In the history of monasticism, the sixteenth century marks the triumph of a doctrine – which was, incidentally, to some extent, inherent in the very nature of monastic life on the Balkan Peninsula, a doctrine which represents, above all, an extreme form of monastic enthusiasm, mystical spirituality, and certain older metaphysical concerns that found striking parallels in the contemporary West, which was mired in a multifaceted political, moral and intellectual crisis. This refers – as is surely understood – to Hesychasm, which, during the turbulent period of civil strife under the reigns of John V Palaeologus (1341–1391) and John VI Cantacuzene (1341–1355) at the helm of Byzantium, the growing threat of Turkish conquest, feudal exploitation and numerous plagues—particularly the Black Death—which also marked the second half of the century in south-eastern Europesecond half of the century, was bound to leave a deep imprint on the medieval public spirit, particularly on the common people amongst the clergy of Mount Athos and Constantinople, in Serbia and Bulgaria, in the Romanian lands and in Russia.
Pointing, from the very earliest days of monasticism, to an existential-contemplative attitude amongst the monks of the Syro-Palestinian and Microasian East, this in fact signified – in the belief of the Eastern mystics from Saint Simeon the New Theologian, from the late 10th and early 11th centuries, right up to Saint Gregory of Sinai in the first quarter of the 14th century – a quest for the union of the believer, and of the monk in general, with the divine through continuous contemplation, through mental prayer – the true guardian of the spirit (νοερά προσευχή, φυλακή νοός), an occasion for purification and resurrection (ή τῆς ψυχῆς ϰάθαρσις ἣ άνάστασις) – a form of prayer involving a set of specific physical rules (πρᾶξις) and a form of meditation (theoria), at the end of which one would attain ecstasy (ekstasis) and experience the much-coveted vision of the uncreated divine light (doxa theou) that appeared to the prophets and was revealed on Mount Tabor 1, Hesychasm, through the lengthy and subtle discussions surrounding it, amidst the heat of theological struggles often intertwined with political ones in south-eastern Europe during the years 1340–1350, the most significant ecclesiastical doctrine of the Orthodox East, with profound and lasting implications for the mindset of the clergy, monks and great feudal lords in the countries of Eastern Europe, and for the entire medieval literature and art of these parts of the world. The dispute between Saint Gregory Palamas 2 and Barlaam of the Seminary – in fact, ultimately, between two conceptions whose theological and dogmatic core brought into the debate a significant number of other aspects of the thought and sensibilities of 14th-century Balkan intellectual circles – which came to a head at the synods of 1341 and 1347, as well as in the social movements that marked the empire’s second city between 1342 and 1350 (the well-known opposition of the ‘zealots’ of Thessaloniki)3 and culminated in May 1351 at the Council of Blachernae with the proclamation of Palamite Hesychasm as the official doctrine of the Byzantine Church. Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki (died in November 1359), John VI Cantacuzene, a follower of the former, Callistus I (June 1350 – after March 1353; 1355–August 1363) and Philotheos (November 1353–November 1354; February 1364–1376), the Hesychast patriarchs of Constantinople, were all, therefore, contemporaries of—and, in some cases, such as that of the latter, key figures in—the recognition of the Metropolis of Argeș and the earliest organised beginnings of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Wallachia, whilst also living at the same time as the first steps were taken towards the consolidation of a monastic life governed by stable rules along the Lower Danube. It was only natural, therefore – in the spiritual climate of south-eastern Europe in the mid- and early second half of the 14th century, in the midst of theological struggles that were to culminate in the official adoption by the Great Church of a doctrine which was the quintessence of the monastic viewpoint—primarily that of Mount Athos— in all areas of Orthodox faith and cultural practices – it seems that from the very beginning the Greek element, present amongst the first metropolitans of Argeș and Severin, and later the Balkan monks — most likely Serbs — as well as the local monks in Nicodim’s monasteries, were, for the most part, staunch and militant Hesychasts.
There is very little information about the manner in which certain hierarchs or monks north of the Danube expressed their Hesychast convictions in the 14th century, and, as far as we know, compiling such information has not been a particular focus of attention until now. If, in theory, given the opposition sometimes expressed on Mount Athos by the Palamite Hesychasts towards the rule of St. Athanasius of the Lavra and, more generally, towards Athonite cenobitism 4, we might deduce that, at least for a time, until the triumph of idiorhythmia on the Holy Mountain, Romanian monks inclined towards a non-Kinovian way of life would have held, all the more so—whether consciously or not—Hesychast views and sympathies; and if the small monastic communities that emerged with and even after the arrival of Saint Nicodemos, at the end of the 14th century and in the early 15th century, were not incompatible with the Hesychast ideal of life in smaller, somewhat isolated settlements—such as Vodița, Tismana, Cotmeana or Cozia – the precise records directly pointing to Hesychast practices in Wallachia – for in Moldavia such records are lacking prior to 1400 – can be found in several contemporary texts and works of art.
We thus consider, for example, the work of that ‘honest and holy man, well-versed in books, and even more so in judgement, words and answers’, as the Balkan Nicodim characterised him, with evident intellectual esteem, a source from south of the Danube5, regarding the contribution he made in 1375 in the capital of the Byzantine Empire as an ‘interpreter of words’ – alongside Isaiah of Hilandar, the protos Theophanes and the two disciples, Silvestru and Nifon – to the re-establishment of ties between the Serbian Church and that of Constantinople, proved to be – from its very beginnings in Oltenia – the work of a leader of a small Hesychast community. This can be read between the lines in the very passage contained in the charter granted to Vodița by Vladislav I, namely that relating to the direct contribution of the future abbot and his monks, through their own physical labour, to the construction of this monastery which continued, on the left bank of the Oltenian Danube, an undertaking by the same man, prior to the years 1370–1372, in the neighbouring region. In donating gifts, books, silverware and liturgical embroidery to the new foundation, Nicolae Alexandru’s son was keen to specify: ‘and with the labour of Chir Nicodim and his brothers, we built and plastered’6 – which amounts to expressly acknowledging the role as bricklayers, stonemasons and plasterers of those who had recently crossed the river in search of conditions more conducive to life, in a wooded region far from the larger settlements of the Principality of Bessarabia; a reminder of labour – lasting several months, presumably – carried out by monks who did not shy away from performing the time-honoured trades of their order by erecting and embellishing a monastery church, it should come as no surprise whatsoever, in the spiritual context outlined above, that the monks should have been so directly involved; they were equally prepared for meditation and for physical exertion, sometimes arduous, particularly in the construction of their own dwellings and those of the community—which constituted, amongst other things, a common Hesychast practice 7—a practice which, incidentally, brings to mind a similar one in the Western Cistercian world.
Whilst there is a general consensus that St Nicodimus was a follower of Hesychasm 8 – there have even been some attempts, excessive in our view, to interpret his ‘expulsion’ (‘banishment’) around 1399, which he himself mentions on the reverse of a leaf in his well-known Tetraevangelion from 1404–1405, as a ‘quest for hesychasm’9 in ‘Hungary’ (in fact, not in Prislop in Transylvania, as is commonly believed, but probably, for reasons that remain unclear, in the very same Banat of Severin, which was in principle under Hungarian rule even though ceded as a fief to Mircea the Elder, where he had established his first foundation north of the Danube more than a quarter of a century earlier) – it has been suggested, no less, and the singular hypothesis 10 according to which this founder of monasteries and Athonite monk, together with his brothers who had withdrawn to a deserted bank of the Oltenian Danube, is said to have been in a state of very distinct spiritual detachment, if not actually in opposition, to the rest of the clergy of Wallachia, to the metropolitan and voivodal courts of Argeș, which were closer to the turmoil of everyday life, to political concerns and matters of a different nature. We are, of course, seriously hesitant to share such a view, given that we have strong reasons to suspect that the clerical circles – Greek, perhaps also Slavic and local – surrounding a Hariton of Cutlumuz or an Antim – a man of the Patriarchate led in those years by well-known Hesychasts – not only adopted a doctrine similar to that which appears to have been held by the monks of Vodița and Tismana, but actually led a way of life in which monastic asceticism played a significant role, as was the case almost everywhere around the episcopal and metropolitan sees of south-eastern Europe, during the period of spiritual crisis in the second half of the 14th century.
Clear evidence of the Hesychast convictions of a contemporary metropolitan of Wallachia is, in fact, provided by the second will, dated July 1378, of another Athonite, who was present in our lands during the reigns of Vladislav I and Radu I. This refers to the aforementioned Hariton who, whilst ill towards the end of his life and career—as a hierarch of the Wallachian Church and Protos of Mount Athos— spoke humbly of “the marvellous attainment of poverty, through which material beings seem to be outside of matter”, and reminded the monks that “after… I attained the episcopate and the office of protos, I did not forget my former way of life, but I watched over my customary poverty’, and he was keen to emphasise in his counsel to them: ‘I implore them earnestly and advise them paternally to preserve poverty’11. We believe that in all these statements by this important ecclesiastical figure there was also a mark of the Hesychast spirit which, by extolling monastic poverty through sermons and writings, in the 14th century, from Athos to Russia 12, often included in its texts the counsel of eminent representatives of the monastic order and the higher episcopal clergy, addressed to those under their care during those times of the triumph of a new spirit, calling for the adoption of a humble life full of privations – something, moreover, that had always been required of monks – for that ‘embrace of poverty’ of which Hariton of Ungrovlahia spoke in 1378, which, in the faith of the great Hesychasts, ennobled and spiritualised the existence of those who sought to distance themselves from the goods of this life.
To supplement the few pieces of evidence that allow us to speak of a highly probable and natural influence of Hesychasm on the mentality and ecclesiastical culture of the Lower Danube region in the 14th century, we shall add to the above the testimony of a sumptuous work of art from the oldest collection of liturgical embroidery at Tismana, the second foundation of the Athonite Hesychast Nicodimus. It is an epitrachelion adorned with an unusually large number of figures – busts of saints, apostles, prophets, archangels and other sacred figures – contained within several dozen medallions of silk, gold and silver thread, on a blue-13 background, alongside plant, floral and geometric motifs, executed in a rich style, in a manner that would suggest the piece was crafted in a southern, Byzantine-Balkan workshop, perhaps even in Constantinople or Thessaloniki. As a detail of particular interest to us here, it should be noted that the 14th-century embroidery from Tismana bears, in two medallions with abbreviated inscriptions, monogrammatic inscriptions, situated at the top of the piece, the Greek words – amongst which we find ‘light’ (φῶς) twice – representing the expressions ‘the light of Christ shines upon all’ (Φῶς Χριστοῠ φαίνει πασῐν) and ‘light, life’ (Φῶς Ζωή)14.
Whether, as is surmised 15, that liturgical embroidery was commissioned for the first metropolitan of the western regions of Wallachia, the Greek Antim Critopulos – from whom, also at Tismana, a contemporary epigonation to the aforementioned epitrachelion is preserved, bearing his name in an inscription, also monogrammatic (Μητροπολίτου ʹ Ανθήμου Ούγγρο Βλαχίας)16 – whether it belonged to Saint Nicodimus himself, who came from a region south of the Danube where, at that time, the workshops from which the embroidered pieces in the Gorj monastery originate appear to have been located, what we wish to emphasise is that we find ourselves, through the monograms on the described epitrachelion, faced with evidence which we consider to be of some significance in researching the Hesychast atmosphere within the monastic settlements of Wallachia at the end of the 14th century. As is well known, the Hesychasts of that same century were characterised, at different intellectual levels – and following ancient concerns of the clergy – by endless dogmatic discussions on the nature of light – primarily the light of the Transfiguration, on which Palamas and Barlaam had clashed, holding diametrically opposed views – the connections established between the ‘heroes’ of Byzantine-Balkan monasticism, particularly those of Mount Athos, and the miraculous light, being a recurring-motif in hagiographic literature of Hesychast hue, which went so far as to compare certain monks—more or less renowned for their way of life and deeds—to the sun that illuminates all, surrounded by a wondrous light17, and so on.
Bearing in mind the significant fact that amongst the readings which, as we shall see, Nicodemus certainly appears to have had, there was also the figure and work of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in whose theological teaching the fundamental motif is light 18 – the divine light whose messengers are the angels, that which illuminates the ‘righteous’ in the life to come and which was identical to the light of Tabor 19 –, a doctrine whose influence was felt by Saint Gregory Palamas himself 20 when he asserted that the light of Tabor is beyond all knowledge 21, we shall of course better understand the significance it held here, in a remote monastery in Oltenia, the presence of an embroidery bearing, almost obsessively, the monogram of a word that occupied such a significant place in the theological disputes of the time—disputes with which they would not have been entirely unfamiliar, during their little-known careers at the end of the 14th century, neither the Greek-Serbian founder of the monastery nor the metropolitan of those parts, of Byzantine origin.
Combining this testimony with certain allusions to ‘the light of Christ’ found in the already cited will of Metropolitan Hariton from the summer of 1378, the exhortations to poverty given by the same to the monks of Athos in language that was, of course, in the spirit of the times, not infrequently in the presence of clergy and monks from Wallachia, as well as evidence of a direct physical contribution made to the construction of Vodița by Nicodim’s monks, we may conclude that we have sufficient evidence to substantiate, on the basis of revealing details, that at least during the eighth and ninth decades of the 14th century, when the Balkan monks Antim, Hariton and Nicodim were particularly active north of the Danube – but, most likely, also before and afterwards – both in the metropolitan centres of Argeș and Severin, and in the monastic settlements, secluded in the forests and mountains, in the settlements of Vodița and Tismana, at Cotmeana or Cozia, the Hesychast doctrine was known and practised in the Basarab state, giving rise to a mindset and an entire spiritual tradition which we shall encounter again in the fifteenth century, and later at the beginning of the 16th century; we shall highlight their echoes in pre-1400 Wallachian art – in mural painting, for example – in due course.
We have good reason to believe that in Moldavia, too, during the second half of the 14th century – albeit to a lesser extent than in Wallachia, given the lack of sustained contact with the Constantinopolitan clergy and Athonite monasticism until the beginning and, respectively, the second half of the fifteenth century – Hesychast tendencies were certainly not absent from the behaviour and way of life of the local monks in hermitages and monasteries, nor from the clergy associated with figures such as Iosif and Meletie; the links – which we suspect – between Moldavia and the Serbian Church, as well as those with the neighbouring Wallachian Church, may have contributed to some extent, of course, to the spread of Hesychasm within the state of the Musatins. However, it was only during the reign of Alexander the Good, with the establishment of collaborative relations with the Byzantine Patriarchate, that we know Moldova came into direct contact with Palamite thought – and Hesychasm in general – through manuscripts of theological and legal works, hagiographic and homiletic literature by authors of Hesychast background (such as the writings of Gregory of Sinai and Philotheos Kokkinos – the aforementioned Patriarch Philotheos – and perhaps Matei Blastares’s ‘Syntagma’, later), manuscripts brought and copied up until the mid-15th century in the country’s principal monastery, Neamț, as well as in the few other monastic settlements where the Slavic cultural milieu, in relation to the cultural climate south of the Danube, appears to have taken on a Hesychast orientation, and whose links with the Greek Unionist metropolitans of the See of Suceava – such as Damian or Ioachim – would probably have experienced some moments of tension 22.
In a cultural atmosphere such as that of the Byzantine-Balkan world – with clear echoes in the Romanian lands in the 14th century – where the dominant theme seems to have been, on a spiritual level, the hermits, ascetics and Hesychast clergy, where the idea of retreating into a contemplative life as the sole possibility of existence – as far removed as possible from a world torn by political strife, socially unjust, ravaged by wars, scourges and devastating plagues, was very widespread; it was only natural that, alongside the main mystical doctrine of Orthodoxy, there should emerge, as its antithesis, certain doctrines of a heterodox, heretical nature, which, by challenging the foundations of the Church and of medieval society, proposed to the masses of south-eastern Europe alternative ways of life and paths to salvation. Such was the case with Bogomilism in the Lower Danube region in the 14th century – and perhaps even in the preceding century.
- 1
This description appears in Patriarch Matei’s letter of acknowledgement dated 26 July 1401; for any possible relations between the Moldavian Church and the Patriarchate of Pec prior to 1401, see N. Dobrescu, The Founding of the Metropolises and the First Monasteries in the Country, Bucharest, 1906, p. 92; V. Laurent, ‘On the Origins of the Church of Moldavia: Metropolitan Jeremiah and Bishop Joseph’, in REB, V, 1947, p. 161; S. Porcescu, ‘Joseph, the First Known Metropolitan of Moldavia’, in MMS, 3–4, 1964, pp. 135–136; it is worth noting, by analogy with this term, that for the period 1348–1371, when Serbian ‘protoi’ were to rule at Athos, later Athonite documents would refer to ‘Serbo-protoi’ (G. Ostrogorsky, ‘Problems of Byzantine-Serbian Relations in the 14th Century’, in Congress Oxford, II, p. 10).
- 2
Regarding the long-running dispute between the Hesychasts – represented by St Gregory Palamas, a nobleman at the court of Andronicus II, who believed in the doctrine of uncreated divine light – and the followers of Barlaam of Seminara, for whom that same light was created, material, perceptible and describable—as well as for the implications of the debate, see D. Tatakis, La philosophie byzantine, Paris, 1959, pp. 261–281. For Hesychast practices and their traditions in Sinai, and in the doctrine of St Simeon the New Theologian, see I. Hausherr, ‘La méthode d’oraison hésychaste’, in Orientalia Christiana, IX, 2, 1927, pp. 101–210.
- 3
For his life and teachings, and for the overall Hesychast atmosphere of the 14th century, see J. Meyendorff, Introduction à l’étude de Grégoire Palamas, Paris, 1959.
- 4
O. Tafrali, Thessaloniki in the Fourteenth Century, Paris, 1913.
- 5
J. Meyendorff, Op. cit., p. 39.
- 6
The Life of Isaiah of Hilandar, cited in E. Lăzărescu, Op. cit., p. 268.
- 7
DRH, I, no. 6, pp. 18–19; T. Simedrea attempts to demonstrate, not without justification, that the number of monks who ‘built and painted’ the first church at Vodița may not have exceeded twelve, Op. cit., pp. 64–65, note 5.
- 8
J. Meyendorff, Op. cit., pp. 38–39; on the same subject, see, more generally, H. B. de Warren, ‘Le travail manuel chez les moines à travers les âges’, in La vie spirituelle, LII, 1937, pp. 80–123.
- 9
E. Lăzărescu, Op. cit., p. 264, note 3, holds the same view, ‘though without any conclusive evidence’. As we have seen, such evidence does exist, at least indirectly.
- 10
T. Simedrea (‘A Commentary on a Note’, in M.O., 1–4, 1961, pp. 15–24) suspects that the term ‘gonenie’, the equivalent of the Greek δίωξις, was used in the text in a figurative sense, intended to indicate Nicodim’s flight in search of tranquillity ‘closer to the hermitage than to the monastery’ (ibid., p. 19).
- 11
E. Turdeanu, ‘The First Religious Writers in Wallachia: Hegumen Nicodemus of Tismana and the Monk Philotheus’, in RER, II, 1954, p. 114 ff.
- 12
DIR. Țara Românească, no. 21, pp. 29–31; P. Lemerle, Op. cit., no. 36.
- 13
J. Meyendorff, Op. cit., p. 39; for the development of this ‘rule’ of poverty in Orthodox monasticism, see E. Herman, ‘Die Regelung der Armut in den byzantinischen Klöstern’, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, VII, 1941, pp. 406–460; for its reappearance, this time in the monastic world of the Catholic West, amongst the Franciscans of the 13th and 14th centuries for example, see M. D. Knowles, D. Obolensky, *Nouvelle histoire de l’Église. 2. Le Moyen Age, Paris, 1968, pp. 415–417, 422.
- 14
G. Millet, Religious Embroidery in the Byzantine Style, Paris, 1939–1947, pp. 4–6, plates I–IV; E. Turdeanu, ‘Religious Embroidery in Romania: Stoles of the 15th and 16th Centuries’, in BIRS, I, 1, 1941, pp. 13–14; V. Vătășianu, A History of Feudal Art in the Romanian Lands, I, Bucharest, 1959, pp. 464 and 466; P. Ș. Năsturel, ‘The Venerable Nicodim the Sanctified and the Vestments of Metropolitan Antim Critopul of Tismana’, in M.O., 7–8, 1959, pp. 425–428.
- 15
Ibid., p. 426; G. Millet, Op. cit., p. 4, plate I (these Greek abbreviations can be made out in the medallions in that part of the embroidery which covered the nape of the wearer’s neck during the liturgical service). For the appearance of the monograms of these expressions in the embroidery of the Christian East, see P. Johnstone, The Byzantine Tradition in Church Embroidery, London, 1967, p. 52.
- 16
P. Ș. Năsturel, Op. cit., p. 428.
- 17
I. R. Mircea, ‘Some observations on Romanian embroideries from the Dionisiu-Athos and Tismana-Gorj monasteries’, in M.O., 7–8, 1959, p. 435.
- 18
Fr. Halkin, ‘Deux vies de S. Maxime le Kausokalybe ermite au Mont Athos (14th century)’, in Analecta Bollandiana, LIV, 1936, p. 66, note 2.
- 19
P. Scazzoso, Research into the Linguistic Structure of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. An Introduction to the Reading of the Pseudo-Dionysian Works, Milan, 1967, p. 135.
- 20
D. Stăniloae, The Life and Teachings of Saint Gregory Palamas, Sibiu, 1938, p. 83.
- 21
P. Scazzoso, Op. cit., pp. 189–190.
- 22
D. Stăniloae, Op. cit., p. 77.