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Saint Basil of Poiana Mărului. Biographic milestones
Authors: Ion Marian CROITORU
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While, in the 19th century, many servants of the monastic settlements left
Wallachia and Moldova, because of the measures taken there, the situation was
nevertheless different in the 18th century, when monks from different areas
inhabited by Orthodox Christians came to the Romanian Countries, where they
encountered an uninterrupted reality of hesychastic renewal started by Saint
Gregory of Sinai (1255-1346), due to the fact that the Romanians had known
another cultural continuity, different from what had happened, until that century,
in the Greek Byzantine or in the Slav world. This reality explains why the
revitalization of the hesychastic and spiritual life in the areas north of the Danube
is related, in the 18th century, to the Saints Basil of Poiana Mărului (1692-1767)
and Paisius Velichkovsky or Wieliczkowski of Neamţ (1722-1794), both of them
arrived from the Slav world in the Romanian extra-Carpathian territories. Saint
Basil founded many hermitages and trained many disciples in the practice of the
prayer of the mind or of the heart, becoming known as a great teacher of this
prayer, in the modern times. Just as the Holy Fathers of Mount Sinai (Gregory,
Philotheos, Hesychios), but also from other parts of the Byzantine world (Saint
Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Gregory Palamas etc.), once again, he draws
the attention not just of the monks but also of the lay people on the prayer of the
heart, so that in the 19th century it was not the teaching of Saint Paisius on the
practice of the prayer of the heart that prevailed, but the teaching of Saint Basil,
followed especially in the Romanian and in the Russian tradition. Regarding the
monastic life, the activity of Starets Basil can be characterized by the ecumenicity
of the Orthodox faith, due to the fact that, on the one hand, he brought together
monks from the Romanian and the Slav area, and, on the other hand, he
contributed to the enrichment of the Romanian monasticism through the
cultivation of the spirit of two Holy Mounts, Athos and Sinai.