(translated project title) 

In 1418, the Metropolitan Gregorios Tsamblak of Kiev participated in the Council of Constance. Along the way, the cleric, born in what is now Bulgaria, had crossed two empires and countless duchies, and had done so not just as a monachós, or sole wanderer, but as a networked and influential actor. Taking the examples of four outstanding monks of southeast Europe in the 14^th to 17^th centuries – Nicodemos of Tismana (approx. 1320 - approx. 1406); Gregorios Tsamblak (approx. 1364 - approx. 1435); Nephon II (approx. 1440-1508), Patriarch of Constantinople; and Makarios III Ibn al-Za’im (?-1672), Patriarch of Antioch – historian PD Dr Mihai-D. Grigore examines travelling monastic holders of power.

Why monks? Because, owing to the religious policies of the Byzantine Empire and the neighbouring rulers such as those of Bulgaria, Serbia, and the duchies along the River Danube, down through the centuries permanent networks arose that were impervious even to changes in power from Christian to non-Christian statehood. The transition from a Christian-Byzantine to a Muslim-Ottoman order, in particular in the region of Constantinople and Mt. Athos as a holy mountain, signified neither a collapse of the existing infrastructure nor of the monastic networks that existed at the time. The new rulership took on much of the old and consolidated it by setting up and expanding structures of its own. Here, monks were key players in the politics of the Late Byzantine and Ottoman eras, when the power of the patriarchs became ever more striking. Their canonical jurisdiction exceeded even the regions ruled by both the Byzantine and the Ottoman states, something manifested by the increased influence of clerical-patriarchal actors with a background as monks.

In his analysis, Dr Grigore focuses on the Danube duchies of Walachia and Moldavia, whose location in this time of change was of central importance. The long-term transformation processes of the Orthodox world can be examined at this crossroads of cultural, political, and religious communication as if under a microscope. By tracing the paths travelled by his four protagonists, Dr Grigore attempts to define how monastic mobile elites influenced processes and how they were incorporated into local spheres of rulership in larger contexts.

What emerges here is that mobility on the one hand characterizes the formation of rulership but, on the other, depends on structures of rulership. As duchies, Walachia and Moldavia were themselves the direct results of mobile factors, as their first rulers came from outside. In the 13^th century, under the influence of the Knights of St. John and the Teutonic Knights, structures of rulership evolved that were integrated into the space of Orthodox communication. Light can also be shed on this by means of the protagonists as the imperial infrastructure also used the monastic networks: Roads, postal system and inns enabled persons and ideas to move, and terms of protection ensured a degree of safety. The intention is to show what contribution mobility made to the dynamics of integration and what narrative of belonging arose.

In Dr Grigore’s monograph, rulership is seen through the lens of mobility and a new picture drawn of the polycentric Orthodox world.