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

478 cOnSTAnTIn PAncHEnKO
palestine. the basilica of the nativity was restored – thanks to the
Moscowite alms or other resources. Chroniclers attributed this restoration
exclusively to the patriarch Sophronius. 23 the role of the metropolitan
uwakim remains unclear.
For several years the metropolitan of Bethlehem disappeared from
records. We know nothing about him until the summer of 1589, when
uwakim made the most strange action in his life. Without official resign
from his position uwakim left Bethlehem and retired to the small lebanese
monastery of the Mother of God hamatura. the metropolitan does not look
like a man searching for monastic solitude. his biography proves that he
was an ambitious, active and adventurous person. he retired to hamatura
hardly for an ascetic seclusion. It was more probably a demonstration, a
result of his uneasy relations with the Jerusalem patriarch. I think that both
Sophronius and uwakim could not forget the conflict of January 1579.
What was the place, which uwakim chose for the self-exile? We have
a detailed description of the hamatura monastery written by the russian
traveler Vasiliy Grigorowich-Barskiy in 1728. he wrote that the monastery
situated in highlands near lebanese Mountains above a terrible deep canyon
with a fast river in it (Kadisha valley). A small church decorated by frescoes
was placed inside unique two-level cave. the church, which occupied the
lower storey of the cave, had only two windows in the northern wall and
was a bit dark. the upper storey was occupied by monastic cells. outside
the cave there were kitchen, refectory, guesthouse and other buildings,
surrounded by a wall with gates covered by iron. Grigorowich-Barskiy
mentioned that a lot of elders had lived here in the past, but at his time only
few monks remained. 24
Indeed, in the early 18 th century the monastery declined. however, one
and a half century before it played an important role in the Christian culture
of the northern lebanon. the manuscript collection of hamatura is one
of the richest in the Antiochean patriarchate. Many of these manuscripts
were written by prominent monks and priests, confidents of Antiochean
patriarch uwakim Juma (1543–1576) and metropolitan of tripoli Dorotheus
Daw. 25 It seems that before the foundation of the Balamand monastery the
monastery of hamatura was a religious center of the region.
23 KAptereV n.F., op. cit., p. 210; Maxim SIMSKIy, op. cit., p. 45.
24 Peshehodtsa Vasiliya Grigorovitcha-Barskogo-Plaki-Albova, urodjentsa
Kievskogo, monaha Antiohiyskogo, puteshestvie k sviatim mestam v Evrope, Azii I Afrike
nahodiaschimsa, predpriniatoe v 1723 I okonchennoe v 1747 godu, im samim pisannoe (A
Pilgrimage of Vasiliy Grigorovitch-Barskiy to the Holy Places of Europe, Asia and Africa
in the Years 1723 – 1747). St.-petersburg. 1800, p. 299.
25 Makhtutat Deir Sayyida Hamatura Kusba. № 1, 20, 23, 25, 28, 38, 39.