Anti-Mine Reflections in Eminescu’s Work (II)

It goes without saying that the conclusions with which we concluded the first part of this endeavour in the previous issue can only be a stepping stone towards those of the endeavour as a whole, being, in fact, ‘conclusions that open up’ and premises for its continuation on new levels, just as we had promised: ‘We ourselves intend to write about all these matters in a subsequent context’.

Inevitably, those new levels we wish to address will fall along the same ‘fine line’ of more or less well-founded conjecture, arising from analogies, parallels or (ideally!) even relevant ‘examples’, doggedly sought out in a field of research fraught with pitfalls, over which only intuition and good faith carry us.

Did Eminescu know of the Anti-Mian Didachies in manuscript copies?

The first fundamental ‘pitfall’ concerns the documentary evidence, in the sense that, as we have already emphasised, no ‘definitive document has yet been found to show that Eminescu read, even in part, the manuscript of the Antimian Didachies’, the posthumous literary work proper of the metropolitan, printer and orator, which could have satisfied the poet’s cultural, spiritual, ethical, linguistic and artistic interests; however, as this work, composed at the beginning of the previous century, was not printed in its first edition, as late as 1886, only the manuscript copies that had been in circulation during that period could have been of use to him, had he been aware of any of them. Gabriel Strempel, the researcher who produced, in 1962 and 1972, the standard editions of Antim Ivireanul’s works, identified only seven manuscript copies of the Didahii, discovered towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century, of which only some might (or might not) have been known to Eminescu. Arranging these copies (the original having been lost!) in a chronological order 1, a partially significant picture emerges of the enduring legacy of this major work by Antim, though posthumously; a picture which does not, however, place them on the ‘surface’ of cultural and spiritual life, such that they might have resonated in the consciousness of Eminescu’s era. Thus:

• 1722–1725 (less than a decade after Metropolitan Antim’s martyrdom), a period during which, at the request of the abbot of Antim Monastery, Father Stanciu, a scribe named Efrem, made the first manuscript copy, most likely based on the autograph original of Antim Ivireanul’s Didachies; it was discovered by Gabriel Strempel in 1958, bears the number 3460 in the Library of the Romanian Academy and forms the basis for the 1972 critical edition;
• (c. 1725–1750) 2, a period during which a second known manuscript copy was produced, bearing the number 549 (BAR) and which drew on Efrem’s text, containing, like it, “in addition to the 28 didache, two addresses to the prince (Constantin Brâncoveanu – ed.) and a Sermon on Repentance”, as well as “three funeral sermons and a teaching on confession” (G. Strempel); it was discovered in the summer of 1887 at Căldărușani Monastery by Constantin Erbiceanu, who also edited it, in 1887, claiming that, due to the handwriting and ornamentation, it was in fact Antim’s own autograph, a claim subsequently refuted;
• “the mid-18th century”, when it was written, “in the cursive script specific to the grammar schools of Bucharest” (G. Strempel), a new copy, this time based on manuscript no. 549 from Căldărușani; this new copy is held at the Craiova County Library, registered under no. 67;
• 1781, the year of the manuscript copy produced by Archimandrite Grigorie Deleanu of the Metropolis, registered under no. 524 (BAR); it was discovered by the Bishop of Roman, Melchisedec Ștefănescu, in 1886, when he also published it; this was the year in which Antim Ivireanul’s Didachies were first printed. (Subsequently, up to 1915, a further six editions appeared – see G. Strempel, op. cit., p. LVII);
• ‘around the year 1780’, another copy was produced, ‘of the same dimensions as those mentioned above’ (G. Strempel), brought to the Academy in 1958 but not acquired;
• in the “first decade of the last century” (19th century), another copy was made, “with gaps at the beginning and end” and kept “also in a private collection” (G. Strempel); it was not acquired, although it had been brought to light “by the well-known researcher from Iași, Paul Mihail”. Now the second manuscript to be published in a critical edition, and one whose the editors have managed to reconstruct its history (up to the point where it came into the possession of Father Paul Mihail as a gift), this Bessarabian manuscript 3, succeeding the damaged or lost Bucharest prototype, is yet further conclusive proof that, although defrocked, Antim Ivireanul remained, through his martyr’s biography, through his printed works of the utmost importance to the faith and, indeed, through his posthumous manuscripts, in the public consciousness of the Church’s people (hierarchs, priests, monks), who published or copied his works—even omitting his signature (for there was no other way!)—and used them, in whole or in part, ensuring their circulation and the enduring legacy of the ‘4’.

Undoubtedly, the ‘picture’ depicted above—of manuscript copies based on the original of Antim’s Didachies—beyond the fact that it raises certain questions and conjectures regarding this original 5, clearly indicates that Eminescu, both during his formative years (1866–1874) and in his mature years (1874–1883), although he would have learnt of Antim Ivireanul (from Aron Pumnul and Timotei Cipariu, initially), could not have read the martyred metropolitan’s homiletic work until 1886, the year of its discovery and first publication—that is, far too late for any ‘influences’ or ‘echoes’ to have been discernible. Nevertheless, the poetic analogies highlighted by Al. Piru, Mihai Rădulescu and ourselves ‘open up – as we wrote – avenues of research that may spur progress’, the argument being that ‘it cannot be ruled out, although we have no evidence that he (Eminescu – ed.) may have come across and read, at some Moldavian monastery (Neamț, for example) or in the mountains (Căldărușani, possibly) some fragmentary copies of the Antimian Didachies, which might have provided him with poetic or journalistic inspiration’6 In fact, amongst the miscellaneous collections in which he might have encountered such fragments, Gabriel Strempel himself noted in 1972 that, in the Academy’s manuscript 1224 of the Academy, inserted amongst other sermons copied at the beginning of the 19th century, there is also a ‘Sermon on the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ 7. In the same vein, we would like to add at least one example from the Catalogue of Romanian Manuscripts, Vol. I, compiled by the same eminent scholar, Gabriel Strempel, namely the miscellany catalogued under no. 302, dated to the early 18th century 8 and which contains, on folios 1–105, Catavasier (by Filothei Sfetagorețul), and on folios 107–145, Antim Ivireanul, the Didachies – a fragmentary text corresponding to the sermons on pages 133–139 (Teaching on our holy father Nicholas), 194 – 202 (Teaching on the 25th of the month of Dechemvrie, on the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ), 126–128 (Teaching on the Circumcision of Christ), 188–193 (Sermon on the Dead Man) from the volume Antim Ivireanul, Works, 1972 edition; that miscellany was donated to the Romanian Academy in 1881 by Dim. A. Sturdza (who would not have been interested in the history of the manuscript).

The natural question—whether Eminescu would have been familiar with this miscellany (and, by extension, the Didachies contained therein, as texts written by Antim Ivireanul himself)—cannot be answered in the affirmative, since Dimitrie A. Sturdza – “an amateur and fanciful historian, but a highly influential Liberal politician and, above all, a man who never forgives an offence”, as characterised by a contemporary literary historian 9 – was satirised in no uncertain terms by Eminescu, in that very year, 1881, in Letter III (“Behold that soulless, mindless abomination…”), the underlying factor being, of course, the poet’s aversion to the “Reds” party. Our question, whilst we continue to search for or await another miscellany, another collector or another repository that may have preserved at least fragments of the Anti-Mian Didachies, also raises a related query: given that it has itself been in circulation and use for some 150 years, might miscellany no. 302 not, in turn, as is customary, have had other copies, one of which might have caught the keen eye of Eminescu?

We are, therefore, treading the ‘fine line’ of conjecture, but not without reason...

What and how much did Eminescu know about Antim Ivireanul?

It is clear, however, that our approach of continuing to focus on a single target vector—namely, Eminescu’s knowledge of Antim’s Didachies—from which to identify further analogies, ‘reflections’ or creative borrowings, beyond those previously highlighted, has reached its limits, to the extent that we must combine it with a more comprehensive perspective, namely Eminescu’s knowledge of ancient Romanian culture, the focus being on highlighting, within this context, the personality and work of Antim Ivireanul as a point of reference and a possible model of attitude and, to some extent, creativity.

Eminescu may well have learnt about Antim Ivireanul from the early readers of ancient Romanian books and manuscripts with whom he came into direct contact, either in person or through books, from an early age. Having been brought up in a family environment that fostered an appreciation for ancient ecclesiastical texts (through prayer with psalms and readings from the Lives of the Saints, as well as texts by Dosoftei), and having been sent by his father to the Romanian-German grammar school in Chernivtsi, he would live as a ‘favourite pupil’10 in the home of the Transylvanian teacher (a leading figure of the 1848 Revolution) Aron Pumnul, whose library—shared by the grammar school pupils (located in the small house in the courtyard)— he would organise and explore at length, and whose Lepturariu would provide him with his first insights into the world of Romanian literature as it existed at that time. From the noble professor, respected and loved by the whole town of Bukovina – the man who would often travel by cart with his pupils to Putna Monastery, from where he would borrow books to use in class and in Lepturariu, and, on more than one occasion, to lend them in turn to his colleague Timotei Cipariu from Blaj for inclusion in the volumes of the Crestomația he was compiling – the future poet would develop a habit of acquiring (sometimes under precarious financial circumstances) the books necessary for his many intellectual and artistic pursuits, and of lending them out in turn for major cultural purposes, as he did for Moses Gaster’s Crestomația. Furthermore, as his first poems began to take shape and his talent was confirmed (his debut, with the poem ‘Dress in Mourning, ‘Beautiful Bukovina’, in the pamphlet Lily of the Valley for the Gymnasium Pupils of Chernivtsi at the Grave of Their Beloved Teacher Aron Pumnul, Who Passed Away on 12/24 January 1866’), he would take up ‘as his own’ the thesis (and exhortation) of Professor Cipariu regarding the possibility and necessity ‘of reviving and reintroducing viable forms from the old language into the modern fabric of the Romanian language’11; a thesis which would inspire the Blaj scholar of the time to compile Crestomație* or Literary Anthology from Older and Newer Romanian Books, Printed and Manuscript, spanning from the 16th to the 19th century, with literary notes, a multi-volume anthology, of which only the first volume was published in 1858, containing excerpts from 16th- and 17th-century printed works, accompanied by an extensive introduction – Literary Note – ‘the first sketch of ancient Romanian literature’12

In this Note – 38 pages long! – Timotei Cipariu proves to be the first of our 19th-century authors to mention the Georgian-born metropolitan who met a martyr’s end, Antim Ivireanul 13 and it is from here that the young Eminescu may first have learnt of this memorable figure of our ancient culture. This would have taken place either in Chernivtsi, where Professor Aron Pumnul would have received the first volume of the Crestomația, published in 1855 (second edition in 1862), or in Blaj, where, deeply affected by the death of the Transylvanian professor and fascinated by the ‘Little Rome’ of the Transylvanian School, the young poet had travelled on foot along the ‘imperial road’14 in 1866, hoping to continue his studies and eager to read. However, it was not only from Master Cipariu’s ‘Note’ that Eminescu learnt something about Antim Ivireanul and his work, for, whilst perusing the 1858 inventory of books in the library of the Chernivtsi grammar school pupils, published by Al. Vasiliu 15, we discover, under number 67, a work printed by Antim Ivireanul, namely:

– (no. 67) Book or Light with Sound Proofs from the Dogmas of the Eastern Church, concerning the refutation of the Papists, discovered and compiled by the most learned Ermonah Maxim of the Peloponnese, now printed for the first time in the Romanian language, by the command and at the full expense of the most enlightened and exalted Lord and Ruler of the whole Romanian Land, Ioann Constantin B. B. Voivode, with His Holiness Metropolitan Kyr Theodosius at the helm of the Orthodox Church. And it was printed in the princely printing house of the Holy Monastery of Snagov in the year 1699 by the humble monk Antim Ivireanul, to be given as a gift to the Orthodox – a work donated by Zbiera Ion, a seventh-year student.

Comparing this title (listed in the library catalogue) with the original title:

‘Book or Light with sound proofs from the dogmas of the Eastern Church concerning the refutation of the Papists, discovered and compiled by the most learned hieromonk Maxim the Peloponnesian, now printed for the first time in the Romanian language, by the command and at the full expense of the Most Enlightened and Exalted Lord and Ruler of the whole of Wallachia, Ioann Constandinu B.(asarab) B.(Râncoveanu) Voivode. With His Holiness Metropolitan Chir Thedosie at the helm of the Orthodox Church. And it was printed at the Royal Printing House in the Holy Monastery at Sneagov. In the year of the world’s salvation 1699, in the month of April, by the humble Hieromonk Anthim Ivireanul, to be given as a gift to the Orthodox16;

it is very clear that the librarian (Professor Pumnul or a ‘student’) updated the spelling in accordance with the conventions of the first half of the nineteenth century—conventions of the nineteenth-century successors of the Transylvanian School, including Aron Pumnul—and, on the other hand (and here, too, we assume the scribe was a secondary school pupil!), the choice to begin with a lower-case letter words written by Antim with a capital letter denotes ignorance (once again!) of a basic philological rule, namely, the accuracy of transcription. The book, ‘written in Romanian using the Cyrillic alphabet’, was intended to enlighten the ‘Orthodox believers’ (the true believers) on the dogmas of the Orthodox Church in order to combat the doctrine of the Catholics (‘Papists’) at a “time of the greatest threat to the identity and spiritual unity of the Romanians”17 – which, in part, occurred in Transylvania through the forced conversion of many to Uniatism – was able to arouse the interest of the schoolboy Eminovici; his secondary school classmates acknowledged that: “Eminescu got his best marks in religion, Romanian language and literature, and world history”18; fields in which he would later excel, when he proved himself a staunch adherent of ‘sacred thought’, irreconcilable with secularised thinking, an exceptional writer, and a fervent champion of the historical rights of the Romanians.

From a historical perspective, Eminescu would emphatically highlight the contribution of the ancestral Church, through the light of the book, to the defence and preservation of the ‘spiritual identity and unity’ of the Romanian people: ‘The era of the Reformation, spreading through the outlying regions, reached Transylvania; The Calvinists had begun to translate church books into Romanian in order to draw the Romanian people towards the Reformation. Well, the Church and our princes fought the Reformation with its own weapons. They commissioned the translation of ecclesiastical books (Orthodox – ed.) into Romanian, and introduced the language of the people into the church and the state, in place of the foreign, hieratic languages. If there had indeed been any tendencies towards the dialectisation of our language, these ceased the moment the Church created the literary language, sanctified it, and elevated it to the status of a literary and official language…’19 That moment belongs to Matei Basarab, to Varlaam’s Sermon, to Dosoftei (much loved by Eminescu from childhood), of Șerban’s Bible, as well as of Antim Ivireanul, who perfected the integration of the Romanian language into the liturgical service and delivered his Didachies in the most authentic vernacular. We do not know, however, whether Eminescu was thus made aware of the importance of the metropolitan scholar and printer. Would Varlaam, Dosoftei and Șerban have been enough for him – to support his idea? If so, he would not have sought out information and sources of poetic expression in so many books and manuscripts, which he acquired and carried with him as his sole possession! As for Antim, the defrocked monk, his name was forbidden, and his printed works were almost always printed or copied without his name, which led some to fragment them into miscellanies or even to adapt and supplement them according to necessity or various interests.

We find this latter situation in another printed work from the inventory of the Chernivtsi grammar school pupils’ library, listed under number 65, entitled A Collection of Philosophical Parables and Church Prayers, Arranged by Topic and Very Useful to Anyone Who Loves Reading, translated from Greek into Romanian and now printed for the third time at the expense of a devoted man of Romanian descent, 1835 20. This is a collection of sapiential texts, which resembles a Târgoviște print from 1713 by Antim Ivireanul, namely Philosophical Parables from the Greek language translated into Romanian, which were graciously dedicated to the Most Enlightened Ruler of Wallachia, Ioannŭ Constandinŭ Basarab Voivode, whilst Anthim Ivireanul was Metropolitan. By Manul, son of Apostol, at whose expense they were first printed in Târgoviște in the year 722121. A work which appeared, in the same year, first in Greek, under the title ‘Maxims of certain ancient philosophers, translated from Italian into our simple language…’ (Modern Greek), after having been translated from French (its author: Antoine Galland, who, as can be seen, was omitted once his work had come into circulation!) into Italian by Anton Maria del Chiaro, and from Italian into Greek by the Greek priest Ioan Avramios, who had come from Venice, and then, from Greek into ‘simple’ Romanian (that too!) by Antim Ivireanul. The Romanian-language work underwent several reprints: in 1783, Râmnic; 1808, Brașov; 1814, Sibiu; 1864, Bucharest22 – which indicates that the 1835 edition (which Moses Gaster, without a doubt, but also without sufficient information and analysis, regarded as the ‘second edition’23 of the ‘Philosophical Parables...” from 1713, translated and printed by “Vladica Antim”) was not identical, but contained omissions or additions that obscured its original identity and any awareness of it.

That Eminescu, with his particular fondness for old books, would have read this work whilst he was a pupil or in 1871, when we find him acting as custodian of the Cernăuți grammar school library, can also be deduced from the fact that, on 6 March 1875, whilst he was in charge of the Central Library in Iași, he proposed for acquisition, amongst 17 other printed works, ‘Pilde filosofești. Three leaves are missing at the beginning and the title. 1 vol. 16° bound’24 Regarding this incomplete copy, Alexandru Elian suggested that it might have been the 1783 edition from Râmnic or the 1795 edition from Sibiu; however, as it concerns Fiore di virtù, in Romanian translation, as Rosa del Conte observes, who draws on Nicolae Iorga’s information regarding Antim’s 1713 printed work Pilde filosofești and opts for this or a reprint of it 25. As it lacks a title page, perhaps Eminescu did not realise it was a work by Antim, but merely one of the many old books from which he drew wisdom and marvelled at the charm of the language (‘astonishing’ as noted by G. Călinescu).

During his time in Iași (1874–1877), Mihai Eminescu, in his particular passion (acquired from Aron Pumnul, but also developed from his own impulses) for the Romanian past (which had been violated by more recent upheavals in Bukovina and Bessarabia) and for old books, whether printed or copied/manuscript, he continued, as he had done wherever and whenever (in Chernivtsi, Vienna and Berlin, and later in Bucharest), to acquire “many antiquities, comprising old Romanian manuscripts and printed works”26, which, stored in chests, constituted his “library”—his sole possession. He had made it a habit – as Professor Ioan Scurtu noted – “to reproduce in ‘Cd.I.’ (‘Curierul de Iași’ – ed.) excerpts from older Romanian writings”27, in order to illustrate the restrained style, the rhythmic phrasing and the expressiveness of words and phrases, and to use such archaisms as constants of the language, against the backdrop of the era’s trends towards renewal and modernisation, which were often exaggerated and inappropriate. Similarly, Eminescu used to ‘read (from old texts) at literary gatherings (...), and even, as a teacher, set his pupils the task of translating fragments from the “Chronicles” into German...’28 ‘The literary language—not that spoken in cultured society, but the language of chroniclers and legends,’ he was to write in the newspaper Timpul in Bucharest, ‘is, in places, of rare beauty. Many texts, both ecclesiastical and secular, possess such a melodious rhythm in the combination of words that it is impossible to attribute the beauty of their style to chance rather than to the writer’s talent and the development of the language”29.

With Moses Gaster on ‘folk literature’ and ‘Vladica Antim’

Imagine

His complex and profound knowledge of the Romanian language—in its lexical-historical landmarks and its stable, organic morphosyntactic structures 30—would prove of great use to him, in Iași, to the linguist H. Tiktin, a fact he himself acknowledged with integrity, as he often consulted him to gain a better understanding of the semantics of certain words and the spirit of the native language; on the other hand, it is worth noting that, in order to acquire the Romanian language in the most considered and authentic manner possible in the context of the dawn of our cultural modernisation, Eminescu, even whilst in Cernăuți 31, had set himself on the right course, avoiding the excesses of etymologists, as well as the unrestrained adoption of neologisms; and for all this, he engaged in veritable ‘media campaigns’, his writing—whether fiction or journalism—serving as a true model for his era. At the same time, Eminescu’s idea—which had, in a sense, sprung from the ‘Pumnulist’ Lepturariul and Ciparian’s Crestomația—that, in our medieval culture, even if without experience or aesthetic awareness, yet with talent in places, literature – more accurately described by Eugen Negrici as ‘involuntary expressiveness’ – it served, in Bucharest, as a ‘good seedling’ for the comparative work of the scholar Moses Gaster, which was itself based on the premise that Byzantine literature and the medieval literatures of south-eastern Europe (even in their unformed state) served as a vehicle for the penetration of Hebrew literature onto the European continent. A proponent of the diffusionist theory of the English scholar Benfey—who held that there are no original literary motifs in the literature of peoples, but rather a continuous migration of such motifs from certain areas of diffusion and through a chain of selection and adaptation—Gaster went on to following some groundbreaking comparative studies, to write that, within the area and during the period of diffusion: ‘The Romanian people did not isolate themselves from all contact with other peoples, nor did they, over the centuries, feed on the crumbs that fell from the table of classical antiquity. On the contrary, we see the Romanian people in a constant state of movement, developing an intellectual energy characteristic of peoples full of life and promise. The Romanian people have sat at the same table alongside the other modern peoples, have fed on the same nourishment, have drunk from the same spring, and Romanian folk literature forms a link in the golden chain that binds the peoples together”32.

Interpreting literature in a quasi-original, yet also medieval sense – that is, as text (both written and oral) in33 – Gaster, in his volume Romanian Folk Literature (1883), as well as in his Anthology (1891, two volumes), in the spirit of his mentor, was not specifically interested in the originality of an author’s or a people’s adaptation of a literary motif, nor, even less so, in aesthetic evaluation (the criterion for selection); rather, he broadened his investigation, as summarised by Mircea Anghelescu (his editor on the centenary), “to all texts circulating in folklore, whether orally or in writing, regardless of their purpose; he subjects to research both folklore proper, in the modern sense of the word, and ‘written folk’ literature, sapiential and thaumaturgical texts, remedies for the soul and the body, folk books, amulets, books of omens, dream interpretation and so on; in short, the entire corpus of texts that shapes and determines the spiritual profile of a people within the sphere of their traditional culture”34; of these texts, with their various sequences, the researcher endeavours to reconstruct their universal path of dissemination, without, however, overlooking those that appear to him to be indigenous compositions, such as Miorița, about which the seasoned comparatist remarks: “So far (...) I have not found among other peoples a perfect analogue to Miorița...”35. Despite certain inherent errors in his impressive work, what is also worth emphasising is that, in his books, Gaster establishes, in the spirit of the era in our country (that of Hașdeu, Eminescu and others), a connection between written folk literature and ‘unwritten folk literature’; here, ‘for the first time, folk literature was systematically and extensively researched in relation to Romanian authorial creation’36).

Eminescu also contributed to all this; apart from many illuminating ideas arising from his lengthy discussions with Gaster, he lent the latter, for use in his research, ten books and manuscripts from his travelling library37 (which the scholar then honestly recorded in the footnotes); these were printed works or miscellanies dating up to 1830, when the organic nature of the old Romanian language and culture, in its relationship between East and West, was countered by the self-assurance of Western-derived ‘modernity’, which also brought with it a pronounced authorial spirit. A remark by Rosa del Conte on this matter, namely that: ‘Eminescu saw this tradition as having been irrevocably severed precisely from 1830 onwards, in agreement on this point with his friend, the philologist Gaster, who refused to include texts from a later period in his Crestomația’38 – this remark allows us to observe that, following an initial phase—that of writing the poem Epigonii (1870)— with its antinomic view of the relationship between the ‘golden’ tradition and the derisory innovation of his own day, Eminescu devoted himself particularly to the past—specifically to our ancient, medieval history, language and culture— but not with the interest of a comparative scholar, rather with the aspiration to nourish his spirit and artistic taste with its values and to subtly transpose them into his own work, as a personal solution to the problems of literary language at the time (and beyond). In this regard, Gaster also recalled him later: ‘Whenever he liked a phrase, he would say to me: “Read that again, I really like it!” or “You know, that’s well put!”’ And from time to time he would pick up a scrap of paper from the table and copy a phrase or a word that he particularly liked. I have no doubt that I could easily have found them later in his poems or writings. He was in the habit of frequently copying what he had once written, constantly changing and refining the words, and I have no doubt that the beauty of his language is due to his reading of the old texts which he had evidently read in the past”39 (our emphasis, I. St. L.). In the same vein, Rosa del Conte goes on to comment on Eminescu’s writing practice, particularly as regards poetic language: “by immersing it in the springs of the past, from which it would gush forth, as he said of those times, ‘fresh and clear’ in all the beauty of its youthful vigour”. A language “nourished by the finest blossom of an ancient and rich culture”, as Elian defined it: ancient and miraculously young, as is the case with any synthesis brought about by a truly vital creative act”40.

We shall attempt to elucidate where Antim of Ivirei fits into this universe, adding, to the points mentioned above, further references, selected primarily from the works of Moses Gaster. This Jewish scholar, who has left us heartfelt accounts of Eminescu and of medieval and pre-modern Romanian language and culture 41—evidence that he must have been deeply imbued with the great poet’s universal outlook and Romanian sensibility (a possible mentor to him 42)— he thoroughly enjoyed, during the lengthy discussions on ancient literature from the Romanian lands, Eminescu’s substantial, generous and creative expertise 43 and his practical support; we therefore take it for granted that the information and interpretations relating to one or other of the literary works analysed would also have been Eminescu’s.

Thus, right from the very first folk book, Alexandria, analysed in his volume Romanian Folk Literature, Moses Gaster refers to del Chiaro, Brâncoveanu’s Florentine secretary and author of the book on the Revolutions of Wallachia (1718, Venice) – an author also cited in Crestomație sau analecte literare (Blaj, 1858, p. XXXIII), by Timotei Cipariu, and in Words of the Ancients (vol. II, 1879, p. XXXI), by B.P. Hașdeu. Gaster, however, cites him because del Chiaro attested to the existence of a printed edition of Alexandria dating from Antim’s time (without stating that Antim had printed it himself, and without it having been seen by any researcher to date) 44; for this reason, the scholar confines himself to analysing a manuscript from 1704 (in the possession of B.P. Hașdeu, having previously belonged to Bishop Dionisie of Buzău). Of particular importance to us is the quotation from Anton Maria del Chiaro, who, in the chapter ‘Mavrocordat’s Flight from Bucharest to the Danube’, writes words that are both true and full of admiration for Antim, as well as words that evoke a sense of awe at his martyr’s suffering. We may therefore infer that Eminescu would have become acquainted with these lines, first in summary form from Cipariu, and then in full from the volume in question and in his discussions with Gaster. Unfortunately, the image of Ivireanu, de Chiaro—a great printer, scholar and Romanian patriot—who provides a rather brief list of printed works from Antim’s era 45, adds nothing, as a Catholic, on Antim’s Orthodox oratory, such as to have aroused Eminescu’s artistic interest. On the other hand, the fact that, on at least two occasions, Gaster writes of ‘Vladica Antim’46 indicates a certain familiarity on his part (as well as Eminescu’s) with the personality of this eminent producer of old Romanian printed works.

Secondly, by specifically referring to Antim’s printed works—whom he primarily regarded in this capacity— the two researchers, Gaster and Eminescu, appear to have been interested primarily in the (moral and spiritual) content of these works and less so in the personality of their printer. This is the case with Floarea darurilor, considered to have been ‘first printed in 1700 in Snagov’47, from which he draws the ‘famous legend of the phoenix’, which we also find in the Didahiile antimiene 48, but Gaster is unaware of this; the same is true of The Pearls of St John Chrysostom (Zlatoust), translated into Romanian by Radu Greceanu, printed in Bucharest in 1691, and in the printing of which Antim Ivireanul is said to have played a part; the same is true, however, of the aforementioned work Philosophical Parables, produced in Târgoviște in 1713 by ‘Bishop Antim’48—of whom nothing is subsequently mentioned— not even as a promoter of moral-philosophical and spiritual works, the focus being on these very texts, with all their wisdom.

Another aspect, this time revealing, is that of the texts by Antim that were copied (sometimes even by Eminescu himself), which indicates a truly intimate knowledge of at least part of the Metropolitan’s work, from which he selected what he deemed illustrative of his own ideas, both in poetry and in his journalistic writings. Thus, as Al. Elian observed, ‘Political Verses on the Coat of Arms of the Most Illustrious Lord Io Constandin B. Basarab Voivode’, included in the miscellany Sinopsis, or a Brief Summary of the Old and New Scriptures (Râmnic, 1783)—which the poet had proposed for acquisition by the Central Library in Iași—were “copied from the Snagov Gospel, 1697, where they accompany the country’s coat of arms on the verso of the title page”49. Similarly, Alexandru Elian, in an attempt to clarify the source of Calist’s prayer included in the article ‘Christ is Risen!’, finds it, like fragment I, “in a form very close to that given by Eminescu”, in the Evhologhion, that is, the Molitvenic, an Antimian edition printed in Târgoviște in 1713, whereas, in Fragment II, from the same source, ‘the text given by Eminescu is, in places, abridged, perhaps even by himself’50

It is possible that such examples, which involve highly specialised philological and epigraphic analysis, may shed light on Eminescu’s personal relationship with the learned metropolitan and printer Antim Ivireanul, who died a martyr’s death for the Romanian people and his ancestral church, but about whom, in his public writings, the great poet and journalist wrote nothing, just as he made no explicit mention of Brâncoveanu and his martyred sons, nor of Miorița and her sacrificed shepherd. We do not know whether we should ask ourselves why there is this silence in the face of subjects that shake one to the core, but if we do, we would have – focusing on Antim – at least two or three possible answers.

Despite his exceptional qualities, attested to by Anton Maria del Chiaro, Metropolitan Antim, in historical and biographical terms, was associated with the era of Dimitrie Cantemir and Constantin Brâncoveanu, who, following the era of peace and prosperity under Matei Basarab – regarded as the true Romanian benchmark of the past – pursued a duplicitous policy towards the still-powerful Ottoman rule, which, as a consequence, led to the Romanian lands losing their earthly dominions and entering the ‘age of mud under the Phanariots’, a century in which ‘Russia’s influence in the principalities grew ever greater’51, culminating in the annexation of Bessarabia in 1812 (which Eminescu could not forgive!). Furthermore, Antim, who was fundamentally hostile to the ‘abominations of Babylonian bondage’52 of the Ottomans, had himself been duplicitous towards them and their acolyte, the Phanariot prince, in 1716, deluding himself that the country would be saved by the Austrians (whom Eminescu, too, disliked, because they had seized Bukovina!)

Secondly, Eminescu, a defender of the memory of those who had been politically sacrificed for their patriotism – this is how he viewed Grigorie Ghica Voievod, in an article dated 1 and 3 October 1876, in the Curierul de Iași – would also have written about the martyred Metropolitan Ivireanul, who is reverently honoured in popular memory and whom, together with Gaster, he himself would have affectionately called ‘Vladica Antim’; yet he did not do so because, presumably, he—who held sacred ‘the Church of Mateiu Basarab and Varlaam, the spiritual mother of the Romanian nation, which gave birth to the linguistic and ethnic unity of the people’53 did not allow himself (or did not get round to) addressing the issue of the canons of excommunication, which, in the context of the many major issues that troubled him, he would have regarded as secondary or, if not, as inopportune, at a time when the Orthodox Church of the Kingdom of Romania was striving to obtain autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Thirdly, it is reasonable to assume that, had Eminescu, together with other scholars of the time (Odobescu, Hașdeu, Gaster, Melchisedec), been familiar with the bulk of Antim’s printed works (Anton Maria del Chiaro’s list being merely a suggestion, and even Odobescu—who brought printed works and manuscripts from monasteries for the Academy Library—did not arrange Antim’s works in any meaningful order) and if they had understood the role of the hierarch from Ivire, as a printer, scholar and translator, in his struggle against the Greek hierarchs and professors—a struggle won by successfully introducing the Romanian language into the liturgical service (to the detriment of the Church Slavonic or Greek languages) and in the adaptation of ecclesiastical language to the established patterns of the national tongue (so that even today, generally speaking, services in church are conducted according to Antim’s texts), he would not have hesitated to place him in the same line of praise as Varlaam, Dosoftei, Șerban and Antim in shaping the church language ‘for the people to understand’.

Similarly, we can be certain that, had he, amongst the countless manuscripts he must have read, come across the didache recognised as belonging to Antim Ivireanul (as in the manuscripts 302 mentioned above, but unknown to the poet), Eminescu, in his unconditional love for the vernacular, for its words and idioms, and for the many poetic expressions that adorned the ancient texts, would have recognised the moral—both lofty and profound—the pathos of his affirmation at a time of crisis of conscience, and the stylistic virtues of Antim’s expansive expressions and phrases; nor would he have hesitated to praise the personality and talent of the oratorical metropolitan, just as he did for Metropolitan Varlaam, the author of that Cazana – a Romanian book of instruction – found in so many churches and homes in the Transylvanian villages, especially those traversed by the poet; he would have written about Antim all the more so because the latter, understanding his sacred mission as a shepherd of souls, addressed his contemporaries in their own language (the same as in Eminescu’s time!), rebuked them for the weakening of their faith and the proliferation of sins and hardships, whilst at the same time loving them as ‘brethren in Christ’ and praying for them as a whole. He would have found common ground in faith, a sense of purpose, fighting spirit and self-sacrifice, for – we can state without a shadow of a doubt – Antim bears a closer resemblance to Eminescu than to any of those who followed him, and Eminescu bears a closer resemblance to Antim than to any of those who preceded him!

This was also the underlying thought with which we embarked on the present endeavour, its premise, to uncover concrete connections in support of the idea regarding the affinities (across time and differing problematic horizons, yet real!) between these two great figures of Romanian culture (and beyond!). These are cultural and spiritual affinities concerning the condition of the homo religiosus, the ethos of action, the antinomic structure of human existence—as well as that of discourse—the drama of alienation and adaptation, the moral and spiritual meaning of existence, and the aim (of social and historical purification and reorganisation) of combativeness against existential evil (with its corollaries), intransigence in the name of truth, the yearning for the absolute (metaphorically, a star), and, finally, self-denial and sacrifice. The complexity of these concepts does not allow us to address them in the present context; however, by recognising the affinity through the principle of analogy – a resemblance rooted in the awareness of differentiation – we open up this niche, limiting ourselves to a single example, by way of a significant suggestion.

Rosa del Conte has repeatedly emphasised that Eminescu’s inner life embodies the man-star relationship, a mythopoetic topos of ‘Mithraic and Gnostic’ (and thus ‘Eastern and Neoplatonic’) origin: ‘man comes from a star’ and ‘yearns to return’ to the astral realm, escaping mortal time and projecting himself unwaveringly into the ecstasy of ascension; among other things, the distinguished scholar quotes a few lines from a variant of Eminescu’s ‘Glossa’:

‘Only the music of the spheres
, Welling up from on high, calls to
you— - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let whoever passes through it pass proudly;
You, follow a ray’54

Now, the final line inevitably brings to mind the emblem of Ivireanu – the snail climbing upon a ray of light towards the divine star – which, without a doubt, Eminescu must have seen, carved above the entrance door to the church of Antim’s monastery in Bucharest. By this, we do not mean to suggest that the Antimian emblem inspired Eminescu, who would have drawn upon the relationship between man and the star from both folk tradition and his vast culture; nevertheless, faced with this symbol of the Christian aspiring towards the divine, the poet must have felt strengthened in his inner yearning, drawing inspiration, in the spirit of the folk books The Physiologist and The Flower of Gifts (with which he was well acquainted), and from … the Antimian snail, with which he must have discovered an unexpected affinity. As for this novel connection between Antim and Eminescu, and the cultural and metaphysical horizon of his existential projection, we must consider that it is not without purpose; that Antim was, in fact, a man of the East, with a rich, Greco-Eastern culture, which must have been reflected, alongside the Christian sources 55, in his choice of the symbolic snail.

And yet, surprises … in journalism

At the end of this journey through the Scylla and Charybdis of… conjecture and research, we are left with the regret of not having discovered whether Eminescu would have read, in some miscellany, the entire set of manuscript didachia, recited by ‘Vladica Antim’, their reading being possible only in fragments incorporated into anthologies, from which the poet would have noted down distinctive expressions, used as they were or adapted, particularly in poetry (which is more permissive of archaisms). And yet, we believe that Eminescu’s journalistic writings also echo his readings of the Didahii. When we read in the Curierul de Iași (of 30 September 1977) the phrase ‘the Babylon of the Babylonian empire’56 by which Eminescu defines the rabble of profiteers who, in the name of the Imperial Court in Vienna, overran the fertile land and peaceful world of Bukovina following its abusive and fraudulent seizure in 1774, we cannot help but think, as readers familiar with Eminescu’s writings, of the “abominations of Babylonian bondage” inflicted by the Ottoman Empire, which Antim vehemently denounced in the very speech he delivered at his enthronement as Metropolitan 57 and for which he presented himself to the people as a spiritual father, with the mission of being a ‘source of comfort’ in the face of that centuries-old historical evil.

We can also draw a significant parallel between two other texts by these two protagonists. Firstly, a passage frequently cited by exegetes, which we have always regarded as reflecting a late medieval reality (apud J. Huizinga)58:

‘For the Apostle Paul says: “The Gentiles have no law, yet they do what the law requires.” But we, having the law, do everything contrary to the law and are more sinful than all the nations and than all the peoples. And you may know this, for it is just as I say: for what nation reviles us as we do—the law, the cross, the Eucharist, the dead, the commandments, candles, the soul, the grave, memorial bread, unleavened bread, confession, baptism, marriage and all the sacraments of the Holy Church—and do we ourselves revile and mock the law?! Who amongst the pagans does this, or who mocks the law as we do?...”59

We find a distant echo, from over 150 years ago, in Eminescu’s manuscript 2258, folio 249:

‘For a long time I have heard people boasting of the extraordinary intelligence of the Romanians, though perhaps nothing is further from the truth than this praise. For on what is such an assumption based? A people who are repelled by any scientific work, whose surplus of intelligence is expended on what is surely the easiest task of the human mind—namely, grumbling (emphasis added by I.St.L.) or extolling its rulers to the heavens—cannot be called an intelligent people.” 60

By way of analogy, we can imagine that Eminescu would have read Antim’s didache alongside the passage above and that something of its rhetoric would have lingered in his subconscious, so that, at the very moment his text took shape, something of the (latent) memory of the anti-Mian phrase—with its underlying thrust, the curse—would rise to the ‘surface’, as a common denominator, or rather, in Eminescu’s reflection on ‘undoubtedly the easiest task of the Romanian mind’, the curse (a synonym).

With this second example—more difficult, though not impossible, to perceive as a ‘reflex’—we also suggest the (unavoidable) difficulty of our endeavour, the subterranean recesses, if we may put it that way, of the underground currents in our ancient literature, which remain in the reader’s subconscious until the moment they surface in their own text. However difficult this endeavour may be, it shows us, through the highlights it brings to light, that it was worthwhile and could well be pursued further.

Did Eminescu, however, read five of Antim’s didachia?

In conclusion, let us note: from Part I of our text, it appears that Eminescu may have read, in fragments and in miscellaneous works, the following from Antim Ivireanul’s didachies:

• ‘The month of June, 29 days, Sermon on Saints Peter and Paul the Apostles’ (for the metaphor of the moon as ‘mistress of the sea’);
• ‘Sermon on 26 October, on the feast day of Saint and Great Martyr Demetrius, the source of myrrh, concerning the earthquake’ (for the phrase ‘the winds, the waves’);
• ‘6 December, Sermon on Saint Nicholas’ (for the suggestion of darkness ‘like a sea without a ray of light’, before the beginning of the world).

To these didache are added, from the second part of our text, as noted above:

• ‘I said this when I became metropolitan’ (for the phrase ‘the Babylon of the Babylonian kingdom’);
• ‘On the Sunday of the tax collector. A word of teaching’ (for the synonymy between ‘curse’ and ‘slander’).

Thus, with the inherent degree of probability dictated ‘by the nature of things’, we have identified at least five of Antim’s didachies which, from disparate manuscript copies scattered throughout miscellanies unknown to us, Eminescu must have read them, drawing on expressive passages in his own work and forging a link across time between Antim’s world and that of Eminescu, between early Romanian literature and modern literature. Is that a lot? Is that a little? Were these works already assumed or known prior to this endeavour? Would it be worth continuing this work?

• 1

  See Gabriel Strempel, ‘Introduction’ to the volume Antim Ivireanul, Works, critical edition and introductory study by Gabriel Strempel, Bucharest, ‘Minerva’ Publishing House, 1972, pp. XLIV–XLVI.

• 2

  our deduction

• 3

  Today, we can say more about this copy, which was published under the title Antim Ivireanul. Sermons. An Unpublished Manuscript from Bessarabia (1824), critical edition, introductory study, notes and facsimile by Zamfira Mihail and Paul Mihail, published by the Romanian Academy Press and the ‘Istros’ Press of the ‘Carol I’ Museum of Brăila, Bucharest–Brăila, 2017, 651 pp. Strictly speaking, this publication introduces Manuscript D – which joins the other three held by the Academy: A (no. 3460), B (no. 549) and C (no. 524) – having been produced at Dobrușa Monastery in Bessarabia between 1822 and 1824, based on a prototype that had itself been copied in Bucharest at the request of Bishop Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni, who, between 1808 and 1812, served as exarch of the Plaiuri region of the Ungrovlahia Metropolis and as Metropolitan of Moldavia; Upon his return to Bessarabia, which had been annexed by Russia, and his appointment as Metropolitan of Chișinău and Hotin, the hierarch used the Bucharest manuscript in his pastoral work until his death (1822), after which a close archimandrite, appointed abbot at Dobrușa, brought it here and arranged for it to be copied ‘with the aim of having a collection of homiletic texts to be read from the pulpit’ or ‘so that there might be a Book of Instruction for reading aloud’, in church, so that the faithful, who had been subjected to denationalisation in the Tsarist Empire, might not forget the Romanian language.

• 4

  See, in this regard, Ioan St. Lazăr, ‘The Enduring Influence of Antim Ivireanul’s Printed Works in the 18th Century’, in Antimiana, Vol. II, an anthology of studies, papers and articles, edited by the ‘Antim Ivireanul’ Centre for Medieval and Pre-modern Studies – Râmnicu-Vâlcea, Bacău, ‘Babel’ Publishing House, 2012, pp. 498–503; Zamfira Mihail and Paul Mihail, ‘Introduction’, in Antim Ivireanul, Sermons. An unpublished manuscript from Bessarabia (1824) (...), 2017, p. 25.

• 5

  We put forward the hypothesis that there were two original anti-Mian versions of the Didahii. The first was the one prepared ‘for printing around (the year) 1713’ and rejected by the censorship established by Brâncoveanu through the leadership of the Royal Academy – cf. Daniel Barbu, Scrisoare pe nisip. Time and Perspective in 18th-Century Romanian Civilisation, Bucharest, ‘Antet’ Publishing House, 1996, p. 75 – a rejection which, in our view, was based on at least three objective, as well as subjective, reasons, which we shall not dwell upon here; did this original remain amongst the manuscripts of the Royal Academy? Was it returned to the author? We believe the second original to be the ‘draft’ remaining in the metropolitan’s ‘portfolio’, a draft to which he added the two letters of exoneration addressed to the prince or the eulogy delivered at the funeral (in 1716) of Nicolae Mavrocordat’s wife, and in which the first didache bore, of course provisionally, the title ‘This is what I said when I became metropolitan’—a title impossible, from an ethical standpoint, in the copy intended for printing; this second, anti-Mian original would have been copied by Efrem the scribe and would become established with the critical edition of 1972.

• 6

  our quotations – from the first part of this study, and from the journal Martyria, no. 1/2017, respectively.

• 7

  Gabriel Strempel, op. cit., p. XLVI.

• 8

  see Gabriel Strempel, Catalogue of Romanian Manuscripts, vol. I, Bucharest, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1978, pp. 84–85.

• 9

  Mircea Anghelescu, Preface, to the volume by Moses Gaster, Romanian Folk Literature, edited, with a preface and notes by ..., Bucharest, ‘Minerva’ Publishing House, 1983, p. XVII.

• 10

  see Ion Filipciuc, The Tears of the Pupils … and Eminescu, supplemented with a facsimile of the 1866 pamphlet. Câmpulung, Bukovina: ‘Miorița’ Library Press, 2001, p. 47; see also Petru Rezuș, ‘Mihail, the Child of the Heart’, in Aron Pumnul (...), Iași, 1994, pp. 79–84.

• 11

  Dan Zamfirescu, ‘Eminescu and Early Romanian Literature’, in D.Z., Studies and Articles on Early Romanian Literature, Bucharest, Editura pentru Literatură, 1967, p. 38; ibid., in D.Z., Contributions to the History of Early Romanian Literature, Bucharest, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1981, p. 45.

• 12

  Ibid.

• 13

  see Gabriel Strempel, Antim Ivireanul, Bucharest, Romanian Academy Press, 1997, p. 15.

• 14

  see Ion Filipciuc, The Poet’s Imperial Path, Târgoviște, ‘Macarie’ Publishing House, 1999.

• 15

  see Aurel Vasiliu, ‘Mihai Eminescu the Schoolboy in the Light of the Books’, in The Mihai Eminescu Notebooks: Studies, Articles, Notes, Documents, Illustrations and Bibliography, edited by Marin Bucur, Vol. IV, Bucharest, ‘Eminescu’ Publishing House, 1977, p. 241.

• 16

  Transcription based on the volume Antim Ivireanul, Opera tipografică, edited by Archimandrite Policarp Chițulescu (ed.), Doru Bădără, Ion Marian Croitoru, Gabriela Dumitrescu, Ioana Feodorov, Bucharest, Romanian Cultural Institute, 2016, p. 67.

• 17

  cf. D.B. (Doru Bădără), in Antim Ivireanul, Opera tipografică (...), 2016, p. 68.

• 18

  Teodor Ștefănelli, in the volume Memories of Eminescu, an anthology edited by Ion Popescu, Iași, ‘Junimea’ Publishing House, 1971, p. 157; idem, in the volume They Saw Eminescu, anthology, edited with notes and bibliography by Cristina Crăciun and Victor Crăciun (...), Cluj-Napoca, “Dacia” Publishing House, 1989, p. 81.

• 19

  Mihai Eminescu, ‘Church Books’, in: Timpul, VI, 1881, 10 October, p. 1 – cited in Mihai Eminescu on Culture and Art, edited by D. Irimia, Iași, “Junimea” Publishing House, 1970, p. 216.

• 20

  see Aurel Vasiliu, in op. cit.

• 21

  ibid.

• 22

  Moses Gaster, Romanian Folk Literature (...), 1983, p. 138.

• 23

  V. Antim Ivireanul, Printed Works (...), 2016, p. 182.

• 24

  see Alexandru Elian, ‘Eminescu and Old Romanian Writing’, in: Studies and Research in Bibliology, 1955, no. 1, p. 133; see also Rosa del Conte, Eminescu or On the Absolute, edited, translated and with a preface by Marian Paparagi. Foreword by Zoe Dumitrescu-Bușulenga, Afterword by Mircea Eliade, with a Note on the Romanian edition by Rosa del Conte, Cluj, ‘Dacia’ Publishing House, 1990, p. 416.

• 25

  see Rosa del Conte, op. cit., p. 419.

• 26

  cf. a letter from Eminescu to Maiorescu, dated October 1877, when he was asked to come to Bucharest and wished to take them with him – see Florica Dimitrescu, ‘Mihai Eminescu and the Old Language’, in F. D., Contributions to the History of the Old Romanian Language, Bucharest, Didactică și Pedagogică Publishing House, 1973, p. 247.

• 27

  see I. Scurtu, in the volume Mihai Eminescu. Political and Literary Writings. Unpublished manuscripts and collections from newspapers and magazines. Critical edition by ..., vol. I (1870–1877), Bucharest, 1905, p. 324.

• 28

  I. Scurtu, in op. cit., pp. 324–325.

• 29

  (Eminescu) in Timpul, 21 Nov. 1881 – cited in Fl. Dimitrescu, op. cit. Compare this idea, by way of analogy and as a precedent, with that of the contemporary literary critic and historian Eugen Negrici, as set out in his series Involuntary Expressiveness.

• 30

  for which see the chapter on Philology. Folklore from the volume Mihai Eminescu, Fragmentarium, an edition based on manuscripts, variants, notes, addenda and indices by Magdalena Vatamaniuc, Bucharest, Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1981, pp. 239–274; see also the chapter ‘On Language’, in the volume Mihai Eminescu. On Culture and Art (...), 1970, pp. 211–237.

• 31

  See Teodor Stefanelli, in the volume They Saw Eminescu (...), 1989, p. 80: (the pupil Eminoviciu “spoke Romanian more correctly than we did, and also avoided the so-called ‘Pumnulist’ expressions...”).

• 32

  Moses Gaster, op. cit., p. 3.

• 33

  see Adrian Marino, Hermeneutics of the Concept of Literature, Cluj-Napoca, ‘Dacia’ Publishing House, 1987, pp. 38–41, 53–54, etc.

• 34

  Mircea Anghelescu, in Moses Gaster, op. cit., p. IX.

• 35

  Moses Gaster, op. cit., p. 315.

• 36

  Mircea Anghelescu, in op. cit., p. XII.

• 37

  examined by Alexandru Elian in the work cited above, where, in order to reconstruct the poet’s library to some extent, he compares them with the books and manuscripts of Eminescu donated to the Academy by Titu Maiorescu in 1902.

• 38

  Rosa del Canto, op. cit., p. 281.

• 39

  M. Gaster, letter dated 11 January 1934, in Nicolae Cartojan, Folk Books in Romanian Literature, Vol. II, p. 389 – cited in Florica Dimitrescu, op. cit., p. 248.

• 40

  Rosa del Conte, op. cit.

• 41

  and who defended Eminescu against accusations of anti-Semitism, writing: “It was said that he was anti-Semitic. At that time, anti-Semitism was very widespread, but he was not infected by this virus; he very rarely addressed the Jewish question in the newspaper and only once or twice in his poems, where he satirised the Greeks and also added a word about the Jews’ (cf. Moses Gaster in Correspondence, edited, with a preface, notes and indices by Virgiliu Florea, Bucharest, ‘Minerva’ Publishing House, 1985, p. 27).

• 42

  see Dan Zamfirescu, Studies and Articles (...), 1982, p. 48; ibid., Contributions (...), 1981, p. 52.

• 43

  cf. Alexandru Elian: ‘Eminescu’s extensive knowledge of early Romanian printing, his ability to navigate a diverse and challenging field such as that of manuscripts, combined with a thorough knowledge of Cyrillic palaeography, promised to produce, in the future, an eminent specialist in all matters relating to Romanian script” (op. cit., pp. 135–136).

• 44

  see Anton Maria del Chiaro, The Revolutions of Wallachia, (...), with an introductory study and notes by Archimandrite Mihail Stanciu and Academician Gabriel Ștrempel (...).

• 45

  see Anton Maria del Chiaro, op. cit., pp. 68–69; see also Moses Gaster, op. cit., p. 138.

• 46

  see Moses Gaster, op. cit., p. 138 et seq.

• 47

  ibid., p. 94 et al.

• 48a48b

  Moses Gaster, op. cit., p. 138.

• 49

  Alexandru Elian, op. cit., p. 143.

• 50

  See ibid., p. 144.

• 51

  see Mihai Eminescu, Journalism. Historical and Historiographical References (...), Chișinău, ‘Cartea moldovenească’ Publishing House, 1990, pp. 112–113 (quoted in M.E., ‘Five Centuries of History’, in Timpul of 3, 4, 7, 8, 10 and 14 March 1878).

• 52

  see Antim Ivireanul, Works (...), 1972, p. 7 (“I said this when I became metropolitan”).

• 53

  cf. Timpul, Vol. VII, No. 63, 20 March 1881, p. 1.

• 54

  see Rosa del Conte, op. cit., pp. 134–138.

• 55

  see Ioan St. Lazăr, ‘Reflections on the patronal seal of Metropolitan Antim Ivireanul (II)’, in Tabor, a journal of Romanian culture and spirituality, Cluj-Napoca, vol. XI, no. 3, March 2017, pp. 59–60.

• 56

  see Mihai Eminescu, Publicistică (...), Chișinău, 1990, p. 76.

• 57

  see Antim Ivireanul, Works (...), 1972, p. 7, in the didache ‘This is what I said when I became metropolitan’, which Eminescu is presumed to have read.

• 58

  see Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, (...), Bucharest, ‘Univers’ Publishing House, 1970, p. 248 ff., from which we quote: “Holy festivals, even Christmas, are celebrated in debauchery, with card games, swearing and abusive language; if you rebuke the people, they reply that the nobles, clergy and prelates do the same without being punished...”; Ioan St. Lazăr also refers to the irreligiousness of the late Middle Ages in his volume Saint Antim Ivireanul – ‘Treasury of Gifts’, Rm. Vâlcea, Ed. ‘Almarom’, 2000, pp. 95 and 180, where he quotes the same Huizinga: “Only the idea of truly defying heaven lends blasphemy the allure of sin (p. 252)” and: ‘In most cases of impiety, so intensely lamented, we are dealing with the sudden disappearance of religious tension, in an intellectual life oversaturated with religious content and forms (p. 255). This state of affairs coexisted, however, with a number of ‘forms of religious life’ (J. Huizinga, op. cit., pp. 274–294), ‘which projected and realised the ideal of piety and holiness’. Ivirean, like Bossnet, also illustrates this conservative counter-reaction in his didache, which reveals “a directly proportional relationship between the critical fervour in exposing human sins and the intensity of the mystical experience; the more vehement the criticism, the more it springs from a more acute degree of holiness” (Ioan St. Lazăr, op. cit., p. 96).

• 59

  cf. Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., pp. 25–26 (“Sermon. On the Sunday of the Publican”).

• 60

  M. Eminescu, mss. 2258, f. 249 – as cited in George Munteanu, Eminescu and the Antinomies of Posterity, Bucharest, ‘Albatros’ Publishing House, 1998, p. 89.