The Church and Religious Life of Christians in Pandemic Time

Proceedings of the International
Scientific Conference
„History and Theology”
Constanţa (Romania)
November 17-18, 2020

Organizing Committee:
Rev. Professor Nicușor TUCĂ

Rev. Associate Professor Ionuț HOLUBEANU
Rev. Associate Professor Claudiu-Constantin COTAN
Rev. Associate Professor Corneliu-Dragoș BĂLAN
Lecturer Dumitru CARABAȘ
Assistant Ionuț CHIRCALAN
DISCLAIMER
This book contains abstracts and complete papers approved by the

Conference Review Committee. The authors are responsible for the content
and its accuracy.
Proceedings of the International
Scientific Conference
„History and Theology”
Constanţa (Romania)
November 17-18, 2020
Edited by
Rev. IONUȚ HOLUBEANU
EDITURA UNIVERSITARĂ
Bucharest
Series RELIGIE ŞI FILOSOFIE
Reviewers: Rev. Ass.-Prof. Dr. Constantin-Claudiu Cotan

Rev. Ass.-Prof. Dr. Dragoș-Corneliu Bălan
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HISTORY AND THEOLOGY. International scientific conference (2020 ;
Constanţa)
History and Theology : International Scientific Conference Faculty of
Orthodox Theology, University "Ovidius" Constanţa (Romania) :
November 17-18, 2020 / ed.: Ionuţ Holubeanu. - Bucureşti : Editura
Universitară, 2021
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ISBN 978-606-28-1374-1
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 9
Florin CURTA and Ethan WILLIAMSON
ANCHOR OF FAITH: THE CULT OF ST. CLEMENT IN EASTERN
EUROPE (ca. 500 TO ca. 1050) ............................................................... 16
Alexandru MADGEARU
MARTYRS FROM THE DANUBIAN LIMES DURING THE REIGN
OF GALERIUS ................................................................................................. 55
Alexander MINCHEV
“I AM THE LIGHT”: TWO HANGING LAMPS FROM BULGARIA
(FIFTH-SIXTH CENTURIES AD) .......................................................... 69
Bartłomiej Szymon SZMONIEWSKI and Valentina M. VOINEA
THE SACRED AND PROFANE DESTINATION OF THE KARST
CAVE SPACE: THE CASE OF CHEILE DOBROGEI .......................... 89
Cristina PARASCHIV-TALMAȚCHI and Constantin ȘOVA
CHRISTIAN ELEMENTS DISCOVERED IN EARLY MEDIEVAL
SETTLEMENTS FROM DOBRUDJA .................................................... 127
Rev. Ionuț HOLUBEANU
A NEW READING OF THE DATA CONCERNING THE
ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE ROMAN
PROVINCE OF SCYTHIA DURING THE SIXTH CENTURY AD ...... 151
Rev. Marin COJOC
CAROSUS FROM SCYTHIA MINOR, ARCHIMANDRITE IN
CONSTANTINOPLE AND COMBATANT IN THE COUNCIL OF
CHALCEDON (451) ................................................................................ 182
Rév. Emanoil BĂBUȘ
BYZANTINS ET LATINS DURANT LE RÈGNE D’ALEXIS Ier
COMNÈNE. ORCHESTRATION STATALE ET RITUALISATION
DES ÉMOTIONS. .................................................................................... 196
5
Rev. Constantin Claudiu COTAN
THE ROLE OF THE TYPIKON IN THE ORGANISATION OF
BYZANTINE MONASTICISM IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY ....... 220
Rév. Mihai Ovidiu CĂȚOI
MIRACULA SANCTI DEMETRII II.5 COMMENTAIRES,
CLARIFICATIONS, HYPOTHESES DU TRAVAIL ............................. 240
Rev. Cristian GAGU
THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHRISTIANS IN
PANDEMIC TIMES ................................................................................. 288
Adrian MARINESCU
PATRISTIC PHENOMENOLOGIES OF ORTHODOX
CONTEMPORANEITY: PATRISTICS – POST-PATRISTICS – NEO-
PATRISTICS IN THE RECENT THEOLOGICAL DEBATE IN
GREECE ................................................................................................... 318
Rev. Corneliu-Dragoș BĂLAN and Rev. Nicușor TUCĂ
THE ANTINOMY BETWEEN THE SIN OF INTOLERANCE AND
THE SUFFERING ASSUMED AS PAIN, PENANCE OR CHANGE ... 348
Ionuț CHIRCALAN
CHALLENGERS AND DEFENDERS OF THE CORPUS
DIONYSIACUM FOR THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE
TWENTIETH AND TWENTYFIRST CENTURIES ...................................... 367
Rev. Gheorghe ATOMEI
CYNICS, HEDONISTS, STOICS, AND THE ISSUES OF HUMAN
IMPERFECTION ................................................................................................... 382
Daniel NIȚĂ-DANIELESCU
GUERRE ET PHILANTHROPIE PENDANT LES ANNÉES
ARCHPASTORALES DE L'ÉVÊQUE, ENSUITE MÉTROPOLITE
IACOV STAMATI (1782-1803) .............................................................. 403
Adrian MARINESCU
ASPECTS OF SAINT ANTHIM THE IBERIAN’S CONNECTIONS
WITH SINAI............................................................................................. 420
Rev. Nicușor MORLOVA
PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM CHRYSANTHOS NOTARAS (1660-
1731): A SCIENTIST OF HIS TIME ....................................................... 451
6
Rev. Ion RIZEA
PETRE D. ROȘCA (1849-1922) – A GREAT OLTENIAN FOUNDER
AND PHILANTHROPIST ....................................................................... 475
Rev. Nechita RUNCAN
PATRIARCH NICODIM MUNTEANU OF ROMANIA –
ENLIGHTENED SCHOLAR AND PATRIOT ....................................... 508
Dumitru CARABAŞ
SEVERAL CHURCHES BUILT IN CONSTANȚA COUNTY
BETWEEN 1923 AND 1950 .................................................................... 521
Rev. Ion APOSTU
THE PERSONALITY OF METROPOLITAN GURIE GROSU OF
BESSARABIA (1928-1936) ..................................................................... 544
7
THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHRISTIANS
IN PANDEMIC TIMES
Rev. Cristian GAGU*
Abstract: Often, in times of hardship, the faith of many Christians weakens, and as
they succumb to fears of unbelief, their trust in God's care is lost. Others in such
moments, on the contrary, follow the recommendations and exhortations issued by
the Church and are strengthened in their faith to the point that they place in God the
hope of being redeemed from illness and other dangers. There are also some
Christians who, in such times – of sickness, suffering, and even death – see the
arrival of apocalyptic times and as such – envision all the persecutions against
Christians that proceed from this. For this group, any measure taken by the
authorities to limit the effects of pandemic diseases or calamities that affect the
public communion of faith, is proof that Christians are being persecuted. And if the
Church, understanding the necessity and effectiveness of such measures for all
citizens, and therefore for the Christians it pastors and cares for, accepts to respect
them, then it is accused either of apostasy, or of ecumenism, or of others similar
“sins.” On the other side of the spectrum, on a position antagonistic to the Church,
there are those who have renounced their faith in God, atheists and free thinkers.
This group militates for the complete closure of churches and the prohibition of
religious manifestations not so much out of concern for the good of their fellow
citizens, but out of disdain for God and the Church.
In such a situation where the position of the Church is challenged by a
minor but very vocal part of its members, and by its few but similarly vocal
detractors, the present study proposes a foray into history through an analysis of
documents on state action and the Church's response and attitude during past
pandemic episodes. This is all the more important if we want to understand the
actions of the Church beyond the veil of preconceived ideas, the truncated
scriptural texts invoked and the numerous conspiracist scenarios that abound.
Keywords: pandemic/epidemic, plague, cholera, Black Death, coronavirus,

quarantine, isolation, Church
*
Rev. Cristian GAGU: “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galați, Faculty of History,
Philosophy and Theology; e-mail: pr.cristi_gagu@yahoo.com.
288
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin?
And not one of them falls to the ground
apart from your Father's will.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
(Matthew 10: 29-30; Luke 12: 6-7)**
The bibliography on the pandemics that have hit Europe in the last two
millennia is extremely rich, with multidisciplinary approaches, from an
anthropological, epidemiological, medical, biological, climatological,
demographic, social, economic, cultural, civilizational, and historical
perspective. The religious perspective did not enjoy the attention of
researchers; most often the issues related to church life during these
pandemics were approached at most tangentially. The exception is two or
three studies,1 in which more space is dedicated to the religious perspective.
A similar situation is in the case of epidemics that have affected the territory
of our country in the last three centuries. However, by gathering the data
and putting it together, one can create a fairly accurate picture of the
perspective of the religious life of Christians.
Until the current pandemic caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, history
records three other major pandemics, the plague, caused by the bacterium
Yersinia pestis, which hit human society causing a large number of human
casualties and, according to some researchers, major changes in mentality in
the culture and even in the historical evolution of the affected peoples.2
**
The English translation of all Biblical texts is according to The Orthodox Study Bible,
prepared under the auspices of the Academic Community of St. Athanasius Academy of
Orthodox Theology (Nashville/Dallas/Mexico City/Rio de Janeiro/Beijing: Thomas Nelson,
2008).
1
Henry Gruber, “Indirect evidence for the social impact of the Justinianic Pandemic:
Episcopal Burial and Conciliar Legislation in Visigothic Hispania,” Journal of Late
Antiquity 11 (2018), 193-215; Mischa Meier, “The 'Justinianic Plague': the economic
consequences of the pandemic in the eastern Roman empire and its cultural and religious
effects,” Early Medieval Europe 24 (2016), no. 3, 267-92.
2
Meier, “The 'Justinianic Plague',” pp. 270, 285 and 291-92; Lee Mordechai, Merle
Eisenberg, Timothy P. Newfield, Adam Izdebski, Janet E. Kay and Hendrik Poinar, “The
Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic?” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, 116 (2019), no. 51, 25546-54, here 25546; Josiah Russell, “That Earlier
Plague,” Demography 5 (1968), no. 1, 174-84; Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos, “Death in
the countryside: Some thoughts on the effects of famine and epidemics,” Antiquité Tardive
20 (2012), 105-14.
289
1. “Justinian's Plague”
The first plague pandemic appeared in 541, when Justinian I (527-565) was
on the throne of the Byzantine Empire, hence its name, “Justinian's plague.”
Contemporary historians do not give many details about this pandemic that
hit the whole of Europe in successive waves until the middle of the eighth
century,3 as no other historical sources provide.
Most of the data on “Justinian's plague” was recorded by Procopius
of Caesarea, especially in The Persian War,4 in which he describes in no
less than two chapters the impact of the plague on Constantinople and the
inhabitants of the city. In two other writings, Procopius5 briefly mentions
this plague, without providing any information in addition to that in The
Persian War. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, in his Chronicle, made
perhaps the most simultaneously detailed and dramatic description of the
“terrible and mighty scourge with which the whole world was lashed.”6 St.
Gregory of Tours,7 like Paul the Deacon for the Lombard kingdom,8 records
less than Procopius and Dionysius the effects that the plague pandemic
produced in the Frankish kingdom. Instead, it provides the only and most
important direct information about the Church's reaction during the
pandemic, describing the processions organized by St. Gregory the Great,
the bishop of Rome.9
3
Merle Eisemberg and Lee Mordechai, “The Justinianic Plague: an interdisciplinary
review,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 43 (2019), no. 2, 156-80, here 160.
4
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, Books I and II, The Persian War, translated
by H. B. Dewing, Loeb Classical Library (London: W. Heinemann; New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1914).
5
Procopius of Caesarea, Războiul cu goții [The Gothic War], I, 4, 1; I, 6, 22; III, 18, 44,
translated into Romanian by Haralambie Mihăescu, Scriptores Byzantini, 3 (Bucharest: Ed.
Academiei Române, 1963), pp. 47, 63 and 155; Procopius of Caesarea, Istoria secretă
[Secret History], II, 3, 1, translated into Romanian by Haralambie Mihăescu, Scriptores
Byzantini, 8 (Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Române, 1972), p. 85; Prokopios, The Secret
History with Related Texts, edited and translated, with an introduction, by Anthony
Kaldellis (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Heckett, 2010).
6
Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle (Know also as the Chonicle of Zuqnin) III,
translated with notes and introduction by Witold Witakowski, Translated texts for
historians, 22 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), p. 74.
7
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 1, translated into French by François Guizot,
Mémoires relatifs à l`historire de France (Paris: J.-L.-J. Brière, 1823).
8
Paulus Diaconus, Istoria longobarzilor [History of the Lombards] II, 4, translated into
Romanian by Emanuel Grosu (Iași: Polirom, 2011), pp. 73-75.
9
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 2, translated into French by François Guizot,
Mémoires relatifs à l`historire de France (Paris: J.-L.-J. Brière, 1823).
290
In his Chronicle, St. Theophanes the Confessor10 also mentions, in
turn, the effects of the brief waves of the plague that struck Constantinople
until the eighth century. Other sources11 only mention in passing the years in
which the plague waves of Justinian's pandemic manifested themselves,
without bringing new information. Instead, Dionysius of Tel-Mahre
captures in his Chronicle, in shocking terms, the horrors and sufferings that
Syria went through during the last great wave of the plague pandemic,
which struck for sixteen years, beginning in 744, covering “The whole
world,” from the Euphrates to the Red Sea to the West.12
According to the mentioned sources, the first wave of Justinian's
plague hit violently in the winter of 541 and lasted three and a half years.13
Those who were infested suffered from fever and ulcers on the body,
especially in the armpits, groin, thighs, ears, and abdomen, with most
afflicted dying on the very first day of the disease.14 The plague caused so
many casualties, both in Constantinople and in other large urban centers and
in rural areas, that sometimes the dead remained unburied for two or three
days. In large urban centers in particular, lacking coffins and planks for
them, the dead were buried in mass graves, ten or even more in the same
pit.15 In Constantinople, when all the cemeteries were filled and there were
no more places empty in which to dig other common graves, the bodies of
the dead were either thrown into the sea, or piled into boats to carry them
wherever they could, or thrown in disarray into the towers of fortifications
and buried there.16
10
Sfântul Teofan Mărturisitorul [Theophanes the Confessor], Cronografia [Chronicle],
translated into Romanian by Mihai Țipău, Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești (s.n.) 7 (Bucharest:
Basilica, 2012).
11
Kitab AlʽUnvan, Histoire universelle écrit par Agapius (Mahboub) de Menbidj, edited
and translated into French by Alexandre Vasiliev, II/2, Patrologia Orientalis, 8 (Paris:
Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1912); Histoire nestorienne (Chronique de Séert), edited and
translated into French by Addaï Scher, II/1, Patrologia Orientalis, 7.2 (Paris: Firmin-Didot
et Cie, 1911); Evagrius Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, translated by Edward Walford
(London: Bagster & Sons, 1846); Chronique de Michel le Grand, patriarche des syriens
jacobites, translated into French by Victor Langlois (Venice: Academy of Saint Lazarus,
1868).
12
Denys de Tell-Mahre, Chronique, IV, edited and translated into French by Jean Baptiste
Chabot (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1895), p. 36.
13
Kitab AlʽUnvan, Histoire universelle, II/2, p. 431; Histoire nestorienne, II/1, p. 185.
14
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxii, 17, pp. 457-459;
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 1, IV, 31, pp. 82; VI, 14, p. 136; Kitab AlʽUnvan,
Histoire universelle, II/2, p. 431; Paulus Diaconus, Istoria longobarzilor, II, 4, pp. 73-75;
Denys de Tell-Mahre, Chronique, IV, p. 38.
15
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 1, IV, 31, p. 82; Chronique de Michel le Grand,
p. 193.
16
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxiii, 9-11, pp. 467-
469; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, III, pp. 89-91.
291
According to the maximalist approach of the information provided
by the cited sources, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael the Syrian,17 who
counted ten thousand deaths daily in the peak days of the plague, and even
more, most researchers estimate that the number of those killed by
“Justinian`s plague” varies between 15 and 100 million victims, which
would have represented, in percentage, between 25% and 60% of the
estimated population of the Byzantine Empire.18 Even if this estimate,
which, moreover, is challenged with solid arguments by some researchers,19
is exaggerated, in large urban centers the number of dead was extremely
high, and the general picture of daily life, a terrifying one. The streets were
empty, the inhabitants isolated in houses, all activities, trades, and
occupations abandoned, and the markets closed, so that the plague was
accompanied quite quickly by famine.20
In this context, being a Christian society, one can raise the question
of how Christians related to this plague and how religious life took place in
such circumstances. Due to insufficient information regarding this pandemic
in general, and religious life in general, the answer, although not easy to
give, is still not impossible.
In general, all the misfortunes that periodically struck in one part or
another of the Empire were seen as punishments coming from God for the
sins of Christians,21 and therefore the plague pandemic was also seen as
17
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxii, 1, p. 451 - “there
was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated”; xxiii, 1-
2, p. 465 - “And at first the deaths were a little more than the normal, then the mortality
rose still higher, and afterwards the tale of dead reached five thousand each day, and again
it even came to ten thousand and still more than that”; Prokopios, The Secret History ii, 18,
44, p. 86 - “and then the plague broke out as well, …, and carried away half the survivors”;
Chronique de Michel le Grand, p. 193; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, III, p.
35 - 5,000, 7,000, 12,000 and even 16,000 died in one day; Denys de Tell-Mahre,
Chronique, IV, p. 86 - more than 500 coffins were taken out daily at each gate of the
fortress.
18
Mordechai, Eisenberg, Newfield, Izdebski, Kay and Poinar, “The Justinianic Plague,” p.
25546; P. Allen, “The 'Justinianic' Plague,” Byzantion 49 (1979), 5-20, here 11.
19
Mordechai, Eisenberg, Newfield, Izdebski, Kay and Poinar, “The Justinianic Plague,” pp.
25547-53.
20
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxiii, 17-19, p. 471;
Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, III, p. 88.
21
For the correct understanding, from the Orthodox point of view, of the existence of
suffering, disease and death in the world see Adrian Sorin Mihalache, “CoVid-19, SARS,
MERS, Gripe aviare. Câteva date științifice și radiografii spirituale despre pandemiile
civilizației noastre. O schiță interdisciplinară,” in Pan-demon 2020 și Covid-19 (Iași:
Sedcom Libris, 2020), pp. 52-94, here 78-82; Jean Claude Larchet, “Lòrigine, la nature et
le sens de pandémie actuelle,” an interview for Orthodoxie.com (April 8, 2020) by Jivko
Panev, available at https://orthodoxie.com/lorigine-la-nature-et-les-sens-de-la-pandemie-
292
such.22 In his Chronicle, Michael the Syrian relates that in Egypt, after all
the inhabitants of a village were killed by the plague, except one child, the
angel of the Lord appeared to him in the form of an old man and said to
him: “Go now and do not weep, for that this punishment is the payment for
heresy and sin.”23 The episode confirms and strengthens, once again, the
generally accepted faith, which for a Christian, moreover, can only be
correct, that God allows the trials that come upon people to wake them from
their sleep of sins and return to Him.
A second observation that emerges from the cited sources is that at
that time more attention was paid to natural disasters, such as earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, the repercussions of which are
described in more detail than diseases, be they epidemic.24
A possible explanation for this state of affairs could be, on the one
hand, the frequency of successive waves of plague that struck between the
sixth and eighth centuries, so that the Byzantines became accustomed to the
presence of this disease and its consequences. On the other hand, the
material damage caused to cities and homes by volcanic eruptions and
earthquakes shocked for a long time, and the collective memory of the
famine caused by drought or floods was more vivid than that caused by the
plague. Perhaps even more so as few of those infested survived to
perpetuate the memory of the suffering caused by the disease, compared to
those who endured hunger.
When the first plague struck for three and a half years
uninterruptedly, both the church and the religious life of Christians were,
without a doubt, affected. Procopius recorded that when the number of
deaths increased, exceeding the capacity of cemeteries and the possibility of
the survivors to bury them according to Christian traditions, the bodies were
buried in mass graves, or thrown into the sea, or in abandoned towers or
boats and left to the waves. “At that time all the customary rites of burial
were overlooked,” and “the dead were not carried out escorted by a
actuelle-une-interview-de-jean-claude-larchet-par-orthodoxie-com (visit of May 24, 2020),

s.p.
22
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxii, 1-23, pp. 451-59;
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 2, X, 1, p. 78; Evagrius Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical
History, IV, 29, p. 226; Denys de Tell-Mahre, Chronique, IV, pp. 32-33, often refers to the
prophecies of Jeremiah (9, 10-22; 24, 10) in the Old Testament, in which the plague is seen
as God's punishment for the sins of the people.
23
Chronique de Michel le Grand, p. 194; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, III,
pp. 77-79.
24
Mordechai, Eisenberg, Newfield, Izdebski, Kay and Poinar, “The Justinianic Plague,”
p. 25547.
293
procession in the customary manner, nor were the usual chants sung over
them.”25
However, the fear of death and cowardice have not taken hold of the
souls of all Christians. Many did not forget that burying foreigners is one of
the most important acts of Christian mercy. St. Gregory of Tour recorded in
his chronicle that when all fled the cities for fear of the plague, some priests
prayed for the dead and buried them, many paying for the courage of their
faith with the price of their own lives.26 Procopius wrote, in turn, that
at that time, too, those of the population who had formerly been members
of the factions laid aside their mutual enmity and in common they attended
to the burial rites of the dead, and they carried with their own hands the
bodies of those who were no connections of theirs and buried them.27
The fulfilment of the funeral rituals presupposed, without a doubt,

the presence of the priests to perform the funeral service. At the beginning
of the plague that struck Syria in 744, the poor, being the first victims, were
buried Christian by the rich, according to all orders. The priests were
divided, in the morning, to go everywhere to perform the funeral service,
sometimes with more than 250 dead at once. When the plague intensified
and the rich began to be reaped, they had no one to bury them, and, “except
for a few, no ordinance was performed, rather because of the sudden death
than of the small number of priests and the innumerable multitude of
convoys.”28 In turn, the priests were affected by the plague, many dying
along with their faithful, and those who survived were left with squeals for
the rest of their lives, from pallor and lack of strength in the body to
baldness and purulent inguinal wounds.29
The official documents of the Church do not mention either the
plague pandemic or the adoption of any official measure in the context of its
spread, regarding the conduct of liturgical ordinances. Only one church
canon can be linked to this pandemic, namely, the fourth canon of the synod
of Valencia in 546, a canon that refers to how the bishop who “died a
sudden death” must be buried. The bishops gathered in the year 546, in
Valencia, and decided the following, in the fourth canon:
25
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxiii, 12, p. 469.
26
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 1, IV, 31, p. 82; the same testimony, with
reference to Liguria but to Paulus Diaconus, Istoria longobarzilor, II, 4, p. 73.
27
28
Denys de Tell-Mahre, Chronique, IV, pp. 34-35.
29
294
If, however, as is accustomed to happen, a bishop should die a sudden
death, and the neighboring bishops are not able to come from afar, the
lifeless body of the bishop should not be buried at once, but honorably
entrusted, and for one day and night only kept with a crowd of brothers and
religious and the wakefulness of psalm-singers. And [the body] should be
placed by priests with great care in a cofn apart from the others until, with
a bishop having been invited without delay from wherever, it should be
solemnly entombed by this man as is proper, so that the occasion for
slander might be lifted and the old custom for burying bishops be
observed.30
Although it makes no reference to the plague pandemic, in the text

of the canon there are some elements that lead to the hypothesis that the
death of the bishop caused by the plague was expressly targeted. First of all,
the canon expressly refers to “sudden death,” this being one of the
consequences of the plague infestation of which almost all the contemporary
sources mention. The canon also stopped the hasty burial, which most often
occurred in the case of other plague-stricken Christians, and ordered the
performance of the vigil ritual, with prayers and songs, which they no
longer had. Finally, the canon forbade the burial of the bishop in common
graves, without a coffin, along with the other victims of the plague, as
eyewitnesses testify that it usually happened. For example, in Gaul, after the
death of St. Gall, the bishop of Clermont (543-551), which occurred during
the plague, he was placed in the church to be buried according to the order
of the bishops' burial.31
What is certain is that the churches were not closed, sources noted
that many of those suffering from the plague “fell either in the streets or at
home, in harbours, on ships, in churches and everywhere”32 or “lay in the
churches,”33 the only places where they could probably hope for care and to
consolation, and where they could receive the holy mysteries before they
died. In fact, “even in the sanctuaries where the most of them fled for refuge
they were dying constantly,”34 and the decaying bodies “lay in churches and
martyria,”35 but, compared to most of those whom death reaped in vain, they
had the “chance” to benefit from the funeral service.
In favour of the statement that the churches were not closed during
the “plague of Justinian” also pleads the account of St. Gregory of Tours
30
Gruber, “Indirect evidence,” p. 196.
31
Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 1, IV, 5, p. 70.
32
33
34
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxii, 11, pp. 455-57.
35
295
about St. Gall, bishop of Clermont during the time when the plague struck
Gaul. According to the account, as the plague wreaked havoc in Gaul when
St. Gall became bishop of Clermont, he “prayed night and day to the Lord to
keep him, in his lifetime, from seeing such great suffering of his flock.” In
response to his prayers, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in vision, who
said to him, “Bishop, you are right to pray to the Lord for your pastors,” and
announced to him that as long as he was bishop for eight years, none of the
pastors will die of the plague. As a token of gratitude, the St. Gall instituted
the performance of prayers of thanksgiving with the participation of the
faithful, and in the middle of the fast he went with his faithful on a
pilgrimage to the church of the St. Martyr Julian of Brioude.36
Not only did the churches continue to open and the liturgical
ordinance fulfilled, but it was Emperor Justinian himself who, in order to
save Constantinople from the plague, amid growing popular piety toward
the Virgin Mary, moved the feast of the Presentation at the Temple of the
Lord from February 14 to February 2, celebrating with all pomp this feast
that was then dedicated to the Mother of God, as a day of cleansing the
Virgin 40 days after the birth of a male baby, according to the rules of the
old law.37
Also, on November 20, 543, the church of “St. Mary the New,”
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was consecrated in Jerusalem. Even before
the beginning of the seventh century, on November 21, the day after
consecration, the patron saint of the church was first celebrated; it became
widespread and entered the calendar of the Eastern Church.38 This is just
one of many churches dedicated to the Virgin that Emperor Justinian built
during his reign, so it is believed that the plague pandemic led to the
development of the cult of the Mother of God.39
The example of Emperor Justinian was not singular. In 590, when
another wave of the plague devastated Rome and “wreaked havoc on the
people,” bearing in mind the piety of Emperor Justinian toward the Mother
of God, Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) followed his example and
organized an impressive religious procession, in which all the Christians of
the city were called to participate:
36
37
Ene Braniște, Liturgica generală cu noțiuni de artă bisericească, arhitectură și pictură
creștină, 1, 3rd edition (Bucharest: Basilica, 2015), pp. 252-54; Meier, “The 'Justinianic
Plague',” p. 285.
38
Braniște, Liturgica generală, p. 291; Meier, “The 'Justinianic Plague',” p. 285.
39
Meier, “The 'Justinianic Plague',” p. 285.
296
Let the clergy go in procession from the church of the holy martyrs
Cosmas and Damian, with the priests of the sixth region. Let all the Abbots
with their monks process from the church of the holy martyrs Protasius and
Gervasius, with the priests of the fourth region. Let all the Abbesses and
their assembled nuns walk from the church of the holy martyrs Marcellinus
and Peter, with the priests of the first region. Let all the children go from
the church of the holy martyrs John and Paul, with the priests of the second
region. Let all the laymen go from the church of the protomartyr Stephen,
with the priests of the seventh region. Let all the widows go from the
church of St. Euphemia, with the priests of the fifth region. Let all the
married women go from the church of the holy martyr Clement, with the
priests of the third region. Let us all process with prayers and lamentations
from each of the churches thus appointed, to meet together at the basilica
of the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ.40
Based on these arguments, it was stated that during this period the
plague not only increased popular piety, but also led to the development of
the church cult dedicated to the Mother of God, with the Virgin thus
becoming the protector of the capital.41 Not only had the Virgin Mary
become, in this context, the protector of a city, but St. John the Baptist
became the protector of the town of Hems, in Palestine, after it was
bypassed by the plague as a result of the invocation of his help by all the
inhabitants.42
A church was built and consecrated in the midst of the plague,
between 542 and 543 in Arabia, in the town of Zora, dedicated to the Holy
Prophet Elijah.43
Finally, we must mention the development of the cult of holy icons
during and after the plague pandemic, as a result of miracles performed by
means of holy icons, such as the healing of the plague of St. Theodore of
Sykeon.44
40
Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks X, 15, Translated with an Introduction by
Lewis Thorpe (Penguin Books, 1974); Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs 2, X, 15,
p. 80.
41
42
Chronique de Michel le Grand, p. 194.
43
44
The Life of St. Theodore of Sykeon 8, in Three Byzantine Saints: Contemporary
Biographies of St. Daniel the Stylite, St. Theodore of Sykeon and St. John the Almgiver,
translated by Elizabeth A. S. Dawes, introductions and notes by Norman H. Baynea
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1948), complete digitized edition available at https://sourcebooks.
fordham.edu/basis/theodore-sykeon.asp (visit of May 24, 2020), s.p.; Meier, “The
'Justinianic Plague',” p. 286.
297
Faced with the dread of imminent death, believing at the time had
come for the fulfilment of Ezekiel's prophecy (9: 3-6), Christians in the
region of Auvergne, Gaul, marked their homes and churches with the sign
T(tau).45 In Constantinople, terrified by what was happening in the city and
convinced that they would soon die, even “those who in times past used to
take delight in devoting themselves to pursuit both shameful and base,
shook off the unrigtheouness of their daily lives and practiced the duties of
religion with diligence.”46 According to Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, in
those days some Christians saved their souls and won the Kingdom of
Heaven “in pain of tears by almsgiving and also by distributing their
possessions to the needy; (still) others by lament and humility, vigils,
abstinence and woeful calling upon God.”47 Therefore, some would have
multiplied and intensified daily prayers, invoking the help and intercession
of the Mother of God48 and the saints for deliverance from imminent danger.
They would have taken care of the Christian burial of those killed by the
plague and, last but not least, the research of churches49 while others would
only then remember all this. The faith of Christians has been put to the test,
some wondering why God allows such suffering, while others have fallen
into all sorts of superstitions, which then flourished among the weak in the
faith.50
Each time after the danger of death passed, those who before during
the plague had returned to God with faith and repentance, seeing that they
had been saved and were safe, “then they turned sharply about and reverted
once more to their baseness of hearts, and now, more than before, they make
a display of the inconsistency of their conduct, altogether surpassing
themselves in villainy and in lawlessness of every sort.”51
The “plague of Justinian” manifested itself in successive waves until
52
750, from China, India, and Persia, passing through Syria, Arabia, and
Egypt, descending south to Yemen, and ascending north to Scandinavia,
45
46
47
48
49
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxii, 11, p. 455; Denys
de Tell-Mahre, Chronique, IV, p. 34.
50
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxii, 11, p. 455;
Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, III, pp. 97-98.
51
Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, II, The Persian War, xxiii, 16 p. 471; Sfântul
Teofan Mărturisitorul, Cronografia, p. 237; Histoire nestorienne, II/1, p. 185.
52
Eisemberg and Mordechai, “The Justinianic Plague,” p. 160.
298
after sweeping Byzantium, Thrace, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Gaul, and
reaching as far as Ireland.53
2. The Black Death
The second pandemic began to spread in Europe at the end of 1347, entering
through the ports of Messina, Italy, and Marseilles, France. It was brought
by the crews of some ships that also passed through Caffa, where, during the
Mongol siege of 1344, they threw catapults over the walls of the fortress the
bodies of some of their comrades, killed by the plague.54 The new plague
pandemic hit Western Europe in successive waves until the eighteenth
century, after which it spread to the East, including the Romanian territories.
This pandemic, which swept Europe for five centuries, most often
accompanied by famines and wars, which contributed to its rapid spread,
produced a large number of victims, and influenced the life of society in all
its aspects. For Western Europe, the documents of the time “are, about the
plague, of extraordinary discretion,” the sources being very few and quite
vague, so that it seems that neither the large number of deaths, nor the
sudden death of those infested, nor the sinister images produced by the
effects of the plague impress the people of those days.55 In fact, those for the
Eastern Continent are no more numerous.
Given the paucity of sources, news about the religious life of
Christians and about the Church during this second pandemic are also
scarce. However, a fairly accurate picture can be drawn from the
fragmentary information, scattered in various contemporary documents, but
especially due to the epistles by which some Catholic bishops in England
arranged the church measures to be followed during the plague for God to
stop the scourge. From their epistles it is clear that the measures adopted by
St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, during the plague that struck Rome in
590 were also recommended during the second plague pandemic.
Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury strongly urged the monks and the
myrrh clergy, together with the heartfelt believers of Jesus, to come to
53
Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos, Famine and pestilence in the late Roman and early
Byzantine Empire: a systematic survey of subsistence crises and epidemics (Aldershot:
Aldershot, 2004), pp. 124-34; Eisemberg and Mordechai, “The Justinianic Plague,” p. 158;
Allen, “The 'Justinianic' Plague,” pp. 13-15.
54
Robert Fossier and Jacques Verger, Histoire du Moyen Age. 4 (XIIIe - XVe siècle)
(Brussels: Ed. Complexe, 2005), p. 15.
55
Fossier and Verger, Histoire du Moyen Age, p. 119; Jean-Noël Biraben and Jacques Le
Goff, “La Peste dans le Haut Moyen Age,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 24 (1969),
no. 6, Cambridge University Press, 1484-510, here 1494.
299
church to confess humbly, to sing psalms, and to perform almsgiving acts so
that God would have mercy on them not to punish the people with the
plague. He also ordered that processions be organized every Friday in every
parish, monastery, and Episcopal Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury
ordered the organization of processions not only on Fridays but also on
Wednesdays, and asked the suffragan bishops and their priests to perform
the Eucharistic Sacrifice daily, for which special services and prayers were
prepared against the plague. Pope Clement, in Avignon, also served a
special mass to remove the plague. Many Christians also addressed the
Virgin Mary to intercede before her Son for the cessation of the plague.56
Religious processions were also organized in Italian cities, with
statues of the Virgin or holy relics carried around the streets. As early as
1347, the year the plague broke out on the peninsula, the bishop of Messina
organized such a demonstration and, as he did not receive from Catania the
holy relics requested to carry them in procession through the depopulated
city, he carried in procession a vessel of water soaked with holy relics.57 The
Madonna of Impruneta was brought in procession to Florence no less than
four times until the end of the fourteenth century.58
The state of religious effervescence that appeared as a result of the
liturgical measures adopted by the Church authority, which involved a large
number of believers, also had consequences in terms of the religious life of
the laity. They organized themselves into confraternities associated with a
church or parish, but over time they entered a centrifugal movement that
removed them from the Catholic Church and even brought them into
conflict with it. In addition to the charitable fraternities, which dealt with the
help of the poor and their burial, and those of the singers of praise, who
prayed and sang in the churches, there appeared those of the flagellants,
who believed that by atoning for sins by self-flagellation they could
persuade God to remove the plague.59
Against the background of the lack of catechesis, millennial and
apocalyptic ideas began to manifest among the simple believers.60 Also,
against the background of the same lack of catechesis, as they saw how
many of their priests died of the plague in their midst, the vision of
56
The Black Death, translated and edited by Rosemary Horrox, Manchester Medieval
Sources series (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 112-124.
57
Charles Dejob, La foi religieuse en Italie au quatorzième siècle (Paris: Albert
Fontemoing, 1906), p. 381.
58
Dejob, La foi religieuse, p. 378.
59
Joseph Patrick Byrne, The Black Death (London: Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 77-78;
The Black Death, translated and edited by Rosemary Horrox, p. 150.
60
The Black Death, pp. 154-155.
300
fourteenth-century Catholic Christians about the role of the Church and its
ministers in keeping the human community under merciful protection of
God suffered, many experiencing a state of disappointment in the absence of
immediate effects of their devotional efforts. J.P. Byrne is of the opinion
that the “seeds” of Protestantism were thrown away even then and for this
reason.61 In fact, at the time there were many social movements directed
against the rich and powerful, preached by pseudo-prophets, although the
plague reaped both the rich and the poor.62
3. Black Death and Cholera in the Romanian Lands
Until 1840,63 the Romanian lands were hit by the plague no less than
fourteen times, the main vectors of the epidemic being the Turkish and
Tsarist armies involved in the Austro-Russian-Turkish war64 and trade on
the Danube. The suffering of the Romanian population caused by the plague
ended only after the end of this war through the peace of Adrianople, as a
result of which the Russian administration led by Pavel Kiseleff established
the sanitary cordon on the Danube.65 After 1830-1840, the plague
disappeared, but the cholera epidemic appeared, which would return in
waves until the First World War, causing as many victims as the plague.
Whether it was a plague or cholera, the picture created by these
contagious diseases was the same in the Romanian space as anywhere else
in Europe and in the world. Depopulated villages and fairs, misery, death,
bodies left unburied on city streets or torn and eaten by beasts when death
overtook those who had taken refuge in forests, stumps and convoys full of
the dead who were thrown into mass graves.66
In the Romanian territories, the authorities began to take measures to
prevent the spread of epidemics only at the end of the nineteenth century,
following the Habsburg model, thus ending the Ottoman fatalism that had
61
Byrne, The Black Death, p. 57.
62
Biraben and Le Goff, “La Peste,” p. 1498.
63
Mihaela Mehedinți and Cecilia Alina Sava, “Death as Statistics: Demographic Aspects of
Plague in the Romanian Area (18th – 19th Centuries),” Romanian Journal of Population
Studies 6 (2012), no. 2, 33-50, here 47; Emanuel Bălan, “Flagelul ciumei în istoria
Moldovei (secolele XV-XIX),” Carpica 48 (2019), 1-40, here 19-20.
64
Mehedinți and Sava, “Death as Statistics,” p. 40; Bălan, “Flagelul ciumei,” p. 15.
65
Mehedinți and Sava, “Death as Statistics,” p. 48; Bălan, “Flagelul ciumei,” pp. 16-17.
66
Ion Ghica, “Din vremea lui Caragea,” in Scrisori către Vasile Alexandri, edited by Radu
Gârmacea (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2014), pp. 58-60, complete digitized edition available at
https://humanitas.ro/assets/pdf/Ion-Ghica_Scrisori-catre-V-Alecsandri.pdf (visit of May 27,
2020); Mehedinți and Sava, “Death as Statistics,” p. 39; Bălan, “Flagelul ciumei,”
pp. 20-22.
301
influenced the mentality of Phanariot rulers until then, according to which
“who must die, not he can escape death.”67 Thus, those infested were either
isolated in their homes or were taken out of the localities and quarantined by
“fielding” for forty days, at the edge of the localities forming large
communities, called “lazarete,”68 or in the hermitages and monasteries
designated for their quarantine and treatment.69 Also, both in Moldavia and
in Muntenia, public gatherings and traffic on the streets were restricted,
especially during the night. To avoid interpersonal contact, stalls, cafes,
pubs, markets, schools, and churches were closed and the fairs were
cancelled.70
Sanitary measures were doubled in both principalities by the
adoption of church measures. During the plague of 1792, Prince Mihai Șuțu,
after ordering these measures, summoned the clergy from Bucharest and
decided together to organize a procession with the head of St. Vissarion, the
healer of the plague. After the holy relics were brought from the Dusca
hermitage of the Meteora monastery, processions were organized in 1792
and 1793.71 Ioan Gheorghe Caragea (1812-1818) organized a pilgrimage
during the plague of 1813 with the relics of St. Dimitrie Basarabov, which
were exhibited in Herăstrău for three days, to be honoured by the people of
Bucharest.72 Similar religious processions were organized in Moldavia.
Such a procession took place in Iași in 1796,73 probably with the relics of St.
Paraskeva, to remove the plague. This action was repeated in 1848, this time
against cholera. The inhabitants of Huși, terrified by the ravages of the
plague, brought in procession through the locality and through their houses
the icon of the Mother of God from the Florești Monastery.74
The authorities of the time appealed to the Church not only for the
organization of those religious processions, but also for the rich boyars and
merchants to donate funds to the quarantined or to provide some hermitages
67
Mehedinți and Sava, “Death as Statistics,” p. 35.
68
Ștefan Ionescu, Bucureștii în vremea fanarioților (Cluj: Dacia, 1974), p. 287.
69
Sorin Grigoruță, “Măsuri de prevenire a apariției și răspândirii epidemiilor de ciumă în
orașele Moldovei la începutul secolului al XIX-lea,” in Orașe vechi, orașe noi în spațiul
românesc. Societate, economie și civilizație urbană în prag de modernitate (secXVI –
jumătatea sec. XIX), edited by Laurențiu Rădvan, Historica (Iași: Editura Universității “Al.
I. Cuza” din Iași, 2014), pp. 175-192, here 179-180 and 184.
70
Grigoruță, “Măsuri de prevenire,” p. 184; Ionescu, Bucureștii, pp. 288-291; Ana-Maria
Lepăr, “Incendii, epidemii și calamități naturale în București (1774-1834),“ București.
Materiale de Istorie și Muzeografie 30 (2016), 292-305, here 299-300.
71
Lepăr, “Incendii, epidemii,” pp. 300-301.
72
Lepăr, “Incendii, epidemii,” p. 301.
73
Bălan, “Flagelul ciumei,” p. 10.
74
Bălan, “Flagelul ciumei,” pp. 25-26; Grigoruță, “Măsuri de prevenire,” p. 184.
302
and monasteries for the quarantine and treatment of the sick. Finally, the
priests were called to implement the sanitary preventive measures to be
taken by the authorities.75
During the plague of Ioan Caragea Vodă, through a document issued
by the ruler on July 1, they were obliged, together with the “swindlers of the
slums (neighborhood commissioners),” to ask about the health of all the
houses, and not only to ask, but also to inspect themselves closely every
day, reporting to the nobles (supervisors). By the same document, the ruler
asked the metropolitan to ask the priests to commit “Orthodox prayer in all
the slums and chapels, asking God to remove the disease.”76 The priest was
also the first to be notified of any case of illness in his parish and to notify
the doctor. As for the burial of someone who died of the plague, it had to be
done “without alms.”77 The measure obviously aimed to stop the spread of
the plague by preventing the gathering of several people at the memorial
service.
As the measures adopted on July 1 were not fully complied with and
the plague continued to cause many casualties, on August 18, 1813 Ioan
Caragea issued a new document with new measures and asked the
metropolitan to send them to the priests accompanied by a “curse book [...]
so that the people may decide to follow them.”78
Similar measures were taken by the Russian General Pavel Kisseleff
during the plague of 1829, probably inspired by those of Caragea, given
how similar they are. On November 26, he wrote a letter to Metropolitan
Neophyte of Ungrovlahia informing him that quarantine would begin on
December 15 and asking him to urge his priests, by that date, “to make it to
all the churches in slums pray with holy water and owe all the inhabitants by
oath” that they will not hide from the authorities sick or suspected of plague
nor goods touched by those sick or suspected of disease. The priests were
also obliged to explain to Christians the importance of quarantining the sick
and the oath they would take, as well as to inform them of the punishments
in case of violation of the imposed rules.79
At the same time, in both principalities, the authorities imposed
restrictive measures regarding the participation of Christians in church
75
Mehedinți and Sava, “Death as Statistics,” p. 45.
76
Ionescu, Bucureștii, p. 288; Gabriel Ciotoran, “Bucureștiul în timpul epidemiei de ciumă
din anul 1812,” București. Materiale de Istorie și Muzeografie 25 (2011), 21- 27, here
22-23.
77
Ciotoran, “Bucureștiul în timpul epidemiei,” p. 24.
78
Ciotoran, “Bucureștiul în timpul epidemiei,” p. 24.
79
Documente privitóre la Istoria Românilor, supl. I/IV (1802-1849), edited by Dimitrie
Alexandru Sturdza, Dimitrie C. Sturdza and Octavian Lugoșianu (Bucharest: Ministerul
Cultelor și Instrucțiunii publice/Academia Română, 1891), p. 337.
303
services. In Iași, the committee for “uprooting the sticky disease,” as the
plague was called, considered that the churches should be closed “so that the
people in distress do not interfere.” However, “in order not to touch the
divine service which must follow as before, and for the obedience of which
men may gather at the windows,” the faithful were allowed to come around
the churches on condition that they stand “far from one another.”80 Instead,
in Bucharest the liturgical service was allowed only in monasteries, without
the participation of people from Bucharest in services.81 The measures taken
during the plague of 1829 by Russian General Pavel Kisseleff went as far as
to disinfect the icons by spraying them with water, ventilating clothes and
churches, and smoking cult books.82
In Romania, the second decade of the twentieth century was marked
by the cholera epidemic and the typhus epidemic, the first coming from
Russia, the second caused by the miserable living conditions and the
shortages of all kinds endured both by the civilian population, as well as by
soldiers during the First World War. And during this period, all the more so
as the health system developed compared to the situation of the previous
century, the civil and health authorities took a series of measures to prevent
the spread of the two epidemics. As in the previous century, the Church,
through parish priests, was called to help implement these measures in areas
affected by epidemics. It was also called to adopt its own measures so that
specific liturgical services could not be suspected by health officials that
they are ways of transmitting and spreading epidemics.
The Church's partnership with the civil authorities in stopping the
epidemics of that period, as well as the Church's own adopted measures, are
eloquently illustrated by internal documents kept in church archives. Five
such documents, kept in the church archives “Sf. M. Mc. Gheorghe” [St.
George] from Brăila, are edifying in this regard. In a circular note dated
January 20, 1910, archpriest Anghel Constantinescu reminded the priests
from the deanery of Brăila the Order no. 88 of the Diocese of the Lower
Danube, which specified that in the case of the communion of holy
Eucharist at the homes of cholera patients, the teaspoon used should be
requested from the family and, after the communion of the holy Eucharist,
“destroyed.” By Order no. 1011, of June 5, 1910, and Order no. 23, of
February 11, 1911, some changes were made in the case of sharing holy the
Eucharist with the sick at home. The priest could offer Communion to a sick
80
Grigoruță, “Măsuri de prevenire,” p. 184, note 57.
81
Lepăr, “Incendii, epidemii,” p. 302.
82
Mehedinți and Sava, “Death as Statistics,” p. 45; Constantin Erbiceanu, “Note asupra
Istoriei Bisericești a Românilor pentru secolul al XIX-lea,” Biserica Ortodoxă Română 28
(1905), no. 10, 1371-1372, here 1372.
304
person only at the request of the family, to “give the last religious
consolations,” and the teaspoon had to be disinfected by soaking it in a bowl
of clean alcohol and then burning it over a candle flame until the alcohol
was consumed, after which it had to be wiped well with a pall. It is also
recommended that if several people were to share the holy Eucharist, “two
or more teaspoons” be used and then disinfected by the same method. In
turn, the priest had to disinfect his clothes with “concentrated phenolic
acid.”83
The measures ordered by Bishop Nifon Niculescu (1909-1922), the
Diocesan of the Lower Danube at that time, in the case of Holy Communion
aimed at avoiding “repeated conflicts that arise between doctors, during the
application of prophylactic measures against contagious diseases, and
between priests, during the fulfilment of the religious duties toward the
contaminated patients,” sometimes resulted in the summoning of the priest
by the mesh doctors.84
Beyond these conflicts, the priests, as a result of the spiritual
authority they had over their parishioners, were obliged, through sermons
and private counsel, to carry out a minimum of their sanitary education,
enabling them to boil drinking water, to not eat unprepared fruits and
vegetables, to keep their bodies, houses, and yards “in the most perfect state
of cleanliness.”85 The hierarch of the Lower Danube linked the fulfilment
“with holiness” by Christians of the advice and orders given by doctors to
the conscience of their good Christians, which had to be proved precisely by
following these measures, to “receive the blessing of God, who will spare
them this ruthless plague.”86
Finally, the Diocesan of the Lower Danube conveyed to his
archpriests and priests that they will deserve even more his trust and
blessing “if you work hand in hand and equally with the administration and
the health service to apply prophylactic measures.”87
The mission of the clergy in areas at risk of epidemic contagion to
achieve the health education of the believers they pastored remained a
83
Parish Fund “St. M. Mc. Gheorghe,” Brăila, File no. 52 / 1910-1914, Circular Order no.
26/20 January 1910, Circular Order no. 701/5 June 1910, Circular Order no. 11/11
February 1911, s.p.
84
701/5 June 1910, s.p.
85
827/14 July 1910, Circular Order no. 576/5 September 1911 s.p.
86
576/5 September 1911 s.p.
87
576/5 September 1911 s.p.
305
continuous duty in the second decade of the twentieth century. By Circular
Order 9/1918, Bishop Dionysius of Buzău renewed this duty and ordered
that priests, especially those in rural areas, where doctors were often absent
or difficult to reach, take the necessary measures “to combat contagious
diseases.”88
Therefore, the epidemics of cholera and typhus did not greatly affect
the liturgical activity of the churches, which, were always open for the
celebration of the Holy Liturgy and other holy services, but at least in the
Archdiocese of Brăila, in full epidemic and under German occupation,
choirs of pupils were set up to beautify the liturgical service. Such choirs
were established in each parish, and the results were felt immediately, as
Nicolae Petrovici testifies in his memoirs, which noted that “churches were
very crowded,” and “church songs were like a consolation of souls in the
misfortunes of that time, and as a hope for a better future.”89
4. The pandemic caused by the SARS-Cov virus 2
Much worse than the cholera epidemic and the typhoid fever mentioned
above, was the bird flu pandemic, known as the “Spanish” flu, which was
estimated to have killed between 17.5 and 50 million people in 1918-1919.
Since then, humanity has faced six more pandemic episodes, the last two of
which, SARS, in 2000-2003, and MERS, in 2012-2019, have been like
warnings about the current SARS-Cov 2 pandemic, as they were caused by
viruses from the same coronavirus family.90
Like the plague pandemics we referred to in this study, it also caused
the same sinister and frightening picture of the frighteningly high number of
dead, some actually falling on the street, as during the plague, of the
extremely large number of infested and sufferers of the covid-19 virus, a
picture amplified by the media. In fact, if in previous times panic and fear
were first caused by rumors and then by the evidence of abandoned dead on
the streets and convoys passing to mass graves, now fear has been
propagated and maintained at high altitudes, to determine the population to
comply with the quarantine imposed by the authorities, by the media,
especially by television stations. It was, from this point of view, a televised
pandemic.
88
Brăila Deanery Fund, File 1/1918, P. 2, tab 385.
89
Nicolae Petrovici, Brăila sub ocupațiune, 23 decembrie 1916 – 10 noiembrie 1918
(Brăila: Tipografia Română, 1939), p. 170.
90
An extremely enlightening presentation of the pandemics of the last century, at the
Mihalache, “CoVid-19, SARS, MERS,” pp. 56-62.
306
As in the past, measures of quarantine, isolation, social distancing,
limited closure of non-essential activities, which involved the agglomeration
of a large number of people, have had negative effects on almost all walks
of life of pandemic societies, including that of church life. However, unlike
previous pandemic periods in which, as evidenced by the documents of the
time, the Church was a close partner of the State throughout Europe,
working together, each by virtue of its authority, to stop the spread of the
contagion and the common good of the population, this time the civil
authorities not only acted alone, by virtue of the separation of the State from
the Church, but adopted measures concerning church life, and even
liturgical life, without prior consultation of the Church. Perhaps this is why
some of the measures taken by European states to stop the spread of the
virus have been unprecedented to church life.
The liturgical rhythm of church life suffered all the more as the
months of quarantine and isolation coincided with the periods of Lent, Holy
Week, and much of the time before the Ascension, both for Orthodox
Christians and for the Catholics and Protestants. For the latter, it seems that
the ban on physical participation in services has been easier to accept, due to
the frighteningly high number of victims in Western states, be it Italy,
Spain, France, England, Germany, Sweden, to list the most affected, which
induced a state of “despair, deep pain,”91 as a result of the installation of a
state of deep secularization and desecration. This last reality reduced the
feast of the Resurrection for most Catholics to the papal blessing “Urbi et
orbi,” which “is sometimes ridiculed because it is an official forgiveness of
sins,”92 and for Protestants, as well as for Catholics, and even for many
Orthodox, at the “traditional reunion of the whole family,”93 in free time for
relaxation and fun.94 Even so, for the priests and pastors of these
denominations, the week of Christ's sufferings and the Resurrection were
unusual and unreal because of the prohibition of their believers'
participation in services. Even though the services and sermons were
broadcast online, often being recorded two or three days before the holiday
itself, and not live, they lacked interaction with the faithful and their
reactions.95
91
Christoph Starck, Comentariu: Religie și reculegere în vreme de corona, DW.COM,
April 11, 2020, available at https://www.dw.com/ro/comentariu-religie-reculegere-în-
vreme-de-corona/a-53095812 (visit of May 29, 2020), s.p.
92
Starck, Comentariu, s.p.
93
Medana Weident, Germania: Sărbători neobișnuite de Paști, DW.COM, April 10, 2020,
available at https://www.dw.com/ro/germania-sărbători-neobinuite-de-paști/a-53089281
(visit of May 29, 2020), s.p.
94
Starck, Comentariu, s.p.
95
Weident, Germania, s.p.
307
In the Orthodox space, however, the closure of churches was much
more difficult to accept by believers, especially by practitioners, this action
of governments being received by many in an antichrist and apocalyptic
key. Looking back at the history of pandemics, we see that this key to
understanding pandemics, on the part of Christians, is recurring, however.
Unlike the previous pandemic waves, when the civil authorities did not
establish official measures to prevent the spread of plagues, or these
measures were minimal and applied with the help of the Church, today,
these measures, extremely drastic in some cases, were perceived from the
same antichrist and apocalyptic perspective,96 as the implementation of anti-
Christian conspiracy scenarios of the Judeo-Masonic World Occult. The
Internet, which was also used in the Orthodox East to broadcast live services
throughout the period of isolation, abounded in conspiracy theories,
arguments and scenarios. The Church itself, in its hierarchical part, has been
accused of apostasy, of betrayal of Christ, on the background of a chronic
lack of catechesis of its faithful, a catechesis that would have helped them to
understand correctly the Church's position on government measures and not
fall prey to manipulation. The enlightening explanations brought by
orthodox theologians97 of high intellectual, moral, and spiritual standing, by
which this theory was dismantled with theological and scientific arguments,
unfortunately remained without echo among the believers caught in the
social media trap, the place where these are promoted scenarios.
As in the West, in the East the liturgical service was limited too,
going from the total closure of churches, by banning any services, as in
Greece, to banning the participation of believers in services, which were
performed only by worshipers, as in most Orthodox states, including
Romania. Exceptions were the governments of Bulgaria, which allowed the
Resurrection to take place outside places of worship, with respect for social
distance, and Georgia, where churches were not closed, the responsibility
for observing social and sanitary measures ordered by the government
96
See, in this sense, Panagiotis Christias, Lìnstitution du Bien dans la philosophie de
Platon et dans la prédication de saint Paul. Le mystère katéchontique et la constitution du
corps politique. Enquête sur les raports entre la République, la seconde aux
Thessalociniens 2, 1-12 et la première aux Corinthiens 12-13, Thèse pour lòbtention du
grade de docteur de lÙniversité Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris, 2010), complete
digitized edition available at
https://www.academia.edu/4600514/Plato_and_Saint_Paul._Who_is_the_katechon_Le_my
stère_katéchontique_et_la_constitution_du_corps_politique._Enquête_sur_les_rapports_ent
re_la_République_la_seconde_aux_Thessaloniciens_2_1-
12_et_la_première_aux_Corinthiens_12-13?email_work_card=view-paper (visit of June
01, 2020).
97
Mihalache, “CoVid-19, SARS, MERS,” pp. 53-56 and 77-78; Larchet, “Lòrigine,” s.p .
308
resting with the faithful. If the situation in Georgia is explained by the
statement of the Georgian Prime Minister, according to whom the
Resurrection is “an existential theme – both for the government and for the
Church,”98 the one in Bulgaria is explained by the very small number of
Bulgarian believers who still take part in the liturgical life service of the
Church, even on a feast as great as the Resurrection.
In Romania, although the liturgical ordinance on the night of the
Resurrection was performed without the presence of the faithful, they
received, through a voluntary action that covered the entire territory of the
country, both the Holy Light, brought on Holy Saturday from the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as well as feed or easter, as the blessed bread that is
distributed at the end of the Holy Liturgy that night is called. In Greece, as it
could not be celebrated according to the calendar due to the isolation of the
population and the closure of churches, the feast of the Resurrection was
celebrated on the leave-taking feast day.
In Romania, on the other hand, the service in the place of worship of
the Holy Sacrament of Baptism and of the Wedding, as well as of the
funeral service, in certain cases, with strict observance of certain conditions,
was allowed. Participation was reduced to eight people in a first stage,
during isolation, and then to sixteen people, in a second stage. In the case of
burial, when there was no case of death due to the virus, the service could be
performed in the church or, if possible, in a mortuary chapel or even in front
of the church.99 When the death was caused by the virus, the service was
performed exclusively in the cemetery, in compliance with the rules ordered
by the health authorities. We also find these measures in other countries,100
as evidenced by the fact that the relevant authorities in the European
countries have consulted with each other and adopted similar measures.
After a period of almost three months of isolation, the participation
of the faithful in the Holy Liturgy was allowed, but performed in the open
air, not in the church, observing the rules of hygiene and social distancing,
the faithful having to keep a distance of 2 meters between them.
If the closure of churches for the participation of believers in
services has precedent, at least in Romania, although during the plague
epidemics of 1813 and 1829 the closure was limited only to Bucharest and
98
Miodrag Soric, Sărbătoriea Paștelui ortodox, în plină criză coronavirus, DW.COM,
April 17, 2020, available at https://www.dw.com/ro/sărbătorirea-paștelui-ortodox-în-plină-
criză-coronavirus/a-53159687 (visit of May 19, 2020), s.p.
99
*** Church guidelines for the alert state, Ziarul lumina, May 14, 2020, s.p.
100
Medana Weident, Să evităm o suprainterpretare a crizei, DW.COM, April 13, 2020,
available at https://www.dw.com/ro/să-evităm-o-suprainterpretare-a-crizei/a-53105913
(visit of May 29, 2020), s.p.
309
the cities affected by the plague, and only to myrrh churches, the closure of
cemeteries was an unprecedented decision and difficult to understand.
And yet, as a sociologist of religion concluded in an analysis of the
reaction of the Romanian Orthodox Church during the pandemic, “the
Church has done what she knows best, with the means at her disposal for
centuries,” so that even during this pandemic the holy relics were taken in
procession through the deserted streets, brought to the hospital courtyard to
strengthen the faith and hope of God's help for both medical staff and the
sick, thus taking the risk of appearing “radically anti-modern” and
“completely out of phase” in the eyes of those who have lost the mystery of
faith.101
4.1. The dispute over the common Eucharistic teaspoon
By far, the most delicate situation during the pandemic for the Orthodox
Churches has been not the closure of churches, or cemeteries, or the
limitations on the celebration of Holy Sacraments or funerals, but the issue
of communion for believers with the same teaspoon at the Holy Liturgy.102
Public health authorities, some doctors, especially epidemiologists and
infectionists, have called for a law banning the use of the same teaspoon for
communion to believers, such as the traditional practice of the Orthodox
Church,103 and the use of disposable spoons. Against the background of the
panic created by the apocalyptic news presented by the media and the
extremely high contagiousness of the covid-19 virus, the Eucharistic
teaspoon has become a safe factor for the unbelievers or non-believers to
spread the virus, so the reactions of supporters of this approach, extremely
vocal and with free access to media channels, went viral. A real hunt began
for the servants who used the same teaspoon in the communion of believers,
going so far as to file criminal complaints against them under the accusation
of thwarting the fight against the spread of the virus.
101
Mirel Bănică, Biserica Ortodoxă Română la vreme de molimă. Inventar de etapă,
available at http://www.contributors.ro/cultura/biserica-ortodoxa-romana-la-vreme-de-
molima-inventar-de-etapa/ (visit of June 10, 2020), s.p.
102
According to Jean-Claude Larchet, Viața liturgică [La vie liturgique], translated into
Romanian by Felicia Dumas (Iași: Doxologia, 2017), p. 501, which refers to Saint Simeon
of Thessalonica, the communion with the teaspoon was introduced in the Orthodox Church
to avoid the cases of removing the Holy Eucharist from the church and using it for magical
purposes.
103
For the tradition of using the single teaspoon in the communion of believers in the
Orthodox Church see Robert F. Taft, “Byzantine Communion Spoons: A Review of the
Evidence,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996), 209-38; also useful: Petru Pruteanu,
Liturghia Ortodoxă. Istorie și actualitate (Bucharest: Sophia, 2013), pp. 349-52.
310
“In order to overcome polarizations and controversies that weaken
Orthodox unity,” the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church showed
that “the Holy Eucharist is not and can never be a source of sickness and
death, but a source of new life in Christ, of forgiveness of sins, of healing
the soul and the body,” reason for which “the rule of the communion of the
clergy and the faithful of the same Holy Chalice remains unchanged.”104
A similar position was expressed by the members of the synod of the
Hellenic Orthodox Church, who stated that:
Coming to the Divine Eucharist and sharing in the Public Chalice of Life
cannot become the cause of the transmission of diseases. [...] Any
suspicion regarding the transmission of diseases through the Divine
Eucharist is reprehensible, as it affects the Dogmatic Truth, the Apostolic
Faith and the Tradition of the Church. [...] Also, under the given
conditions, any discussion about the administration of the Divine
Communion is inopportune, without discernment, it does not build, and
therefore it is unacceptable.105
The problem is not entirely new, however. Archive documents

clearly show that the communion of the holy Eucharist with the same
teaspoon sparked disputes between doctors and priests a century ago, during
the cholera epidemic, but it was only raised in the context of communion of
the cholera sick with the holy Eucharist at home. Then, the measures
ordered by the church authority went from destroying the teaspoon to
disinfecting it after each communion, by passing it through alcohol and then
by fire, or even using two or more teaspoons alternately and disinfecting
them by the same method.106 Those measures seem to have been inspired by
the work of the Russian liturgist S. V. Bulgakov who summarizes the
practice of the Russian Orthodox Church, since this Church resumed these
recommendations in the case of the covid-19 pandemic.107 This practice,
104
Daniel [Ciobotea], “Cuvânt pastoral pentru întărirea în credință și în comuniunea
euharistică,” Ziarul Lumina February 28, 2020, available at https://ziarullumina.ro/
actualitate-religioasa/cuvant-pastoral-pentru-intarirea-in-credinta-si-in-comuniune-
euharistica-152320.html (visit of May 29, 2020), s.p.
105
Η Ιερά Σύνοδος της Εκκλησίας της Ελλάδος, Εγκύκλιος 3016, 6, pp. 4-5, available at
http://www.ecclesia.gr/greek/holysynod/egyklioi/711_02042020.pdf (visit of June 01,
2020).
106
26/20 January 1910, Circular Order no. 701/5 June 1910, Circular Order no. 11/11
February 1911, s.p.
107
Russkaja Pravοslavnaja Cerkοvʺ, Instructions to the priors of the parishes and parishes,
the hegumen and the abbess of the monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church in
connection with the threat of the spread of coronavirus infection (Concerning the
Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Crist, 1), available at http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/
311
however, has a canonical basis in St. Nicodemus Aghioritus' commentary on
canon 28 of the Quinisext Council (Council in Trullo) in Constantinople,
from 691-692. According to St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite,
Priests and bishops must, in time of plague, use the way to share the sick
with holy Eucharist that do not violate this canon, by putting the Holy
Body in raisins108, but in some holy vessel, and from there to take it, or
beaks, or the sick, with the teaspoon. Then the vessel with the teaspoon
should be placed in vinegar, and the vinegar should be poured where the
priests are washed after the Holy Liturgy, or in any way it could, more
harmless and canonical.109
Corroborating the meeting of the Quinisext Council, during the first

plague pandemic, with the provisions of this canon and those of canon
101110 adopted at the same synod, as well as with the commentary of St.
text/5608607.htmlsauhttps://mospatusa.com/news_200318_1 (visit of June 01, 2020), s.p.;

Petru Pruteanu, Împărtășirea cu o singură linguriță în vreme de epidemie, available at
https://www.teologie.net/2020/03/17/impartasire-lingurita-epidemie/ (visit of June 01,
2020), s.p.
108
Canon 28 of the Quinisext Council (Council in Trullo) provides: “Since we understand
that in several churches grapes are brought to the altar, according to a custom which has
long prevailed, and the ministers joined this with the unbloody sacrifice of the oblation, and
distributed both to the people at the same time, we decree that no priest shall do this for the
future, but shall administer the oblation alone to the people for the quickening of their souls
and for the remission of their sins […]” The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided
Church. Their Canons and Dogmatic Decrees, Together with the Canons of All the Local
Synods which have Received Ecumenical Acceptance, edited with notes gathered from the
writings of the greatest scholars by Philip Schaff and Henry R. Percival, Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series II, vol. 14 (Massachusetts: Hendrickson
Publishers, 1995), p. 378, available at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.
xiv.iii.xxix.html (visit of September 16, 2020); *** Canoanele Bisericii Ortodoxe. 1.
Canoanele Apostolice și Canoanele Sinoadelor Ecumenice, translated into Romanian by
Răzvan Perșa (Bucharest: Basilica, 2018), p. 287.
109
Sfântul Nicodim Aghioritul [St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite], Pidalion sau Cârma Bisericii
Ortodoxe [Pedalion], edited by Neofit Scriban (Neamț: Tipografia Sfintei Mănăstiri
Neamțul, 1844), p. 208, nota 189, complete digitized edition available at
https://www.mirem.ro/pdf/pidalionul.pdf (visit of June 10, 2020).
110
Canon 101 of the Quinisext Council states the following: “[…] Wherefore, if any one
wishes to be a participator of the immaculate Body in the time of the Synaxis, and to offer
himself for the communion, let him draw near, arranging his hands in the form of a cross,
and so let him receive the communion of grace. But such as, instead of their hands, make
vessels of gold or other materials for the reception of the divine gift, and by these receive
the immaculate communion, we by no means allow to come, as preferring inanimate and
inferior matter to the image of God. But if any one shall be found imparting the
immaculate Communion to those who bring vessels of this kind, let him be cut off as well
as the one who brings them.” The Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 407-408, available at
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.iii.cii.html (visit of September 16, 2020); ***
Canoanele Bisericii Ortodoxe, p. 331.
312
Nicodemus the Hagiorite, we can speculate that after the outbreak of
“Justinian’s plague,” due to the high degree of contagiousness of the
disease, in some local churches the faithful no longer shared the holy
Eucharist like priests, receiving the Holy Body in the palm of their hand and
then drinking the Holy Blood from the Holy Chalice, but was probably
chosen as the Holy Blood to be offered to them in a grape seed to avoid
their contact with the Holy Chalice. Canon 28 of the Quinisext Council
stopped this practice, without offering an alternative for the communion of
the contagious, an alternative recommended by St. Nicodemus the
Hagiorite, who stated, after twelve centuries, how to proceed, “more
harmless and canonical,” regarding the sharing of believers during
contagious epidemics.
The question of the possibility of transmitting diseases to believers
by Holy Communion with a single teaspoon was raised in Greece a decade
ago, during the N1H1 bird flu pandemic. At that time, Bishop Nicholas
Hatzinikolaou, in his dual capacity as a hierarch and former researcher in
biomedicine at Harvard, stated that
for centuries believers, healthy and sick, have received Holy Communion
from the same Holy Chalice and the same teaspoon, which we never wash
and disinfect without anything happening. Charitable priests in hospitals,
where the most contagious diseases are treated, share the sick and consume
the Holy Sacraments that remain pious at the end and live for many years.
Holy Communion represents what is most sacred to the Church and to
people, the strongest doctorate for soul and body, and this is the teaching
and experience of our Church.111
The statement of Bishop Nicholas Hatzinikolaou, who is the faith

and conviction of the entire Orthodox Church, cannot be denied or
contradicted even by the scientific studies carried out by researchers on the
cup from which several believers have the Holy Communion. Such research
has been conducted over twenty years by the Centres for Disease Control
and Prevention in the United States, which concluded that “no documented
transmission of any infectious disease has ever been identified as a result of
the use of the common cup of communion.” The consensual conclusion of
the National Centre for Infectious Diseases and the National Centre for
Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and
Tuberculosis is that “there is a theoretical risk of transmitting infectious
diseases through the common cup, but the risk is so low that it is
undetectable.” Research reporters showed that, following an experimental
111
Larchet, Viața liturgică, p. 502, note 764.
313
study of 681 Christians who shared the same chalice over the course of a
year, “people who received daily Communion were not exposed to a higher
risk of infection with those who did not share or with those who do not
attend church at all.”112
Therefore, most of those who called for a ban on receiving the Holy
Eucharist from the same cup and the same teaspoon and the adoption of
receiving the Holy Eucharist in glasses and disposable teaspoons did so
either out of ignorance of research on the transmission of infectious diseases
through the common cup, which it is unforgivable in the case of infectious
disease physicians and epidemiologists, either out of gratuitous malice,
which is understandable on the part of neo-Marxist activists, who have
made a point of attacking the Orthodox Church.
Ignoring the latter, it must be emphasized, in the case of the former,
the exclusively rational-scientific approach of a spiritual reality related to
the mystery of faith. The drill lockdown minds, as Bishop Ignatius of
Huși113 called those with inflexible thinking, confined exclusively and
irremediably in the rationality of science, came to practice a sanitary
totalitarianism based on the dictatorship of aseptic hygiene to save human
biological life, totalitarianism he wanted to impose it with the authority of
civil law, including in the liturgical life of the Church, even in violation of
the principle, so often invoked elsewhere, of the separation of the State from
the Church.
For the Church, which understands to make its believers aware that
life and bodily health are gifts of God that must be cherished and preserved,
including by observing the norms of bodily hygiene and keeping physical
distance, is much more important the purity and health of the spiritual life of
the Christian through which eternal life is gained, and the purity and health
of the spiritual life in the acquisition of eternal life in the Kingdom of
Heaven presupposes, without a doubt, communion with the Holy Body and
Blood of Christ the Savior (John 6: 53-54). And communion, without
absolutizing or idolizing the teaspoon, and except in special cases, for
which, as we have seen, the Church has provided special ordinances, is
offered to the faithful, according to the centuries-old tradition of the Church,
with the common teaspoon of the common Holy Chalice.
112
Lilia P. Manangan, Lynne M. Sehulster, Linda Chiarello, Dawn N. Simonds and
William R. Jarvis, “Risk of Infectious Disease Transmission from a Common Communion
Cup,” American Journal of Infection Control 26 (1998), no. 5, 538-39; James Pellerin,
Michael B. Edmond, “Infections associated with religious rituals,” International Journal of
Infectious Diseases 17 (2013), e945-e948, here e947.
113
Ignatie [Trif], Mințile “drill lockdown” din epoca de aur a despotismului sanitar, s.p.,
complete digitized edition available at https://www.marginaliaetc.ro/parintele-episcop-
ignatie-al-husilor-mintile-drill-lockdown-din-epoca-de-aur-a-despotismului-sanitar/ (visit
of June 10, 2020).
314
Beyond the attacks on the Orthodox Church and its liturgical
practice related to the common communion of believers, even if, according
to the communiqué of the Romanian Orthodox Church, for example, “the
way of common communion of believers during the Holy Liturgy, during a
pandemic, will be determined [...] in consensus with the other Orthodox
Churches,”114 in the parish practice, the faithful, from the newly baptized
children to the older ones, were further divided from a single chalice, with a
single teaspoon. This fact proves that in the souls of practicing Christians, of
faithful parents, faith and trust in Christ, the Lord of Life, prevailed, and not
the doubt or irrational fear of illness with which they were threatened every
night on television.
Conclusions
The pandemic caused by the Sars-CoV 2 virus was not, and certainly will
not be, the only one that the Church will have to face with its faithful.
Looking diachronically and analyzing the information provided by the cited
sources, it is easy to notice some constants regarding the reaction of the
Church and Christians to these pandemics.
The first conclusion to be drawn is that most Christians have seen in
these pandemics, as in all catastrophic events that have caused destruction,
suffering and death, God's punishment for the sins of men.
In front of the danger of an “announced death,” Christians
understood that they must isolate themselves in their homes and avoid
contact with others, in the time of Emperor Justinian on their own initiative,
at the same time by the effect of state laws, to avoid contamination,
suffering and death. In isolation, many rediscovered their Christian qualities
and intensified their spiritual lives, increasing their prayers, fasts, and vigils.
Another part put into practice the philanthropic work, caring for the sick and
burying the dead, even at the cost of their lives, which was done by some
holy servants of the holy altars, today as before.
Isolation emphasized the spiritual need of communion with the
members of the family of the little one, but also of the big one, which is the
Church, and reminded the man tempted to self-determine how fragile his
earthly existence is and how powerless and ignorant he is when creation,
which he does not regard as a gift from God, revolts against him. Hence the
fear and dread that, each time during these pandemics, led to the emergence
and spread of apocalyptic scenarios. Unlike in the past, however, they are
114
*** “Îndrumări bisericești pentru starea de alertă,” Ziarul Lumina May 09, 2020, s.p.,
complete digitized edition available at https://ziarullumina.ro/actualitate-religioasa/
indrumari-bisericesti-pentru-starea-de-alerta-154118.html (visit of June 10, 2020).
315
supported today by countless conspiracy scenarios that predict the coming
of the antichrist.
The Church, in turn, multiplied the prayers and processions with the
holy relics, which invoked God's mercy to stop the plagues. If in the past
many Christians participated in these holy works of the Church, preferring
to endanger their bodily life than the inheritance of eternal life, in the
contemporary age they could no longer participate. Instead, on the routes
that the holy relics were carried in procession in the speed of trucks, they
were greeted from the gates of houses or from the balconies of blocks of
flats or in the courtyards of Christian hospitals, which accompanied them
with their prayers and worship.
Also, the Holy Liturgy never ceased to be celebrated in churches
during pandemics, even if in modern times it was celebrated without the
participation of the faithful, their access to places of worship being
prohibited by law. However, those who wished to receive the Holy
Eucharist distributed at home, the elderly and the sick, or even at church,
after the State allowed the celebration of the Holy Liturgy with the
participation of the faithful outside the place of worship. Even the
imposition of the Holy Liturgy outside, in the open air, is not exactly a
novelty for the Church, although for the modern world it seems a new thing.
The church relived, in a way, the times of persecution by heretics,
mentioned by St. Basil the Great.115
On the positive side, the celebration of the Holy Mass in the open air
gave all believers the chance to see the entire liturgical work of the priest,
which was otherwise performed behind the iconostasis, bringing them closer
to the Holy Altar and the Holy Liturgy, and helping them understand the
Holy Mystery of the Eucharist. For this situation, it is worth noting the
remark of a doctor, a practicing Christian, who does not hesitate to receive
the Holy Eucharist with the same teaspoon as his wife and their three
children, who stated: “They took us out of the church to put us all in the
Holy Altar.”
Related to the Holy Eucharist, we must also note the constant
concern of the Church, since the time of the “plague of Justinian,” to
identify and regulate the synod the most “harmless and canonical” way of
sharing the Holy Eucharist to the faithful during the manifestation of
diseases with a high degree of contagion, such as plague, cholera or the new
coronavirus. The Church, therefore, never absolutized the teaspoon or any
115
Sfântul Vasile cel Mare [Saint Basil the Great], Epistola [Letter] 242, II, in Sfântul
Vasile cel Mare, Scrieri. 3. Despre Sfântul Duh. Corespondență (Epistole), translated into
Romanian by Constantin Cornițescu and Teodor Bodogae, Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești, 12
(Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1988),
p. 501.
316
other method of sharing the Holy Eucharist with the faithful, but always
sought to respond canonically and synodally to the challenges in its life at a
certain historical moment, obviously taking into account its centuries-old
traditions.
However, the Church's concern to identify the most appropriate and
canonical way to offer the holy Eucharist to the faithful does not come from
the fear that the Holy Eucharist or the teaspoon could be vectors of
transmission of the disease, but to limit the contact of holy ministers with
already sick believers so that the priests do not become infected and do not
transmit the disease to other believers they come into contact with. In fact,
if, according to the word of the Savior Jesus Christ, those who believe in
Him, “if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them” (Mark
16: 18), the Holy Eucharist will harm them less since it is His Holy Body
and Blood. Therefore, the source of eternal life and the medicine of
immortality cannot be the cause of any illness for those who share faithfully
and worthily.
Finally, it should be noted that the Church was, and remains, today
as yesterday, the most important social partner of the State. This is the case
even though today the State no longer views the Church in this way, both in
implementing measures to prevent the spread of epidemics, Christians
listening to the voice of their pastors when they asked them to respect the
measures of civil authorities, as well as in philanthropic work, addressed not
only to Christians in crisis, but also to hospitals or other social institutions
of the State. Even those who have no sympathy for the Church have had to
acknowledge its consistent contribution to supporting the effort to combat
the effects of the health and social crisis.116
116
Raluca Ionescu-Heroiu, “Implicarea BOR în limitarea efectelor pandemiei: cărți de
rugăciuni, suport moral și sprijin material pentru cei afectați de coronavirus,” #Neimplicăm
Știrile Zilei March 27, 2020, s.p., complete digitized edition available at
https://mainnews.ro/implicarea-bor-in-limitarea-efectelor-pandemiei-carti-de-rugaciuni-
suport-moral-si-sprijin-material-pentru-cei-afectati-de-coronavirus/?cn-reloaded=1 (visit of
June 15, 2020); Redacția Observator, Biserica Ortodoxă Română, ajutor penru spitale în
lupta cu coronavirusul, March 28, 2020, s.p., digitized edition available at
https://observatornews.ro/social/biserica-ortodoxa-ajutor-spitale-352060.html (visit of June
15, 2020); Mihai Călin, “Bisericile donează peste 4 milioane de lei celor afectați de
coronavirus,” Adevărul March 31, 2020, s.p., complete digitized edition available at
https://adevarul.ro/news/societate/patriarhia-ajuta-cei-afectati-pandemia-covid-19-
1_5e82d90a5163ec427153cfbd/index.html (visit of June 15, 2020); Adrian Pătrușcă,
“Pălmuită și scuipată, Biserica a ajutat țara în pandemie cu aproape 4 milioane de euro,”
evz.ro May 14, 2020, s.p., complete digitized edition available at https://evz.ro/palmuita-si-
scuipata-biserica-a-ajutat-tara-in-pandemie-cu-aproape-4-milioane-de-europalmuita-si-
scuipata-in-pandemie-biserica-a-ajutat-tara-cu-aproape-4-milioane-de-euro.html (visit of
June 15, 2020).
317

The Church and Religious Life of Christians in Pandemic Time

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Proceedings of the International

November 17-18, 2020

Rev. Professor Nicușor TUCĂ

This book contains abstracts and complete papers approved by the

November 17-18, 2020

Reviewers: Rev. Ass.-Prof. Dr. Constantin-Claudiu Cotan

Editor-in-chief: Gheorghe Iovan

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României

I. Holubeanu, Ionuţ (ed.)

DOI: (Digital Object Identifier): 10.5682/9786062813741

Distribution: Phone: 021.315.32.47 / 0745 200 718/ 0745 200 357

Keywords: pandemic/epidemic, plague, cholera, Black Death, coronavirus,

actuelle-une-interview-de-jean-claude-larchet-par-orthodoxie-com (visit of May 24, 2020),

The fulfilment of the funeral rituals presupposed, without a doubt,

Although it makes no reference to the plague pandemic, in the text

2. The Black Death

3. Black Death and Cholera in the Romanian Lands

4. The pandemic caused by the SARS-Cov virus 2

4.1. The dispute over the common Eucharistic teaspoon

The problem is not entirely new, however. Archive documents

Corroborating the meeting of the Quinisext Council, during the first

text/5608607.htmlsauhttps://mospatusa.com/news_200318_1 (visit of June 01, 2020), s.p.;

The statement of Bishop Nicholas Hatzinikolaou, who is the faith

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