I leave these notes on the computer screen while I read the book History of the Romanian Orthodox Church. State Church or Church in the State 1918-1923published under the signature of the Austrian historian Oliver Jens Schmitt in the Bucharest publishing house Humanitason the morning of Monday, May 22.

The consecutive, more than 450-page volume can be found in bookstores for almost three weeks and, surprisingly, since then not even a single review by a professional historian has appeared in the public space. At least I am not aware of such an analysis. Was the book really so uninteresting, could it have left historians, lay people, or people of the Church indifferent? Didn’t Oliver Jens Schmitt’s provocative research evoke even the most fragile, elementary emotions among experts?

In no case. There was a reaction, there were emotions, there were answers, there were radical amendments, but all this was eaten up in social networks. Many of them took the form of personal attacks. What was actually said? Not Oliver Jens Schmitt, who is neither Romanian nor Orthodox, and who has formulated enough objections to the BOR in an earlier book (see Romania after 100 years. Summary of a century-old historyPublishing house Humanitas, Bucharest, 2018) would have the most right to write such a book. That its signatory has the education of a medievalist, and by no means a historian of Orthodoxy. Karevasazyka is a bastard. That Oliver Jens Schmitt is part of the anti-Bor and anti-Orthodox conspiracy planned by Gabriel Liicanu and Humanitas. A corresponding member of the Academy and a university professor from Cluj went so far as to write the following facebook that an Austrian researcher presents a new instrument of struggle to Mr. Liican (against whom, Romanians, Romanianism and hierarchs?), after Professor Lucian Boya has become unfit. Another, that is, also a historian, declared that Oliver Jens Schmitt cannot write a serious book, since he once published a tome about Scandenberg. The third strongly condemned what was written, although he admitted that he had not read it, but promised to do so. With a pencil and an A4 sheet at hand. Someone has noticed the misinformation that has slipped through the pages on this issue Burning wick. Someone else was streaming and commenting on them. After the ear. They criticize us even in serious matters, word for word.

I have no doubt that there are omissions and errors in the information. Especially since Oliver Jens Schmidt does not for a moment take the position of a person who possesses the absolute truth. He does not present himself as infallible. Schmitt admits more than once, but several times, that he had to face the shakiness of previous studies, the lack of detailed examples. Here I may point out an omission. When he writes about the relations between the Romanian state, the BOR and the Vatican, Oliver Jens Schmitt does not mention the visit of Prime Minister Ion Gheorghe Maurer in 1968, his reception by Pope Paul VI. Just as the visit to the Holy See of Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu in 1973 is hushed up. The fact is that the “academic” visited the Sistine Chapel. As well as the failure of the Vatican in its justified desire to change its unforgiving attitude towards Romanian Greek Catholics. And this treatment should have benefited from serious analysis first at the BOR. Just as seriously the involvement of the BOR in the Holocaust should have been investigated.

Oliver Jens Schmitt’s book presents the history of the BOR, its relationship with the state, politics, with the elders of that time, and points to the relatively small number of mistakes made by the hierarchs towards the faithful and parishioners, as well as towards the lower clergy. , the differences between hierarchs and ordinary priests, the struggle of generations, deviations in the behavior of the Holy Synod or some patriarchs who were or pretended to be friends with either the legionnaires or the communists, creating shameful bridges between the two extremes (at least two patriarchs happily went from one to another and reprehensibly served the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu) not only since 1918, as the subtitle warns us, but since the time of Alexander Ioan Kuza. That is, from the secularization of monastery property. The Austrian historian reveals the existing differences between the Kingdom, Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina, differences that created problems after the 1918 union. The act of December 1 did not solve everyone instantly. The interwar period, marked by the royal dictatorship, the national-legionary state and the Antonesian dictatorship, was not very peaceful either. Charles II wanted to instrumentalize the BOR, the patriarch Myron Cristea was on his side, the legionnaires were successful among young clergymen, Antonescu had a rather hostile, even contemptuous attitude towards the BOR. It is not at all easy to discuss all these topics, to clarify them in depth, but Oliver Jens Schmitt carefully notes several times that he had the biggest problems with the documentation in relation to the other two periods. Closer in time to our days. The one that began with the communist takeover of full power, immediately after King Mihai was expelled from the country, and the one that took place after December 1989. When it wasn’t exactly heaven on earth for explorers.

Access to the archives of the BOR for professional researchers is almost impossible, the BOR itself is involved in a consistent operation to embellish its own history, the same BOR categorically denies the barriers it put up for the opening of Romania to the West and disunity. many hierarchs from actions and saviors, and desperate patriarch Nicodym Munteanu. BOR erects statues to him and presents him as a great sage and a model of behavior during the restriction of Justinian Marina, known under the label The Red Patriarch. Also, the BOR hides the cooperation of the hierarchs in order to succeed in the operation to compromise and declare the Greek Catholic Church outlawed. And the same BOR finds many justifications for the pro-communist and pro-Ceausescu actions and positions of patriarchs Justin Moisescu and Teoctist Arepasha.

After 1989, that is, after a short period of confusion, after the formal recall of Teoktista from office, he returned to power, becoming an ally of Ion Iliescu, the FSN and the parties originating from this neo-communist core. BOR supported not only Iliescu, but also Viktor Ponta in the elections. It is true that when the election of Klaus Iohannis as president became almost certain, the BOR said it wanted to fix what could still be fixed. BOR did not disinterestedly support the neo-communist left. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro