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

182 adina Berciu-drĂGhiceScu
Athos Mountain, in the summer of 1913, was mostly missed because of the
lack of determination of the romanian parties in power. “We may, as such,
register a failure in an issue that was… sufficiently entitled from the point
of view of an entire historical background of romanian orthodoxy, but
also from the national point of view.” 20
In 1914 at the romanian hermitage prodrom a conflict broke out
between the monks and the archimandrite Antipa Dinescu, accused of
breaching the regulation adopted in 1891. the archimandrite was forcefully
dismissed and expelled from the hermitage. Sent to solve the conflict,
romania’s general consul in Salonic, G.C. Ionescu, found in February 1915
that the mutiny had been led by the Greek monks of the lavra monastery,
and expelling archimandrite Dinescu was illegal. the consul reached the
following conclusion: “the disorder and the money-related dishonor ruling
in the Greek monasteries shall also grow roots in prodrom, satisfying the
insubordinate monks, and the Greek monasteries hope to fulfill their will
that no independent romanian monastery or hermitage should exist on the
holy Mountain”. 21 the conflict that occurred at the prodrom hermitage
continued between 1914–1917 and broke out again in March 1919, when
the exiled monks were reinstated at the leadership of the hermitage with the
assistance of the Greek authorities. 22
In December 1922, the romanian Metropolitan church proposed to the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs to bring in the country, with the help of the
Greek authorities, the four insubordinate monks who, by means of repeated
mutinies, had caused the expelling of five superiors from the management
of the prodrom hermitage. 23
In 1912, a constitutional Charter, voted by the over 20 monasteries and
confirmed by the Athens government, institutionalized the maintenance of the
former organization of the holy Mountain, thus legalizing the preponderant
situation of the Greek national element 24 . the new constitutional Charter
included the obligatory nature of the monks’ Greek citizenship, the
inalienability of the peninsula’s land, the administrative monitoring by the
Greek state through a governor, certain fiscal advantages 25 .
the situation of the romanian monks at the Athos Mountain grew
increasingly more difficult. therefore, in 1928, the monks of the romanian
20 zBuCheA, Gheorghe, op. cit., p. 177.
21 AMAe, fond Problema 15, vol. 29, f. 74.
22 Ibidem, f. 254-255.
23 Ibidem, vol. 30, f. 31.
24 zBuCheA, Gheorghe, op. cit., p. 177.
25 AMAe, fond Problema 15, vol 30, f. 69-70.