Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/41

 Roumanians. In the fight against Calvinism the capital of Moldavia, Jassy, had the honour of being the meeting-place of the council which purified the eastern creed attacked by Cyril Lukaris, the «kalvinophrone» Patriarch, and, when in the second half of the 17th century, the Jesuits began their great campaign for the conquest of orthodoxy, it was in the same Jassy (though he first resided at Bucharest, Constantin Brâncoveanu’s capital) that the defender of the faith, the Patriarch of Jerusalem Dositheus, and his cultured nephew, Chrysanthos Notaras, established their head quarters, attentively watching the conduct of all Roumanian bishops, including the recalcitrant bishop of Transylvania, and publishing ponderous works of counter-propaganda, culminating in the splendid history of his predecessors in the Holy City. Brâncoveanu, a generous benefactor of all eastern churches, was surrounded at the great feasts of the Orthodoxy by nearly all the Patriarchs and by many of their bishops. Living side by side with such princes, it was only natural that the chiefs of the two Roumanian churches owed the Oecumenical See no duty beyond that of announcing their election, their confirmation by the sovereign and of asking for the «grammata » recognising them as such, without the least likelihood of its being opposed. (A single case occurs at the beginning of the 17th century, and it is plain that the destitution was asked for by the prince himself).

Being thus a purely national organisation, an integrant part of the political life of the country and of the popular life of the nation, the Roumanian orthodoxy was instrumental in assisting the progress of society itself, without vain aspirations of leading or controlling it. Against the rules of the western churches and without asking permission from Constantinople, it accepted the great reform introducing the use of the Roumanian tongue in the