Book Reviews 101

true (I’m hoping it is) in God’s eternal presence. Michael Plekon’s

work emphasizes that this is not confined to the Orthodox Church
or even Christianity itself. Some of his subjects were drawn into
Christianity from elsewhere, presumably by the same Spirit we
assume is at work among us. The working out of what holiness
means and its many manifestations simply cannot be confined
institutionally.
This reminds me of what we see in the Theophany prayers. The
Incarnation’s most profound meaning is revealed in Jesus’ baptism
in the Jordan, and there is the clear implication the mystery is
deeper than God taking on human flesh and human nature. It has
a meaning for all creation, for everything from water to large gas
planets and the Horsehead Nebula.
Plekon’s introduction to Hidden Holiness begins with a good
quote from Martin Buber, and it echoes the spirit of both these books:
The manifest just see themselves sustained by these hidden
ones, Moreover that within them which serves to sustain
men belongs to their hidden and not to their manifest
nature. All that sustains belongs to the hidden.

— John Garvey

Serafim Joanta, Treasures of Romanian Christianity—Hesychast

Tradition and Culture. Whitby, ON: Cross Meridian, 2013.
293pp. ISBN: 978–1481–9099–14. $14.95.
This is a revised and enlarged translation of the book by Fr Romul
Joanta (now Metropolitan Serafim Joanta) first published in English
by the St Zenia Skete in 1992 under the title Romania: Its Hesychast
Tradition and Culture (long out of print). The original French
version published in 1987 was Met Serafim’s doctoral thesis at the
St Sergius Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris. Met Serafim has
been responsible for the Romanian Orthodox Church in Germany,
Central and Northern Europe since 1994.
The book is first and foremost a study of the presence in Romania
of one of Orthodoxy’s brightest gems, hesychasm, the spirituality of

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 102 ST VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

divine presence and inner peace. The author’s main argument is that
hesychasm has so permeated the Romanian soul that it is possible to
speak of a “hesychast tradition and culture” in Romania. After a brief
overview of the Christian presence in what is now Romania during
the first millennium and of monastic life prior to the fourteenth
century, the author presents a detailed study of monasticism and
hesychastic spirituality in the ensuing centuries.
The book reveals the inner heart of Romanian Orthodoxy,
characterized by the continuing endurance of the hesychastic
tradition, with several notable flowerings, especially in the
fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, at the end of the eighteenth
and the first half of the nineteenth centuries and again after World
War I and up to the imposition of communist rule after World War
II. And there has been a substantial monastic revival in Romania
since the fall of communism, although the author does not treat this
period. Met Serafim sees the spiritual heart of Romania as subsisting
mostly in its numerous monasteries and those who frequent them
on a regular basis. And it is precisely this spiritual heart of Romania
which is the subject of this book.
The book is also a welcome and luminous respite and antidote
to recent studies of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which
often highlight the darker sides of the Romanian Church, such
as its association with ethnic nationalism, flirtation and active
collaboration of clergy with both regimes of the right (conservative
and fascist governments) and of the left (the communist regime),
and dubious attitudes and actions with respect to religious
minorities. Indeed, if we look at Met Serafim’s study, together with
other works focusing on the inspiring lives and teachings of modern
Romanian elders, such as Fr Cleopa Ilie (1912–1998) and Fr Paisie
Olaru (“the Hermit”) (1897–1990) on the one hand, and on the
other, the spate of studies which deal with questionable political
compromises and undertakings of Romanian Church leaders and
laity over the past century (books mostly by Romanians, such as
those of Lucian Leustan, Cristian Romocea, and Lavinia Stan, and
Lucian Turcescu), we are hard pressed to believe that both types

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 Book Reviews 103

of works are talking about the same Orthodoxy. Certainly from a

typical “religious studies” perspective, this book can no doubt be
seen as a romanticized evocation of glorious past which is no longer
relevant. Yet Romanian piety, singularly captured in the author’s
expression “hesychast tradition and culture,” still exists in the hearts
and minds of many Romanian Orthodox, both in Romania and
abroad. Undoubtedly both visions of Orthodoxy in Romania have
truth in them—it depends on whether one is gazing through a
microscope or a telescope.
As a study, Met Serafim’s book is strongest for the period from
the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, certainly a “golden
age” of Romanian Orthodoxy, and weaker on the period since the
formation of the modern Romanian state in 1864. But even for
the modern period, the work is a useful introduction to the major
themes, events, and personalities of Romanian spirituality.
The short conclusion, which does not feature in the original
French, is in effect a sort of “hesychastic sermon,” thematically
related to the extracts of the Akathist to the Mother God at the
Burning Bush (Appendix I). Other changes from the original
English publication include the addition of maps showing the main
centers of Romanian Orthodoxy at various periods—useful, but
unfortunately the maps are not very clear. There are also additional
black and white illustrations and brief introductions to some of the
major modern Romanian spiritual figures, mostly unknown outside
Romania. Unfortunately, occasional lapses in style and punctuation
and sometimes awkward translations detract from the overall
quality and interest of the study itself.
One can only hope that the manifest spiritual renewal in
Romania since the fall of communism, so much in continuity with
the hesychast tradition ably presented in this book, will be reflected
in such areas as morality in public life and attitudes and actions
toward religious and ethnic minorities in Romania.
— Paul Ladouceur

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