Gifted Monasteries

Between the 16th Century and the early 19th Century, a practice was in place of gifting monasteries

Steliu Lambru, 05.12.2025, 14:10

In Romanian ecclesiastical history, between the 16th Century and the early 19th Century, a practice was in place of gifting monasteries. This “gifting” was what we would call today a donation. Romanian princes and nobility would donate monasteries in the Romanian provinces, with the goods they owned, to Christian Orthodox monastic settlements in the East. A total of 220 monastic sites were thus gifted to Mount Athos, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai and other monastic settlements. Of the gifted monasteries, 130 were in Wallachia and 90 in Moldavia.

Tudor Dinu is a professor with the University of Bucharest and authored a volume on gifted monasteries:

Tudor Dinu: “I was aware that Romanians were gifting these monasteries, primarily in order to help their brothers in faith under Muslim rule. Statistically speaking, as I now realize, the main reason out of the 12 I am reviewing is the bankruptcy of our monasteries. They went bankrupt and then competent managers were called from abroad. It is a surprise, at least for me it was. There are many reasons for this practice, including the visits of personalities from the Christian East, who were fascinating for Romanian boyars.”

The researched documents span such a long period, around 300 years, that some surprises were bound to be found:

Tudor Dinu: “I looked at the whole pattern of gifting and de-gifting, because there were also examples of de-gifting. I found gifting done wholeheartedly, but I also saw abusive gifting. I also saw, and I had not expected this, that the peak period of gifting was not the Phanar period. It was somewhere between 1620-1635 in Wallachia and 1665-1680 in Moldavia. We have enough cases in which Phanariot rulers opposed gifting. The Phanariots were trying to preserve a fragile balance with the local circles of power. Around 1800 they no longer wanted new gifting that would attract enemies.”

Tudor Dinu looked at the gifted monasteries and at the goods they managed:

Tudor Dinu: “While studying life in monasteries, I came to the conclusion that, unlike regular monasteries, the gifted monasteries had very few monks. The statistics we have indicate that most monasteries had one or two monks, Greeks of course. There were also mixed councils, but they were less important. A monastery of five, six, ten monks was a huge one. In contrast to the very small number of monks, there was a huge number of types of property that these monasteries had. There were not only the estates and vineyards that we know about, but also entire cities. There were cities that belonged entirely to one monastery. Today’s capital of the Republic of Moldova, Chisinau, belonged entirely to the Galata Monastery and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The city of Botoșani was entirely donated by a Phanariot to the Patriarchate of Antioch through the monastery of St. Nicholas Popăuți in Botoșani. There were also pubs, houses, fuel oil wells, stone quarries, cafes, Turkish baths, inns. So we could describe these monasteries as actual groups of companies. An abbot who was alone, or had two assistants, was faced with exhausting management work. The abbots of these monasteries were mostly involved in management, with little time left for cultural activities. Obviously, cultural work existed in Cotroceni and Văcărești, where there were more monks.”

Behind the incomes generated by the assets of gifted monasteries was the work of many people.

Tudor Dinu: “Apart from the monks and the abbot who was the CEO, as we would say today, of a large company, those who did the actual work in monasteries fell into two categories. There were the so-called subordinates or servants who, most often than not, were not locals because they would have caused losses to the state finances. They were foreigners. In Wallachia, they came mostly from the Balkans, they were Balkan Christians, but there were also Hungarian servants. In Moldavia, they came not only from the Balkans, but also from the area of ​​present-day Ukraine, towards Russia and Galicia, so people often specialised depending on the specifics of the monastery. If a monastery was in a wine-growing area, many were winemakers. If the monastery had many beehives, they were beekeepers. But others had completely different specialisations, at “Trei Ierarhi” monastery for instance there was a translator, an interpreter, in the language of the time.”

The monasteries also had slaves, whose status varied from one period to another and from one owner to another.

Tudor Dinu: “There were also gypsy slaves. Sometimes, large monasteries such as Cotroceni or Radu-vodă owned several hundred souls. A gypsy settlement meant a man together with his large family, who carried the brunt of the work and who had such difficult lives that were often forced to flee. Unfortunately, many times, abbots chose to get search orders for the runaway gypsies, instead of offering them better conditions that would have kept them from running. Often, the gypsies were not specialized, but their specialities were interesting. In addition to the traditional ones of blacksmith, boilermaker, brickmaker, spoonmaker, there were many gypsies who were cooks, fiddlers and coachmen.”

In 1863, under the rule of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza and with the support of the entire political class, the Romanian state secularised the entire wealth of the gifted monasteries. (AMP)