Ionescu Dan, Un manuscrit de Dionisie Eclisiarhul au monastère de Barlaam

Ionescu Dan, 
«Un manuscrit de Dionisie Eclisiarhul au monastère de Barlaam», Balkan Studies 23/2 (1982), p. 307-319. 
Thessaloniki 1982

Summary

In the early thirties Marcu Beza discovered at the Barlaam Monastery / Meteora a Romanian manuscript, which he described in his book Romanian Traces in the Orthodox Orient. The brief description was accompanied by four photographs. The manuscript, an abridged register of the Bucovăţ Monastery (Oltenia), is adorned with miniatures, among which two full-page compositions deserve particular attention: Saint Nicholas, patron of the Romanian monastery, and All Saints’, dedication of the Barlaam Monastery. In 1934 N. lorga published the text of the documents contained in the Barlaam register. They represent a choice of charters, reconfirming the monastic properties at different times. The Bucovăţ Monastery was founded in 1572 and submitted to Barlaam in 1588. A. Sacerdoţeanu, an experienced archivist, was the first to suggest (1967) that the Barlaam manuscript could belong to Dionisie Eclesiarhul, an outstanding Wallachian chronicler, calligrapher and miniaturist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His suggestion was based exclusively on the textual analysis, using the lorga transliteration as a starting point. The full version of the Bucovăţ register is preserved at the State Archives, Bucharest (ms. no. 443). It bears Dionisie’s signature and the date (1813). The decorative and the palaeographic similarities between the Bucharest and the Barlaam manuscripts are obvious. Their title pages and Saint Nicholas miniatures display even a certain identity of details. Further comparative material is offered by the obituary of the Bucovăţ Monastery (State Archives, Bucharest, ms. no. 460). The manuscript is signed by Dionisie and dates from 1813 as well. The page-setting, the graphic characteristics and the decoration reveal Dionisie as compiler, calligrapher and illustrator of the Barlaam Romanian manuscript, written probably at the same time with the other two Dionisie / Bucovăţ manuscripts (1813). As an abstract of the original register, the Barlaam short version was destined to be kept at the patron monastery. The figuration of the All Saints’scene besides that of Saint Nicholas points out the ad hoc destination of the Barlaam manuscript. Its function was more representative than purely documental. The dedication of the Barlaam Monastery furnishes the best explanation for the presence of the All Saints’ scene among the wall paintings from the naos of the Bucovăţ church. This infrequent scene occupies a prominent place in the naos, namely the half-dome of the south apse.