Ovidiu Pecican

Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

 

 

A Greek Monastery in Palestine and Its Possessions in Hungary

at the Beginning of the 13^th Century

 

 

Abstract: This paper discusses the case of a monastery in the Banat region, near the lower Danube, at the beginning of the 13^th century. At that epoch, the Hungarian Kingdom expanded on the territories previously ruled by the Bulgarian Czardom. The monastery presented here entered under Roman ecclesiastical jurisdiction, suffering a tormented reorganization. Its evolution is presented in com­parison with a similar monastery in Cyprus.

Keywords: South-eastern Europe; Central Europe; Orthodoxy; Catholicism; monastery.

 

 

A document written by pope Honorius III (1216-1227) and preserved in two versions, one from 1216 and one from 1218, speaks about Nicolae, the abbot of the central monastery dedicated to Saint Teodosie Chinoviarch situated in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem[1]. The prelate was the leader of a widespread “monastic confederation” including numerous monasteries, churches and lands in Palestine, Cyprus and Hungary. Nicolae was asking the pope to protect the monastery together with all its dependent monasteries and the houses belonging to it and their riches[2]. On October 26, 1216, the pope responded to him, but would repeat the same response in a new letter dated January 29, 1218. The response established the terms under which the monastery would come under his rule (the observance of St. Basil the Great’s rule, the guarantee of their property’s inviolability, the tax exemption, the confirmation that new members could be admitted to the monastery without any problems, the fact that the local abbot had to receive the religious sacraments and services from the superior hierarch, if he was Catholic and approved by the Holy See, the possibility of holding services during the times of general interdiction, under special circumstances, the stopping of the robberies, violence and bloodshed inside the holy place, the decision that the general superior should be elected by the brothers’ assembly by unanimous or majority vote, without any involvement from the outside, the confirmation of the freedoms and immunities received throughout time from popes, as well as from kings, princes and other believers, the cessation of the harassment against the monastery and the demand that the riches be used for the purposes desired by the founders).

The 1216 bulla seems to have been given following a visit to Rome by one of the monastery’s monks, brother Efrem, who had probably been sent by Nicolae with the express purpose of asking for the papal protection[3]. But the papal protection which was obvious to Nicolae does not seem quite as clear to us today. It must have been caused by some Christian threat coming either from the general desire to minimise the considerable possessions of this monastic fief or – less general – the diminishing of the monastery patrimony in an area where its possessions were located. In the first case, the threat could have come from within the church itself, from some hierarch who had the power to divide what Nicolae and his brothers managed, in the other case, it could have come form one of the lay leaders of the Christian world during those times[4]. If the situation had been caused by the dark possibility that the head monastery could be conquered by pagans, any appeal to Rome would have been superfluous. This latter hypothesis should then be eliminated.

The network of monasteries included some situated in many parts of known world in those times (Palestine, the Latin Empire of Jerusalem, Cyprus, Hungary, Croatia, Banat and Transylvania). The properties it had were situated in Jerusalem, Ramla, Acalon, Jaffa, Zevel (maybe Gabala), in the principality of Antioch. At that time, the Latin domination did not include all these places, because some of them had been conquered by Saladin. In Constantinople, the St. Theodor monastery had a hospital and a church. In Halici, the Russian princes had given it an income measured in wax. It possessed the St. Dimitros monastery situated at the intersection between the Danube and the Sava, as well as a considerable number of churches and villages situated in the valley of the Sava River, in the valley of the Tisa or in that of the Danube[5].

This chain of possessions has been analysed only from a few partial points of view so far. Some historians were interested in the monasteries on the territory of Hungary; Aloisie Ludovic Tăutu was interested in those where the Romanian presence was probable. Finally, Jean Richard wanted to see what the Cyprus possessions of the monastery were before and after the island was conquered by Richard the Lionheart, noticing that the change of rule did not bring about a modification in the previous situation from this point of view.

The fragments below will explore my interest towards the St. Theodosie monastery possessions on the territory of the present-day Romania. The perspective of research will be somewhat different from that of A. L. Tăutu, as I will not be interested in the Romanian presence in those respective monasteries, which is difficult to establish only on the basis of the information available so far to scholars, but in the management change of these possessions from the Eastern jurisdiction to the Catholic one.

Before anything, I would like to say that the papal documents discussed cause some wondering. They respond to a crisis situation whose causes elude us today. Practically speaking, we do not know the circumstances which asked for the protection of the papacy on the monastic confederation of St. Theodosie.

We only know the immediate circumstances of obtaining the papal guarantees. Efrem, the hierarch of St. Theodosie, accompanied the bishop Ioan of Crotona when he went to the despot of Epir in order to obtain the release of the cardinal Colonna, who had been captured together with Pierre de Courtenay by Mihai Anghelos Comnen. As a token of appreciation, the pope granted the monastery a complete tax exemption on January 25, 1218, renewing and expanding the 1216 bulla[6]. In this second edition of the document, the possessions of Cateluţiu, Foc and Chalasa (Ciala, on the outskirts of nowadays Arad), and Minisi (Miniş, in the Arad county), among those of direct interest to us, are no longer mentioned, which means that they had been either sold of lost[7].

Regardless of what might have happened with these, I find it important to notice that in 1216 they existed and belonged to the Palestine monastery, together with Minis and Mocrea, but would be soon lost.

We do not know when and how these Greek possessions became part of the patrimony of the Catholic Church. However, we could try to offer some explanation to this effect. The head monastery, founded in the 5^th century very close to the road linking Jerusalem to Bethlehem was established by St. Theodosie himself. As he died very old in 529, the foundation of the monastery needs to be placed before that year. The Arab occupation, which occurred a century later, did not affect the lives of the monks here, who numbered seventy brothers at the end of the 7^th century.

The moment when this Greek monastery entered the patrimony of the Latin states and Syria, as well as whether some of its possessions came from the Western seniors, are aspects ignored. It is quite probable, however, that the assets and possessions of the monastery came from the Eastern Christians. Anyway, the Cyprus possessions of the monastery seem to have come from the times of the monks’ exodus to Constantinople and Cyprus caused by the troubles following the death of the caliph Harun al-Rasid (on 3 djuma 193, namely March 24, 809).

What we do know about the territorial spreading of these possessions is their relative grouping in different areas. Thus, in Cyprus – which is the only such case where the issue was very closely investigated – they are grouped around the valley of Khapotamos[8]. In Hungary, the same situation can be noted: the St. Dimitrie monastery on the valley of the Sava River, which had become dependent on the Palestine location at an unknown date, as well as considerable number of villages and churches situated in the same valley, in the Tisa, Mureş and Danube valleys.

Among the villages on the Mureş, where the Serbian monastery had properties, Aloisie Ludovic Tăutu identified Minisi (Minis in the Arad county), where there was a metoh (casale) with forests (nemoribus), fisheries, agricultural land (terries), thatch (canneto) and annexes (agricultural ones: stables, wells, and the like)[9]. Tăutu noted that “after the conscription of the pontifical taxes in 1332-1337 (Rationes decimarum Hungariae, p. 146, 155, and 161), there were other two places named Monustur (monastery) in these parts of Arad, whose leaders had oriental names (Cosma and Petru)”[10].

Another village identified by the same author is the Macra castrum, namely the city of Mocrea. According to a 1199 document of king Emeric (1196-1204), this had a monastery church dedicated to the Holy Ghost which was placed under the patronage of the local senior, count Dyenus (Denes?), being situated “supra fluvium Crisii iuxta Macra” (“up the Cris river, near Macra”)[11].

Among the other villages in Hungary where St. Thedor had possessions mentioned by A. L. Tăutu, I would like to mention here “the Chalasa village (Cialasa, probably Ciala in the archdeaconate of Arad, the Cenad diocese having lands, forests and fisheries)…”[12]. Although we know that this was a separate settlement once, we cannot know how old it is. “It was first mentioned as city in the second half of the 15^th century (1486), under the rule of the Orszag family”[13].

Therefore, one can notice that, among all the possessions in the Hungarian kingdom mentioned in 1216 document, those depending on the Sirmium monastery (Mitrovita) were grouped on the Mureş valley (Minis, Mocrea and Ciala). In relation to this “monasterium Sanct Demetrii Graecorum de Ungaria iuxta fluvium cum conductu auae fluminis Sabae”, namely “the monastery of St. Dimitrios belonging to the Greeks on the Sava river with the water canal”, Tăutu quotes from a March 18, 1344 document. On this occasion, pope Clement VI addressed to the bishop Vitrus of Nitra, appointing him administrator of that respective monastery. Here the fact that “this monastery was served by Greeks, Hungarians and Slavs ever since its foundation, each of these nations having special places there” is mentioned. The historian believes that the Romanians were included in the name of Greeks – according to their Eastern faith – and even under that of Hungarians, because it would have been hard to find Hungarians of Eastern faith in that particular moment[14]. however, it is less important whether the generic name of Greeks meant Romanians or not; what is important is that the Sirmium monastery had this special “multicultural profile” ever since its foundation.

When did the Orthodox monastery of Sirmium a possession of the Palestine monastery? It is hard to say. We know that during the 11^th and the 12^th centuries, Byzantium had organised a thema in Sirmium-Serbia[15]. Initially, its centre was in Sirmium, but then it moved to Belgrade. According to Bosko I. Bojovic, the subordination of the majority of Serbian territories to the imperial power of the Bosphorus was largely theoretical[16], as those areas were decidedly autonomous. After the battle of Myriokefalon, the true prelude of the decline of the Comnens’ power, the announcement of Manuel Comnen’s death marked the end of the Byzantine supremacy on the neighbouring countries. Nemanja allied itself with the Hungarian king Bela III, who had been the protégé of Byzantium once. The Hungarians carried out an offensive in Northern Dalmatia which in 1182 resulted in the cooperation between the Serbians and the Hungarians. The Bosniac ruler Kulin, a Byzantine vassal, became a part of the actions against the empire. The internal struggles as a result of the dynastic confrontations weakened the Byzantine forces. The Serbian and Hungarian troops devastated the fortified cities in Belgrade, Branicevo, Ravno, Nis and Sardica, imposing their domination on parts of Dalmatia and Sirmium. The knights of the 3^rd crusade found ruined settlements there. In 1186, Nemanja was already ruling as grand leader of Kotor. Beginning with this moment, Dioclea and Dalmatia were part of the Serbian state, as long as they were included in the title of his son, Vlkan, who had received them as part of his domain in 1195, as an inscription in the St. Luke’s church in Kotor points out[17].

As Viorel Achim recounts, “the Serbian lands, which in the 12^th century were largely united under the rule of the great leader of Raskam Stefan Nemanja, were under different jurisdiction as far as the ecclesiastic rule was concerned. Stefan Nemanja’s territory was partly under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Ohrida and partly under that of the bishop of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Antibari. The Ragusa archbishopric had as dependent bishoprics Trebinje, Stagno and the Bosnian bishopric. The antibari archbishopric exercised its jurisdiction in the land of Zeta (Dioclea, corresponding to present-day Montenegro). The territories situated west of the Neretva, included only temporarily among the lands of the Serbian state, were under the jurisdiction of the Spalato (Split) archbishopric. Stefan Nemanja’s territory was crossed by the line separating western from eastern Christianity. This situation was the result of the region’s history, characterised by the existence of several territorial formations led by often rival Serbian princes. The option for Orthodoxism was made fairly late, in 1219. Before this moment, the Serbian princes had close ties with the Catholic Church, while later on, in the 13^th century; there was a permanent oscillation between Orthodoxism and Catholicism in the case of Serbia. The two competitors for the supremacy of the Serbian world in the 12^th-13^th centuries acknowledged the papal authority: Vukan, the Dioclea prince, in 1198, and Stefan Nemanja, the grand leader of Rascia, in 1202. Pope Honorius III gave Stefan Nemanja the royal crown and title. […]

The general offensive of Catholicism in south-east Europe in the first decades of the 13^th century and particularly the expansion of the kingdom of Hungary, the great catholic power in the region, in this direction led to the creation of new catholic bishoprics.

The first among them was the Sirmium bishopric. As the Byzantine province of Sirmium, situated between the Danube and the Sava, was placed under Hungarian rule in 1181, this process was accompanied by the organisation of a catholic bishopric here, which actually replaced the Orthodox one. As from that moment on, this territory, transformed unto a county (Szerem), remained under the rule of the Hungarian medieval kingdom for good, the Sirmium (Szerem) bishopric having its residence in Bacs (Bac), administered by the bishop of Calocea, remained one of the dioceses of the Hungarian church”[18].

An eastern monastery under Byzantine rule until 1181 (according to V. Achim) or until 1183 (according to B. I. Bojovic), the settlement of St. Dimitrios would become a part of the Serbian-Hungarian coalition. The temporary situation, the alliance between Serbians and Hungarians, caused the monastery to remain close to Orthodoxism, at least for the tie being.

But times were complicated and the region, from a political point of view, was deeply unstable, as it was at the intersection of several regional powers. Soon after he acceded to the throne of Hungary, king Emeric (1196-1204) manifested his conquering desires towards the south-east. He plotted with Stefan’s ambitious brother, Vlkan, who had taken over the former royal title of the Dioclea leaders and wished to become the sole ruler of Serbia. In order to win the Roman pontiff over to his side, Vlkan promised, using Emeric as an intermediary, to obey him. Stefan then had to abandon the throne. Emeric adopted the title of king of Serbia (Rex Rasciae), maintained by the Hungarians in their official titles until the fall of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, giving to Vlkan all the Serbian territories under Hungarian sovereignty[19].

Stefan allied himself with the ruler of Bosnia, Kulin, who had a grudge against Vlkan ever since the latter made it known in Rome that the heretic Bogumils had been received in Bosnia. The fact that he had been the vassal of the Hungarians for two decades did not prevent Kulin from attacking the territories of the Hungarian king, who took advantage of the situation in order not to take part in the 1202 crusade. Discontent, the pope reprimanded Emeric that he had accepted the sign of the cross in order to take up arms against the Christians.

Vlkan was on the throne in March 1203, when the pope sent the archbishop of Kalosa to Serbia to release the sovereign and the Serbian bishops from their oath towards the patriarch of Constantinople and to strengthen their catholic faith. It is probable that this was the opportunity when the Sirmium monastery changed its ruler, becoming part of the papal jurisdiction.

The Hungarian rule over Serbia ceased after the Bulgarian offensive in 1203 or 1204, which rejected the Hungarians to the north and devastated parts of Serbia.

Taking advantage of the situation created by the Bulgarians, Stefan progressively began regaining power in his country. The moment when Stefan returned to the throne of Serbia could not be established. The only certainty is the fact that it occurred between April 1204 and April 1207; it is however plausible that Stefan regained power in 1205[20]. But the fact that Stefan returned to the throne and that the bones of the two rival brothers’ father were brought back by the third brother, Sava in 1207, which marked the reconciliation of the Serbian dynasts who had previously been in conflict brought the monastery back under the influence of the Serbian orthodox church. The conquest of Stefan’s lands by the Bulgarian czar Boril in 1212 as a result of the dissatisfaction the latter felt towards the shelter granted to his rebellious relative, Strez, at the court of the former placed Sirmium again in the sphere of the papal ecclesiastic obedience.

The alliance between Henry, the Latin emperor of Constantinople and king Andrei II of Hungary was not one to calm down Stefan of Serbia, even though it was directed against Boril. The three had to meet in Nis, immediately after the Easter in 1215. As Henry and Andrei had hostile interests not only in relation to Bulgaria, but also Serbia, Stefan was eager to greet the Hungarian king. After a twelve day meeting in Ravno, they headed towards Nis, where the hope of the crusading king to restore his sovereignty over Serbia was not successful. Moreover, upon retuning home, the Serbians blocked the roads to Constantinople, which meant that Andrei’s mediation was necessary. Henry’s death in Thessaloniki kept the Latin threat away from Serbia for a while.

Surrounded by enemies, Stefan sought allies in Venice. In 1207-1208 he married the daughter of the doge, Ana Dandolo, who gave him a son, the future king Uros, even though she died in 1217[21]. In 1217, following his western policy and reiterating the Bulgarian example of Ioniţă, Stefan asked the pope to give the crown for the second time. Honorius III (1216-1227) sent a cardinal to Serbia with the corona regnii for the grand leader, who was crowned in September 1217. King Andrei II contested this act and started preparing an intervention in Serbia when he returned from the crusade in 1218. Stefan’s brother, Sava, who would become archbishop of Serbia in 1219 managed to convince him to change his plans during a diplomatic mission[22]. We know very little about the concrete circumstances which made this mission a success. Some historians believe that the abandonment of the project was a result of the troubles in the Hungarian kingdom which led to the signing of the Golden Bulla[23]. Actually, Andrei II was not dealing only with the anarchic tendencies of the nobles in his kingdom, but also with the separation ones of the Teutons who had settled in Ţara Bârsei in 1211 and had increased the territory under their direct domination by conquests east and south of the Carpathians. It thus becomes plausible that the 1218 intervention in Serbia that the Hungarian king was planning had to be abandoned as priority project because of the crisis inside the Hungarian state system by the affirmation of the autonomous tendencies of the Teutonic knights. In the period after January 1218, when Andrei II returned home from the crusade, an open conflict broke out between him and the colonised crusaders from Ţara Bârsei which was momentarily appeased. It is hard to say whether the papal interventions played a more significant role than the observation that Hungary was going through a deep crisis as a result of feudal anarchy. Perhaps, the coupling of the Teutonic crisis in south-east Hungary and the social and more general one across the country determined the temporary abandonment of the expansionist projects concerning Serbia.

Making a recap, the Sirmium monastery was under the rule of the Byzantine patriarch until 1183, it then passed under the papal rule (more likely from March 1203), but as a result of the Bulgarian offensive against the Hungarians (1203?-1204?), it entered the jurisdictional rule of Ohrida. One should notice the obedience towards Ohrida meant that it was still under the rule of the papacy beginning with 1204, as Ioniţă Caloian and Vasile of Trnovo united the Vlach and Bulgarian church with Rome. Such an interpretation of the relationship of ecclesiastic dependence between Banat and Ohrida was in contradiction with another one: “the spiritual and religious ties between the Banat Romanians and the Orthodox Vidin, the hierarchic relationships with he bishopric indicated by the documents, their geographical position as border people on the south-eastern frontier of the kingdom and their possibilities of crossing into Oltenia were just as many reasons for the Arpadian kings until Andrei II (1205-1235) to limit their domination over Banat to a county-like organisation”[24]. Consequently, Banat would have been under the rule of Bulgarian Vidin, not Ohrida, at that time. In order to establish who rules over Banat between the two centres of power mentioned, one needs to take up a different frame of investigation.

All these events help sketch the situation of the Sirmium monastery between 1216 and 1218. it was situated exactly in the region where the Bulgarian and Hungarian expansionist interests overlapped the Serbian domination. As a result, the area was very exposed and the transitions from one rule to another were still very frequent. One can rightfully believe, then, that in 1261 when Pope Honorius III guaranteed the possessions of St. Teodosie in Palestine, including Sirmium, for the first time, the intervention of brother Efrem with the Holy See came after an express request of the monks of Sirmium themselves. Although they came under the papal rule both through Boril’s reign, who was himself the ruler of a state whose church was dependent on Rome, and through that of Andrei II, “the apostolic king”, the Sirmium monks remained as exposed before the expansionist projects of the states in the region. At the same time, in his quality as the one being called one year later “the great crowned leader”, Stefan’s visible closeness to the Latin West, sealed through the one-decade old marriage alliance with Venice kept St. Dimitrios monastery under the same jurisdictional authority. It was natural, under these circumstances, that the protection and guarantees to be asked from the Holy See, not because another church wanted to get the possessions and status of the monastic organisation in the region, but because the potential and predictable changes of domination anticipated in the region could also mean unwanted devastations.

The proof that the caution had not been in vain is that, upon revision of the act by the pope in 1218, the Mureş possessions of St. Dimitrios were no longer on the list. They had already been taken out, one or another, from the Sirmium monastery patrimony. In all likelihood, the Hungarian royalty had dealt with the issue somehow, by taking the properties of Chalasa (Ciala, Arad), and Minisi (Miniş, Arad county) from the patrimony or Sirmium and thus, of the patrimony of St. Teodosie in Palestine.

The same act pointed to the disappearance of two other possessions: the one at Casteluţiu and the one at Foc. The former was identified by the same L. A. Tăutu with Sinha-Segna, Zengg, on the Adriatic, where the monastery had vineyards, forests and houses. The latter was in Foc – a village and river in the Somogy county, where two fisheries were owned on the Danube island[25].

It is very possible that the properties of St. Teodosie missing from its patrimony between October 26, 1216 and January 1218 (otherwise said, during a time of only one year and 3 months) could have been precisely those properties that belonged to St. Dimitrios in the territories controlled by the Hungarian king. When the papal recognition of Stefan’s Serbian royalty became clear, as he was the “crowned prince”, Andrei II, who refused him this legitimacy, could confiscate those possessions of Sirmium which were in his kingdom: the other two places on the Mureş, Ciala and Minis, the other two, Castelutiu and FOc (situated on the Adriatic and in Somogy county respectively) could have been lost by St. Theodosie under the same circumstances[26].

It will be the task of other studies to establish the later destiny of the possessions of St. Dimitrie in the Hungarian kingdom. The task that I would like to approach below is one dealing with the time before the moment when the said possessions were lost by the Sirmium monastery.

It is clear that prior to 1217, when this fact occurred, the monastery on the Sava valley exercised its spiritual influence over the Mureş valley. In order to make this possible, the political circumstances had to allow this to happen, as the two banks of the Danube were under the same rule.

After the death of czar Simion (893-927), ”the crisis that the Bulgarian state was experiencing allowed the Hungarians to expand the borders of their domination towards the rivers Criş, Mureş and Timiş, taking over the entire territory between the Danube and Tisa during the rule of Constantine Porfirogenet in the middle of the 10^th century”[27]. However, the counties in Banat were organised fairly late in relation to the moment when the Hungarian domination occurred in the area: in 1177 the Timiş county was documented, in 1197 the Cenad one and in 120 the Caraş one. “The inclusion of Banat in the system of royal counties meant not only the exercising of an institutionalised and territorialised rule but also the expansion of the royal property south of the Mureş. This was primarily formed around the pre-existing fortresses that were taken over or around the newly established one by the royalty. From what we know as documents, the number of these fortresses was not too large, the free rural communities led by knyazs were maintained for a long time[28].

If counties were not organised in the area before the last part of the 12^th century, this is not only because the Hungarian state had not yet been transformed into a territorialised state in the region. The Banat territories could have been an object of dispute between Hungary and other states (Byzantine, Bulgarian) in the earlier period. According to D. Ţeicu, the Danube territories remained under Byzantine control until 1182, when they were conquered by the Hungarian king Bela III[29]. The same conclusion can be drawn from the observations made by other historians concerning civilisational elements. “The traces discovered by archaeologists in Veszprem, Zalavar, Szekesfehervar, Bodrogsziget, Tarnasszentmaria, Obuda, Feldebro, and Thany bear witness to a Byzantine liturgical and architectural tradition well established in the 10^th century and continuing until the third quarter of the 9^th century. While the western missionaries could be counted on the fingers of one hand, the eastern one, less popular with the leaders of the new apostolic kingdom dependent on Rome, with numerous supporters among the majority of the inhabitants, proved to be extremely active. The abundance of ruins of Byzantine baptismal fonts from the 10^th century on the territories of Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Banat, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Transylvania eloquently proves such mass baptismal activities according to the eastern rites. The exact model of these buildings, appropriate for a brief liturgy conducted exclusively for the purpose of mass baptism finds its architectonic pattern in the Sirmia baptismal fonts, the Serbian land under Greek administration situated on the current Banat border. Notwithstanding, the majority of the baptismal fonts are on the territory of meridional Hungary”[30].

In order to better understand the relationships between the Latin clergy and the regulated Greek Church, one could refer to Jean Richard’s study, who notices the following in relation to the situation in Cyprus: “the 1223 concordat referred to the canonical rules that stipulated that each new abbot was supposed to prove his obeisance before the bishop of the diocese, who gave him his blessings, which enabled him to rule his monastery from that point forward. The diocese bishop was the Latin bishop and he was the one giving the abbey blessing and to proceed with the reformation of the monastery. Actually, the situation seems to have evolved: the Greek hierarchy was maintained, moulding on the new ecclesiastic models; the Greek bishop exercised his powers on the Greeks in the diocese by virtue of a delegation from the Latin bishop and he also performed the ordaining and blessings for the clerics of his faith”[31]. There are no reasons to believe that the situation in Banat could have been different from the one in Cyprus, even if we are speaking about a situation prior to 1223. Generally speaking, the eastern bishop would keep his autonomy here, being subordinated to the Latin bishop in the diocese. The clarification of this aspect is essentially important for understanding the type of cohabitation between the Eastern Church and the western one in the territories inhabited by the orthodox population in the Hungarian kingdom.

The beginning of the 13^th century found Banat in the full swig of ecclesiastic and political transformations. The expansion of the Hungarian royal authority over it in a much more decisive manner, the organisation of the comitatens system in the region and the handing over of the Sirmium monastery possessions to another jurisdiction, most probably a Hungarian one, were phenomena marking the beginnings of a new political and ecclesiastic history in the region.

 

[1] The current location appears in Jean Richard, “Un monastere grec de Palestine et son domaine chypriote: le monachisme orthodoxe et l’etablissment de la domination franque”, in Croisades et etats latins dans d’Orient. Points de vue et documents, Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Aldershot, Hampshire, GB & Brookfield, Vermont, USA, 1992, XIV, pp. 61-62. On p. 61, n. 3, the historian shows that other researchers had previously identified the St. Theodor monastery with the one in the desert of Judea and with the one in Laberria, in Hungary. In his turn, Ludovic Aloisie Tăutu found that the monastery was in Verria, in the Macedonian Thessaly (Omagiu canonicului Aloisie Ludovic Tăutu cu ocazia împlinirii etăţii sale de 80 de ani, in Buna Vestire, XIV, (1975), January-March, no. 1, p. 353).