The Posterity of the Council of Nicaea on the Territory of Romania in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The Posterity of the Council of Nicaea on the Territory of Romania in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Summary/Abstract: The paper highlights the presence of references to the Council of Nicaea in 14th–15th century Wallachian documents, in the Wallachian and Moldavian frescoes, and in the early Transylvanian printings in Romanian. The organization of church life north of the Danube in the early Middle Ages defined by the presence of small and weak political formations. For geographical and political reasons, the Romanians were the only Romance-speaking people that neither followed the Latin Church and its rite, nor used Latin as the official administrative language. The Slavonic charters of the rulers of Wallachia thus followed the Byzantine model. One of the six subunits of the second part (the context), coming towards its end, was the sanction, which consisted of both the promise of reward and threats, and even punishments for those who failed to comply with the will of the issuer of the deed. Rooted in the churchly formulary, the spiritual punishment consisted of the curses of the divine power. For instance, out of the 28 preserved and known domestic documents issued by Mircea I of Wallachia, 19 contain, in their sanctions, curses referring to the ecumenical councils, the Council of Nicaea, Judas, Arius, and the Jews. Also, the topic of the ecumenical councils, of the Council of Nicaea in particular, was featured in the pronaos of several medieval churches in Wallachia and Moldavia.

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