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

400 VIcTOR GODEAnU
and was received enthusiastically. he was lead to the metropolitan church
and pronounced, accordingly to the practice of those days, a professional
creed discourse in order to proof that his prolonged stay in europe did not
change in any way his uncompromising faith to the Church of the east”. 17
Chrysanthos Notaras’ personality
undoubtedly, Chrysanthos notaras was a full-fledged phanariot.
Although an outsider of phanar (he was born on the mainland Greece), he
became a brilliant product of it and an illustrious representative of phanariot
interests, which he promoted and defended all his life.
he appears from historical sources as an ambitious individual whose
multiple intellectual aspirations were uphold by his many talents and a
strong transactional vein. Consequently, a display of personal sympathies
and antipathies, interests, ambitions and goals, assumptions of liberty of
thought and expression and, certainly, a number of circumstantial factors
as the conformity with the confessed creed, the monastic oath, the taken
opportunities, his loyalties and weaknesses, all of that has to be taken
into consideration when expressing any substantial opinion concerning
Chrysanthos notaras’ life and activity. the key to understanding his role
in the history of Balkans, his deep involvement in areas of activity that
apparently fall outside the strict religious concern, is deeply rooted in the
Byzantine tradition of theologians being involved in state politics.
his intellectual training and culture was widely acknowledged in the
epoch. All references, either direct or conjectural, to notaras’ character,
from either his correspondence or bibliography, mention his vast culture,
theological knowledge and political ability, and his oratory talent as
well. he was an open-minded individual. his studies at the patriarchal
Academy in Istanbul prepared him as an accomplished theologian in the
eastern tradition, on a solid classical philosophical basis. Adept of the neo-
Aristotelian philosophical current, Chrysanthos became an admirer of the
positive science, interested mostly in mathematics and astronomy. “Being in
possession of a vast culture, adopting first the neo-Aristotelic philosophy,
Chrysanthos becomes later an admirer of positive science, mostly of
mathematics and astronomy. About all intellectuals of his epoch and most
of the ruling princes and boyars of the Danubian principalities entertained
correspondence with this cultivated cleric, everybody asking his advice in
matters of culture. […] Although a clerical, he recommended as more useful
to build and organize schools than hermitages and monasteries, and that
17 C. erBICeAnu 1905: 147.