Marius Oanță: We can talk about a revival of Bulgarian identity in Romania

Vladimir Mitev

Summary

• Marius Oanță examines the historical presence of Bulgarian Catholics in Romania, describing in detail their migration as a result of political pressures and wars.
• He highlights the role of key historical figures and events in the formation of Bulgarian Catholic communities in regions such as Wallachia and Banat.
• The article examines the current state of these communities, highlighting the awareness of their Bulgarian identity among their descendants, despite cultural and linguistic erosion.
• In addition, Oanță reveals efforts to study and promote Bulgarian heritage, including cultural events and cooperation with institutions in Romania and Bulgaria.
• Finally, the text examines the limited role of the Catholic Church in promoting ties between Bulgarian communities on both sides of the Danube.

Intro

Marius Oanță was born in Bucharest on July 3, 1981, and obtained his doctorate at the George Barițiu Institute of History of the Romanian Academy in Cluj-Napoca. Thesis title: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bucharest (1948-1964). Central ecclesiastical structures.

He has contributed to various magazines, such as:Keresztény Szó,Literaturna Miselji, Nasa Glas, Vasarnap, Actualitatea Creștină, Ararat, etc. He also contributed to scientific journals and collective volumes such as: Banatica, Acta Musei Napocensis, Pro Memoria, Studii de Istorie, Anuarul Institutului de Istorie al Academiei Române „George Barițiu” (Yearbook of the George Barițiu Institute of History of the Romanian Academy), Historica series. Some of his contributions can be found here.

Settlements of Bulgarian Catholics in Romania

Mr. Oanță, you are knowledgeable about the historical developments of Bulgarian Catholics in Romania. What led the Paulicians to settle in Romania? Where are their localities? And what is the state of this community today?

The developments in the international climate between the great powers of the time – Tsarist Russia, the Austrian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire – the successive wars between them, and the growing influence of the kardzhalii, against the backdrop of the decline of centralized power in the Ottoman Empire, led the Pavlichians to settle in Wallachia at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Previously, in the 17th century, there was a revolt against the Crescent in Chiprovtsi, recorded in 1688, which inevitably led to the migration of a significant part of the Bulgarians to Wallachia, then to Banat. The situation was imposed by a decree of the sultan, which prohibited the practice of Catholicism and prohibited the reconstruction of churches demolished by Ottoman troops for 50 years. Many of the Bulgarian Catholics were taken into slavery, a significant number lost their lives, and the rest wandered through the forests of Transylvania, where some died from the cold and harsh winter. The survivors established privileged communities in Vinga, Beșenova Veche (today Dudeștii Vechi) or Lovrin, after previously enjoying important privileges in Oltenia—in Craiova, Brădiceni, or Râmnicu Vâlcea—where they founded churches, obtained land, and gained the right to organize fairs and markets on important holidays, under the protection of the Austrians. Here, the same Bulgarian community established the precursors of today’s chambers of commerce, appearing alongside the Greeks among the recognized ethnic groups that were involved in trade in the City of Bănie. Important privileges were granted to them by the ruler of Wallachia, Constantin Brâncoveanu, and Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria. From this, we can deduce the significant role played by the Catholic Bulgarians who temporarily settled in Craiova and the suburbs of this city, where they had a Catholic bishopric, with its own monastery, as well as a cloister to house the monks.

Other localities where Catholic Bulgarians obtained the right to build churches during their pilgrimage to Banat are also documented in Deva, Vințu de Jos, and Alba Iulia. With the exception of those in Banat, none of the listed localities have any registered persons of Bulgarian origin.

Returning to the Pavlichians in exile in Muntenia, in the 19th century several rural localities are mentioned, namely: the village of Flămânda, today Poiana, in Teleorman County, Visciova or Slobozia, near the town of Rusciuk, today Ruse. By the middle of the 19th century, none of these localities were mentioned by Catholic missionaries as being inhabited by Bulgarians, but other villages appeared, including Cioplea (today the Dristor neighborhood of Bucharest) and Popești-Leordeni; the first of these being very important for the history of Catholicism in Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Serbia, as it became the residence of the Catholic bishop until 1847, when it was moved to the country’s capital, Bucharest.

In Popești-Leordeni, there are still people of Bulgarian origin who speak a Pavlichian dialect, while in Cioplea, the specific dialect, part of the Pavlichian dialect, is used in a limited environment, mainly in the family, by the elderly. The village of Cioplea, once flourishing, became a suburban commune in the mid-1930s and was demolished during the communist regime, with socialist blocks of flats being built in its place and the members of the community scattered throughout the city in existing dormitory housing. The only meeting places left for the members of the former community were the church, for baptisms or religious weddings, and the cemetery, where funerals were held, both of which miraculously survived among the blocks of flats built under the communist regime.

Relations between Bulgarian Catholics and other communities in Romania

How did relations between Bulgarian Catholics and Romanians, on the one hand, and Bulgarian Catholics and Bulgarian Orthodox Christians, on the other, develop historically? How do Bulgarian Catholics in Romania relate to Hungarians?

During the 19th century, relations between Romanians and Bulgarians were practically non-existent. Bulgarians interacted with landowners through the Catholic bishop, where we most often encounter litigious situations that were referred to the rulers of Wallachia for mediation. The dispute between the Bulgarians and the descendants of Hagi Moscu, a former landowner and important official in the Royal Council, is well known, a process that lasted for several decades.

Until the effective enfranchisement of the Catholic Bulgarians, through the Rural Law of Alexandru-Ioan Cuza, and later through the acquisition of land after the First World War, the Pavlichians were treated as serfs and forced to work for the benefit of the landowner, who treated them as he pleased, considering it necessary for them to work a certain number of days, while at other times the number of days worked for the owner increased considerably, without taking into account natural events: whether the harvest was rich, whether it rained that year, or whether the animals had young. Certainly, the Bulgarians could no longer support their daily lives, feed their children, or keep animals. For many, the conditions in Wallachia prompted them to return to Bulgaria, to Dragomirovo, where, after the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, we find numerous families from Cioplea, but also to Oreș or Belene, localities where we find people from Cioplea who returned to their relatives. Most of them ended up on the estate of the boyar Condurat, in Popești-Leordeni, founding another Catholic village inhabited by ethnic Bulgarians.

After acquiring the land through the aforementioned law, the villagers developed relationships with the Romanians, especially through the markets of the capital, where they sold their vegetables and goods resulting from their lucrative activities. It should be noted that the Romanian authorities of the time were not always favorable to national minorities, often refusing to approve the establishment and operation of ethnic schools on the territory of the Kingdom of Romania, as highlighted by documents from the time about the ethnic-confessional school in the village of Cioplea at the end of the 19th century. In the following century, the prefects of Ilfov County, to which the commune of Dudești-Cioplea and its villages belonged, exerted constant pressure on the Bulgarian community, in particular to renounce the Bulgarian language spoken in the family, to declare themselves Romanian citizens, and to attend public school in the village of Tîrca-Vitan. The opposition of the Catholic archbishop, Raymund Netzhammer, to the representatives of the state materialized in the reprinting of prayer books in Bulgarian, using the Latin alphabet, precisely for the purpose of preserving the people’s own language. These publications were useful tools in the village, encouraging devotional practice, the use of the spoken language, and the preservation of the characteristic idiom. As for the Bulgarians’ interaction with other nationalities, it should be noted that these were sporadic, whether we are talking about Hungarians, Armenians, or other ethnic groups, with the exception of the priests present in the village and those who visit the locality.

Research on the inhabitants of Cioplea and Popești-Leordeni

How much research and knowledge exists in Romania about the inhabitants of Cioplea and Popești-Leordeni in the contemporary period of Romania?

In the last decade, dedicated researchers have produced several thematic studies on the village of Cioplea and its inhabitants, including ethnographic, historical, and theological studies. Independent researchers such as Gabriela Mitu-Bulăreanu, Ilie-Cătălin Grigore, and myself have attempted and succeeded over time in bringing to light the cultural heritage of the village and raising awareness of the Bulgarian origin of the descendants of the inhabitants of Cioplea. In order to raise awareness of the community in Cioplea, research grants were obtained from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, conferences were held at the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, and collaborations were established with the Assen Diamandiev Academy of Music, Dance, and Art in Plovdiv, with the support of the National “Culture” Fund of the Institute of Folklore and Ethnography in Sofia. At the same time, the folk costumes from Cioplea, specific to the northern part of Bulgaria, were presented by Gabriela Mitu-Bulăreanu at the Dimitrie Gusti Village Museum on the occasion of this year’s Bulgarian Language Day and Saints Cyril and Methodius Day. At the same time, the same researchers were present on Romanian national television programs on TVR1 and TVR Cultural, dedicated to national minorities, with topics related to the specificity and history of the Cioplea neighborhood and the Bulgarian community, the urban development of the area, as well as ethnography, memoirs, and folklore. In addition, the research undertaken has resulted in a series of scientific papers presented at national and international conferences, as well as books and articles for the general public and scientific studies in collective volumes and specialist journals. I must not omit to mention that the personalities from Cioplea with Bulgarian origins, among whom I must mention Iosif Gunciu, an important prelate of the Catholic Church in Romania, were mentioned in the volume edited by the National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism of the Romanian Academy. Collaborations with museums in Romania and Bulgaria were mainly carried out on an individual basis, with Gabriela Mitu-Bulăreanu working with those in Plovdiv and Bucharest, and myself with the Bucharest History Museum, with conferences being held and studies published in the magazine Urbanitas. Ilie-Cătălin Grigore gave a lecture at the Academy of Sciences in Sofia on Karl Pooten’s catechism, a useful tool for catechizing the Bulgarian Catholic population.

Popular Bulgarian Catholics in Romania

Who are the most important figures in the Bulgarian Catholic communities in Romania in the 20th century and today?

I would not want to omit any relevant personalities, but the Catholic communities – I will limit myself to these, as they have been my favorite subjects of research – have produced individuals who have distinguished themselves in their fields of activity. I have already mentioned Iosif Gunciu, a prominent figure and one of the exponents of the Catholic Church in Muntenia, doctor of history and theology at Münster, in Bavaria, author of studies in the interwar periodical Farul Nou, author of the critical edition in German of the Septuagint, and the one who led the Archdiocese of Bucharest in secret during the communist regime.

Banat stood out through the personality of the mayor of Timișoara, Carol Telbis, under whose administration the city crossed by the Bega River became flourishing and a benchmark among the modern cities of Europe.

Even though he passed away before the dawn of the 20th century, the monk Eusebiu Fermendžin remains a distinguished researcher whom I would not want to omit, as he had a decisive influence on my research through the documents he published on the history of the Catholic communities in Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Banat, thanks to his persistence in publishing documents from the Vatican archives.

We can also mention numerous athletes who excelled in their respective sports. Football was the favourite sport of the athletes from Cioplea, but we also had representatives in rowing. Chronologically, among the footballers from Cioplea, I remember Laurenţiu Velicu, an athlete who played in Bacău for the local team that faced Arsenal London in the European cups in the spring of 1970, followed in the next decade by Ionel Augustin, a member of the Romanian national football team and Dinamo Bucharest. Augustin even played against the Bulgarian national team in 1982, even though his family was of Bulgarian origin. Aurel Mincu is another footballer I would like to mention, who played on the national stage at the same time as Augustin. As a left-back, Mincu was a member of the flagship team from the village of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, FC Olt Scornicești, for which he played for four seasons, then for Rapid and Progresul, both in Bucharest. Florin Marin is another legendary footballer for the capital, where he played for two rival teams, Rapid and Steaua, making over 275 appearances. Ilie Oanță is a representative rower for the community of Cioplea, an athlete who participated in national and European championships and the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

The list of personalities does not stop here, as it can be completed today with soprano Cecilia Bucerzan, a lyric artist and member of the Radio Academic Choir, who has participated in numerous prestigious musical events, both nationally and internationally. Ileana Bîrsan happily completes the list of representative figures from Cioplea, as an audiovisual specialist, film critic, and screenwriter. Ileana Bîrsan is actively involved in film education programs, including films for high school students. She is also co-screenwriter of the documentary “The Trial” and curator of the “Garden with Films” program. There are certainly other people who have excelled in their fields, but for now I will limit myself to those presented.

Church life of Bulgarians in Cioplea and Popești-Leordeni

What organizations or activities do Bulgarians have in Cioplea and Popești-Leordeni? To what extent are their churches centers of community life?

In the past, there were mainly religious activities of a collective nature, such as the Rosary or Scapular Confraternity in Popești-Leordeni, where the entire community participated in various communal prayers dedicated to the Virgin Mary, specific to the Catholic Church. and in Cioplea we could meet the community of those who prayed for the souls in Purgatory, today these organizations are missing from the environment of Bulgarian Catholic communities. Churches remain at the center of the concerns of Bulgarian believers or their descendants, even when they no longer have the scope they had during the 19th and 20th centuries, when prayer books and catechisms in Bulgarian were published in Rome or Bucharest and used throughout Bulgaria and Romania, wherever Bulgarian speakers could be found. During the communist period, the political regime did not allow the establishment of religious or ethnic organizations, as a result of which the aforementioned communities were dissolved or operated clandestinely, as revealed in the memoirs of priest Ivan Petre Sebastian. Today, interactions take place exclusively online, through social media platforms, where we meet descendants of the Pavlichian Bulgarians from Romania and the diaspora, from America and Europe. These interaction platforms aim to facilitate communication between members and promote specific activities.

Awareness of Bulgarian origins among the descendants of the Pavlicheni around Bucharest

How much awareness of their Bulgarian origins is there today among the descendants of these Bulgarian Pavlichian communities?

The descendants of Bulgarian Catholics are very aware of their origins, many declare themselves Bulgarian and wonder why the number in the data collected during the censuses is so insignificant. Perhaps the “breakup” of the community in Cioplea in the 1960s-1980s and the scattering of its inhabitants throughout Bucharest, together with the significant growth of the city’s area and population, has resulted in an insignificant number of declared Bulgarians, with the recorded proportion leading to values below 1%. The decline in the standard of living in post-December Romania, the insignificant birth rate, mixed marriages between Bulgarians and other ethnic groups and religious denominations, as well as migration to other European countries in search of a better life, have all led to an alarming decline in the population of Bulgarian origin in the aforementioned urban center.

The discoveries of researcher Marius Oanță

What are the most important or valuable discoveries you have made in your research?

In history, all events make up an overall picture and are important and valuable simply because they have been recorded, because they become a “path” to knowledge. Of course, every day I discover extraordinary images in the archive documents, which I try to piece together to create, for my interlocutors, those who read me, as in a puzzle, an overall perspective, vivid images, like frames that follow one another in an art film. Some of them I become emotionally attached to, others remain etched in my mind, as if I had experienced them myself, as if I were conversing with bishops, missionaries, kings, princes, or queens. Most of them reflect the evolution of language, morals, historical discourse, or the community I am researching. I remember an expression: “trece baba cu colaci” (the old woman with the bread rolls is passing by), transliterated in the spelling of the time, to Bishop Nicola Stanislavich, who led the Bulgarians to Banat. Here, the expression means “it’s too late, you missed the moment, you missed the opportunity,” and I didn’t think it was that old, but it was certainly in use in the pre-modern period, even before 1750, and it definitely comes from other times, perhaps from the medieval period.

Noteworthy is the visit on horseback of Prince Carol I, who became King of the Romanians, to Cioplea, to meet the Bulgarians who settled on the estate of Boyar Dudescu at the beginning of the 19th century, to learn about their customs and history and to understand their specific characteristics. Carol certainly learned about the Bulgarians who had settled in his adopted homeland, noticed their qualities, and appreciated their specific diligence, especially since their gardens were famous throughout the kingdom. Unfortunately, the notes in his own diary are rather sparse.

Also valuable are the efforts of Iosif Gunciu to preserve his unaltered conscience in the prisons he went through, unjustly accused as a Catholic priest, bearing with dignity – about 200 years after another Bulgarian compatriot, Nicola Stanislavici – the adverse fate; the former forced to live in another land, the latter to seek refuge within himself in order to survive the conditions of detention. Perhaps in a normal world, without obstacles, without the forced arrest brought about by the oppressive regime that came to power in Romania, Monsignor Gunciu would not have had his destiny shattered, like most of those who experienced deprivation of liberty for invented crimes. Of course, history is not made with “what might have happened if…”; we are already talking about counterfactual history, historical science operates with certainties, with verifiable facts. If I were to look for breaking news, it would be that the Bulgarian Catholic priest, Iosif Gunciu, never defected, never betrayed his colleagues, never blamed his detractors or the torturers who tormented him, and took his suffering with him “to the other side.” Although he spoke the language of his ancestors at home, he did not serve in either of the two Bulgarian parishes, but in the Hungarian-speaking parish in Bucharest, as well as in Mihail Kogălniceanu, in German. He also served cosmopolitan Catholic communities such as Sinaia and Constanța, where he retired.

Another piece of research that I consider valuable, both personally and for the history of Bulgarians in general, was carried out together with my wife, an architect. In order to determine the location of the episcopal residence of the Bulgarian bishop, Nicola Stanislavich, in Craiova, we superimposed the existing plans, which we correlated with the available documents, namely the written sources held by the archives of the Catholic Diocese of Timișoara, made available through the kindness of archivist Claudiu Călin. Until recently unknown to the public—as the urban fabric has undergone significant changes—the episcopal residence and the area adjacent to the Franciscan cloister, with its outbuildings, where the remains of Bulgarian priests were laid to rest, have been precisely identified. Shortly thereafter, a believer who had converted to Catholicism contacted the local priest, who immediately informed me that someone had found a relic from the Austrian period—a pendant in the form of a miraculous icon — telling me that she owned a house that overlapped a cellar, where there was certainly a rich history from the past. After she showed us pictures of the cellar, we discovered the crypt and ossuary under the Franciscan church, built of bricks manufactured during the period when Oltenia was administered by the Austrians. This confirms our working hypotheses.

The revival of Bulgarian identity in Romania

Can we talk about a small renaissance of Bulgarian identity in Romania today, given that the Bulgarian language may be largely forgotten, but some people realize that their grandparents or great-grandparents came from Bulgaria?

We can certainly talk about a renaissance of Bulgarian identity in Romania. More and more people, seeing our efforts to raise awareness of the community, approach us online and ask us how they can find out where their family comes from, so that they can get in touch with their relatives in Bulgaria. Language is an important component of a community’s identity, but it is not the only one. However, if we talk about the Pavlichian dialect spoken by the people of Cioplea and Popești-Leordeni, with its associated dialects, it could not be used in Bulgaria because it was a medieval, unevolved dialect, while the modern Bulgarian language has evolved distinctly. However, we are talking about 200 years since our ancestors left their native lands to settle in Wallachia. During this time, numerous neologisms have appeared, which the Bulgarian language has incorporated into the modern language, while in the dialect specific to Bulgarian Catholics, these are present in various forms in the areas where Bulgarians reside. If I were to thank you for the interview you are conducting with me, in Cioplea I would say spulaisăt, in Banat the same word would have the equivalent zăfalem, and in modern Bulgarian blăgudăria. And we are referring only to the commonplace thank you. I would not dare to make other analogies, as I am certainly not a linguist and would not be able to support them scientifically. All these aspects have been researched over time by Bulgarian linguists who came to Cioplea, namely Lubomir Miletici, Stoian Romanski, and Olga Mladenova, whose last visit was recorded less than 20 years ago. Before the village disappeared, other researchers from Romania visited Cioplea, namely Olimpia Guțu and Ovidiu Bolcan, to carry out extensive systematic research, which can now be found in the phonographic archive of the “Iorgu Iordan” Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy, in the section dedicated to Slavic languages.

Most people over the age of 20 have heard Bulgarian spoken in church after religious ceremonies, where elderly women, but also their husbands, would meet their relatives or peers with whom they would communicate. Others have heard Bulgarian spoken in their families, where we still find people over 70 who use it. Inevitably, everyone has asked themselves natural questions: where do we come from, who are our ancestors, and can we identify the villages where our ancestors came from? Against this backdrop, after extensive research in archives and documents, individual contacts were established with people living in Bulgaria, whom we visit and with whom we sporadically participate in important events of the communities from which these people come. This year, for example, we participated in Malchika, at the invitation of clergyman Radoslav Radkov, in the event marking the 170th anniversary of the consecration of the church dedicated to “Saint Anne.” I was followed by other descendants of Bulgarians from Cioplea, who visited the parishes belonging to the Diocese of Nicopole to learn about the localities from which their ancestors came. The visits are generally full of emotion and we are welcomed with enthusiasm.

The role of the Catholic Church in relations between the Paulician communities south and north of the Danube

What is the role of the Catholic Church in preserving and developing relations between the Paulician communities south and north of the Danube?

I would consider the role of the Catholic Church to be minor. In none of the villages where the descendants of the Paulicians live do we find Bulgarian priests, with the exception of Banat, more precisely in Dudeștii-Vechi and Vinga. In Cioplea and Popești-Leordeni, there are priests originally from Moldova who, given the decline in the number of Bulgarian descendants, aim to treat these communities from a universal perspective, without taking into account their specific characteristics. In Bulgaria, the missionaries are of French or Italian origin, mainly from the Passionist Congregation. Of course, in recent years there have been several pilgrimages by Bulgarians from Bulgaria to Romania, as well as visits by those from Cioplea to the villages of Belene, Oreș, Trănciovița, and Malcika, but without significant progress or major cultural exchanges. Certainly, all these priests are trying to maintain the specificity of each community, but the contribution of the members in preserving their values is also important: the Bulgarian language, their traditional dress, and their own history.

Photo: Marius Oanță (source: Facebook/Marius Oanță)

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