LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

178 adina Berciu-drĂGhiceScu
of rights and prerogatives” 11 . this regime also applied to the romanian
prerogatives 12 . this regime also applied to the romanian monks until the
holy Mountain was included under the jurisdiction of the Greek state.
For several centuries, the Greeks had had the supremacy as a leading
factor in the Athos Mountain. Starting with the third decade of the 19 th
century, when the national disputes commenced between the monks of the
holy Mountain, the russians, and then the Serbians and the Bulgarians
obtained a proportional representation in the collective leadership bodies,
that is to say in the Chinon (management council) of Careia.
Although the romanians had significantly contributed to the material
support of the holy Mountain, the majority Greek element failed to
acknowledge the right of the approximately 600 romanian monks to
organize in a distinct manner and to have a regime that was similar to that of
the Bulgarian, Serbian or russian monks. they were not fully subordinated
to the Greek monasteries from an ecclesiastical, canonical and economical
point of view.
In the “historical-statistical report on the Athos Mountain and the
statute of the monks of a different origin, especially romanians, at this
location”, addressed to King Carol I by the Archimandrite nifon in 1908,
one proposed: the removal of simony (the prohibition of the right of the
Athonite monasteries to cash money from hermitages, cells and cabins
for the admission in monasticism or for ordainment); the setting out of a
judicial legislation regarding the right of sale-purchase and succession in
the holy Mountain; the right to cultivate the land, to cut off the forest, to
erect and repair annexes, to use the water sources without the intervention
of the monasteries; the reduction of the inheritance fees for cells and cabins
to 5%; the sending to the Chinon (management council) of Careia of one
representative for 500 monks “regardless of nationality, independently of
the monasteries to which the same pertain”; the appointment of a bishop
to whom all monasteries, hermitages and cells of the Athos Mountain are
subject, from a spiritual point of view; the transformation of the prodrom
romanian hermitage into a monastery; the establishment of a romanian
monastery on the place of the former Morfono monastery; the transformation
of the cells with over 20 monks into hermitages, organized in accordance
with the model of the St. John the theologian cell in provata 13 .
the document specified the existence of 32 romanian Athonite centers
11 Documente privind istoria României. Războiul de Independenţă, vol. 9 (Bucureşti,
1955), p. 384-385.
12 Ibidem.
13 AnIC, Fond Casa Regală, dosar 4/1908, f. 26-27.