ABSTRACT

The Romanian Orthodox Church is a discrete presence on the map of the Orthodoxy (see Georgescu 1991; Iorga 1928; Păcurariu 2004). Even if today it ranks numerically – thanks to its some 18 million faithful – the second among the Eastern Orthodox churches (after the Russian and, perhaps, before the Ukrainian Church divided under several jurisdictions), its place in ecclesiastical history is second to none (but see Păcurariu 2007). It is easily observable that the Romanian Church represents the link between the Greek- and the Southern-Slavic-speaking churches and the Eastern Slavic ones. Due to this position, it is scarcely possible even to speak of an Orthodox Commonwealth without the Romanians being an integral part of it. The lack of the specialized literature on this point may be due to the paradoxical history of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which cannot but puzzle observers. Just how did a people of Dacian-Roman origin with a Neo-Latin language evolve under the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Constantinople? And also how did it acquire and, for a millennium or so, live with an Old Church Slavonic liturgy? To uncover the real place of the Romanians in the Orthodox Commonwealth is as yet a desideratum of ecclesiastical history.