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

476 cOnSTAnTIn PAncHEnKO
asked to show hospitality to his brother metropolitan for the sake of our
lord Jesus Christ who was born in Bethlehem. the patriarch wrote about
problems of the bishopric of Bethlehem. he mentioned that because of
our sins ill-natured people were dominating everywhere and oppressed the
orthodox. the metropolitan faced a lot of troubles and asked the patriarch
to give him an encyclical message for collecting alms. 16 According to this
text, the problems of the Bethlehem bishopric were caused by the Muslim
rule, not by Catholics. positive attitude of the patriarch to the idea of the
uwakim’s journey is also obvious. If any reconciliation was achieved
between Sophronius and uwakim? or, on the contrary, if the patriarch tried
to take the potential competitor away from palestine? the latter seems to be
more probable, taking into consideration the further biography of uwakim.
Sophronios wrote also to the Constantinopolitan patriarch Jeremia,
asking him to recommend the Bethlehem metropolitan to the russian tsar.
Jeremia wrote such a message, it was dated october 1582. uwakim left
Istanbul presumably at the end of that year and soon entered Valachia. So
he was the first Christian Arab who visited romanian lands. uwakim, as he
mentioned later, was delayed in Valachia for six months 17 (about the winter
and spring of 1583). nothing is known about the reason of this delay. there
were no serious political troubles in Danube region in this period.
only in September 1583 uwakim together with an embassy of hilandar
monastery from Mount Athos and a group of other clergymen crossed the
russian border and arrived to Chernigov. russian sources mentioned that
the metropolitan was accompanied by a certain monk and three Christian
Arabs. All of them were let to go to Moscow and were accommodated there
at the metokh of Mount Athos. 18
1 of December 1583 uwakim was received in Posolskiy Prikaz. the
metropolitan demonstrated the messages of the patriarchs, talked about
details of his journey, the state of affairs in the Jerusalem patriarchate
and especially on troubles of the Betlehem church, which, according to
uwakim, was in heavily ruined condition. 19
uwakim had to spend in Moscow a lot of time. While the russian
bureaucratic structures thought over his demand of alms, tsar Ivan the
terrible died in March 1584. the beginning of the reign of his son Feodor
Ioannovitch was a time of an active political struggle between different
16 MurAVIeV A.n., Snosheniya Rossii s Vostokom po delam tserkovnim (Russian-
Oriental Contacts on Ecclesiastical Matters), p. 130-131.
17 Ibid., p. 128.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.