Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/62



Not only visitors of higher rank, such as Peter Parcevich, titular bishop of Marcianopolis, on the shores of the Black Sea, were sent to the principalities, but the repeated raids of the German imperialists in Wallachia, under the conduct of one Heissler, a Veterani, the occupation of a large part of Moldavia by the Poles, all gave support to a Catholicism which seemed to organise here through the Roumanians, as well as south of the Danube. Notwithstanding the presence of a bishop in Nicopolis for both banks of the river, Catholic missionaries like de Stefani and Antide Dunod conducted the negotiations with the German subjects of that hardy Wallachian prince of Byzantine descent, Șerban Cantacuzino, who dreamed vainly of regaining the crown of his ancestors. But it was in this same reign that the most important Catholic colony of Câmpulung, formed of Saxons and Hungarians by the Teutonic Knights, was forcibly won over to Orthodoxy. The reaction against the Christian policy of Șerban under his nephew Constantin Brâncoveanu could not be favourable to Catholicism, notwithstanding that the young and brilliant prince was surrounded by Catholic doctors (such as Bartolomeo Ferrati) and secretaries (such as Del Chiaro, author of the «Rivoluzioni della Vallachia »).

This epoch is at least characterised by the fruitful activities of the Patriarch Dositheus in Bucharest and Jassy: this leader of the Hierosolymitan church chose the defence of the Eastern creed against the Jesuits as the principal purpose of his life. The Greek works he published in the Roumanian capitals were disseminated throughout all the provinces of the Orthodoxy and formed the basis of all counter-propaganda. The Roumanian bishops obeyed all his directions, almost considering themselves his subordinates.