’s place, the Turks send Demetrescu Cantacuzino (March 1684-June 25, 1685), then Constantine Cantemir (June 25, 1685-March 27, 1693), “poor old man, who didn’t really understand much from books and he was inclined to spend for them, even if Father Vladica had placed him as well as Duca among the greatest benefactors of the Church.”
Under Constantine Cantemir, Dositheus barely managed to write a letter for Prince Şerban, towards which he would head from now on. It is the “Order of the Holy Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus” in Cotrocenii for the beautiful new monastery of Şerban, which is next to the patron saint of the “Assumption of the Mother of God” and that of the two martyrs. The monastery was built in 1680. In Febr. 1681, the Patriarch of Constantinople, James, gave the gramota, which lined with authority and spiritual dispositions of Şerban regarding this monastery. He was granted the wineries from Țigăneşti Hill and Vițicheşti Hill near Pitesti, 400 boulders of salt from Ocna-Teleaga, the pond: Petriş village in Vlaşca county together with the village. In addition to these, [he was granted] the revenues of the city of Floci. The monastery was dedicated to the community of the Monasteries of Athos, which was sent by Abbot Ignatius Scopelite from Xeropotamou. Annually, five bags of așprii would be sent to Athos.
With the printing of the Order of the Cotrocens, also done by Metrophanes, the Patriarch’s printing house stopped. The two Dositheus met the following year (1686) for the last time. Sobieţchi invaded Moldova and held Iași under terror for several months. Constantine Cantemir had fled. The Patriarch, who came from the Romanian Lands, hastened to return there again upon hearing of the arrival of the Craiului, defender of Catholicism. The Metropolitan remained to receive the conqueror. But that being soon defeated by the Tatars, he had to leave Moldova. Metropolitan Dosoftei, of course, must go with him. This is how Moldavian printing was also extinguished.
Chapter 6. Patriarch Dositheus’s relations with Prince Şerban¹⁷
As Iași is no longer conducive to cultural activity, Dositheus turns his attention to Prince Şerban, where he finds a helper of Orthodoxy and culture lost in George Duca.
During Şerban’s time, “Greeks were no longer viewed with evil eyes, as in the time of Radu Leon, when the party’s interest demanded it, but, on the contrary, they easily climbed to the first places, where they could sit without worries.” Their presence and action on the cultural and religious grounds had been, and was especially now, regarded with all goodwill. The gentlemen, Şerban Cantacuzino and Constantine Brâncoveanu, with the purest native feelings, knew Greek and raised their children with Greek teachers, preferred in their Churches the Greek order and sermon, and they supported the most famous Greek schools in the whole East.
John Cariophilus, former and future Ecumenical Patriarchs, Metropolitans Neophyte of Adrianople, Auxentius of Sofia, and Gennadius of Silistra often came to Şerban’s court.
In 1683, the Lichudis brothers, sent by Dositheus to Moscow, visited the Court of Şerban, to whom Sophronius delivered the speech “Public Joy” in December when he was returning from the Turkish siege of Vienna.
Metropolitan Germanus of Aetolia in Nisei lived in Bucharest since 1676 after first leaving the management of the Patriarchal School, then that of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre. He felt so good that ten years later, he wrote to John [Comnenus] in Padua congratulating him on obtaining his doctorate in medicine and proposing to come to Bucharest, where he intervened for him to the Prince, and the court doctor promised to be a teacher in practice. “Because it is not good,” he says, “to practice the profession in Venice; it’s very expensive, and you’re one of the poor people.” The current doctor “doesn’t want to stay and is looking for a successor in operation.”
He also tells the new doctor about a characteristic episode for meeting the Patriarch Dositheus:
“You know that I am locked up and between the walls in my name, and I do not dare to put my foot beyond the threshold for the following reason: He came from Jerusalem and took me as a priest, thinking that I would absolve him of all his iniquities, which hearing — them; obviously I refused. But he demanded that I release him from everything, and I, supported by the canons, refused. He wanted to receive penance, and the penance required by the canons was to leave the See and to be elected another Patriarch in his place. But he objected. Knowing that soul death was waiting for me, I left. He sets to work on the next thing. Last year, the Lord gave me a monastery that was devoid of everything. I spent my money with it to renew it and restore it, not receiving anything from that. This year, it showed enough income to cover my expenses and earn more. However, the evil one thought of kidnapping her in order to attract me to what he was demanding against the canons. He seduces the Ruler with seductive words and kidnaps the monastery. He steals all my things with her and leaves me empty-handed. But I left them all so as not to break the spiritual laws. When he saw that he did not convince me in this way, he turned back and tried to delight me with gifts and wrote me an epistle, a copy of which I am sending you to make known to young and old alike, reading the present one as well, so that the people may know in what dishonorable vessel the throne of Jerusalem descended and that they do not announce his iniquities in particular, but only that he is unworthy of both the throne and the dignity. If I had yielded to his request, I would have regained mine and would have received ungodly additions. I haven’t forgotten you, dear, but I haven’t found out who to bring your letter to. Nicholas left, and I didn’t know.”
Jeremiah Cacavela, the preacher, also spent time at Şerban’s court. On December 19, 1682, he translated for Constantine Brâncoveanu the work of the Italian humanist Platina: In vitas summorum pontificum. The passionate eloquence of the work was to his taste. He dedicated the translation of an Italian history of the Turkish siege of Vienna to Prince Şerban, in which the Lord of the Mountains had also taken part. The translation was ready in 1688. To comfort the postman, Gregory composed the “speech about vanity” on the occasion of his wife’s death.
Along with Cariophilus, in June 1688, he offered the Prince an explanation of the miraculous sign that troubled the world: the birth of a rabbit with two heads. His explanation is natural and clear; [the explanation] of Cariophilus was hair-pulled and confused but pretentious and not lacking in superior disdain for the country in which he lived.
For Cacavela, the two-headed rabbit was the Turkish kingdom frightened by the recent defeats and divided by the two pretenders to the throne. For Cariophilus, it was Wallachia with the heart of a mole under the Turkish fist. Without establishing how long Şerban lived in Bucharest, Sebastius of Kimina also visits the Romanian Lands and “adorns” the Prince with very flattering attributes.
These and other clerics, monks, and teachers lived at the court of the Lord of the Mountains. The Patriarch of Jerusalem had them bound to him by ties of canons, gratitude, interest, or veneration. His influence was naturally “all-powerful.” From the Romanian Lands, his influence also extended to Transylvania, which was ecclesiastically connected to it. The Patriarch’s zeal for Orthodoxy could not neglect this part, which was so oppressed for the time being by the Calvinists and, in a little while, by the Catholics. In 1680, being in the Romanian Lands — before going to Iaşi, where he would establish the printing house — the people of Transylvania asked him for help: “The Orthodox from Transylvania asked us to give them some writings so that they could respond to Calvinists, who were troubling them beyond measure...”
It seems that this request was made to him by Metropolitan Sava Brancovici himself, who, before being removed from the bishopric and priesthood by Apaffi’s Synod¹³ (July 2, 1680), he had been through the “Turkish parts,” making him guilty of this.
Against the removal of Sava from the See, Prince Şerban took a stand —obviously with the contribution of Dositheus — “with the clever Greeks,” from the Country and from Constantinople, where Apaffi’s position as a prince was thus endangered, as one who depended on the pleasure of the Turks. Apaffi, in order to appease Şerban’s anger, sent the newly elected metropolitan, Joseph Budai of Pişchinți, to receive the ordination from Theodosius, “according to the law,” and on September 30, 1680, it was justified at the Gate that the sentence in Sava’s trial was fair.
Due to Şerban’s connections with the Greeks, Sava’s judgment could be “an opportunity for affirmation and recognition even by the Transylvanian prince and the nobility of this country, of the right to exist that Romanian Orthodoxy had there, and the right to control, which, therefore, could be claimed by the Romanian Church of the Mountain Principality.”
“With Joasaph,” said Acacius, “militant Orthodoxy entered Transylvania, accustomed to all the religious machinations imposed by the government.”
He declared to his face where he was going that heretics unjustly condemned Sava, that his judgment could only be made by the Ecumenical Patriarch. Calvinistic book printing is a crime that must stop; he, recognizing the right of the language of the people, will translate books with pure faith. He submitted, without asking anyone’s permission, the Calvinist deacons from Armenia, Săcadate, Mohu, Corabia, and Daia. He was preparing to depose “with the power of Patriarch Dositheus,” the priests married a second time.
The Transylvanian government, frightened by this avalanche of Orthodoxy, immediately convenes a synod to expel the Greek bishop. Two unyielding antagonists stood in front. Joasaph did not want to recognize the synod of inferior clerics as a forum for judging the hierarch but left without saying a word of justification, stripped of the insignia of his dignity by those he considered barbarians and heretics, persecutors of the true Church, and went to a monastery, with a peaceful conscience that he had done his full duty.
Metropolitan Theodosius, advised and encouraged by Dositheus, answered just as harshly, leaving Transylvania without a shepherd for many years. During this time, when John of Vinți had remained undisturbed to lead the Church of Transylvania in the Calvinist direction, the Lichudis brothers broke through there (1684) — helped by Prince Şerban — who discussed dogmatic issues (about the procession of the Holy Ghost) with different theologians. From Transylvania, he went to Poland, discussing there — in Lemberg — in front of Sobieţchi and Prince Duca with the Lesuites and reporting to Dositheus that they defeated them.
The close relations between Prince Şerban and Dositheus benefited both. They were also useful to Dositheus in the matter of Places of Worship because Şerban knows how to win the friendship of all the Greeks with influence in Constantinople, even of Dositheus’s enemies who could have harmed him through their influence at the Gate.
John Cariophilus visited the Lord of the Mountains as often as the Patriarch; indeed, the two rivals often met at Şerban’s court. They had to meet in the spring of 1680 and in the spring of 1686. Şerban benefited from the friendship of the powerful Cariophilus, among other things, to reconcile him with Prince Duca and the Ruseteşti, the only enemies of the Lord of the Mountains. Just as useful and for the same reasons was the disciple of Cariophilus and the enemy of Dositheus, the Patriarch Dionysius IV Seroglanus¹⁴. He, both as Patriarch and as ex-Patriarch, lived more at Şerban’s court. As Patriarch (1676–1679 for the second time), he gave Şerban “the Tome” of approval for the return of Theodosius to the See. Falling from his dignity in favor of Athanasius IV (1679 Aug. 2–10) and then James, he left after a consultation about the means of reconciling the two Lords in the Romanian Lands (Oct. 1681), then commuting between Şerban and Duca, until he succeeded in reconciling them. This happened on July 1, 1682, and on July 31, he “kissed the hand of the Vizier,” the Patriarch reached, overturning James, not without the help of Şerban.
Through a letter from Chrysanthus, Şerban finds out that James — and it seems that Dositheus — was a bit angry with him for getting him removed from the Patriarchal Chair. The Lord of the Mountains answers superbly like a master: “What the High Most Holy One says has nothing to do with us because neither at the beginning nor later have we shot down our will and our opinion, in any way, without to precede the decision (of His Holiness) to resign… But for Dionysius to go from here to be Patriarch with the common will of the Synod, resigning of his own free will like James, we also helped.”
“The High Most Holy One has no reason to be angry with us because we did not contribute to his downfall. But even noticing that we made a mistake with something and we do not know (hypothetically), again, it is not appropriate to be angry because the call of His Holiness is to pray…”
From these friendships of Şerban, no matter how angry Dositheus was, the help he gave him in the matter of Places of Worship also depended. In July 1683, the Patriarch wrote from Constantinople to the Hagiopolites⁴¹, announcing with joy that, through the interventions of Şerban, he obtained through the hatisherif³⁰, once again, the confirmation of the rights of the Orthodox over the Places of Worship. The event was so important that they did not believe the news, which preceded the letters, and did not consider them “Adrianopolitan lies” because the Patriarch had sent them from Adrianople. That is why he ordered them in the same letter to send the great benefactor an act of thanks from the “Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre and to commemorate him at all liturgies.”
In the meantime, the Patriarch had also made a trip to Iberia to collect alms on behalf of the Hebrew monasteries in Jerusalem for their redemption, that is, from the hands of the Mohammedan creditors, who wanted to surrender them to the Armenians in exchange for the redemption sums.
With the collected money and the mentioned hatisherif, he left for Jerusalem in the spring of 1685, where he had not been since 1679. In Jerusalem, he started repairing some monasteries between the Churches and that of Saint Sava.”
In a letter dated July 27, 1685, addressed to Chrysanthus, Prince Şerban carefully informs him that he, too, has not received a letter from the Patriarch for a long time.
He was leaving Jerusalem in the fall for the Romanian Lands, again with the main purpose of collecting alms on behalf of the Holy Sepulchre, who, as he announced in an encyclical to all the Orthodox, is forced, because of his debts, to pawn off his sacred vessels. In Constantinople, he fell ill and could not continue his journey until the next March (1686). From Bucharest, through Prince Şerban’s letters to the Vizier, he once again defeated the Latins who insisted on the Places of Worship.
It seems he stayed in Bucharest until April next year after making a trip to Iaşi in July, from where he quickly fled on hearing of Sobieţchi’s invasion.
But even during the time he could not spend in Romania, he had his hierodeacon, Chrysanthus, the exarch of the monasteries dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre. This clever young man, who promised a bright future, was very popular at the court of the Lord of the Mountains. In August 1686, he wrote to his claimant last year: “I am next to the great Lord of Ungrovlachia, who is spending time at the cataracts of the Danube called Demir-Capiși, busy with rubbing material for the war with the Germans,” because the Istrian is not navigable in that place and the ships float with difficulty because of the opposite current. He had also connected with Saxon scholars from Braşov. From the same place, the “archmaster” of a school in Braşov (ἐν Βρασχῷ Στεφανοπόλει) wrote to Valentine Luther Greisge, congratulating him on the new degree he had reached. The answer started from that one on December 8 in the correct Greek, but short and with an excuse: “I would write you an epistle properly, but I can’t.”
He had also entered the intimacy of Stolnic¹⁵ Constantine Cantacuzino, with whom he corresponded when they were separated. In the fall of 1688, Chrysanthus went to study in Germany, and after 60 days of travel, he arrived at his destination on December 2nd. As soon as he arrived, he found out about the unexpected death of Prince Şerban. In a letter to Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino, he expresses his unspeakable pain but tries like a monk to console himself and the addressee, concluding with a wish for many years to the new Lord Constantine Brâncoveanu.
The cultural atmosphere at the court of Prince Şerban and his generosity to the Church were reasons that should have encouraged Dositheus to set up a printing house in Bucharest. Measures for this will be taken as early as 1686–7 while he was in the Romanian Lands, but the surprising death of Şerban postponed his plan. However, in the new Lord, in Constantine Brâncoveanu, the ecclesiastical and cultural interests found an equally good understanding, an even more abundant gift. It is a sign of the stream of Greeks that began to flow into the Romanian Lands at the beginning of his reign. Eugenius Ianuli writes at this time to his disciple Photius, explaining to him the doubts he had until now about his fate before receiving the letter from him, with the following characteristic lines: “Who, where, and how is my good Photius? Maybe he is still in Adrianople, or maybe in Byzantium, or maybe he is crossing the borders of free Wallachia, following the new ruler? Because it was said by many, and it was rumored through unwritten words, and it was believed that they were running, there are many sheep running ahead of them all. My friend John Cariophilus ran before everyone and even Neophyte, the guardian of the Church in Adrianople.”
Chapter 7. Greek schools in Iaşi and Bucharest
These schools were founded in Iaşi and Târgovişte by Basil Lupu and Matthew Basarab. After the death of the founders, however, they fell into somnolence. In Iaşi, one teacher is remembered, but in Târgovişte for a long time, not even one. The goal of both was the rebirth of Slavonism, which had disappeared from the monasteries through the school. But their primordial purpose was neglected more and more, and after the death of the founders, they became completely Greekized, reaching, first, the one in Iaşi and later, during the time of Şerban Cantacuzino and Constantine Brâncoveanu and the one in Bucharest, the highest Greek schools from the whole East. Even the students of the Patriarchal School in Constantinople came to complete their studies at the “Academies” in Bucharest or Iaşi. The teaching staff was recruited from the teachers of the schools in Constantinople, who were men with philosophical and philological studies from the universities of the West. They felt flattered if the Romanian Lords called them to their schools and hurried to exchange a needy salary for a noble one.
Among those who illustrated the Iaşi School during the time we are dealing with, the first was Nicholas Kerameus, “the philosopher of healing,” originally from Ioannina. He studied in Venice and was a good friend of Nectarius of Jerusalem. Dositheus spoke about him in laudatory terms: “he spoke about any matter of theology or philosophy easily and in Greek and Latin.”
Patriarch Athanasius III Patelarius (June 16, 1651 — July 1, 1651, for the second time) had spoken at his enthronement on Saint Peter’s day, a rejection of the papal primacy based on the quote “Thou art Peter.” A certain Athanasius the Cypriot, a student of the college of St. Athanasius and the Pope’s agent in the East, happened to be present. The next thing was that he wrote a reply to the Patriarch’s sermon. The Patriarch Parthenius III, with his synod, entrusted Nicholas Kerameus, who had just returned from the West as a professor at the Patriarchal School, to reject the blasphemies of the papal agent. He wrote then: “Response to those who unjustly incriminate the one and only Eastern Catholic Church.”
Later, Kerameus went to Iaşi and spent time as a teacher in Saint Sava until his death (1672). He was buried in the new monastery of Cetățuia, which also inherited his considerable library to the great joy of the bibliophile Dositheus. Later, he removed from the library the manuscript of the aforementioned writing and published it in the “Tome of Joy” in Râmnic. All other writings of Kerameus remained unpublished. Among them are worth mentioning: “On Medicine,” “On the Tradition of Holy Myrrh,” “On Theological Principles (περὶ θεο-λογικῶν ἀρχῶν),” “On Pretension and Love,” “Against the Gossipers that Some Parts of Holy Scripture Would Not Be Authentically Hers,” “Elin-Vulgar Dictionary,” and other philosophical writings.
Jeremiah Cacavela also spent time in Iaşi as a teacher from 1670 until the time of Şerban Cantacuzino, when he came to Bucharest to go to Iaşi again after Şerban’s death. He had studied in Leipzig and Vienna and was entitled “The Hellenic Teacher of the Eastern Church.” He knew ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Italian, was versed in Holy Scripture and philosophy, and was master of preaching. Supposedly, he was well-versed in rhetoric. To this day, there are sayings among the people about his eloquence. In 1698, he served as proofreader for the “Tome of Love” (Τόμος ᾿Αγάπης), which was printed by Dositheus in Iaşi. Apart from the mentioned writings, he also wrote: “On the Differences Between the Two Churches” and “On the Azymes.” In Iaşi, he was also the teacher of the sons of Prince Constantine Cantemir. In 1715, he was still living in one of the Romanian Lands.
The “philosopher of healing,” John Molivdul Comnenus from Heraclea, was also a teacher in Iaşi and of Prince Duca’s sons. In a codex of the Athonite Lavras, there is an encomium of John Molivdul to Prince Duca’s son. He added the name Comnenus later when he found out that he was the last descendant of the Comneni Emperors. It seems that immediately after editing the writings of Symeon of Thessalonica, he went to study in Italy, from where he then returned, around 1687, to Muntenia.
In 1693, we don’t know for what occasion, we find him in Moscow (perhaps on a mission from Constantine Brâncoveanu?) as informed by the note (autograph?) from the end of a translation from Latin done by him there. Just at that time, Chrysanthus was also in Moscow, sent by Dositheus in a delegation to the Emperor. Of course, they will be gone together. Like Comnenus, he did not let his traveling companion pass the time without literary pursuits. Based on the reports of Nicholas Milescu, with whom he met in Moscow, he composed “Κιταία δουλεσουσα — Kitaia subjugated.”
In 1694, John Comnenus was again in Bucharest as the professor of physics and mathematics and physician of the Court. In that year, says C. Daponte, he “explained in the common language the Sentences of Emperors, generals, and philosophers and offered them to Prince Constantine Brâncoveanu.” He was also a teacher of Brâncoveanu’s sons and the celebratory speaker of many book events: printed books, epitaphs, princely deeds, etc. He also bore the title “Notary of the Great Church.” Between 1703 and 1705, he donned the monastic rason and, under the name Hierotheus, became Metropolitan of Sidei and then of Silistra, but stayed all the time in Bucharest.
In 1719, he was still alive and writing verses for Nicholas Mavrocordat’s book “Περὶ καθηκόντων” (On Obligations), which had been sent to him for trial before it was published in the second edition.
His literary activity is surprisingly prodigious and varied. A biography of Emperor John Cantacuzino, written on the basis of the Byzantine Chronicles and dedicated to the Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino, was edited by Chr. Loparev.¹⁸
A preface dedicating the translation into vulgar Greek of Theophylact’s Commentary on the Gospels to Constantine Brâncoveanu was edited with a Romanian translation by Lord N. Iorga. A description of Mount Athos, “Προσκυνητάριον τοῦ ἁγίου Ὄρους” (Pilgrim of the Holy Cross), was printed by the author at his own expense in 1701 at Snagov. Most of his writings are unpublished. A large part can be found in codex gr. 663 and 334 of Acad. Rom. In 346 and 347 of the same library, there is a translation of the “Follower of Christ — Αχολούθος Χρήστου” by Thomas of Kempen, a work done in 1719 by the Metropolitan of Silistra. It would be the “Map of Printing Houses in Muntenia” mentioned by Paranica.
Prince Duca’s sons’s teacher in Iaşi was still Spandonis, “The Peripatetic Philosopher.” In 1690, he had already moved to Constantinople as “dikaiophylax”¹⁹ and a science teacher at the school there. In this capacity, in the mentioned year, he subscribed to Syrigos’s “Antirrhetic,” published in Bucharest by Dositheus. Azarius Tzigala from Santorini, who wrote “Περὶ συντάξεως” for the “Begzada”²⁰ John, son of Antioch Cantemir (18 Dec. 1695–14 Sept. 1700) a grammarian, while he was in Iaşi, and later he went as an archimandrite to Constantinople under Patriarch Cyril IV (1711–1713). Perhaps as a teacher in Iaşi, he founded the school on the island of Santorini.
Theodore Simeon the Trapezuntine was also a teacher at both schools.
The school in Bucharest, however, surpassed the one in Iaşi during the time of Constantine Brâncoveanu. It was called the “The Academy or the Princely Frontistirium” and had a program composed of all the sciences known at the time.
We do not know in detail the order of the program in the School for the first years of Brâncoveanu’s reign, but it will not differ much from the one established in August 1707 by Chrysanthus on behalf of Brâncoveanu.
According to him, the school had three teachers “distinguished by piety and good morals.” The first proposed: a) Logic, b) Rhetoric, c) Acoustics, d) About the Sky, e) About the Birth and Destruction of Things, f) About Soul, and g) Metaphysics. This was the philosophy section. He was the professor and arranged the order of the proposal. In the morning, he would propose two of the subjects listed, paired like this: Logic and About the Sky, Physics (Acoustics and About the Becoming of Things), and About the Soul, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics. According to the weight of the subjects, the students were divided into two classes, and of the three pairs of subjects, the physical ones were proposed to the in-class inferior ones and the philosophical ones to the upper class. So they were from each subject two hours a week. This was the theoretical study. After lunch, I followed the exercises and the seminars in today’s sense. These were not all compulsory for all students, but each chose a specialty. At the logic seminar, there were exercises on judgments, syllogisms, figures, and especially for finding the middle term, then arguments dialectical and sophisticated.
Those who specialized in rhetoric were given practical assignments, which were spoken and critiqued.
With those who specialized in philosophy, there were rehearsals, contradictory discussions, and solutions to problems that were posed to each other or by the teacher.
The other two professors had philological, historical, and theological subjects.
The first of them proposed in the morning selected parts from the History of Greek literature: the Speeches of Isocrates, the Tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, the Speeches of Gregory Nazianzus and his poems, the Epistles of Synesius of Cyrene and his writing about the kingdom, the Poems of Pindar and the Speeches of Demosthenes.
In the afternoon, syntax exercises, according to the manual of Alexander Mavrocordat’s Exaporit, examples, written works, and their correction. Readings from the epistles of Paul, from the writings of Xenophon, Plutarch, and Thucydides. Those from the upper class would also exercise in the poetic genres.
The second philology teacher would propose the Sentences of Chrysoloras and Cato, Phocylides, Pythagoras, Aesop’s fables, Agapetus’s pareneses, the Canons of the 12 Great Feasts, Simocat’s epistles, Homer’s works, and introduce beginners in grammar to teach them the rules of prosody and agreement.
After lunch, grammar terminology, homework, verb classes, etymology of words, and reading from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.
Friday was a vacant day. The school was in Saint Sava, the metochion of Saint George, and both monasteries were dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre. The Abbot of Saint George was the administrative director of the School. He would see earnings of 300 grosi per year for the payment of teachers from the interests of those 30,000 gold coins deposited by Brâncoveanu at the Bank of Saint Mark in Venice and for the maintenance of “the foreign and poor” schoolchildren, 50 grosi annually from Greek customs.
Helladius says about this School: “No wonder it is called the Academy, because it has two professors of Theology and Philosophy, apart from the bishop, and two hypodidascals²¹. The number of students sometimes exceeds 150, sometimes over 200.”
The teachers were recruited from among the most famous Greek scholars. I saw that Cacavela and Theodore the Trapezuntine had been in Bucharest during Şerban’s time. John Comnenus had come to Bucharest under Brâncoveanu. But thanks to Brâncoveanu’s School, the most brilliant representative of Hellenic letters at that time was Sebastius the Trapezuntine of Kimina. His life is little known. He was born in Χότζι, Hotzi (now Κυμίνα, Kimina), 1/2 hour away from Trebizond, in 1622. He studied at the Patriarchal School in Constantinople under John Cariophilus and Alexander Mavrocordat. In 1671, he became a teacher at that School and then director of the Metochion School of the Holy Sepulchre, which the patrons of Greek culture maintained at that time, Manolache Manu the Castorian. In 1682, following disturbances in that School, he left it and went to Trebizond, where he was called by his compatriots to establish a school for them and to be a teacher there. Even in 1681, he had refused an invitation to the School founded by Nikon²² in Moscow.
It remains in Trebizond, with interruptions, until 1689. He was present in Bucharest the following year. “He undoubtedly preferred the higher salary of princely generosity.”
Brâncoveanu gave him the direction of the Academy and the chair of philosophy, taking him at the same time as his son’s teacher. The Lord of the Mountains loved him very much and “put him before all the boyars, an honor that no other gentleman, another teacher, has given, nor will he give again.” He had the honor of beating the Prince on all occasions. What he always praised about that one was his wisdom and his love for cooking. I leave aside — he said in an encomium upon Brâncoveanu’s return, in 1695, from an arms expedition — all the other deeds and virtues of Your Highness. Something in particular that should be revealed is that “in so many upheavals and agitations and misfortunes of the present time… you were kind enough to raise, among other things, a School… to teach through the intercession of teachers… the boyars and the lovers of young people.” And another time: “Not only do you build the Churches and Monasteries from the ground up and endow them, but you also translate the holy books of the Church from the Greek language into the language of the natives and print them with the greatest support and expense, so that they arrive in abundance and without effort in possession of teachings and dogmas otherwise so inaccessible.” But the great thing is the “Hellenic front” which you established, almost for the first time. From all sides, they run to you, attracted as by a magnet, as the Queen of Sheba ran from the ends of the earth to know the wisdom of Solomon.
As a teacher of rhetoric, the Kiminan [Sebastius of Kimina] had students prepare sermons and deliver them at celebrations in front of Brâncoveanu and Patriarch Dosistheus. He reviewed beforehand the books that were sent to the printing house for printing, and he also wrote poems for various occasions.
He died on 6 Sept. 1702 and is buried in Saint Sava. On his tombstone, his colleague John Comnenus wrote a great epitaph.
He left behind him a huge [selection of] literature. PKH²³ (γ΄ — κζ’) lists epigrammatic verses as far as he knew: 107 writings, about 43 epistles, and more.
Printed are: Ἑορτολογιον in 1701, in Snagov, with some introductory questions: About the Exact Chronology, About all the Holidays and their Theory, About Holy Easter. Δογματική δικασταλία with the addition of three tractates: a) That the Saints are Changed in the Body and Blood of the Lord, b) The Holy Virgin was Subjected to the Original Sin and c) The Particles (for the Holy Virgin, Saints, etc.) are not Changed into the Flesh and Blood of Christ.
Dogmatics were printed in Bucharest in 1703 Sept., one year after the author’s death, and were dedicated to Dositheus. The expense was supported by George of Castoria, Brâncoveanu’s commissioner and a great supporter of Greek culture.
All other writings of the Kiminan are unpublished. Several of their sources point to PKH. Some are also found in several codices of the Rom. Academy. Of particular interest would be codex 135, which includes the notebook of Sebastius as indicated by the note on folio 3v: Σεμείωματάριον Σεβαστοῦ. The publication of Sebastius’s correspondence, which, according to PKH, is in a code, would be of great use for knowing the time the codex was in the possession of the Abbot of the Sumela Monastery, Nicodemus Miridis.
Other dogmatic writings of Sebastius, which also show him preoccupied with the problems of the time, are those about the difference between essence and divine energy. The old Hesychast discussion had been renewed at this time. The professor from Ioannina, Gh. Sugduris claimed that the difference is only “in terms of definition” and not in reality. His Archbishop, Clement, claimed to the contrary that they differ “really, like a stone wedge.” The Council of Constantinople took a stand against Clement. So also did Dositheus in 1698. Of course, the content of Sebastius’s writings will be like this. These writings are:
“Brief View on the Difference Between the Divine Essence and Energy,” “What is the Real Reason that the Papists do not Confess the Holy Light Now?,” “Excerpts from the Writings of Theophanes, Metropolitan of Nicaea, About the Light from Tabor.”
Among the dogmatic writings of Sebastius, various clarifications were also given to Patriarch Dositheus.
Apart from the dogmatic writings, he composed paraphrases and translations of many classical works into vulgar Greek by Euripides, Apollonius, Aristotle, Gregory of Nazianzus, Agapetus, Synesia, etc., then manuals for almost all the philosophical studies he proposed. Most of them are dedicated to Constantine Brâncoveanu.
George Maiotul from Crete was also a professor colleague of Sebastius. He had completed his studies in the college of St. Athanasius but remained devoted to the Church. At first, he was a preacher in Constantinople “διδάσκαλος τοῦ ἱεροῦ Εὐαγγελίου” (teacher of the Holy Gospel). Brâncoveanu, hearing of his erudition, called him to Bucharest and entrusted him with the teaching of Latin and Greek at the Academy. At the same time, he made him the teacher of his sons. It would have happened in Bucharest between 1690–1710. We only have reliable news from 1697, when he was a priest in Bucharest and preached before the Lord in the Church of Saint Constantine, a panegyric of the Holy Emperor Constantine, which was printed for him in the same year by Anthimus the Iberian²⁴ at Snagov. In 1704, Anthimus the Iberian printed in Bucharest the translation into vulgar Greek “Parallel Lives of Plutarch,” made by Constantine Brâncoveanu; he was happy for Maiotul to have such a brilliant student. Two years later, he printed in Râmnic a “Word on the Lord’s Passion” with an addition of the respective pericopes from the Four Gospels. Maiotul was called by the title “διδάσκαλος of the Holy Gospels at the Great Church and teacher of the Greek and Latin languages of the sons of Constantine Brâncoveanu.” The author dedicated the book through an epistle to Patriarch Dositheus.
After Sebastius of Kimina, Mark Porphyriopoulos, the Cypriot, was the director of the princely Academy. In 1703, he subscribed in this capacity, correcting the printing of Metropolitan Auxentius of Sofia: “Explanation and Order of the Consecration of Churches.” As such, he was still at the time of Prince Stephen Cantacuzino, who entrusted him to make a free translation of the writings of Procopius of Caesarea.
Over time, Brâncoveanu began to send distinguished young people from his School to Western Universities to train them as professors at the Academy. Thus, they sent George Hipomenas, the nephew of Sebastius of Kimina, to study medicine and philosophy in Padua. He returned in 1708 and later followed Mark the Cypriot as director of the Academy.
Chapter 8. Greek Printing House from Bucharest, Snagov, Râmnic + Relations of Dositheus with Constantine Brâncoveanu
Added to the activity of the Academy, the presence and cultural activity of many Greek prelates, abbots, and lower clergy who gathered at the Court of the Lord of the Mountains, it is easy to imagine the intellectual effervescence of Bucharest.
However, as in the Court of Prince Duca, he supported the promotion of Greek culture in Bucharest, and the clergy did not exclude Romanian cultural activity. Romanian printing houses existed before the Greek one was established and functioned without caring about the Hellenism around it. Function under the protection of Metropolitan Theodosius, who, like Dosoftei the Moldavian, although not so bold, wanted to give the priests the book of Job in Romanian. The printing press was fed by the translations of the different “teachers,” revisited by the boyars with Greek culture but of foreign origin, Romanian feelings, or both. These were the Şerban brothers, Radu Greceanu, and the Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino. The printing press was still brought under Metropolitan Barlaam and George Duca in 1678, and in the same year, the first book appeared: “The Key to Understanding” Holy Scriptures for skill, a sum of hermeneutical rules. He then followed under Theodosius a “Liturgy,” a “Gospel” (1682), an “Apostle” (1683), and, finally, “through a long research of older translations by their proximity to the Greek text, of the Septuagint version,” the entire Bible was translated and printed in 1688. The Metropolitan cooperates with the translation of the one who settled in the Country longer and was knowledgeable of the Romanian language, Germanus of Nisei, the Greceanu brothers, and the Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino. For print service, Metrophanes of Huși, a fugitive in the Romanian Lands from 1685. Patriarch Dositheus put in the preface, under the Church of the Mountain Hierarch, the “Romanians, Moldavians, and Hungarians,” which are understood to be the inhabitants of Transylvania.
Again, Dositheus’s “heart” will “burn” at the sight of the Romanian printing house, all the more so since his printing house in Iași has not been working for so long, and he will have rushed to use — in favor of Orthodoxy — God’s munificent mountain. Şerban’s death (Nov. 1688) postponed the execution of his wish until the beginning of Brâncoveanu’s reign.
The first book he printed in the new Greek printing house is the “Manual Against the Papist Schism,” by Hieromonk Maximus the Peloponnesian, in Jan. 1690. The author had been a student of Meletius Pegas²⁵ and had lived among the Catholics in Jerusalem, thus having the opportunity to — know them well. Under the title, it says: “By the order of Constantine Brâncoveanu, the princely printing house in Bucharest is to be distributed as a gift to the Orthodox.” In more detail, the book includes On the Innovation of the Papal Primacy, On the Procession of the Holy Ghost, On Unnleavened Bread, On the Change (μεταβολή) or transubstantiation (μετουσίωσις) of the Holy Gifts, About the Fire of Purgatory, About the Joy of the Righteous, because they have received the promise…”. All matters of controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches.
The centuries-old slanders of Catholics against the Orthodox Church are stigmatized in any unsigned preface, but it turns out to properly be Dositheus’s both by its vehemence and by its attack against Cariophilus, to whom he also attributes Catholic ideas. They are not shy, he says, to expose the vilest myths for the blackening of our Church. “And when one of ours wants to write, for the sake of the truth, against the blasphemies of the Latins, they all jump up and tell him: ‘Don’t say that, don’t do that, because it creates a scandal.’ This is the same as saying: ‘Tell the truth only half and not the whole.’ That’s why they wanted to prevent the printing of the book of the blessed Maximus because it tells the pure and revealed truth.” The book had to be printed to strengthen the believers. It already smells of danger in Transylvania.
Who would have urged not to publish the book? They would have been the claimants and admirers of Cariophilus. The brothers Constantine and Stephen Cantacuzino would have been “both learned men and good philosophers and benevolent towards the Latins” and even “United Greeks,” as the Catholic missionary Giovanni Battista del Monte says. Constantine Brâncoveanu would also have been out of political prudence.
In September, the second book appeared in the same year, also of polemic, this time with the Protestants. Through it, Dositheus prepared public opinion and competent forums for the conviction of J. Cariophilus. The first part of the book includes: “Rejection of the Calvinist Chapters and Questions of Cyril Lucaris,” written by Meletius Syrigos after the Synod of Iași at the urging of Basil Lupu and the Ecumenical Patriarch Parthenius.
This rejection served as the basis for Dositheus’s answer in the book’s second part, which is nothing more than “The Confession of Dositheus” and the minutes of the Synod of Iași and Jerusalem, with very small changes. It is called here: Manual Rejecting Calvinist Insanity. On pages 24–28 of the Manual, the minutes of the Synod of Iași are included, and on pages 28–29 is the letter of the Synod to Basil Lupu.
The printing was done by Metrophanes²⁶, the Bishop of Huşi, who became the master of the two printing houses in Bucharest. The corrector was Michael Macri from Ioannina, the notary of the Great Church. Chrysanthus and Spandonis subscribed occasional verses to the dikaiophylax of Constantinople and “διδάσκαλος τῶν ἐπιστημῶν τῆς ἐν Κπόλει σχολῆς” (science teacher at the school in Kpolei). The book was printed at the Lord’s expense, of course, to be distributed as a gift.
Dositheus appended, in the preface, two letters dated from Adrianople in May 1690 and addressed one to Brâncoveanu and the other to the chieftains. In the first, reminding the Lord of the Mountains what he did for the defense of the faithful, Basil Lupu, “who gathered the Synod in Iaşi and urged the blessed Meletius Syrigos to write the present book,” tells him: “since it was now necessary for the Church to publish it, your part is left: to bring it to light and patronize it, procuring it as a gift to the whole Church. This is because you are the heir of the Emperors both by the place you occupy and by the royal blood that flows in your veins.”
He then lists the five ancestral Emperors by mother and their deeds for the Church. In the letter to the readers, he talks about the origin of Calvinism, the Confession of Cyril Lucaris, the Synod of Iaşi, the Rejection of Meletius Syrigos, which has remained unknown until now, and the occasion when he composed his own Manual. “Then, coming to Vlahobogdania²⁷ in 1680, nine Orthodox from Transylvania asked us to give them some writings so that they could respond to the Calvinists who were oppressing them beyond measure and thinking of helping them. I found out the present writing of Meletius Syrigos, which, by revisiting it several times, I found fit for any answer against those heretics.” This would have been the reason for printing. A word more to this would have been that: “The blessed, writing first in Greek, he translated it afterward into the vulgar language, and thus every Christian may find it of great help. Then, many boyars in Ungrovlahia, having Hellenized much in speech, will be able to easily translate it into the Vlach language so that it becomes of public benefit to the entire Church.” We wanted to “beat it in the new pattern made by us before, but we couldn’t because of the instability of the weather and because of poverty.” All the induced reasons are poorly chosen pretexts. Transylvanians no longer lacked anti-Protestant writings but also anticatholic writings. The real reason is that John Cariophilus had started a year earlier to propagate his ideas again against “transubstantiation.” His frequent visits to Bucharest and his connections with the Lord [of the Mountains] and the Romanian boyars (and the Greek clergy), to whom he made his ideas known in the Romanian Lands as well. Dositheus was preparing to give him the final blow through synodal condemnation. However, the ground had to be prepared for this, especially in the Romanian Lands, which had so much influence in the affairs of the Synod of Constantinople. But on the other hand, Cariophilus enjoyed unanimous honor in Bucharest more than anywhere else. It was not advisable to strike against him openly. It was enough only to highlight the teaching of the Church precisely so that, by contrast, the heresy of Cariophilus’s ideas could be highlighted. This relief, again, could not be done through individual works — but through the Church’s official Confessions themselves.
I saw the process of the condemnation of the teaching of Cariophilus.
Along with the Cariophilus issue, another one, debated with no less passion, preoccupied Dositheus precisely this year (1690) by interest and the Orthodox community by solidarity. It is the question of the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Jerusalem over the Archbishopric of Sinai. This jurisdiction — restricted by the many privileges of the monastery — had been established at a synod in Constantinople in 1775. During the time we are dealing with, however, Ananias, the Archbishop of Sinai, disturbed the Church by agitating for its emancipation.
For this reason, he was excommunicated by the Constantinople synod in 1671 and then forgiven at the request of the Sinaites. But he had continued with his agitations. Well, in 1689, he had united with Cariophilus, and they were looking to pay someone to kill Dositheus. In 1690, Ananias had come with a delegation of Sinaites to Adrianople to intervene with the Turkish government regarding their grievances. The Synod of Constantinople had summoned them to appear, but they refused. Dositheus asked for Brâncoveanu’s support, for his word had to be listened to by the Sinaites, who he helped so much. In May, Brâncoveanu writes to Clement, the Metropolitan of Adrianople: “We hear that they have come there (the Sinaites) and are walking with hidden tricks and asking for privileges and increases. The Synod commanded them to go there to examine their desire, and they are mocking and disregarding the Synod and the Patriarch and disobeying the Synod. We want Your Most High Holiness to call them on our behalf and tell them to sit quietly, like monks and Christians, and to behave as the Fathers of the monastery have behaved since its construction until today. They have renewed the same old heresies. If they have a grievance, they should tell it to the Church, which has never wronged and will never wrong anyone. If — we assume — they are not satisfied with [the decrees of] two Patriarchs²⁸, let the others come together, and let them all receive what they all find appropriate. Tell them to do so without any delay, that even We and the greatest Emperors like Us, obey the Patriarchs because if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a tax-collector, said the Lord. Let them do the same. If they do otherwise and disrespect our mother Church and mock the Synod and insult the Patriarchs, either one or all, as sons of the holy Church of Christ, we will fight against them in every way we can. Tell them all, Your Most High Holiness, as we write them, and we will have an answer…” Brâncoveanu’s approach was not crowned with success. The Sinaites did not listen. Ananias was condemned again in December of the same year.
It seems that the Lord of Moldavia, Constantine Cantemir, in his enmity with Brâncoveanu, took a different attitude in this Church dispute. If Dositheus addressed Brâncoveanu for intervention, Ananias, a few days after the conviction on Dec. 20, addressed Constantine Cantemir. “We did not cause any scandal,” he writes, but we persisted “to what we received at the independence and autonomy of the See.”
But Jerusalem does not stop working against Us with deed and word and shakes the whole world “moved by his Father the Devil, and the wretch does not feel three times in what depth of evils he is because evil has blinded the spiritual eyes of his soul, and he does not care about anything else but only how to fulfill his evil thoughts.” In fact, he also “deceived with his sly and unconscionable advice the High Most Holy One of Constantinople, as one who does not know the royal and synodal decisions regarding that monastery, and approved without any deliberation and advice from the Holy Synod and made a judgment and decision” accusing us of innovations. The Patriarch of Jerusalem does this individually: the Sinai Monastery attracts countless pilgrims and benefactors; to divert these to his See, he defames the Holy Monastery. The brothers, unable to bear it anymore, sent us with a delegation to the Ecumenical Patriarch. But he doesn’t want to change his decision. “That’s why we ask Your Highness as a good-faithful Lord, too bright and too wise, to write to them for the sake of peace.” If not, we will go to the Vizier.
During this time, Dositheus was busy in Constantinople and did not have time to print anything in Bucharest, neither in 1691 nor in 1692, when he sent the Transylvanians an encyclical against the Latins. However, others continued the series of Greek prints he started.
First, his archimandrite with permanent residence in the Romanian Lands, Chrysanthus, through a paraphrased translation of the “Exhortatory Chapters of Basil the Macedonian to his son Leo the Wise,” at the urging and for the use of Constantine Brâncoveanu and his sons. The book appeared in October 1691, with the hieromonk Anthimus of Iberia serving as the printer for the first time and having the original text as the parallel.
In the following year, Chrysanthus leaving for Moscow as an envoy of Dositheus, Şerban Greceanu, the publisher of Greek books, arrives as Brâncoveanu’s second spokesman. The books edited by him, however, are no longer scientific writings and theological polemics, nor Court literature, but Church service books of immediate necessity to Churches with Greek priests.
In June 1692, at God’s expense, having a typographer, he became the permanent editor of Anthimus of Iberia [producing the works], “The Life of Saint Parasceva of the New and Saint Gregory the Decapolite, together with the Day Before the Entry into the Church, because that day and the Saint fall together.” Finally, the Life of Saint Gregory the Decapolite is added. The book to print for the special solemnity with which the memory of the two Saints was celebrated in the Romanian Lands, being the relics of Saint Gregory the Decapolite in the princely monastery of Bistrita and of Saint Parasceva in The Three Hierarchs [Monastery] in Iaşi. The life of Saint Parasceva and the glorification of both saints is the work of Matthew the Metropolitan of Mirelor, who had lived around 1618 in the Romanian Lands and urged Gireci on the eve of the uprising against them not to abuse the hospitality of the Romanians.
In the following year, Şerban Greceanu and Anthimus of Iberia published “Holy and Divine Gospel” in Greek and Romanian, the Romanian text faithfully following the Greek one. Şerban Greceanu placed some Romanian verses in honor of the Lord of the Land in the title’s subscription and, in an epistle addressed to the readers, found inspired words in praise of the Holy Scriptures. It is also evident from them that the main purpose of the printing was to spread the Romanian text of the Gospel, the printing of the Greek text being a means of criticizing the text because it justifies the parallel text with the example of Origen, who compared four and six versions in order to remove any mistakes by comparison. The book was printed at God’s expense and was to be distributed as a gift. Christians were exhorted: “not to listen to the Holy Gospel only in the Church, but also in your homes to spend boldly in its reading because although you cannot understand what is contained only by reading, still much sanctification is done. As Origen says, the snakes, although they do not understand the voice of the watchman, still hear it and remain stunned.”
Patristic arguments and quotes show this Romanian boyar familiar with patristic literature and with the new aspirations of the time after the restoration of the old texts.²⁹ Regarding the last point, he is much more advanced than Dositheus. He proves a scientific discipline acquired in the serious School. The proofreader of both texts, “if possible,” was Athanasius of Toma from Moldova. In the end, Anthimus the Iberian, “the smallest among the hieromonks,” asked for forgiveness for typographical errors, bringing forward his novitiate in the art of printing.
From April 1691 to April 1693, relations between Dositheus and Brâncoveanu caught cold because of Cariophilus, whom the latter had taken in and defended. Another incident of this nature spoiled the ties between them: Brâncoveanu recast Callinicus II the Arcanan as Ecumenical Patriarch instead of Dionysius Seroglanus through the intervention at the vizier passing through Rusciuc during the war with the Germans to the displeasure of the majority of the Synod and of Dositheus. The friend who had condemned Cariophilus and Ananias and the friend of Dionysius was brought. After trials at the Vizier prematurely and with hairpins, those from Constantinople soon succeeded in chasing away Brâncoveanu’s protégé. Dositheus, on his part, found the means to be reconciled with the Lord of his whose alms could not be dispensed with. As a result of the reconciliation, a transaction was made between them, which, of course, would not have been to the detriment of Dositheus. Through a contract drawn up in Romanian in Bucharest in June 1693 and reinforced by, again, the Patriarch of Constantinople Dionysius and by many bishops, it states the following:
The Polovraci monastery dedicated to the Entrance to the Church, built and dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre by Danciul Milescu with all its “μωσία” estate, Brâncoveanu’s newly built monastery dedicated to Constantine and Helen, let it be as a metochion. The reason is that the monastery, not being richly endowed by the founder and being brought into a very bad state by the many evils that befell those places of the famous Ungrovlahia, was no longer of any use to the Holy Sepulchre. The assignment is consented to by the descendants of the founder: Maria, the ex-wife of the late Barbul Milescu; her daughter, also Maria; Constantine, son of the late Barbu from another wife; and finally, Staicu and Stana, sons of the late Preda Milescu.
In exchange for the ceded monastery, Brâncoveanu gives the Holy Sepulchre “three bags, equal to 1500 aslani,” with which the cells of Saint George in Bucharest will be renewed.
However, as long as Dositheus was angry, he could not express himself in Bucharest, which he wanted. He had to think about Iaşi; even the old man Constantine Cantemir “had no money for typographers, translators, and all kinds of teachers.” The book being printed there now is called “Tome of Reconciliation,” the first part of his great anticatholic polemical trilogy that he would publish. The reason and occasion were that in 1692 when he undertook a trip to the Romanian Lands, he found in Moldova the writing of Leo Allatius: “Handbook on the Holy Ghost,” full of insults to the Orthodox Church. In response, he prepared “The Tome of Reconciliation.” It had been printed since 1692 (date from below of the title), but the fickleness of the weather prevented it from appearing before February 1694 (date from pg. 256, from the end of Matthew Blastares). In March 1693, Constantine Cantemir died, then he followed the one-month reign of his son Demetrius, “chosen by the country and anointed by the Patriarch Gerasimus of Alexandria,” and finally, the Turks made into a Lord Constantine Duca, son of George Duca (Apr. 1693–18 Dec. 1695) “significant for his literary culture.” His correspondence with the dragoman Alexander Mavrocordat, worn in the most correct Greek classical, is proof that he profited a lot from his teachers.
It was only under him that the printing press could resume the momentum it had only had under his father’s reign. The Tome includes a) some anonymous writings, b) the writings against the Florentine Union of John Eugenicus, the brother of Mark of Ephesus, c) polemical writings by George Coresios, a newer theologian, d) the writings of Macarius Macri against the Latins, e) two writings of Theodore Agallianos against the Synod of Florence and of John Arghiropoulos, f) polemical writings of Matthew Blastares, g) the minutes of a Synod of the Holy Wisdom in 1450 against the Synod of Florence.
Almost all of these writings have not been republished by another.
Leo Allatius first edited the minutes of the aforementioned Synod. Many were and are of the opinion that the respective Synod was not held, and the minutes attributed to it are false.
The book’s printer was Demetrius Pădure. The expenses are borne by the Holy Sepulchre. In the verses from the beginning, the seven groups of writings contained in the Tome are compared; they are roughly called seven wise men with the seven thunderbolts who tore down the walls of Jericho with their sound. That is how the malicious dogmas of the Catholics will fall at their word, blown through them by the Holy Ghost.
Immediately after the “Tome of Reconciliation,” Dositheus printed two more books in June 1694, also through Demetrius Pădure.
The first is: “Speech of Rejection of the Impure and False Definition Composed in Florence at the Synod of the Latins,” written by the mentioned deacon and nomophylax John Eugenicus and edited and arranged in chapters by Dosistheus. The second is: “Manual of Dositheus the Patriarch of Jerusalem against John Cariophilus.”
In no case could he have appeared in Bucharest now, where J. Cariophilus was discussing dogmatic questions with the Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino.
After a preface to the citizens, Dositheus reproduces in eight chapters the heretical pamphlet of John Cariophilus, accompanying each chapter with a rebuttal. Pages 62–69 follow as an epilogue to the first part: “Exposure of the Anathemas Against the Heresies of John Cariophilus.”
In the second part of page 69, there is another booklet by Dositheus: “About the Unimaginable Blasphemy of Cariophilus towards the Holy Mystery of the Divine Eucharist and About the Fight Carried out by the Church.” Finally, from pg. 98: “The Synodal Tome Against the Errors and Heresies of Cariophilus.” It is signed by Callinicus, Dositheus, et al. The publication of this tome right now could also mean a warning given to the Bucharest Court, the host of the heretic.
But he [Cariophilus] soon died (Sept. 1694), and there was nothing like that to prevent the warming of relations between Dositheus and Brâncoveanu. This can be seen from the role Brâncoveanu takes as peacemaker between [the monastery on] Sinai and Dositheus.
After Ananias’s condemnation, those who were more persistent for some time supported him. For a short time, however, they left him for the new Archbishop, Joachim. He now had to regain his forgiveness from Dositheus, who would subject him to who knows what spiritual punishments. For mediation, they prayed to [that is, they entreated] Brâncoveanu. His intervention with Dositheus was crowned with success.
Brâncoveanu expresses his joy and satisfaction for this in a letter to Dositheus dated June 3, 1695.
“…We praise God, the peacemaker, and we thank Your Beatitude that you did not ignore our intercession but leaned towards kindness, and the synodal letters of forgiveness were made, which came to us. We sent them to Bucharest to Bishop Joannicius for his comfort and those with him. We hope that those poor people will also be happy and give glory to God, and thanks and wishes for a long life to Your Beatitude, on account of you having forgiven them when they returned to the good.
We have also written to the said bishop to take care of those who are with him in everything that is appropriate because if they disturb something, of course, they will find no one to help them. In the same way, we also ask Your Beatitude to love them, for the sake of the holy places, and to support them in their mastery of administrative matters.”
In the same letter, he informs the Patriarch that he is taking into account the expenses for the restoration of the Metochion of Saint George and will help repair all the monasteries dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre, the enterprise that Dositheus intended. “As for the walling of Saint George from here, without a doubt, my Lord, in accordance with the promise and desire we have for the beautification of this Church, we begin this year with God, and we hope to finish the thing in the coming year, with the help of Saint George, without worrying about the expenses that may increase.
I found out, my Master, that Your Beatitude decided to do the same in other monasteries from their income. We rightly praise the work, and since this order was given to the abbots, we also have a reason to protect them when the work is done, but as far as Caluiul is concerned, I also ordered the abbot to start doing the missing things.”
It follows in a different order of ideas: “That you have many expenses from the side of the dominion, my Lord, we believe it. We also know how this is done from what is done here. You tell us that you are going to write something to us through our postman boyar. We wait to see what is written, and after that, we will answer. We, my Master, wish to serve you with all our courage and authority if you ask us to.
Sir Chrysanthus, according to Your Beatitude’s command, he left for Bucharest and will come ready from there.”
The Greek printing house was silent from 1693 until 1697 when Dositheus was again in the Realm of the Romanians. In the meantime, it had been moved to Snagov, in the Monastery of the Entry to the Temple³¹, under the leadership of Anthimus of Iberia, who had become the abbot of that monastery. The book that Anthimus of Iberia printed that year — strangely — steals the exact dogmatic interpretations of John Cariophilus, and the book is called “The Manual About Some Perplexities and Detachments, or About Strengthening of some Necessary Dogmas of the Church, patronized by the Most Wise, Most Noble, and Most Learned boyar Constantine Cantacuzino, and dedicated to Constantine Brâncoveanu during the time of Metropolitan Theodosius.” The work is arranged in the form of questions and answers. Stolnic Constantine Cantacuzino asked the questions, and Cariophilus gave the answers.
This work was published at the same time as Dositheus was in the Romanian Lands; it reconciles the two unreconciled enemies, at least after the death of one of them, judging by what it is granted both. But with a small reservation: correcting the mistakes of Cariophilus. And this was done through the Orthodox Sebastius of Kimina, by the good graces of Dositheus.
Indeed, Anthimus of Iberia, although he appreciates the qualities of Cariophilus’s writing, being good “for an answer to the enemies of the dogmas,” he nevertheless “does not dare” to print it “without the guidance and judgment of another one of those who have a rich knowledge of church dogmas.” As such, you find the “too wise and too learned” Sebastius of Kimina, a professor of “The Phrontisterion”³² from Bucharest. Sebastius not only corrected “many errors in it due to inattention and forgetfulness” but also added detachments to other matters.
In the same year, Anthimus of Iberia printed two more books at Snagov: a) A very rich “Anthologion For the Whole Year,” including the Book of Hours, the Pentecostarion, and the Triodion. The expense was borne by the hieromonk Galacteon Vidali from the island of Tinos, former abbot of the Lavra of Athos. The corrector, Panagiotis from Sinope, is met for the first time; b) A “Panegyric Orations” on Constantine and Helen in honor of Constantine Brâncoveanu by the priest George Maiotul.
In 1698, Dositheus was still in the Romanian Lands due to having to intervene more persistently in Transylvania. There, tempted by many material promises, a synod composed of archpriests and priests led by Metropolitan Theophilus³⁷ subscribed to the union with the Latin church on June 10, 1697, based on the four points [of compromise]. The work had been done out of fear of interventions [in Church life] from the Romanian Lands. Nevertheless, there was a suspicion that there was danger even there.
That’s why the newly elected Metropolitan of Transylvania, coming to receive, according to custom, the ordination in Bucharest at the beginning of the following year, carried out on January 22, 1698, acted like this: he was accompanied by many advisors and dignities given to him by Metropolitan Theodosius [Vestemeanul], Constantine Brâncoveanu, and Patriarch Dositheus. The latter even gave him a written lesson about his duties, given the critical circumstances that the Church of Transylvania was going through. It is divided into several articles. In Article II, Athanasius was urged to pay attention to religious instruction through the sermon and other ways inside and outside the Church. The sermons to Ruthenians and Serbs were to be delivered in Slavonic and to Romanians in Romanian. In Articles V-VI: General information on the divine services, hymns, and readings from the Holy Scripture should be done only in Slavonic or Greek, never in Romanian. This was established by Dositheus with the argument that: “the language Romanian is a narrow and poor language, and it could happen to alter the holy word.”³⁴ In Article XXI: The Symbol of Faith was translated and printed not long ago by Metrophanes of Buzău (1692) to serve to the directing metropolitan with the reservation that, taking note of the poverty of the Romanian language, if there is any doubt regarding the expression and the correct meaning, then they were to look at the Greek text as a point of reference. In Article XX: In any matter everywhere, the metropolitan will firstly find advice at the eparchial assembly, secondly from the metropolitan of Ungrovlahia, and, as a last resort, from the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Two months later, in Iaşi, Dositheus published the second part of the polemical trilogy against the Latins: “Tome of Love.” The book was printed at the expense of the Holy Sepulchre. The lord was Antioch Cantemir (18 Dec. 1695–14 Sept. 1700). A monk, Dionysius, who did not know Greek very well, was its printer, and Jeremiah Cacavela was its proofreader and expositor. The Tome includes: a) Some writings by Gennadius Scholarius: Against the Akindynists, Exposition of the Faith About the Procession of the Holy Ghost, About the Latin Addition to Symbol, Against the Heresy of Simony, Against the Saturday Fast of the Latins, and About the Marriage of priests; b) A small writing of George Gemistus Plethon about the procession of the Holy Ghost; c) The 15 Antirrhetic of the Patriarch Philotheus³⁵ Against Nicephorus Gregoras; d) A writing by Theodore Agallianos against John Arghiropoulos about the procession of the Holy Ghost; e) The Triads for the Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred Quietude.
At first, Dositheus only wanted to edit Philotheus’s writings against Nicephorus Gregoras, but he found that the Tome too small, so he also added many other writings and synodal decisions, Acts of Emperors and Patriarchs — among them Cyril Lucaris — all against Latins. He was ready to edit it when he got hold of the Jesuit script, the “Targa,” that still befitted a response. So, he collected writings by Mark Eugenicus and printed them together. This Tome displays Dositheus’s patience and zeal in collecting and reading manuscripts. The prologue shows a profound knowledge of the dogmatic differences between the Orthodox Church and the catholics.
In August, a philosophical-religious writing by Demetrius Cantemir, a brother in God, also appeared there: “On the Dispute of the Wise Man with the World and the Judgment of the Soul with the Body.” It was printed in Romanian and Greek. In the title, it is said that it was conceived on the basis of the Old and New Testament “for the growth and benefit of the Moldavian nation.” The metropolitan from the See, Sava, is also remembered. The printing was done at the request of the hetman Bogdan Lupu.
The printers were the hieromonk Athanasius and the monk Dionysius, both “from Moldova.” As such, the product was purely Moldovan.
With Anthimus of Iberia at Snagov, Dositheus commits to printing the second edition of the “Orthodox Confession” of Peter Mogila. The first edition was printed in 1662 in Amsterdam at the expense of the dragoman Panagiotis Nicusios, but it had become so rare that it was almost no longer available. As one who took care of the spiritual food of the Orthodox, Dositheus turned to the Lord who “built so many Churches and printed so many books” that “the whole Eastern Church knows him” to take upon himself the expense of printing this book so that he could distribute as a gift to the faithful.
“The Omologion” appeared in February 1699 with an inclusion of “The Exposition on the Three Great Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love” written by the learned hieromonk from Ioannina, Bessarion Macri, as an explanation of the “Confession.” The literary Greek (Katharevousa) text was printed in one column and the vulgar one (Demotic) in the other. It was a worthy opportunity for the students of the Bucharest Academy to show off their literary skills. The same opportunity was available for those of the school in Ioannina. The poems of the Kiminan professor took first place. It was all dedicated to Constantine Brâncoveanu. Dositheus addressed from Adrianople a dedicatory letter to the Prince (in February 1699) and another, also there, to the citizens (Jan. 1699). The corrector was the aforementioned Panagiotis from Sinope.
In 1700, or still in 1699, another “Psalter” came into print at the expense of Constantine Brâncoveanu.
From 1701, the Snagov printing house began to serve the religious interests of the Arabs from the Patriarchate of Antioch. The former Patriarch of Antioch, Athanasius³⁶, “attracted by the rays of the most brilliant virtues” of the Lord of the Mountains, also came to Bucharest, where he was convinced by the sights that what he had heard was all true. He saw a country adorned “with so many holy and truly imperial Church and monastic buildings, and especially with the phrontisteries and seminaries for the various Hellenic and Slavonic studies, worldly studies, and on top of that with printing for all these dialects.”
Constantine Brâncoveanu asked him why the Arab Orthodox don’t have enough service books, to which Athanasius hastened to answer that in his Patriarchate, “priests are so poor, that they are constrained even in the necessities of life. The books they use are in the condition of manuscripts and, if found, cost a lot of money to buy or copy. That’s why most remain without serving the rites every day.”
So they ask Brâncoveanu to help them by printing the books for their jobs. Upon hearing that some parts of the service are said in Greek and others in Arabic, Brâncoveanu orders that the three Liturgies be printed for them at his expense, each in Greek and Arabic. The books came out in 1701.
The printer was Anthimus, and the proofreader was Ignatius Fiteanu or Fotianu, the hieromonk from Haldia. The doctor John Comnenus wrote verses, and Athanasius wrote a letter to Brâncoveanu dated January 1701 and one to the Arab priests, to whom he described how he arrived at the court of the Lord of the Mountains and how he ordered “the skilled printer Anthimus to diligently carve the Arabic letters and to prepare new Arabic typography.” He makes it a point to remember the benefactor and Prince at every service.
During the rest of the year, the printing house publishes works and speeches by the professors of the Academy and Brâncoveanu’s sons. First: the “Eortologion” (Festal Calendar) of Sebastius of Kimina, the personal author. Anthimus was the printer, Fotianu was the proofreader, and Comnenus was the panegyrist of the work and of the author in a preface to the readers. The work appeared in June.
The same staff still prints at Snagov: “Proskynetarion of the Holy Mount Athos,” a description of Mount Athos by John Comnenus, dedicated to Metropolitan Theodosius.
Then the printing house was moved again to Bucharest where, during the same year, it published a “Panegyric Oration” to Saints Constantine and Helen in honor of God, composed by Stephen, the eldest son of Brâncoveanu, and spoken by his brother Radu. Another “Panegyric Oration” for the Holy Martyr Stephen was composed by the same.
During this time, Dositheus took an active part in preventing the Union in Transylvania. With all the advice received at the ordination, Metropolitan Athanasius³⁸ immediately set out to complete the Union started by his predecessor, Theophilus. On Oct. 7, 1698, together with a synod attended by many archpriests and priests, he declared through a manifesto his union with the Latin church in exchange for material eases. On Sept. 4, 1700, in another synod, that decision was strengthened, and Athanasius went to Vienna in the winter of 1700–1701, where he was ordained in the church of Saint Anne a second time, according to the ritual of the catholics, as a bishop placed under the jurisdiction of the archdiocese of Strigonius. Finally, in June 1701, the supporters of the Union prepared a pompous reception for them at the gates of Alba-Iulia.
Those who protested against the Union, from the very day of Athanasius’s installation, bore for themselves the representatives of the priesthood and the laity in Braşov: a priest and two laymen.
The Orthodox attitude of the clergy of Braşov from the beginning until the end of the propaganda for the Union was largely influenced by Greek merchants from that city and their compatriot Dositheus with whom they were in touch, also thanks to the good material conditions in which they found themselves. Just in 1701, Dositheus was in Braşov ostensibly only for gathering alms, but in reality and above all, for encouraging the opposition against the Union. His success was complete, returning the people already caught in the nets of the Union to their ancestral faith. Athanasius tried to hold him back, but the people were pouring in waves towards Dositheus, who preached openly and impetuously against Athanasius, releasing the faithful from the duty to recognize and listen to him as one who has lost the right to this through his apostasy. Athanasius, at the height of his rage, struck against Dositheus in writing but in vain. He then complained to the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople. From the latter, Callinicus, with whom Dositheus is kind of enamored, it was answered that the Patriarch of Jerusalem had no right to exercise his jurisdictional power wherever he wanted, but only in Palestine and not in the Danubian Lands. And from Vienna came the command for the instigating Patriarch to be thrown across the border.
At this news, Dositheus hastened to leave Transylvania of his own free will, passing to Muntenia and then to Constantinople, where he provoked a joint epistle of the Patriarchs to the Romanian people of Transylvania. He himself wrote to Stephen Rațiu, a fighter for the Union, and to Athanasius, urging them to return to the one true faith. Epistles with the same content were sent to Transylvania, to Athanasius, and to Metropolitan Theodosius. The harsh words in the letter to Athanasius urged him to complain to the cardinal Kollonitsch⁴⁰, which resulted in a very harsh exchange of letters between the cardinal and the Metropolitan of Ungrovlahia. Extracts in Greek of two from these letters were preserved in Chrysanthus’s correspondence in the Library of the Holy Sepulchre. From them, you can guess how rough he was in the fight. The cardinal swears haughtily and makes threats of unfavorable political consequences for the Romanian Lands that can result from the size of the imperial lands. The metropolitan answers with a thin slyness — the likeness of a Greek — and raises the matter from the political order to the spiritual one, which is stronger than the first, reminding him of the 30-year war. The cardinal first wrote in his introductory letter: “To Theodosius the so-called Metropolitan,” for which he received a stinging reply: “To Kollonitsch the so-called Cardinal, may Our Lord Jesus Christ grant health of body and mind unto thee.”
Dositheus’s last contribution to the fight against Catholic propaganda among the Romanians was the presiding of the Synod held in Bucharest in March 1705 for the deposition of Hilarion of Râmnic, accused of collaborating with the Catholics for the spread of Catholicism in the Râmnic diocese. The Synod was attended by Theodosius of Ungrovlachia and the progenitors of the bishops from across the Danube who were in the Romanian Lands: Theodosius of Târnova, Clement of Adrianople, Euthymius of Pogoniana, Maximus of Hierapolis, and Auxentius of Sofia.
In Hilarion’s place was elected Anthimus of Iberia, who took with him the printing house, making Râmnic a hotbed for the spread of anticatholic literature.
Dositheus had thrown himself, with all the fire that characterized him, into the fight against the Union, but at the same time, he was also taking care of the material interests of his See. In 1701, he announced to the Hagiopolites that the restoration of the Saint George Monastery was completed: “47 bags of rough money were spent on the Church of Saint George. The Most Brilliant Lord says that it is necessary for a skilled man from the Holy Sepulchre to always be there, and he asks for Archimandrite Chrysanthus by name, let’s make him a bishop and let him go to be there, which… and the boyars here said it was good. And finally, Your Love, we think you will find out well because the person is useful and adorned with knowledge…”
Recently returned from Padua, Chrysanthus thus remains from thence on in Saint George, having also been ordained a bishop. He remained there even after he became the Metropolitan of Caesarea in Palestine on Easter 1702.
Hieromonk Anthimus continued printing work during this time in Bucharest. In March 1702, “The Order of Saint Matrona Hiopolita” was printed at the expense of Pandoleon Kaliarchis from Chios, the “archiater”⁴² of Constantine Brâncoveanu.
In June, a “Horologion” appeared in Greek and Arabic at the former request of Athanasius of Antioch. At the end of the book, Anthimus apologizes for the mistakes in the Arabic text on the grounds that he does not know the Arabic language well. John Comnenus signs verses, and Athanasius sends an epistle to Brâncoveanu, the one who bears the printing costs, and another to the priests of the Arabs.
In 1703, the “Panegyric Orations” for the Dormition of the Mother of God appeared, composed by Stephen, and was composed by Radu Brâncoveanu and dedicated only to our Lady Mary.
In September 1705: The “Dogmatic Teachings” of Sebastius of Kimina. The expense was borne by George Castriotul, the great Commissioner of Constantine Brâncoveanu, and he dedicated it in an epistle to Dositheus, the guardian of the Church’s faithful. The corrector was John of Ephesus.
A part of the copies was also dedicated to Emperor Peter the Great by George Castriotul, destined to be sent to Russia.
In December 1703: “The Explanation and Order of the Consecration of a Church” at the expense of Auxentius of Sofia, to be distributed as a gift. Through an epistle, he dedicated it to the Ecumenical Patriarch Gabriel III. The corrector was John of Ephesus, and the composer was John Comnenus. We now see for the first time Mark from Cyprus, the new director of the Academy, supervising the correction.
The first print from 1704 is a “Loghidion” for the Passion of the Lord, composed by Radu Brâncoveanu and dedicated to Patriarch Dositheus in the preface. The sermon would be delivered in the presence of the Patriarch. But since that one wasn’t yet put to text, Radu Brâncoveanu sent it to him immediately after Easter (April 14), printed by Chrysanthus together with a box with various gifts. “I wanted to give it to His Beatitude personally if only he were here, but because this could not happen, I dare to embarrass Your Most High Holiness… to offer to His Beatitude, as from me the most insignificant gift. I put different things in the box; it remains at the will of Your Most High Holiness to give to His Beatitude and to withhold as much of them as you wish. I do not write thoroughly to His Beatitude; it would be superfluous since the letter to His Beatitude is printed.”
The other book that appeared in 1704 was again a product of the Brâncoveanu House, namely the translation into vulgar Greek of Plutarch’s “Parallel Lives,” made by Constantine, another son of Brâncoveanu. Anthimus, the “typographer of the princely printing house,” describes, in a preface to readers, the care he has to continuously give something to read to those who want spiritual food. From now on, driven by this concern, he found out about the translation of “The Begzada,” and with great effort, he was able to get it from that one to print it because “Because of his modesty, his brilliance evades the modesty and the intelligence that characterizes vain applause and empty praise.” Next, Anthimus admires and invites the readers to admire the “clarity and great erudition” with which the translation was made and makes George Maiotul, the translator’s classical language teacher, happy, not because he is the teacher of the sons of the Most Brilliant Lord, but because he has such a student of the good.
This was Anthimus’s last print as a hieromonk. In March 1705, he became a bishop in Râmnic. Until he moved to his residence, he still printed in Bucharest, in April: “The Order of Saint Bessarion, Archbishop of Larisa,” at the expense of Hieromonk Ignatius, Abbot of Nucet. Metrophanes Gregoras from Dodon is the corrector and supervisor for the first time. He will remain as a printer in the Country until after 1730.
Then he moves the printing house to Râmnic, where he inaugurates its activity with the third Tome of Dositheus’s anticatholic trilogy.
He spent the autumn of 1704 in Iaşi at the Court of Michael Racoviță, busy with the administration of the consecrated monasteries.
In October, he is forced to make a new transaction regarding Caşin [Monastery]. At first, the monastery only had its chapel and a few cells, but it was then surrounded by many cells and endowed with everything for their management with the money of the Holy Sepulchre “that only the Holy Sepulchre was of any use to her.” She was previously lacking in animals but had won them from Racovită in exchange for the village of Roznov. Now, she was deprived of animals and everything for the second time because of the Muscovite naval raids, Tatars⁴³, and because of their bad administrators. That’s why she ceded the village of Buțuleşti to the great Vornic Gheorghache Ruset in exchange for 250 sheep, 200 beehives, 20 oxen, and ten cows.
A month later, he issued a decision from Iaşi regarding the Dealu-Mare Monastery, the foundation of John Handumi. The monastery had been trampled many times by the Turks, Tatars, and Muscovites, who kidnapped the animals and the hives, and the people were enslaved, killed, or scattered. In everything, however, the Patriarch once again provided her with the necessary supplies from the monasteries of the Holy Sepulchre in Iaşi. But now he doesn’t know what to do to keep it in good condition. That’s why he knew it was good to give it, with the village of Boteşti and all that is left of it, with “μωσίαις” (mosíais) with local villages with vineyards, with mills, with mill sites with “πίμνιτζαις” (pímnitzais), with workshops and with the places he has in Iaşi, all under the control of the Saint Sava Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Iași, be to him as if he had been honored. Also, all “οὐρέκια” (zapísia) and “ζαπίσια” (zapísia) and the other papers of Caşin should be transferred to Saint Sava. The abbot of Saint Sava will have to take care of the monastery he received, and there will always be one priest or hieromonk who reads the “acolouthia”⁴⁴ and serves once or twice a week. The abbot will not be able to sell anything from what the monastery has, either outside at “Τζαρα” (Tzara) or in Iaşi.
Dositheus also concludes a transaction with the Lord of the Lands, Michael Racoviță, for the improvement of the economic condition of the consecrated monasteries.
We find out from an act of the latter. First, a theological-historical introduction: The Holy Sepulchre is the Mother of all Churches. That is why God wanted it to be supported by the contribution of all Christians. This has happened all along. In the past, the Byzantine Emperors distinguished themselves especially in this. Later, missing those, the pious Lords of our Countries remained the protectors and supporters of the Holy Sepulchre. For some time, however, our places have also reached the state of a wooden hoe⁴⁵; the monasteries dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre have become impoverished, and it is dangerous that our country lacks alms towards the Holy Sepulchre.
Coming here, the Most Blessed Patriarch noticed the sad state in which all the monasteries are found. Some kept their belongings and animals but sold their debts; others sold them so as not to get into debt. The monasteries in the first category are the ones from the mountain: Bistrița, Pobrata, and Taslovi. From the second category are the five monasteries in Iaşi: Galata, Barnovschi, Saint Sava, Cetățuia, Bârnova, and Saint George from Galata.
The Patriarch thought of letting us be the first ones, especially since it was found that the Greek monks were not good at mountain climbing. Those from the second category remained under the Holy Sepulchre. Being in the last mess and the Patriarch asking us to help them, we decided with the boyars to use the treasury to free them. To pay only the current ones: 40 florins annually to Galata, 16 to Cetățuia, and 8 to Bârnova. The surplus income will go to the Holy Sepulchre “for the honor of our Country.” The named monasteries keep their neighbors who have them either in one village or several: 56 to Galata, 41 to Cetățuia with its metochion Hlincea, Bârnova, 9 to Saint Sava, 43 to Barnoschi in Şipote, 18 to Volcineț and 77 to Porouți, 3 to Saint George in Galata. They have to give the monasteries 2 1/2 florins each year in 4 installments. Then, the feast of sheep and the feast of bees and pigs. Monasteries will not have to pay the treasury: neither the animal tax⁴⁶ nor the harvest tax⁴⁷. Likewise, neither will their neighbors. Their neighbors will be judged by their abbots, except for theft and murder, for which they will be judged by the Court of Justice.
Dositheus remained in the Romanian Lands until the summer of the following year, presiding in March at the Synod of Bucharest for the deposition of Hilarion of Râmnic, and then he went to Constantinople, strengthening himself to regain the Places of Worship handed over by the Turks to the Latin sin 1689.
Meanwhile, Antioch Cantemir had followed Racoviță to Moldova again. He was not as willing to observe Racovită’s decision about the exemption of consecrated monasteries from giving to the treasury. Dositheus wrote to him reprovingly. Antioch answered with dignity, knowing that the consecrated monasteries also owe debts to the country from whose alms they exist when that country is in need. Otherwise, he was always a big supporter of them.
“…I have received Your Beatitude’s letter, and I have read what is written, one by one. It remains to answer to question after question, period after period…
Your Beatitude is very displeased because of the administration of the monasteries, that we would be committing great injustices…
What devastation and what injustice have I done? Once, twice, I took something from the income that was then kept for the taxes they were going to pay. And this is because I had great needs. But I repeat: no damage was done to the monasteries of the Holy Sepulchre.
Last year, during the harvest tax, when many, young and old, among the boyars rose up to give the monasteries for the sake of harvest tax, we opposed it because of the piety we have towards the Holy Sepulchre and for the love of Your Beatitude. And they cut (from the budget) a large amount, up to three bags, and we somehow got up, damaging us, taking into account the monasteries, but in fact, taking from the nonsense of ours.
I did another injustice. Last year, when they were in great trouble… again, I brought them in order and always helped them as one who would have been the owner myself.
That’s why I’m writing to you to get out of these suspicions. And from now on, let it be known to Your Beatitude that, since you were not satisfied with the help we have given so far in the administration of the monasteries, according to our wishes, we are leaving and moving away, and moreover, we will not be helpers either, nor causes of evil. There are the boyars, there is Your Beatitude, there are the monasteries, do what you want, we don’t interfere in anything anymore so that you don’t think that we are teaching them or commanding them, but we leave them to their own devices…”
However, it can be seen that things were reconciled for the moment, and Antioch continued to take care of the monasteries because the complaints against him continued until the future Patriarch, Chrysanthus.
In Oct 1705, Dositheus, also from Constantinople, announced through a “gramota” that he took Buțuleşti from Ruset, to whom he had sold it last year and gave it to Basil the Agha, the grandson of the founder from Caşin, who later presented himself with this claim based on the custom of the Country.
In the meantime, in September, Anthimus of Iberia printed the “Tome of Joy” in Râmnic. The Tome includes a) Photius’ Epistle to the Church of Antioch. b) The Minutes of the 8th Ecumenical Synod and perhaps some notes on this synod. c) Fighting the papal Primate, by Nicholas Kerameus. d) The Speech of Meletius against the papal Primate. e) The dialogue between the monk Jerome and another monk against the Latins.
The expenses were borne by Dositheus, or rather the community of Christians, because Dositheus was taking money for printing with interest in the name of the Holy Sepulchre; he hoped to pay them from the alms of the Christians. The “Students of the Noble Academy” wrote verses again. Dositheus, in a preface dated from Constantinople, May 1705, talks about writers and human works and promises to soon publish a 4th Tome, “The Tome of Peace.”
His plans were not realized.
“The Tome of Joy” was the last book edited by Dositheus.
His editorial activity was a feat of great importance. If he had not taken care to collect these writings, perhaps many of them would have been lost.
Towards the end of his life, he had his personal work ready to print: “The History of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem.” It is a general history of the Church, treated from a polemical point of view, with the History of the Church in Jerusalem at its center. In opposition to the writing of the contemporary Allatius, the writing could be titled: “On the Perpetual Dissension between the Eastern and Western Churches, especially since the Schism.” It is a fight against the heterodox — especially the Latins — on a historical basis in the sense of the “Magdeburg Centuries” and the “Annals of Baronius.” To this end, it always seeks to present the meaning of historical facts. It does not move to another fact until it completely abolishes the Catholic point of view with regard to it. He makes observations, reflections, and objections, showing himself to be very harsh with the Latins. Some inaccuracies — inherent in the historiography of the time — are not lacking in his writing either, but she is a monument of erudition and patience. No one fought so long against the Catholics as Dositheus fought so long his whole life, and no one rejected their arguments step by step as he did in this work.
It was published by Chrysanthus in Bucharest in 1715 after removing several parts, even an entire book, rounding it to 12 books, hence the name Dodecabiblius.⁴⁸ He also made some material corrections and gave the text a more scholarly form.
Dositheus spends the latter portion of his life in Constantinople, in need of going to Jerusalem until he regains the Places of Worship. However, he could no longer travel because of his physical weakness.
From Constantinople, August 1706, he had the joy of giving the “gramota” for the foundation and support of several schools in Palestine through the grant of George Castriotul, the commissioner of Constantine Brâncoveanu. The 160 așprii benefit from the 2650 așprii, which the Patriarchate received annually from his metochion in Neohorion (near C-nople), the foundation of G. Castriotul, would distribute them as follows: 30 to a chanter at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, who in addition to serving as a singer will have to teach hieromonks and hierodeacons the readings, and the children of the Orthodox chosen by the Patriarch the readings and the Church ordinances, 20 to a pious Orthodox from Jerusalem to teach the same children the old and new Greek language and the Arabic; 20 grosi to two priests from Gaza to teach the children of the Orthodox from there the Greek and Arabic languages, 20 to the priests of Rama, and 20 to the priests of Pezala, the remaining 30 to the priests of Coraki, the Metropolitanate of Petra, for the same purpose. Also, in August, while in Constantinople, he delivered the charter for the installation of Abbot Athanasius to the metochion of Ismail. The monastery had been given to the Holy Sepulchre around 1640 by George the Potter of Moldova. In the fall of 1699, Brâncoveanu renewed it and strengthened the rights of the Holy Sepulchre over it.
Now that he was installing Athanasius as abbot, the elderly Patriarch gave him the following advice: Father Athanasius, don’t enter houses without an ecclesiastical need, and don’t gather boys in your cell.
The parents learned to keep as much as they wanted and to send nothing more to the Holy Sepulchre. Don’t let them do that. You should know that the Patriarch will receive 10 oka⁵⁰ of caviar throughout the year. The metropolitan still has to receive something. Be interested and write to yourself so that somehow you don’t give into it more and a bad habit is born.
You will ask the former abbot to make two inventories in front of the elders of the things in the monastery, Church, cell, kitchen, and the future of the others, then confirm them both and keep one, Your Holiness, and send the other to the old abbot.
Swear in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ not to eat meat, neither much nor little, of the place. Keep the midnight fast according to the order of the monastery. On Wednesday and Friday, eat dry food, and if you can’t, at least show yourself that you would like to.
The local metropolitan could do a thousand good things but do not praise him. And he could do a thousand evils, but do condemn him, not to mention his name even once, so that you can live in peace.
If the metropolitan ever asks you for more than 10 oka of caviar or something else and shows you a patriarchal letter, don’t give it to him. And if you have to, shut the door and come here.
At the beginning of 1707, he also sent instructions to the trustees of Ismail. He first tells them how to take stock, and then: The abbot will gather the large and small expenses, liturgies, unction services, memorials for the dead, the diptychs, the kollyva, and any other almsgiving he can still collect for the monastery of the Holy Sepulchre, as well as other things that Christians from the place are used to giving at the epitaph, confessions, from what gather from the ships and send them all to the Patriarch together with the caviar. And the oil, that is, the money that is collected on the oil and the rough that is left over from the lights, keep them there as well as the fees for funerals in the courtyard of the monastery and the rent from houses, workshops, and shops.
This is the last act preserved by Dositheus regarding the Romanian Lands. The printing house from Râmnic began to stagnate after it published “Tome of Joy.” He also printed a “Panegyric Orations” for Saint Nicholas, written and delivered by Radu Brâncoveanu in honor of his grandfather Preda. It appeared in 1705 under the care of subdeacon Michael Iştfanovici. And “The Sermon on the Passion of the Lord” with the respective Gospel extracts by Gh. Maiotul, in 1706, was also under the care of Iştfanovici. And with that, [the printing house] stopped until 1708, after her move to Târgovişte roars together with her patron Anthimus of Iberia, who became Metropolitan of Ungrovlahia.
It is also felt in this symptom that “the prelate full of fire, zeal, active and enterprising” is about to die out. This happened in February 1707 in Constantinople. Dositheus dies at the age of 66 years after a pastorate of 38 years, filled from one end to the other with battles, sometimes with the Catholics and sometimes with the heretics in the Church. His pastorate was rich in positive achievements such as the Synod and the Confession of 1672, his writings and editorial activity, and the schools founded and organized at his urging.
His activity in the Romanian Lands contributed a lot to making them the home of Greek cultural life.
For the close ties he created between the Romanian Lands and the Holy Sepulchre, we let Constantine Brâncoveanu speak in a letter to the Hagiotaphites⁴⁹: “… I received your common letter, and I know that you pray for Us with thanks for Our help from different times. (I know) that, among other things, you all rejoiced especially for the help now that I made the Patriarchal chair inherit Our Father, the Most Blessed Patriarch Chrysanthus. We were glad that we saw with our fleshly eyes that he came to us first to organize the monasteries from here. Soon, he will come to you as well; rejoice! We were also glad for the news you gave us that the Lavra of Saint Sava has been finished for the glory of God from the foundations of the Church of the Great Martyr and Victory Bearer, Saint George, which is the most capacious, highest, and most beautiful of all the Churches and monasteries in our country. But no less was spent on it than was spent on Saint Sava. There was also a celebration of the consecration of this Church of George, the Most Blessed Father and Patriarch Chrysanthus being present along with many other bishops and priests and Christians, on the day of the saints and of God to the preaching Apostles.”
Patriarch Dositheus made the Romanian Countries a second Patriarchate of the See of Jerusalem.
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- “Raskol” is the Russian word for schism, which in this context refers to the Old Believers who separated from the Russian Orthodox Church due to Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms, bringing them more in line with the current Greek practice.
- A Metochion is either an Embassy Church to represent a foreign jurisdiction, a dependency of a Monastery, or both. A Metochion also usually serves as a Church where the Patriarch regularly resides and serves in contrast to the location of his ecclesiastical See. The Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople fulfills all three of these criteria.
- Saint Parthenius III (ruled 1656–1657) was actually hanged on Lazarus Saturday. He is commemorated on 6 Apr OC / 24 Mar NC.
- The city’s actual name was Roman. It is located in Neamț County in Moldavia, Romania.
- 1 Grosi (in Turkish: Kuruş) = 560 to 4000 US Dollars
- The “corrections” seem to indicate that the decrees were merely rephrased to be easier to understand rather than changing their content.
- The word “transubstantiation” (μετουσίωση) had already entered the Greek patristic lexicon by this point, such as in Saint Gennadius Scholarius’s The Sacrament of the Body of Christ 1, PG 160, 360C. Cariophilus suggests that these fathers are sinning by using that word.
- Caesarea in Palestine, not Caesarea in Cappadocia.
- The historian and philosoper Alexander Dimitrie Xenopol (1847–1920).
- Saint Dositheus Barilă (1624–1693) was the Metropolitan of Moldavia from 1671–1674 the first time, then again from 1675 -1686. To avoid confusion with the namesake of this Life, he shall be called Dosoftei, his Romanian name. He is commemorated on 26 Dec OC / 13 Dec NC.
- Univ Village in modern-day Lviv, Ukraine.
- “Prince of the Mountains” or “Lord of the Mountains” refers to the ruler of Wallachia.
- Prince Michael I Apaffi (1632–1690) was the Prince of Transylvania from 1661–1690.
- Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV “the Muslim,” Patriarch five times:
1. 8 Nov 1671–25 Jul 1673
2. 29 Jul 1676 — 29 Jul 1679
3. 10 Jul 1682–30 Mar 1684
4. Mar 1686–17 Oct 1687
5. Aug 1698 — Apr 1694 - “Stolnic” is a rank of nobility among the Boyars and is roughly equivalent to “seneschal.”
- Saint Constantine Brâncoveanu (1654–1714) was the Prince of Wallachia from 1688–1714. He is commemorated on 29 Aug OC / 16 Aug NC.
- Prince Șerban Cantacuzino (1634–1688) was the Prince of Wallachia from 1678–1688. He was the predecessor of Saint Constantine Brâncoveanu.
- Chrysanthus Methodievich Loparev (1862–1918) was a scholar in the field of Byzantine studies and Old Russian literature. He referred to himself as Chrysanthus Loparev Samarovensis after his native village of Samarovo (now Khanty-Mansiysk) in Tobolsk.
- A Dikaiophylax, literally “Guardian of the Laws,” is a Byzantine judicial office.
- A Begzada is a provisional governor or military general from a noble household within the Ottoman Empire, roughly equivalent to a Lord, Duke, Prince, or Voivode.
- “Hypodidascal” is now an obsolete English word meaning “Assistant Schoolmaster.”
- Patriarch Nikon Minin (1605–1681) was the Patriarch of Moscow and the Hyperborean Regions from 1652–1666.
- PKH refers to Athanasius Papadopoulos-Kerameus (1856–1912), an Ottoman Greek scholar and historian
- Saint Anthimus of Iberia (1650–1716) was the Metropolitan of Wallachia from 1708–1715. He is commemorated on 10 Oct OC / 27 Sept NC.
- Saint Meletius Pegas (1549–1601) was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 1590 — 1601. He is commemorated on 26 Sept OC / 13 Sept NC.
- [Citation in Original Text] In the following year, Metrophanes was elected Bishop of Buzău, where he again founded a Romanian printing house, which produced a series of service books, starting with “The Confession of Peter Mogila” translated by Radu Greceanu. In Bucharest, he leaves Anthimus from Iberia after he has learned the trade. v. N. Dobrescu Ist. Bis. rom., Bucuresti 1922, 99–100 si 142.
- Vlahobogdania refers to all of the Romanian Lands, including Moldavia.
- That is to say, the Ecumenical Patriarch and Jerusalem Patriarch.
- [Citation in the Original Text] The Confession of Dositheus put a stop to private readings of the Bible [for the spiritually deficient]; this was out of influence from the Catholics. Doesn’t Dositheus struggle with the words of Geceanu, who keeps Cariophilus as a guest and exile in the Romanian Lands? It is precisely this that is the realm of the dispute between Dositheus and Brâncoveanu concerning Cariophilus.
- The “Hatt-ı Şerif” is an official document from the Ottoman Sultan. They are usually responses to letters of petition, acknowledgments of a report, grants of permission for a request, an annotation to a decree, or other government documents. It could be called an “edict” and occasionally functioned as a Royal Pardon.
- The Presentation of the Most Holy Birthgiver of God into the Temple (4 Dec OC / 21 Nov NC).
- A Phrontisterion is a type of private specialized school in Greece.
- From Trebizond.
- [Citation in the Original Text] Even for the Greek Patriarchs, the argument about holy languages no longer exists.
- Saint Philotheus Kokkinos (1300–1379) was the Patriarch of Constantinople from 1353–1354 the first time, then again from 1364–1376. He is commemorated on 24 Oct OC / 11 Oct NC.
- Patriarch Athanasius III Dabbas (1647–1724) was the Patriarch of Antioch from 1685 —1724. He was the last Arab Patriarch before the Uniate schism in Syria and the Greek Captivity of Antioch.
- Metropolitan Theophilus Seremi was the Metropolitan of Transylvania from 1692–1697. He started the negotiations for the union of the Metropolitanate of Transylvania with the papist church but did not succeed before his death.
- Metropolitan Athanasius Anghel (1660–1713) was the Metropolitan of Transylvania from 22 Jan 1698 until his apostasy on 7 Oct 1698, leaving the metropolitanate vacant until 1761.
- Metropolitan Theodosius Vestemeanul (1620–1708) was the Metropolitan of Ungrovlahia from 1668–1672 the first time, then again from 1679–1708.
- Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch (1631–1707) was the papal cardinal who was called archbishop of Esztergom and primate of Hungary. In 1692, Kollonitsch was given responsibility over the Hungarian territories, including Transylvania, which were taken from the Ottomans. He became the papal primate of Hungary in 1695 and began the process of converting over 100,000 Orthodox Christians to the dominion of the pope.
- “Hagiopolites,” Residents of the Holy City (Jerusalem).
- The chief physician of the monarch.
- At that time, the Tatars had been in control of much of the lands that would become Russia, most especially the Crimean Khanate, which bordered Moldavia.
- “Sequence of the services.” The word ακολουθια was transliterated into the Latin script by Saint Demetrius, and so it was maintained as such here without the in-text translation.
- “Wooden Hoe” (sapă de lemn) is a Romanian idiom referring to primitivism. In other words, something has reached the state of a “wooden hoe” when it has fallen into disrepair or its upkeep can no longer be sustained.
- The “goștină” was the tax received in the form of sheep, pigs, or cows.
- The “deseatină” was the tax of 10% received in the form of animal products, especially from beehives.
- The original Romanian text says, “Dodecabiblion.” It is commonly known in the West by its Greek original title, “Δωδεκάβιβλος,” aka “The Dodecabiblius.”
- The Hagiotaphites are members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre.
- An “oka” (also spelled okka or oke) is a unit of measurement equivalent to roughly 1.3 kgs or 2.9 lbs. So 10 oka is 29 pounds.
