Barlaam of Moldavia
Our Father among the Saints Barlaam, Metropolitan of Moldavia
Bishop · b. c. 1580–1585, at Borcești in the Putna region of Moldavia — d. 18 August 1657, at the monastery of Secu
Commemorated 30 August — Commemoration of the Metropolitan of Moldavia (canonised 2007)
Barlaam (Varlaam) was Metropolitan of Moldavia from 1632 to 1653, in the reign of Prince Vasile Lupu, and is the father of printed Romanian church literature. A peasant's or small nobleman's son from the Putna country who rose through the monastery of Secu, he set up Moldavia's first printing press at the monastery of the Three Holy Hierarchs in Iași in 1640; from it in 1643 came the Cazania — the Carte românească de învățătură, "Romanian book of teaching" — the collection of homilies and lives that carried the Church's preaching into the Romanian language and became the most widely diffused book of the old Romanian period. He convened the Synod of Iași in 1642, at which the Confession of Peter Mogila was examined and approved for the whole Orthodox East, and he wrote against the Calvinist catechism circulating in Transylvania. He retired to Secu and died there in 1657; the Romanian Orthodox Church canonised him on 12 February 2007, appointing his feast for August 30.
Secu
He was born about 1580–1585 in the Putna region of Moldavia, and was called Vasile Moțoc in the world. He entered the monastery of Secu, in the Neamț hills, which had been founded in 1602 and was then among the most vigorous houses in the principality; he was tonsured Varlaam and rose there to be egumen and afterwards archimandrite. He learned Slavonic and Greek, and — the decisive fact of his life — he learned to write Romanian prose of a quality nobody had yet written it in.
He was already trusted with business outside the cloister before his elevation: he was sent to Moscow in 1628 with letters from the Moldavian prince, and there saw for himself what a church with presses and schools could do.
Metropolitan
In 1632 he was raised to the metropolitan throne of Moldavia at Iași, and held it for twenty-one years, under the powerful and ambitious prince Vasile Lupu. Three things belong to that tenure.
The press. In 1640, with the help of Peter Mogila of Kiev, who sent the type and the printers, Barlaam established at the monastery of the Three Holy Hierarchs in Iași the first printing press in Moldavia. Out of it in 1643 came his Cazania, formally the Carte românească de învățătură dumenecilor preste an — a book of homilies for the Sundays and feasts of the year, in two parts, the first expounding the Gospel of the day and the second giving the lives of the saints in their liturgical order. It was written not for scholars but for parish priests who had no Greek and no Slavonic, and it did for Romanian what the vernacular postils of the same century did elsewhere: it made a literary language out of the language people already spoke. Copies of the Cazania travelled far beyond Moldavia, into Wallachia and Transylvania, and it was reprinted for two centuries.
The school and the synod. He founded at the Three Hierarchs a theological academy on the model of Mogila's collegium at Kiev. And in 1642 he convened at Iași the synod which examined and approved the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila — the assembly at which the Greek, Russian and Romanian churches together fixed a common answer to the Protestant Confession circulating under the name of Cyril Loukaris. Barlaam's own contribution to the same controversy was a Reply to the Calvinist Catechism (1645), directed at the Calvinising catechism then being pressed on the Romanians of Transylvania.
The Romanian language in the Church. Behind all of it lay a single programme: that the Church in Moldavia should preach, teach and print in Romanian. He did not attempt to displace Slavonic from the Liturgy, but everything around the Liturgy — the sermon, the life of the saint, the catechism, the polemic — he moved into the vernacular.
Retirement and repose
Vasile Lupu was driven from the throne in 1653; Barlaam, who had been his metropolitan for twenty-one years, laid down his office in April 1653 and went back to Secu. He died there on 18 August 1657 and was buried in the monastery church.
Canonisation
The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church proclaimed him a saint on 12 February 2007, in the year in which it also canonised a number of other Romanian hierarchs and monastics, and appointed his commemoration for 30 August. He appears in the Russian calendars for the day with the note "(Romanian)."
Feast and commemoration
August 30 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 12). The feast is kept by the Romanian Orthodox Church, which glorified him in 2007, and appears in the Russian calendars for the day as a Romanian commemoration. He is honoured especially at Secu, where his relics lie, and at the monastery of the Three Holy Hierarchs in Iași, the house of his press and his academy.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
The truth of things revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, a model of meekness and a teacher of temperance; therefore thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Barlaam, intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Iconography
As a saint glorified in 2007 his iconography is wholly modern and was fixed at the canonisation: he is shown as a hierarch of the seventeenth century in sakkos and omophorion, with the white kamilavka or bare-headed, a long grey beard, blessing with the right hand and holding in the left not the Gospel but his own Cazania — the printed book being his attribute, as the model church is the founder's — and sometimes with the church of the Three Holy Hierarchs at Iași beside him. Because his cult is nineteen years old, there is no pre-1900 icon of him and there will not be one; the seventeenth-century votive portrait of him that survives at Secu is a historical likeness rather than an icon. No storable image has been located for this collection.
Disputed questions
- The date of the feast. August 30 is the date fixed at the canonisation; it is not the day of his death (18 August), and the choice appears to have been made to avoid the Dormition season and the leavetaking of the Beheading of the Forerunner.
- His birthplace and family. The Romanian tradition gives Borcești/Bolotești in the Putna region and a family of small landowners named Moțoc; the details are transmitted late and are not documentary.
- Not to be confused with the other saints of the name: Barlaam of Khutyn (November 6), Barlaam of Antioch (November 19), Barlaam of Shenkursk, or Barlaam and Josaphat of India (November 19).