Pimen Bărbieru, the partisan abbot from Muscel
It was the year 1917. Matca, a peasant village near Tecuci. Seven children were orphaned by both parents: their father died close to them, in the battles of Mărășești, and their mother, who had gone to the front to look for her husband and bring his body home, fell ill with the typhus that haunted the trenches. In less than a year, the disease took her, and soon after her youngest child. The other six – five boys and a girl – were adopted by relatives, and four of them followed the monastic life. By the grace of God, the eldest became abbot of the Negru-Vodă monastery and then of the Cetățuia hermitage in Muscel, with the name of monk Pimen Bărbieru.
On the rock that stands at the entrance to the heart of Muscel, Pimen prayed for the good of this unique place of Romanian Christian spirituality. Life in the hermitage was hard: the place was wild and isolated, almost like a fortress. To make his life even more difficult, he decided to spend the Lent of 1944 in one of the caves under the hermitage, as the monks who lived here in total isolation in the wilderness used to do. On a rope ladder he descended into a small cave and, by torchlight, on a stone bed, under a cobweb, he discovered the bones of a Romanian saint who had carved his name and the year of his death on the wall: Ioanichie, † 1638. He proclaimed this divine miracle to the community and took the relics to the small church of the hermitage, where he venerated and prayed to them. Among those who guarded them was the hieromonk Dorotheus, the abbot’s brother from Matca, who also lived in Cetățuia.
Vow to faith and country
Early 1948. A silent shadow climbed the snow-covered rock of the hermitage to make a confession of faith. Gheorghe Arsenescu, a colonel in the Romanian army, asked Abbot Pimen Bărbieru for his blessing to found an anti-communist resistance movement called the Dragoslavele Group. The colonel believed that the West would not leave Romania in the hands of the Soviets and, as a former staff officer, he had drawn up a logistical plan. He needed reliable men, shelter, weapons, food and communications. Above all, he needed a secret pact that could only be sealed on the Holy Cross. The abbot listened to him, blessed him and assured him of all his support. The group was joined by former officers, village intellectuals, landowners dispossessed of their land, peasants, all united against the members and anti-Christs of the communist regime. Their oath was written in Cetățuia and it represents a true programme of the movement: “Oath. In the name of Almighty God and on the Holy Cross, I … swear to become a bandit, of my own free will and without anybody’s supervision, in order to fight to save and liberate the motherland and the nation from the clutches of the Communist-Bolshevik beasts and from the heavy yoke of the Russians!
I swear allegiance to His Royal Majesty Michael I, King of all Romanians!
I swear allegiance to the free government of the motherland!
I swear allegiance and obedience, without murmuring or wavering, to the chief of the outlaws!
I swear to mercilessly and ruthlessly kill all the foreigners and scoundrels who have betrayed and sold our motherland and nation and brought disaster to the country!
I swear that I will not separate from my brothers in battle until we have won the final victory.
In case of betrayal or violation of this oath, let me and my whole family be killed!
So help me God!
Arrested by the Security Service
The first nuclei of the movement were formed in Cetățeni, Rucăr, Cîmpulung and Nucșoara. All those who agreed to join the anti-communist movement swore with one hand on the cross and the other on the gun. In the hermitage at the top of the cliff, the leaders of the group held meetings, hid weapons, monitored the area and sent messages to the people in the area. The plan was to act at the beginning of 1949. Muscel was to become the centre of a national resistance. But someone broke his oath and the Communist authorities found out about the plan. Pursued, Colonel Arsenescu managed to escape an ambush and hid in Cîmpulung. In January 1949, the Securitate made its first arrests. Abbot Pimen Bărbieru also fell into the hands of the secret police and was investigated in Cîmpulung, together with other partisans from the same group, such as Toma Burtea and Predoiu Longin. But the flame of struggle and faith was not extinguished, as Colonel Arsenescu and the Arnăuțoiu brothers, from Nucșoara, were those who continued the movement in spirit and deed, as they had sworn on the cross.
The resurrection from the mine
After harsh investigations and grueling tortures in the cellars of the Security Service, Abbot Pimen Bărbieru was tried and sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour under sentence no. 478/11.05.1950, found guilty of conspiring against the “popular regime”. His property was not confiscated because he had no other than the faith of his heart, against which any earthly court is completely powerless. He was politically imprisoned in the prisons of Pitești, Jilava, Târgu Ocna, Baia Sprie and Aiud. In Baia Sprie, Abbot Pimen Bărbieru was sentenced to hard labour in the local mine. On Easter 1953, in the bowels of the earth, he made a bell out of drills and from a white cloth an epitrachelion, proclaiming the Resurrection of the Lord to the other prisoners. His faith in God strengthened him and allowed him to overcome all suffering. However, the work underground and the hardships of prison made him seriously ill with tuberculosis. And since the authorities’ aim was not death but physical and mental suffering, the former abbot of the Muscel fortress was transferred to the prison hospital in Târgu-Ocna in 1955. After being treated with antibiotics and under the care of the prison doctor, Dr. Aurelian Narcea, Pimen Bărbieru was able to get back on his feet, gain weight and halt the progress of his relentless illness. His optimistic nature and, above all, his unshakeable faith in God helped him, along with the efforts of the brave servant of Hippocrates.
Fulfillment by God’s will
The pardon decree of 1964 also brought freedom to Father Pimen Barbieru. He had served 14 years and 9 months in prison. He retired to the monastery of Cernica, where his blood brother Nifon Bărbieru was a monk. In 1977, for a few months, he was even abbot of the Sitaru Monastery, but he returned to Cernica and was appointed confessor of the Pasărea Monastery, where his sister, Mother Doroteea Bărbieru, was staying. The abbot found his eternal rest in 1982 and was buried in the cemetery of Pasărea Monastery, next to Nifon. God fulfilled Pimen Bărbieru’s toil and hope: communism fell and Ioanichie, whose relics were discovered in the cave of Cetățuia, was canonised through the care of the Patriarchate and the Diocese of Argeș and Muscel.
(Narcis Manole – Curierul Zilei)