§ 45. The Romanian Canonical Collections

Through the contact of the Romanians with the Greeks and the Slavs, necessitated by their geographical position, both the Greek and the Slavonic language were known among them. The first law-books, both of civil and of church law, were the very same as those in use among the Greeks and the Slavs. At first the Greek canonical collections held sway among them, and by these collections church life was governed both in Moldavia and in Wallachia. In the fifteenth century Blastares’s Syntagma was introduced as the official canonical collection, which we find in use in Moldavia in the time of Stephen the Great (1456-1504), in a Slavonic translation. This Syntagma, now in an abridged, now in a fuller form, remained in use among the Romanians, alongside other Greek collections, down to the first half of the seventeenth century, when the cycle of canonical collections in the Romanian language begins.[1]

1) The first canonical collection in the Romanian language was prepared in 1632 by a certain Eustratius of Moldavia, and is a translation of one of the many redactions of the Nomocanon of Manuel Malaxos.[2]

2) A few years later (1640) a new collection was printed at the monastery of Govora under the title Pravila mică (Little Rule).[3] It was so named to distinguish it from another collection (the Indreptarea), which is called “Pravila cea mare” (Great Rule). This collection is intended for confessors. It contains 159 chapters, and its basis is the so-called Nomocanon of Cotelerius,[4] which must have been reworked and translated by someone into Slavonic, and from that language translated into Wallachia into Romanian by the hegumen Michael Moxalie, and printed in 1640 at Govora.[5]

3) A few years later, in 1652, at Târgovişte, with the blessing of the then metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, Stephen, a second Romanian canonical collection was issued, which was translated from the Greek by a Pannonian monk, Daniel, with the help of two daskaloi from Chios, Ignatius Petritzi and Panteleimon Ligaridis, from a copy kept by a certain Georgius Caridi. This collection is called “Pravila cea mare,” to distinguish it from “Pravila mică”; otherwise the collection is called “Indreptarea legii.”[6] After its preface, the collection is divided into two main parts. The first part has 417 chapters and is composed of two mutually distinct collections, namely the Nomocanon of Manuel Malaxos and the collection of Basil Lupu entitled “Pravilele împărăteşti.” Of Malaxos’s Nomocanon we have already spoken.[7] This second collection was issued in 1646 in Moldavia, and contains the laws of the Graeco-Roman emperors touching agriculture, criminal law, and the like.[8] From the first of these collections 314 chapters were taken into the Indreptarea, and from the second all of its chapters, numbering 303, so that together they make up the (417) chapters of the first part of the Indreptarea. Various subjects are treated here, canonical as much as religious, liturgical, social, and other. The second part, under its own particular title, contains, in an abridged redaction, the canonical synopsis with Aristenus’s commentaries.[9] After this synopsis follows an article entitled “Theologia,” in fifty-four questions and answers, by Anastasius Sinaita, of the seventh century.[10] Since this collection (the Indreptarea) was issued with the approval of the competent church authority, it is the official canonical collection for the Orthodox Romanian church. The Indreptarea was translated into Latin in 1722 by Peter Dobra; and a few years ago the first part of it was printed at Bucharest in Latin letters.[11]

4) From the Indreptarea and from the general fundamental canonical collection there was compiled, in 1853, by the Wallachian metropolitan Niphon, a separate canonical collection, which is today in general use there.[12]

5) Besides the Indreptarea, the Greek Pedalion is also used in the church practice of the Romanian church, whether in the translation prepared in 1844,[13] or in the edition prepared in 1871 by Metropolitan Şaguna.[14]