#Innocent of Râmnic

Bishop Inochentie of Râmnic (1728–1735), successor to Damaschin Dascălul, served as bishop of Oltenia whilst it was under Austrian occupation, vigorously defending the rights of the Church before the Viennese Court and opposing the Administration’s interference in the appointment of abbots and in diocesan affairs. His work also includes a rich body of printed works — the Prayer Book, the Book of Hours, the Triodion, the Liturgy Book, and the Catavasier — which were distributed throughout all the Romanian provinces, including Transylvania.

Bishop Damaschin of Râmnic (†1725) translated into Romanian almost all the Orthodox liturgical books — the Octoechos, the Triodion, the Pentecostarion, the Miney, the Apostol, the Gospel Book, The Commentary of Theophylact —, drawing on Greek, Church Slavonic and Latin editions; whilst for the New Testament books he relied on the commentaries of St John Chrysostom and St Theophylact, thereby ensuring the patristic accuracy of the translation. His enlightened style, attested to by Chesarie of Râmnic, Radu Tempea and Constantin Erbiceanu, established the Muntenian dialect as the standard for literary and liturgical Romanian; his translations remain in use to this day.

The study publishes in full, in transcription and facsimile, the printed work Capete de poruncă by Bishop Climent of Râmnic (1743), preserved in Sibiu, identifying it with the Invățăturile în Postul Mare from the Bibliografia Românească Veche. The text is compared with the pastoral letters of Antim Ivireanul (1714), Inochentie (1731), Climent (1747) and Filaret (1781), highlighting the continuity of the canonical, moral and liturgical concerns of the bishops of Râmnic in the 18th century.