Photo credit: (c) Liviu POPESCU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

“Anyway, one is for certain as regards the promotion of Romanian language in Valcea. The unrelenting scriptorium activities of the calligraphers and miniaturists from the monasteries of Cozia, Bistrita, Govora, the diligence of the translators and the books printed here have all been part of the programmatic efforts pursuing the replacement of Slavonic with Romanian,” says philologist and Professor Ion Soare.

A conclusive example in this respect is provided by the work of monk Mardarie from Cozia, the “Slavonic-Romanian Lexicon and the Meaning of Names” put out in 1649, the first dictionary preserved until today, with 4,574 Slavonic entries accompanied by their correspondent in Romanian.

Voivode Matei Basarab brought in 1637 a print shop to the Govora Monastery and founded here the “first school of culture in Wallachia, providing it with an income of 1,000 ducats, an amount the Prince was offering the abbot of the Govora Monastery, Meletios, for keeping the school and the print shop up and running, for the prints, as well as for paying the teachers,” relates historian Florin Epure, director of the Valcea County Cultural Directorate.

In 1640, the first Romanian language book on the territory of Wallachia is put out by the Govora print shop: the Church Code of Laws, also known as the Small Code of Laws (because of its format) or the Govora Code.

“The book was printed in seven months thanks to the diligence of Meletius the Macedonian, who had lived in the spiritually uplifting atmosphere of the Zographou Monastery of Mount Athos, and who had learned the technique of printing at the monasteries headed by Metropolitan Petru Movila and with hieromonk Stephen from Ohrid,” says Florin Epure.
The Code of Laws is a collection of laws both for clerics and laymen.

“There are various opinions that Valcea is also the place where the first printed book in the entire Romanian territory appeared. It’s the ‘Euchologion’ of Makarios, the first Slavonic edition of the most important book of the Orthodox liturgical services; the Bistrita Monastery and the Dealu Monastery in Targoviste are in a dispute as to where the first printed book was put out. According to a title deed released by Voivode Mihnea, the book appeared on November 10, 1508. A documented fact is that in 1861 writer Alexandru Odobescu found at the Bistrita Monastery located in Valcea County seven copies of Makarios’s ‘Euchologion’,” reports Archimandrite Veniamin Micle in his book “Hieromonk Makarios, the Romanian typographer (1508—1512),” p. 40.

“With its possessions of liturgical treasures, estates, incomes from custom dues and tax exemptions, with its important library dating from the sixteenth century, the Bistrita-based monastery founded by the noble family of the Craiovesti has been for Wallachia what Neamt has been for Moldova,” adds historian Florin Epure.

In 1861 Alexandru Odobescu “reports having found in Bistrita 150 manuscripts of which 80 in Slavonic, 40 in Romanian and 30 in Greek,” and in 1884 historian, archaeologist and epigrapher Grigore Tocilescu collected from Bistrita “two hundred sixty two books in Romanian, Greek and Slavonic, as well as Slavonic and Romanian manuscripts” (as states Archimandrite Veniamin Micle in his book “The Bistrita Monastery of the Oltenia Region,” p. 241).

This is where the most important Romanian school comes into being in the sixteenth century. In 1620 monk and chronicler Mihail Moxa writes at Bistrita the first universal history titled “The Chronograph of Wallachia.” The manuscript is currently kept in Moscow. Its importance resides in the fact that after approaching in the beginning problems of universal history, the author gets in the end to talk about the history of Romanians, presenting, among others, the battle given by Mircea the Elder at Rovine (this description is considered to be the source of inspiration for poet Mihai Eminescu’s ‘Third Epistle’). To accomplish his work, Mihail Moxa used important documents of that time: “The Chronicle of Constantine Manasses” (12th century), the “Chronographikon syntomon” by Patriarch Nikephoros of Constantinople”,”The New Serbian Chronicles”,”The Bulgarian Anonymous Chronicle.”

Beyond the competition for the honor of having released the first printed book, what is clear to the historians is that the print shop in Ramnic placed the town on the chart of major cultural centers as an ancient Wallachian pole of printing efflorescence.

“It all starts on March 16, 1705, when Anthimos of Iviria is appointed Bishop of Ramnic,” says Ion Soare.

Setting off for Ramnic — where he will stay until January 27, 1708 — from Snagov, where he had been serving as abbot of the local monastery, Anthimos of Iviria took with him a part of the printing equipment from Snagov. These presses that could print both in Romanian and Greek rolled out numerous books, which will build the fame of the city of at the foot of the Capela hill as a true “capital of master typographers,” as historian Nicolae Iorga puts it.

The first book to appear in the new Ramnic print shop is the Greek-language “Tome of Joy” (1705), which is a response on behalf of the Orthodox Church to the expansionist trend of Catholicism and Calvinism. As many as 58 typographers, engravers, correctors and typesetters were known in the period 1705-1825, during the lifetime of the print shop. Some great scholars will work here, leaving a strong mark on the spiritual life of the Romanian society. Thus, two remarkable figures in Ramnic are master typographer Mihail Istanovici, or Bishop Damaschin of the Ramnic Archdiocese, one of Oltenia’s spiritual leaders to leave a rich legacy.

“Multilingual and well-read, Damaschin stands out through his immense activity as a translator, but also through his fortitude in defending the rights of the Romanian Church in front of the Austrian conquerors. Other first-rank scholars of the Romanian Orthodox Church are Bishops Innocent, Clement — a former disciple of Damaschin — Chesarie and Filaret,” says historian Florin Epure.

After 1742, Ramnic becomes the second printing center of Wallachia and stays as such until the end of the eighteenth century. The print shop in Blaj and the letterpress used to print the Cyrillic books put out in Blaj in the second half of the eighteenth century originate from Ramnic.

“The print shop in Ramnic was a hotbed from where written culture irradiated not only among the Romanians, but also to their south-western neighbors, who place it on a forefront position in the history of Serbian culture and literature, acknowledging the unstinting support they received in times of hardship from the Romanian people. Metropolitan Pavel Nenadovic who obtained in 1751 the authorization to open a print shop at Sremski Karlovici, turned to the Ramnic Diocese where three of his typographers were trained,” adds Professor Ion Soare.

The dissemination range of the Ramnic-printed books was far-reaching, with all three Romanian principalities feeling the tremendous irradiation power of this cultural center, as it penetrated as far as to northern Transylvania and the south of Banat, contributing to the strengthening of the Romanian cultural unity.

Cozia, Govora, Bistrita and Ramnic are the centers where the Romanian language was born in hard labor, in a period when the Romanians were not allowed to write in the language of their dreams, in which they sang their ballads, laments, or told their ancient tales.

“The fact that the Romanian language came into existence in written form led to the subsequent explosion of the Enlightenment in the mid-nineteenth century, to the appearance of the Vacaresti family of writers — precursors of modern Romanian literature — of Alecsandri and essentially, of landmark poet Mihai Eminescu. It actually paved the way for the emergence of Romanian literature,” concludes historian Florin Epure.AGERPRES