Un nou caz de sinucidere din Ţara Românească (începutul secolului al XVIII-lea)
A newly discovered case of suicide in Wallachia (early 18th century)

Summary/Abstract: Beginning with Jean-Claude Schmitt’s pioneering study and up to Alexander Murray’s recent synthesis, Western historians thoroughly explored the subject of suicide. In contrast, Romanian scholarship paid little attention to this topic. Evidently, this is partially explicable by the lack of sources, as only one case of suicide was previously documented, that of a merchant from Craiova who killed himself in 1835. A new case of suicide, from the beginning of the 18th century, is edited and commented on in this study. The details are scarce, as the case is documented only by two charters recording a land donation given by a small merchant from Bucharest and his family to Samuel, the patriarch of Alexandria. Samuel, who was visiting Wallachia at that time, consented to the burying of a self-murderer within the grounds of the Zlătari monastery and accepted to celebrate the liturgical rites. This newly discovered case of suicide, the oldest documented so far, raises a few thought-provoking questions: why did the family pleaded to the patriarch’s authority? is the paucity of suicide cases mentioned in the Wallachian documents the consequence of a voluntary omission, understandable from a Christian viewpoint? or such cases were indeed very rare?

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