ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES SOCIALES ET POLITIQUES INSTITUT D'ETUDES SUD-EST EUROPEENNES TOME XIX—1961, N° 3 (jul!let—Septembre) , EDITURA ACADEMIE! REPUBLICI| SOCIALISTE ROMANIA sieht,THE ROLE OF «VLAH™ AND ITS RULERS ON ATHOS AND SiNAI (Reflections on a Portrait of Constantin Brancoveanu, Prince of Wallachia, at St, Katherine's Monastery on Mt. Sina.) J. G. NANORIS (London) In Post-Byzantine times, afier the fall of Const: atinople to Fatih Mehmet Sultan in 1453, the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia played a part out of all proportion to their size and resources in endowing and maintaining the monastic centres of eastern Orthodo spirituality which now found themselves wider Ottoman influence. Pol they also filled the role of buffer states in Europe against otherwise substantially nnopposed expansion of that influence, without gaining very inch credit or external assistance in the process, Artistically this was the peviod during which the unique painted churches of Bukovina in the north of Moldavia were created. These are unique, not in that they do not have intimate relitionships with other masterpieces of Post-Byzantine art in a. and on Athos, but in that their brilliant polychrome paintings were carried out on the external as well as internal walls of the churches, where for half a millennium they have retained their splendour in snow and rai ‘These buildings became carefully ordered paradigins of Christian spir tuality, setting out visually in the relationships between the different parts of the building, the tenets of faith of a peasant people whose fervent beliefs were independent of literacy. Indeed it is often forgotten how much of an advantage is illiteracy in the strengthening of traditional culture. The distinctive architecture of the Moldavian churches is reflected, by virtue of the patronage of the Voivodes of Moldavia and Wallachia, in that of very many of the monastery churches of Athos. In recognition of the Latin “Atitors”, or benefactors, they are depicted or mentioned in portraits ‘on the walls or in the frescoes, in heraldic carvings, inscriptions and dedi- cations of ikons, on the gilded covers of thrones and books, and in the parch- ment chrysobulls with which they ratified their endowments to the monas- teries. These further included gifts of estates in Romania, called metohia, from which the monastery could continue to enjey revenues. The sonrce of all these riches is often alluded to under terms obscure to most west Euro- peans, such as Moldovlakhia or — even less comprehensibly — Ungro- phaldakia. But no other patrons can be adduced who so consistently and wenerously supported nearly every one of the twenty or so autonomous «at monasteries of Athos, irrespective of their particular national «ffilia- Tions then or at this time, expecially in such miatters as rebuilding after the frequent fires. Ciindea and Simionescu (1979) have recently documented these benefactions. The concept of ustionality remains in any case an ana- Serh REY, ETUDES SUD-EST EUROP,, XIX, 2, P, 695—6}9, SUCAREST, 1981 4606 3. G, NANDRIS 2 chronistic one in Byzantine history for a very long time. It is perhaps ivonie thet the only major Orthodox nation of south-east Europe not to have its own monastery on Athos is the Romanian, whose decaying skete of Prodromul at the farthest tip of the peninsula is as large as many monasteries, yet has consistently been denied that. status. One further feature of Athos should be mentioned, the presence of a class of civilian monastery servants, employed on the estates, and in cutting and transporting the timber from which an importaut part of monastery revenue from within the peninsula was derived. Prominent among these servants were Vlahs, or Aromini, the Latin-speaking inhabi- tants of mainland Greece, whose various specialised roles incaded mule- tering, and hence control of much of Balkan transport before the age of the railways. Themselves fervently Orthodox, though without prejudice to their efficiency elsewhere as brigands (the “klephts” of the Greek War of Independence), these people are ancient ‘Thracian’ inhabitagts of the Balkan peninsula, who acquired their Latinity from the Romans (Nandris 1930). In their native mountain villages of the Pindus such as Metsove or Samarina, their large, impressive churches take a quite different form from the Moldavian or Athonite type, and are visibly related to the Roman Basilica. It is now being appreciated what an important role Orthodox Atho- nite monasticism filled in the preservation for posterity of inestimable historical evidence, jealously guarded in its archives and treasuries despite all the vicissitudes which have destroyed so much more. Documents and portraits are gradually being published, and for example Turdeanu (in Révue des Etudes Roumaines, 1975) recently drew attention to a portrait of a Wallachian ruler, Serban Cantacuzino, at the monastery of Iviron on Athos. It is often assumed that historical material which is known to those familiar with the monasteries must already be more widely known, This is not necessarily always the case, and it is better to draw attention to evidence than to lose sight of it. In this spirit I should like to refer to a portrait of Constantin Brancoveanu, which now hangs in the Council Room of the Monastery of St. Katherine on Mount Sinai, and use the occasion to draw out some analogies between the Athonite and the Sinaitic situations. It is not unpublished (Bez 1937 or Rabino 1938 e.g.), but needs to be reconsidered. The picture is in oils on canvas, framed, and in good condition. It depicts the Wallachian ruler of 1688—1714 in richly trimmed ermine robes, with a fine grasp of sartorial niceties and a less sure one of perspec- tive. The portrait is nevertheless a fine one, and approximately life size. His crown is on the table, and is also found in slightly different form behind him surmounting the arms of Wallachia. The inscription beside his head reads : CONSTANTINVS: BRANKOVAN SVPREMYS- VALACHIE: TRAN- a. SALPINE:PRINCEPS: ETIS 42- 2 0 AO-DNT- 1696. ‘The portrait is a clear likeness of Brancoveann. It can be compared with his depiction in Romania, in the frescoes of the monastery of Hurezw for Aeneae THE ROLE OF ..VLAH* ON ATHOS AND SINAr 607 example, which show him in similar ermine trimmed robes, with the same features and heard, and the same ring with a stone on the Little finger of his right hand. The Sinai picture seems to be the original, although there is at least one version in Romania. The presence of the portrait at St. Katherine's itself illustrates that Romanian concern tor the support of Orthodox monasticism extended as far afield as Sinai, a remote region under mediaeval conditions of travel. ‘There are considerable analogies between the relations of Romania or “Vlah” to both Athos and Sinai, and hetween the historical roles of the two centres of monasticism. These arise in part out of the nature of Ortho- dox aonasticism itself, whose spirituality and organisation lean especially heavily on its traditions, and in addition monks have always travelled between the two centres. The location of the “real” Mount Sinai has been mach disputed, but is irrelevant before the fact that the Monastery of St. Katherine still stands where it was founded in the mid sixth century by Justinian, himself a native Latin-speaker of south-east Europe from a village near Skopj It was thus Christian monasticism which created and maintained this mountain and its surroundings as a holy place during the last one and a half millennia, Even earlier, from the first one or two centuries A.D., the early hermits made the desert their peculiar province, first in the Thebaid aud at Skete in Egypt, and immediately thereafter in Sinai. ‘To the monastery we owe the guardianship of the oldest library in the world, including recently discovered further pages of the Codex Sinai- ticus and other treasures, and the preservation of the oldest continuously 4 ‘Athos Library Emapeucah Pome608 J. G, NANDRIS 4 inhabited building in the world, for us and our posterity. The analogy with the Athonite libraries is clear, and while the oldest monastery there, the Great Lavra was founded later than Sinai in the tenth century, on Athos too there were earlier hermits on the peninsula. Aside from this role of preservation and transmission of objects and traditions, there are other parallels between the two centres. Among its many metohia (which were a8 far-flung as India) Sinai was also given lands in Romania, where these holdings gave its name to the town of Sinaia. It also had monastery servants, originally assigned by Justinian soon after the foundation, to man. the fortified site which his envoys had built, and to protect ‘the monks from the Saracens, or what we should now probably refer to as the local Bedouin. It might be too much to expect that there should be any further parallel between these soldier-servauts, with their further role as camel drivers and as guides for pilgrims to Sinai, and the Viah muleteers and workmen found on Athos. But it is precisely the case. These people today have become the Jebaliyeh tribe, meaning the Mountaineers, one among many Islamic Bedouin groups in Sinai, but distinguished from all the others in many ways. They still have a special role as servants of the monas- tery, and are settled immediately around it. They have tenacious tradi- tions as to their origins from a land called “Vlah”, from whence a hundred of them with their families were sent by Justinian, and joined by another contingent from Egypt. At that time they were Christians. These tradi- tions are substantiated not only by the writings of Byzantine chroniclers, such as Procopius (the coeval of Justinian) and of Eutychius (writing around 900 A.D., and much better acquainted with the region than was Procopius) but also by scientific evidence. The Jatest: serological evidence shows that the blood-groupings of the Jebaliyeh are completely distinctive, among all other populations of the area. They are one of the oldest isolates among Near Eastern peoples, supporting the long-standing tradition that they go back 1,400 years. Only the Samaritans can claim a longer serolo- gical record of isolation, while there is no prospect that any other modern population in the Near East can claim to trace older genetic links, with for example the ancient Hebrew peoples. The Jebaliyeh blood groups inelnde traces of genes from Egyptian sources, substantiating the oral tradition of an Egyptian contingent. ‘The prospect of linking a part of their genetic component with some south-east European group cannot be taken literally. It must be remem- bered that south-east European populations are not comparable isolates, having been centred in regions of intensive historical ferment, whereas the Samaritans and the Jebaliyeh have both been protected by cultural exclusiveness from their neighbours, and in the case of the Jebaliyeh by geographical isolation. But the fact remains that the most likely which Justinian, the Latin-speaking native of an Empire whose inhabi- tants he knew well, would have chosen a group suitable for the role of soldiers, guides, and ~ with the ultimate substitution of the camel for the mule — as muleteers, were precisely the Latin-speaking natives of south-east Europe. Like their descendants, the modern Viahs of Greece (the Aromini), these were famed as solidiers, from the time of the Roman ov Byzantine armies, down to the modern Greek army in which they form5 THE ROLE OF ,VLAH“ ON ATHOS AND snvAr 600 the toughest paratroopers. They traditionally fill all the relevant roles of muleteers, monastery workmen, guides and so forth. ‘The geographical location in this context of “Vlah” remains proble- matical, and is often equated with parts of modern Wallachia — a name which like Viah, Welsh, and a wide range of other derivative terms through- out Europe owes its origin to the saine Germanic root, apparently used. by Celtic peoples to denote “strangers” across whom they came in the course of their expansion during the Iron Age across Europe. The En- glish Arabist Palmer in the nineteenth century records the Jebaliyeh account of their origins from the land of ‘K'lah” — which is the result of the Arabic disinclination to vocalise the letter “V", We know from the record of the Armenian geographer Moses Khorenatzi, writing in the ninth century about Sarmatia and Thrace, that by that time there was in that region (including modern Romania) a geographical entity (and not merely a people) known as Viah — “the unknown land they ‘call Balakh”. The best reason for a land being obscurely known must surely: be if it were as mountainous and afforested as the Carpathians. Very shortly after this in Eutychius, writing around 900 A.D., we find a laco- nic and hitherto unremarked reference, in the passage where he is quite unambiguously discussing the Jebaliyeh, and nobody else. He says : “«... 5 suntque ex ipsis Lachmienses”. (There are also among them the Lachmienses.) The Arabie context (and the fact that Eutychius himself had Arab origins which give his knowledge of the region more authority than those of Procopius) again explains the loss of the initial “V7, and means that in this enigmatic clause we surely have reference to the Vlah people. The historical tradition of the Jebaliyeh is firm that they came from “Vlah”, by the Black Sea, and that they were Roman Byzantines, initially speaking the Roman language. Latin was and remained the offi cial language of Byzantium in any case until the time of Heraclins, in the seventh century; and for much longer the daily language of an im- portant proportion of the native inhabitants of the Empire. We now know that such natives, the Bessae, were represented among the monks of Sinai within decades of its foundation in the sixth century, as well as in other Palestinian monastic centres. The Jebaliyeh present us with an ethnoarchaeological and histo- tieal problem which in its essentials refers to the fundamental issue of what it is that constitutes the identity of « human group. The short answer would seem to be that it is “behaviour as if” that identity were a fact; and “obedience to the often unenforceable” cultural norms which sustain belief in it (Nandris, forthcoming). It certainly is not any single- factor explanation of genetic, linguistic or any other literalist continuity. The transtormations of Jebaliyeh culture to suit the Sinaitie e viron- ment and to further their relations with neighbouring tribes (all of whom, they antedate) are among the features which make them a paradigm of the ethnoarchaeological problem. In the interest of survival they adopted Arabic, Islam, and all the ways of life appropriate to the desert. Yet against all probability they have not forgotten their origins. Their remate- couireres in south-east Europe have made similar adjustments to the industrial or urban desert, and to their language of daily use. Ae hte610 3. G. NANDRIS 6 ‘The field work in Sinai in 1978 took place in the context of research into this ethnoarchaeological problem and was supported by the British Academy. These reflections centred howeyer distantly on the portrait of Constantin Brancoveanu arise a8 a by-product of those researches. They are presented here in the conviction that we should not show ourselves less Willing to overcome physical and intellectual obstacles linking remote places and ideas than were those early south-east Buropeans. REFERENCES Bez, M., 1937, Lirme romdnesit tn Rasaritul Orlodox, Bucharest. Cindea, V., Simioncseu, C., 1979, Wuinesses lo the Romanian Presence on Mount Athos, Editura Sport—Turism, Bucharest, Nandris, J. G., 1980, The Thracian Inheritunce, “Llustrated London News”, June 1980; 99 101, Nandris, J. G., forthcoming, The Jebaliyeh of Mount Sinai, and the Lend of Vlah, in Pro- ceedings : 111 Weltkongress fur Thralologie (Vieana, 2-6 June 1980). Robino, M., 1938, Le’ Monastére de Sainte-Catherine du Mont Sinai, Cairo (Royal Automobile Club of Egypt). Lona