Having witnessed, according to his own claim, the indifference and mundane preoccupations of

his peers, Creangă admitted to having taken little care in his training, submitting to the drinking
culture, playing practical jokes on his colleagues, and even shoplifting, while pursuing an affair
with the daughter of a local priest.[8] According to his own statement, he was a philanderer who,
early in his youth, had already "caught the scent" of the catrință (the skirt in traditional costumes).
[13]
 In August 1855, circumstances again forced him to change schools: confronted with the
closure of his Fălticeni school,[8] Creangă left for the Central Seminary attached to Socola
Monastery, in Moldavia's capital of Iași.[14] Ștefan sin Petre's 1858 death left him without means of
support, and he requested being directly ordained, but, not being of the necessary age, was
instead handed a certificate to attest his school attendance. [8] He was soon after married, after a
brief courtship, to the 15-year-old Ileana, daughter of Priest Ioan Grigoriu from the church of the
Forty Saints, where he is believed to have been in training as a schoolteacher. [8] The ceremony
took place in August 1859,[8] several months after the personal union between Moldavia and its
southern neighbor Wallachia, effected by the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as Domnitor.
Having been employed as a cantor by his father in law's church, he was ordained in December of
the same year, assigned to the position of deacon in Holy Trinity Church, and, in May 1860,
returned to Forty Saints.[8]
Relations between Creangă and Grigoriu were exceptionally tense. Only weeks after his wedding,
the groom, who had probably agreed to marriage only because it could facilitate succeeding
Grigoriu,[15] signed a complaint addressed to Metropolitan Sofronie Miclescu, denouncing his
father in law as "a killer", claiming to have been mistreated by him and cheated out of his
wife's dowry, and demanding to be allowed a divorce.[8] The response to this request was contrary
to his wishes: he was ordered into isolation by the Dicasterie, the supreme ecclesiastical court,
being allowed to go free only on promise to reconcile with Grigoriu. [8]

Beginnings as schoolteacher and clash with the Orthodox

Church[edit]

Ion Creangă as a deacon

In 1860, Creangă enlisted at the Faculty of Theology, part of the newly founded University of Iași,
[8][15]
 and, in December 1860, fathered a son, Constantin. [8] His life still lacked in stability, and he
decided to move out of Grigoriu's supervision and into Bărboi Church, before his position as
deacon was cut out of the budget and his belongings were evicted out of his temporary lodging in
1864.[8] He contemplated leaving the city, and even officially requested a new assignment in the
more remote Bolgrad.[8] Since January 1864, when the Faculty of Theology had been closed
down,[15] he had been attending Iași's Trei Ierarhi Monastery normal school (Trisfetite or Trei
Sfetite), where he first met the young cultural figure Titu Maiorescu, who served as his teacher
and supervisor, and whence he graduated as the first in his class (June 1865). [15][16] Embittered by
his own experience with the education system, Creangă became an enthusiastic promoter of
Maiorescu's ideas on education reform and modernization, and in particular of the new methods
of teaching reading and writing.[17] During and after completing normal school, he was assigned to
teaching positions at Trisfetite.[18] While there, he earned the reputation of a demanding teacher
(notably by accompanying his reports on individual students with characterizations such as "idiot",
"impertinent" or "envious").[19] Accounts from the period state that he made use of corporal
punishment in disciplining his pupils, and even surpassed the standards of violence accepted at
the time.[10]
In parallel, he was beginning his activities in support of education reform. By 1864, he and
several others, among them schoolteacher V. Răceanu, [20] were working on a new primer, which
saw print in 1868 under the title Metodă nouă de scriere și cetire pentru uzul clasei I primară ("A
New Method of Writing and Reading for the Use of 1st Grade Primary Course Students"). It
mainly addressed the issues posed by the new Romanian alphabetical standard,
a Romanization replacing Cyrillic spelling (which had been officially discarded in 1862).[21] Largely
based on Maiorescu's principles, Metodă nouă ... became one the period's most circulated
textbooks.[21][22] In addition to didactic texts, it also featured Creangă's isolated debut in lyric poetry,
with a naïve piece titled Păsărica în timpul iernii ("The Little Bird in Wintertime").[21] The book was
followed in 1871 by another such work, published as Învățătoriul copiilor ("The Children's
Teacher") and co-authored by V. Răceanu. [23] It included several prose fables and a sketch story,
"Human Stupidity",[20] to which later editions added Poveste ("A Story") and Pâcală (a borrowing of
the fictional folk character better known as Păcală).[24]

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