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

Aspects in the Religious Life of Romanians... 179
with a number of 615 romanian monks who lived in the two hermitages,
namely prodrom (80 monks, Father Superior Antipa Dinescu) and lacu (60
monks, Father Superior Dichiu Iustin) and in 24 cells and 26 cabins 14 .
9 out of the 24 romanian cells were subordinated to the lavra monastery,
5 were subordinated to the Vatoped monastery, 3 to the pantocrator
monastery and one to each of the Dionisiu, Ivir, xiropotam, Simon petru,
Grigoriu and cutlumuş monasteries. They owned land, ranging between
60 acres (the cucuvino cell), 30 acres (the catafighi and Naşterea Maicii
Domnului cells), 15 acres (St. John the Baptist), 10 acres (Sf. Ipatie and Sf.
teodor cells) and the remaining ones owned between 8 and 1 acre and paid
to the monasteries to which they were subordinated an annual fee ranging
between 5 and 12 turkish pounds.
the cabins were religious dwellings with 2 to 4 rooms, purchased
or rented, where monks and apprentices lived. In 1906 there existed 26
romanian cabins, subordinated to the Greek monasteries, to which they
paid an annual fee ranging between 2 pounds and ½ pound, and they owned
lands ranging between 3 acres and ½ acre. Apart from cultivating the land,
romanian monks also carried out activities such as fishing, shoemaking,
tailoring, the making of monastic clothes and hats, crosses and objects of
worship, the writing of books in Cyrillic, etc. the sermon was carried out
in romanian and, in a few of such cabins, in Greek as well 15 .
the wish of the romanian monks at the Athos mountain, to have
representatives in the Chinon (management council) of Careia together
with the 17 Greek monasteries and the russian one (rusicon), the Serbian
one (hilandar) and the Bulgarian one (zografu) was grounded both from
a historical and from a number-related point of view (5% of the entire
Athonite community). over the following period, the romanian authorities
had certain discussions with the Constantinople patriarchy and with the
ottoman authorities with respect to the perspectives of the romanian
monasticism in Athos. no positive results were however obtained, because
of the tension occurred in the romanian-Greek relations (1905–1911)
and the policy of temporizing reforms, led by the young turks. this was
supplemented by the lack of determination of the proceedings carried out
by romania.
the prognosis of the report submitted by hieromonk teodosie
Soroceanu on June 12 th , 1900, proved to be extremely accurate: “this
condition of humiliation of the romanian monk at the holy Mountain has
partly been caused by the weakness occurred amongst themselves. For the
14 Ibidem, f. 24.
15 Ibidem, f. 4-24.