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1 Andronikos Falangas University of Ioannina Some Aspects of Greek 1 Andronikos Falangas University of Ioannina Some aspects of Greek-Romanian Religious Relations in the Post-Byzantine-Era (16th - 17 th Centuries) Ι would like with my communication to remove us far away from the land of Israel and also far from Greece, so far as the Northern Balkan Peninsula and in particular in Romania. This Eastern-Latin country resulted from the progressive union, in the 19th and 20th centuries, of its three components situated in the both parts of the Carpathian mountains: the Danubian principalities of Walachia and Moldavia, founded in the 14th century, and the extra Carpathian region of Transylvania, a former appanage of the Crown of Hungary and subsequently a part of the collapsed Hapsburg Empire. In all these lands the majority of the people consistently professed and continues to profess the Orthodox Christian religion. Despite their Romanic language and their national name that recalls the glorious Romans who colonized the North of Danube and the Carpathian Mountains, The Romanians maintained exceptionally close relations with the Greek Orthodox Church. The two highest Romanian ecclesiastic institutions, the metropolitan sieges of Walachia and Moldavia, founded in the 14th century by the initiative of the first Romanian rulers, were initially put under the direct dependency of the most prestigious Orthodox authority, the ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. It was a political decision that strengthened the political status of the new created Walachia and Moldavia against the expansionism of the neighboring catholic kings of Hungary and Poland. The majority of the first Romanian metropolitan bishops were of Greek origin. The Greek monk Nikodimos, a man of confidence of the Patriarchs and an adept of the mystical movement of hesychasm, was the organizer of the Walachian monastic life and is venerated in modern Romania as a saint. Even under the administration of Hungarian Catholics in Transylvania of the 14th century, the local Romanian-Orthodox people maintained direct contacts with the Great Church of Constantinople. It is enough to mention that an important Orthodox monastery of Northern Transylvania (now in Ukraine), the Peri monastery, was under the control of Constantinople who approved its superiors and conferred on them the 2 prestigious title of exarch. These superiors substituted the Orthodox Transylvanian bishops, which were unwanted by the Hungarian rulers and their Italian spiritual instructors. However, the relations between the Romanian and Greek Churches were affected during the 15th century by a serious crisis. It occurred after 1439 when the Greeks decided to accept the union with the Catholic Church, which they believed to be the only way to save the Byzantine Empire from the Ottoman expansion. Not only the Romanians but also all the Orthodox Slavs and even the majority of the Greek people considered this desperate initiative, which finally failed to save the agonizing Greek Empire, as a betrayal of the true Christian faith. It is very telling that the authors of the Romanian narrative sources of the epoch mention the fall of impious pro-catholic Constantinople without any obvious involvement and even with apathy. The revival of the spiritual relations between Greeks and Romanians starts at the eve of the 16th century, when the former patriarch Niphon II was invited to Walachia. At this time the political and ecclesiastical situation of the South-Eastern Europe has changed. Half a century ago, the Ottoman sultans became the lords of Constantinople. Its conqueror Mohamed II has restituted the ecumenical Patriarchate who, conforming to the Ottoman interests and the Greek popular sentiment, followed an anti-Catholic policy. It was not by chance, that the first patriarch under Ottoman domination, Gennadius Scholarios (1454-1456, 1462-1465), before the fall of Constantinople has been the leader of the opposition to the union with Rome. At the beginning of the 16th century despite the stubborn resistance of some Romanian princes, the Ottomans have also imposed a constant political tutorage on both Romanian principalities that still preserved their internal autonomy and their own rulers. The presence of Niphon in Walachia is the result of all these changes. Niphon, who was born by eminent parents of Byzantine Pelloponese, was a monk imbued by the mystical and anti-Catholic spirit of Hesychasm. He became the metropolitan of Thessalonica and subsequently, two times, patriarch of Constantinople (1486-1488, 1496-1498). After his second destitution he accepted the invitation of the Walachian prince Radu the Great (1495-1508), initiating the long list of the Greek patriarchs who visited or lived in the Romanian lands. His mission was the reorganization of the Walachian ecclesiastical life and undoubtedly the strengthening of the prestige of his host who intended to continue in his principality the Byzantine tradition of caesaro-papism. Niphon started his mission by the 3 convocation of a synod with the participation of Radu the Great and the Walachian nobles. The synod elaborated a plan of the restructuring of the Church of Walachia. It also formulated the relations between the prince and the nobility. But Radu the Great and his court were not Byzantines! Niphon, a rigid exponent of the Byzantine tradition, was not prepared to approve the moral behavior of the Romanian high class of the epoch. Shocked by a matrimonial scandal, he didn’t hesitate to criticize the Radu’s family. Finally he has proved to be a danger for the prince’s prestige. So he ought to leave Walachia for the Mt Athos where he finished his exemplary Orthodox life in 1508, in the Dionysiou monastery. But Niphon’s death has not impeded his influence and even his physical appearance on the Walachian ground. Some years later, in 1512, the influential noble family of Craiovescu extirpated with the Ottoman’s aid the dynasty of Radu the Great by the killing his brother and successor Vlad the Younger. The same family imposed at the Walachian throne one of its members Neagoe Basarab (1512-1521). The luck of legitimacy of the new prince was evident. Thus, his political propaganda concentrated on the Niphon’s sanctity. On his request Gabriel, the head of the monastic community of Mt Athos, composed a Life of Niphon. According to this hagiographical text, expelling Niphon, Radu the Great committed a sin that insulted the God’s justice and caused the fall of the dynasty. In his turn, Vlad the Younger was under the diabolic influence of the Radu’s brother-in-law who has been excommunicated by Niphon as the protagonist of the above- mentioned matrimonial scandal. In contrast with these sinners, Neagoe Basarab is presented in the Life of Niphon as the holy man’s spiritual son who took care of the former patriarch during his conflict with Radu. It is evident that Neagoe tried to project himself as a follower of the Byzantine model of pious sovereign. Inspired by the Byzantine political tradition, Neagoe repeated at his capital Târgovişte the expiatory ceremony organized by the emperor Theodosius the Younger in Constantinple in favor of his mother’s soul who dared to persecute a Father of Church Athanasius Chrysostomus. Like Theodosius who brought from Caucasus the relics of the saint Athanasius, Neagoe Basarad organized a pompous transfer of Niphon’s body from Mt Athos. It was exposed in the church of Dealu monastery, the Radu the Great’s burial chapel, where a religious service assured the pardon of the dead prince. The readers of the Life were informed that Neagoe witnessed the 4 following revelation: he saw the dirty and terrifying Radu’s body to leave its tomb; the dead prince was cleaned by the holy water that sprung from the Niphon’s reliquary and finally returned, sparkling in its purity, to the grave. This expiatory ceremony is only one of many expressions of the Byzantine revival at the Neagoe Basarab’s epoch. Few years after, in 1517, the Walachians saw the Ecumenical Patriarch Theolept Ist (1513-1522) to arrive in their lands with a suite of four eminent metropolitans. He was accompanied by the head of Mt Athos Gabriel, whom we already met, and a number of superiors and other eminent Athonite monks. They were invited by the Neagoe Basarab to participate in the foundation of the monastery of Curtea de Argeş and, on the same occasion, to canonize Niphon. Thus, Niphon was officially introduced into the pantheon of the Orthodox saints. Until nowadays he is venerated by the Romanian people who recognize him as their national saint. We can imagine the splendor of the mentioned ceremonies that recalled the glorious days of the Byzantine Empire, far away from the Muslim-controlled Constantinople. The Great Rhethor of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Manuel of Corinth didn’t hesitate to refer to Neagoe with a majestic Byzantine-styled title: “emperor and autocrat of all the Great Walachia”. Neagoe has also adopted the attitude of the Byzantine emperors towards the Orthodox holy institutions. He generously gratified the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Jerusalem. He assured also generous pecuniary aids to a great number of venerable monasteries in the Greek lands, and particularly to the most prestigious in all the Orthodox world monastic republic of Mt Athos. Characteristically, Gabriel in the Life of Niphon qualifies the Walachian prince as “great founder of the whole Holy Mountain”. We believe that the Neagoe’s munificence was not only dictated by his desire to consolidate his reign or to augment its glory. According to our opinion, he truly wanted to help his Orthodox brothers directly subjected to a Muslim authority. We also consider that Neagoe also hoped that God would recompense him and his family on the earth and, after his death, in heaven. Neagoe Basarab was not the only Romanian ruler who opted to regain the place of the Byzantine emperors as a defender of the Orthodoxy often affected by the avidity of the Ottoman treasury, the abuses of the sultan’s high officials but also the costing ambitions of many Orthodox personalities.
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