Romanian Culture and Spirituality in the Phanariot Era

Abstract

Regardless of the field it refers to, the history of the Romanian nation cannot be presented, analyzed and commented separately from the past and the bimillennial experience of Romanian Christianity. In art, the Church is present through its places of worship and iconography; in literature, the bibliographical roots from which today's Romanian language has developed were planted with much hard work, faith and diligence by hierarchs and writers of the Church; in education, the hallway of the churches still remains a point of reference for the evocations of many consecrated Romanian writers; in the sphere of social assistance, the Church has been present, in one form or another, since the beginning of its spread in Romania; in the field of thought and ideas, teachings, exhortations and doctrines on life and society belonging to prominent hierarchs and theologians of the Church; even in politics and administration, at least until the beginning of the modern period, many of the Orthodox hierarchs who have pastored over the centuries have been the protagonists of events and initiatives about which chroniclers have written significant pages of history. Such testimonies are evidence of the fact that history cannot make an initial distinction between Christianity and Romanianism, because there is an organic fusion between Orthodoxy and the Romanian soul. We appear in history simply as a Romanian people.
Consequently, in the Phanariot era (1716-1821), we can say that the culture and spirituality of the Romanians people have the same common denominator: the confession of the Orthodox faith by deed and word.