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chrysanthos notaras the Patriarch of Jerusalem... 405
the necessary material for the great bell and the money to buy a second
one. Brâncoveanu ended tragically the same year when, denounced by
the Cantacuzene as a traitor of the sultan, is dismissed, arrested, and later
executed in Istanbul by the sultan’s executioner together with his four sons.
Always loyal to the Cantacuzene family, which followed briefly on the
throne of Walachia, Anthimos the metropolitan played an ambiguous role in
this issue. Concerned about retaliation against him from the sultan, because
his friendly relations with now the traitor Brâncoveanu, Chrysanthos
seeks the same year refuge in Moldavia invited by his friend nikolaou
Mavrokordatos, freshly appointed prince of Moldavia. on the subject of
the conspiracy against Brancoveanu, Chrysanthos received a consistent
correspondence from now the ruling prince of Walachia Cantacuzene and
his family, apparently explaining their position on the issue. eventually,
prince Cantacuzene was in his turn banished from the walachian throne,
although not executed, the throne going to nikolaou Mavrokordatos who
came from Moldavia. Finally, in 1716, after conspiring in favor of Austria
against the phanariot Mavrokordatos and the ottoman empire, Anthimos
the Ivirian is arrested, banished from his assignment as metropolitan and
from monastic life and killed by his guards on the way to the place of exile.
Chrysanthos the promoter of culture, founder of schools and author
undoubtedly, Chrysanthos notaras was for the modern cultural
development of Moldavia and Walachia a spreader of light. his personal
opening toward science and culture was very wide, and one can hardly find
an area he did not explore thoroughly. From mathematics to astronomy
and geography, from writing to publishing, from the subtleties of politics
and information gathering to refined leisure 32 , Chrysanthos practiced it all.
Although as a principle he served the interests of the phanariotes, the fortunate
conjunction of his activity with the natural interests of the Walachian
and Moldavian people contributed to the process of configuration of the
romanian national identity that soon after will lead to the formation of the
romanian state. talking about Chrysanthos notaras, we refer implicitly to
the sequence of underlying modernity in romanian culture. For instance,
in order to implement into the Danubian principalities the cultural trend of
32 D.h. MAzIlu 2006: 44 mentions Chrysanthos’ supply of opium paste and,
interestingly, remedies against poisoning, send to him by the year 1716 by his friend
nikolaou Mavrokordatos, all “weight as for ourselves as when we were in Cotroceni”
by his own apothecaries (Cotroceni is the name of the official residence of the prince of
Walachia) – the habit of taking drugs, mostly opium, being fairly spread among the higher
or lesser society of that time, in the eastern and Western europe as well.