The fate of the Bessarabian priest and historian Paul Mihail in the era of communist totalitarianism

“The longing for the homeland and the great pain he carried in his soul all his life,
for the Romanian brothers on the other side of the Prut,
torn from the bosom of the motherland
made him write about Bessarabia,
which proves its Romanianness and the continuity of the pure Romanian language, especially in the villages”.

The distinguished historian and priest Paul Mihail was born on 29 June 1905 in the village of Cornova, in the former county of Orhei. He attended the Theological Seminary in Chișinău (1918-1926), the Faculty of Theology (1926-1930) and the Faculty of History in Iași (1929-1932). He founded and edited the magazine Studentul din Chișinău (1928 – 1930). Doctorate in Theology (Historical Section) from the University of Iasi (1945). 1931 Study trip to Bulgaria. Greece (Mount Athos) and Turkey (Constantinople). From 1933, teacher at the School of Church Singers in Chisinau (and director from 1942 to 1945). Assistant at the Faculty of History in Lași (1948 – 1949) and lecturer at the Theological Institute in Bucharest (1949 – 1950). Director of the Historical Church Museum in Chisinau (1941-1945), Secretary of the Historical Monuments Commission – Basarabia Region, member of the Historical-Archaeological Church Society of Basarabia (1932-1944), member of the Association of Slavs in Romania, collaborating member (1940-1944) and honorary member of the Institute of History “A. D. Xenopol” Historical Institute in Iași (1990), member – through an “Act of Honour” – of the Chisinau Athenaeum (1992) and honorary member of the Romanian Academy (7 July 1994). Deacon at Chisinau Cathedral (1933-1935). Parish priest at the Church of the Archangels in the same city (1936-1944) and at the Banu Church in Iași (1946-1964). He was banned from publishing between 1950 and 1954. Awards: “Năsturel Herăscu” Prize (1939) and “Eudoxiu Hurmuzaki” Prize (1995, together with his daughter, Dr. Zamfira Mihail) of the Romanian Academy; Economist and Stavrophor (1942), Patriarchal Cross (1972) and Avva (“Great Deacon”, 1980). He died in Bucharest on 11 October 1994.

Through painstaking research, Paul Mihail discovered and disseminated a huge amount of documentary material on the history of the Romanians everywhere, mostly found in archives and libraries abroad: medieval documents, manuscripts (Slavic, Greek, Romanian), old books; he is the first Romanian researcher of the Holy Sepulchre Archives in Constantinople. His studies and articles – in which the history of Bessarabia occupies a central place – have focused mainly on: the research and description of manuscripts, their circulation in the Romanian countries and beyond its borders; the enrichment of the knowledge about the Romanian antiquarian book; the circulation of the books printed in our country in the South Slavic world, from the Middle Ages to modern times; the study of historical and artistic monuments; the cultural and ecclesiastical relations of the Romanian people with the Orthodox world. Among his numerous publications, we mention the following works Documents on Bessarabia (1560 – 1807) (1930); Ecclesiastical-Cultural Relations between Romanians and Russians in the 19th Century (1930). XV – XX. Historical sketch (1932); Eight Moldovan documents from the time before Stephen the Great (1933); Moldovan documents found in Constantinople (1462 – 1755) (1933 and 1934); Romanian documents from Bulgaria and Greece (1468 – 1866) (1933); Album of Moldovan documents from the 15th century (1934); Regentele of Moldovan documents from the Archive of St. Constuntinopot of Church records, manuscripts and icons from Bessarabia. Old Inscriptions and Inscriptions (1934, 1939 and 1940); Forgotten Facts and Forgotten Basarabians 1799 – 1918 (1938); Romanian Prints in Bessarabia from 1812 to 1918 (1941): Moldavian Documents and Zapise from Constantinople (1607 – 1806); Unpublished Documents of the Moldavian Chancellery from the 16th Century. From the archive of the Metoch of St. Mormânt in Constantinople (1964); Slavic manuscripts in collections in Moldova (I – 1972 with collaboration and 11 – 1979); Romanian manuscripts in the Library of the Metropolitanate of Moldova (I – 1974, II – 1975 and III – 1976); Contributions to the Old Romanian Bibliography (1785 – 1830) (I – 1984, II – 1985 and III – 1986); Old Romanian printed works (1831 – 1871) (I – 1988, II – 1989 and III – 1990); Romanian documents printed in Bessarabia. 1 (1812 – 1830) (1993, in collaboration with Zamfira Mihail); Mărturii de spiritualitate românească din Basarabia (1993).

The priestess Eugenia Mihail, wife of the great scholar, responded with great kindness to our dialogue.

Toader Buculei: Mrs. Priestess, I sincerely consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to include in my imprisoned Clio a great Basarabian scholar and patriot, who carried the Bible with dedication and holiness in one hand and the history of our nation in the other: We find a correspondent of his in the Transylvanian library of Lupaș, who also honours the Romanian book. We begin our dialogue with the question: what is the origin of the famous historian Paul Mihail?

Eugenia Mihail: The priest Dr. Rev. Paul Mihail was a servant of the altar of God who dedicated his life to researching the history of the Romanians and the Romanian Orthodox Church, publishing more than 460 studies and articles, many of which are still in manuscript.

He was born in Cornova, Orhei County, in 1905, heir to seven generations of clergymen from the Mihail family, dating back to 1688, on 29 June 1905.

In 1865 the surname had been changed from Russian to Mihailovich, with the addition of the particle “-ovici”. He regained his name Mihail in 1942.

The fourth of five children, the same number as Justin and Elena, he was orphaned at the age of three and a half. The father, Justin Mihail, was a teacher in the village church and, through his efforts, established the first Romanian school in Cornova. He died young, at the age of 33, after a tragic accident in 1909. The founder of the stone church in the village of Cornova, he left behind the memory of an energetic man who strove for the cultural upliftment of his fellow villagers. His mother, Elena, came from a family of Mazili from Meleșeni, Orhei. The daughter of wealthy parents, brought up in the love of God and proverbial kindness, she was the one who instilled in her children the desire and love of God and books. The sacrifice of the young mother to bring up her five children alone created in Father Paul’s soul a cult of love for her. As long as she lived, until February 1939, Mother Elena always came to Cornova to help and comfort her and her family.

Of course, his secondary studies, especially his higher ones, cultivated his love and sharpened Paul Mihail’s skills in searching, deciphering and exploiting medieval documents and manuscripts, old Romanian books. Under whose mentors did he cultivate this love and hone this skill?

He went to primary school at the Hârjauca monastery, the orphanage for orphaned children from clerical families. Here, between the ages of 6 and 11, he lived a hard monastic life of prayer and fasting, with the same duties as the monks, attending services day and night. Living in the monastery, surrounded by books, manuscripts and icons, among monks who read and sang, he learnt to decipher the ancient Cyrillic alphabet, especially from the monk James who took care of him, and acquired a love, a zeal and a determination to know it for himself. It can be said that God’s mercy blessed him to become a priest.

Of the 12 students of the monastery, two are still alive, one of them being Fr. Paul Mihail. Until 1918, children at the school had to speak only Russian, and those who spoke Romanian were beaten. Once, punished for the mistake of “speaking Romanian”, he was beaten and stabbed with a pen in the palm of his hand, which became infected and developed such a high temperature that he barely escaped. He carried the scar of this beating all his life.

In 1912 he was sent from Hârjauca Monastery to the Spiritual School in Chișinău and continued his studies at the Theological Seminary, graduating in 1926 with a first class degree. He loved to write from an early age; his daily notes, which he began at the age of 13 and continued until his last day, have survived, as have his manuscripts describing nature, his colleagues, his teachers, his grandmother, the bell ringer at the church and the people he met throughout his life. These manuscripts have become a veritable archive.

He was good at helping out, so on holidays from the seminary or college he would come home and help my mother with the roasting or tying up the vineyard, or go to the neighbouring villages to see the priests to bless their libraries. And sometimes a generous priest would give her a book or a sheet of old notes to start her own library. His life was a constant dedication to love, to serving God and to researching the history of the nation. He was always studying. If he found an unknown manuscript or an old book, he would not rest until he had deciphered it. He always wanted to bring to light the deeds of the most important people. The words of the Gospel: “By your works the world will know that you are mine” were his guide. At the seminary, he admired the rector, Father Professor Constantin Popovici, about whom, in 1983, 65 years after the unification of Bessarabia, he printed a study Priests fighting for the Romanian language in the magazine Mitropolia Moldovei.

Between 1926 and 1930, he studied at the Faculty of Theology, where he graduated “magna cum laudae”, being the first in his class. During his four years of study, he supported himself on the salary of the assistant secretary of the Faculty of Theology. The head secretary, Deacon Teodor Simionov, impressed by the young student’s ability and poverty, recommended him for employment during his studies. (A portrait of Deacon Teodor Simionov was printed in the 1993 issue of Luminătorul).

In 1929 – 1930 and 1932 he also attended the Faculty of Letters, Department of History of the University of Lași. At the Faculty of History, Professor llie Minca, when he learned how much the student Paul Mihailovici knew, took him under his wing and asked him to prepare for printing the documents discovered in Constantinople, which he published in the journal Cercetări istorice in 1932-1933. Now the Institute of History in Iași has published a commemorative volume dedicated to Professor Ilie Minea, and the priest Paul Mihail has printed memories of this professor, his only true mentor.

So we can say that he cultivated his love for books and documents and carried out all the historical researches by his own strength and work.

Paul Mikhail was the first person to research in the Holy Sepulchre Archives in Constantinople, from which he brought back a huge amount of documentary material. With what material sacrifices and intellectual effort did he collect this precious material?

As a graduate in theology, in December 1930 he received a scholarship from the Diocese of Chișinău to study in south-eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Greece, Mount Athos and Istanbul. The scholarship, worth 50,000 lei, was sent monthly. Sometimes he didn’t receive it on time, so he worked as a day labourer at the port of Piraeus, cutting stone to earn a living.

While studying in Istanbul, God helped them find the treasure of their homeland: Romanian documents from the 16th century. He researched and photographed more than 1,200 documents relating to Romanian monasteries and gifts to holy places, and brought some back home. “God’s grace and my mother Elena’s prayers guided me,” wrote Paul Mihail in his daily notes in the Journal of the Study Trip to Southeastern Europe (1931), which was not published until 1991. In his article, written 33 years after the discovery of the Romanian documents in Constantinople, Paul Mihail recounts the events that these historic documents went through before they could be printed.

When he was a student, before he went abroad, he founded and edited the magazine Studentul, printing 15 issues in four years and then passing it on to other students.

But let me read you, Professor, part of the article After 33 years… which gives a more eloquent answer to your question:

“Even before I graduated in theology, I visited Prague, went through Poland via Krakow and Liov, spent a month in Belgrade, at the Patriarchate of Carlovitz and in Macedonia.

Now I wanted to see Bulgaria, Greece, Mount Athos, to go to Constantinople. I thought that I would find material for my thesis, that I would find evidence of Romanian craftsmanship, that I would find places where Romanian slova was spoken, that I would make the names of our scholars known in the places I passed through.

My travel diary of 1931 is a testimony of what happened to me, the joys, troubles and incidents I had in foreign lands. If it can ever be published, let it be!

In the perspective of the years, my penetration into the archives of the Holy Sepulchre’s Metochion in Constantinople was an act of Providence.

That I, a young man of 26, with threadbare clothes, little money and no guardian, should see the rusty doors of the cellar of the Mona Lisa of the Holy Sepulchre open?

Should you, a Moldavian from Orhei’s Culla Valley, tread the paths where ecumenical patriarchs and saints have walked?

To find in the cellar of the Metochion, scattered in the corridors, piles of documents and Moldavian zapis, to see boxes full of maps and files of more than 1,000 sheets?

To touch shelves full of old manuscripts, scrolls and rotting books?

To feel the thrill of being in a repository where centuries-old, beautifully decorated documents are kept, a priceless treasure for the history of the Romanian nation?

To be the first Romanian to enter a foreign archive that had been closed and sealed since the year of secularisation, 1863?

And then to dig out mouldy documents with one’s arm. To shake them one by one, to seal them, to wipe away the smears and the spiders.

Tell them you’re from home, and cry with them because you’re homesick!

Each hrisov and parchment, each zapis and border testimony, whispered to me its long centuries of history, each silently told me its troubled life.

Each one asked me if there were still the same villages and fairs, if the mountains and waters had the same names, if the same fortresses still stood on the Dniester, if there were still fuel wells and salt mines, if the same customs survived with songs, doinas, cobze and horses, if people kept the same faith and spoke the same Romanian language.

And I told them all: everything is as it was in their time. The same mountains and the same waters, the same towns and the same forests, the same hard-working people and the same chant, the same villages and the same Romanian language.

Only that the dividing lines of that time and the brothers who had been at war for centuries in the three provinces are now united in Greater Romania, thanks to the sacrifices of the soldiers from Plevna and Mărășești.

But since I cannot take with me the old hrisoave, zapise and harsh testimonies, let me tell them that they are the pages of the book of the secular generosity of the Romanian people, which, from the beginning of its state organisation until today, from a small and poor country, as Mihai Vodă wrote, has poured out its mercy, equal to the love of God, to the Holy Places and to the neighbouring peoples.

Let me tell them that they will not remain alone here among strangers, but will be joined by the good spirit of Alexandra, the foundations of Stephen, the courage of Michael, the wisdom of Miron, the teaching of Cantemir, the drops of blood of Grigore, of Horea, of Tudor, of all the farmers and peasants who fought for centuries to defend their ancestral land.

And with them, finally, remain the diecians and copyists, the teachers and uricarii, the miniaturists and painters, the scholars and poets, the chroniclers and writers, with them remains the spirit of the entire Romanian nation, creators of the values of the land that for centuries, by destiny, has stood guard at the crossroads between East and West.

For days on end, stacks of papers are sorted, placed in files and then written on: “Romanian documents, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th century”!

Providence did this for me! Because my whole being was pure, because I did not yet know the sin of lust, because I was faithful, because my mother Elena prayed for me.

My posthumous gratitude to you, lawyer Mirmiroglu, that you have rewarded me with a number of the most rotten and useless scrolls and papers by accepting my Astrahan cap as a gift.

Thank you, Lord, for giving me this honour, so that I may lay my hand on, read and kiss the centuries-old tablets of the Romanian edifice!

Paul Mihail is equally meticulous in the use of the documentary material he has collected, which is reflected in the rich and valuable legacy he has left to Romanian historiography (the bibliography of Paul Mihail’s writings and references to them, included in his volume Testimonies of Romanian Spirituality in Bessarabia [Chișinău, 1993], contains 458 titles). What are the main directions of his scientific research? What place does the history of Bessarabia occupy in his work? How did he participate in the work of historical institutions?

The exploitation of unpublished documents from foreign and Romanian archives, the re-examination of the cultural settlements of Bessarabia and of Romanian cultural personalities. By bringing old books and manuscripts into print, Paul Mihail’s studies on monasteries, churches, ecclesiastical and cultural personalities will continue to enrich our knowledge of the history of Romanian culture in Bessarabia. Paul Mihail’s writings on Bessarabia occupy a predominant place in his oeuvre (more than 200 bibliographical titles), beginning with the study on parish libraries published in the journal Luminătorul in Chișinău in May 1928 and ending with his last work, published in one volume by Ed. Academiei, Romanian-language documents printed in Bessarabia (1812-1830), published in 1993, which was awarded the “E. Hurmuzaki” prize. For all the hardships and shortcomings he endured, God rewarded him with the joy of writing, of discovering unpublished works and discoveries for Romanian historiography. The longing for his homeland and the great pain he carried in his soul all his life for his Romanian brothers on the other side of the Prut, torn from the bosom of the motherland by the empire of the Antichrist, led him to write about Bessarabia, to prove its Romanianness and the continuity of the pure Romanian language, especially in the villages. (I will only mention the study Priests Fighting for the Romanian Language until the Political Completion of the Romanian National State in 1918, for the publication of which he struggled for years until it appeared in the journal Mitropolia Moldovei și Sucevei, no. 10-12/1983, pp. 674-681).

His scientific works, for which he had collected documentary material since his youth, since they mostly concerned Bessarabia, could not be published after 1944. For more than three decades, he approached all the historical-scientific publications in order to publish new contributions to the old Romanian bibliography, with unpublished testimonies concerning the prints of Bessarabia from 1812-1918. The Academia publishing house officially replied that it could not include them in the bibliographical journal because “they contain references to deposits in a territory that is not part of the Romanian P.R.”. And the History Journal also cited circumstantial reasons. It was only in 1985, thanks to the courage of the historians Stefan S. Gorovei and Leon Simanschi, from the editorial staff of the Historical Yearbook of the “A. D. Xenopol” Institute in Iasi, that the publication of this documentary evidence of Romanian culture in Bessarabia, from the 16th to the 20th century, began. XIX. CENTURY. However, the name Bessarabia could not be mentioned and crosses were used for the fragments that were omitted from the text.

Between 1941 and 1945, he was the director of the Church Museum in Chișinău, of art and religious books. He enriched the exhibits of the museum and discovered rare pieces of the national heritage. (In the manuscript there is a moving and tragic article Ten years of wandering of the Church Historical Museum, which he could not print). During the same period, he also held other scientific positions: 1929-1938, secretary of the Historical Monuments Commission of the Basarabia Region, and between 1932-1944, member of the Ecclesiastical-Historical-Archaeological Society of Bessarabia.

Since 1940, he was a collaborating member of the A.D. Xenopol Historical Institute in Iași, since its foundation, and since 1990, an honorary member. His posthumous contributions were published in the last volume of the Institute’s Yearbook, 1995. A member of the Romanian Slavic Association, he participated and presented papers at the national congresses of Slavicists (Sofia – 1963; Prague – 1968; Warsaw – 1973; Suzdal – 1982) and at numerous scientific meetings in the country. He took part in the National Congress of Historians in Bucharest in 1980.

What was the life of Paul Mihail and his family like from the first invasion of the Red Empire armies in Bessarabia (June 1940) until the end of his life? Under what conditions did he research and publish?

The period of exile, from 28 June 1940 to 11 July 1941, in Iași, and the second exile, from the summer of 1944, with 9 changes of residence, until 13 April 1946, when he was appointed priest in Iași, were the most difficult because of the hardships and difficult living conditions. But the years 1950-1955 and the years that followed were hard because of the harassment by the authorities, the constant surveillance, which was evident in the people who took notes of what was said in the church during the sermon or followed whom he met. The insecurity of the years in which he went to bed with his clothes on, in fear of being picked up and locked up, had psychological consequences.

During his exile from 28 June 1940 to 11 July 1941, all the documents and manuscripts he had brought with him from Constantinople remained in his house in Chisinau. They were taken by the Soviets three days after the occupation of Chisinau. His doctoral thesis Romanian Monasteries Worshipped at the Holy Places (350 pages), the Historical Monograph of the State of Cornova (his contribution to the work of the Romanian Social Institute team led by Prof. D. Gusti) and other works in progress were lost. In 1961, a volume of documents from the 19th century was published in the Moldavian SSR. XV-XVI, Paul Mihail recognised the documents he had brought from Constantinople. Acad. E. Russev had the scientific honesty to print a review in Izvestia of the Academy in Chișinău, stating that Paul Mihail was the one who brought the documents, thus contributing to the enrichment of information for the history of the Romanians.

In 1948, he was appointed assistant to the Slavic Department of the History Faculty of the University of Iași, from which he was dismissed for attending lectures in priest’s clothes. In 1949 he was appointed by appointment as a university lecturer in the Department of Russian Language and History of the Russian and Romanian Church at the Theological Institute in Bucharest, but he refused because he did not want to teach the language to his brothers who had fallen into slavery. Twice the Blessed Patriarch Justinian, who was very fond of Father and knew him from his refuge in Râmnicu Vâlcea, insisted that he be given the post. Because he refused the chair in Bucharest, knowing the ordeal of the Romanian brothers on the other side of the Prut, he began to be watched. Inspectors from the Department of Religious Affairs searched him several times, not only in the church but also in his house. In those days there were inspectors and general inspectors in the Department of Religious Affairs who checked the books in the library, page by page, to find anything compromising. And these inspectors were not intellectuals, some of them had barely finished primary school. The order was that all forbidden names were to be removed from the parish or personal library, and woe betide anyone who did not remove them. With the sword of Damokles hanging over their heads, the fear was so great that it left a deep mark on their lives. As a result of these searches, the priest Michael, out of fear, burned many papers from his archives and his own notes.

It is difficult to describe the terror of 1950-1955. Only those who were investigated, searched and summoned to the Securitate can understand the traumatic psychological effects of the constant pressure. To keep him under pressure, he was called to the headquarters and kept there for a day and a night without being questioned, only to be let out at dawn with the threat: “You’ll come back to us!

Between 1950 and 1954 he was also banned from publishing. To our own suffering was added that of our relatives. 1946-1947 was a year of famine. In 1949, brother Călin Mihail was deported from the village of Peciul Nou, near the border with Yugoslavia, to Bărăgan, together with other villagers, and left in the fields. They dug their own huts and founded the village of Salcâmi, near the Jegălia railway station. They had to walk 3 km for a bucket of water. His wife went blind from grief. They survived thanks to brother Călin, a former church cantor, who took a job as an accountant on a state farm. At the same time, in the autumn of 1949, his nephew Constantin Mihail, a pupil in the 8th grade of the Oradea Normal School, was arrested with a group of his colleagues, he for writing patriotic poems, and sent to the Canal for two years and then another year with forced residence in the Bărăgan. With fear in our hearts, we sent them both monthly parcels of food, clothes and money.

As a priest, he had needs in the parish, but at the same time for years he was forced by the hierarchy of the Metropolitanate to make translations of foreign language magazines that arrived at the Metropolitanate (from Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and even Polish). He was also responsible for going to various places in the diocese to decipher difficult inscriptions for church monographs. He worked alone when and how he could. When he had an idea, he would get up at night and work. But day after day he read, he was up to date with everything that appeared in the field of Romanian history, and he printed many reviews. Until the end of his life, he had an extraordinary memory, remembering to the last detail the works he had read.

From her father, our daughter Zamfira Mihail learned palaeography and inherited the love of books, the Church and the nation. She never hesitated to say that she was a Basarabian. It is now up to her to publish Father Mihail’s unpublished manuscripts.

In our family there was a constant intellectual collaboration. In jest and in earnest, the priest gave us “titles”: the priestess was promoted to protonotarius, and the daughter to secretary general of the house.

Dear priestess, please tell me what activities your husband carried out as a servant of the altar of the Lord! Under the Communist regime, which proclaimed and imposed atheism in spiritual life, what was the situation of priests in general and of Paul Michael in particular?

In 1933, on the 19th of February, he married me, my name was Eugenia Kening: “We met in 1927 when I was also a student at the Faculty of Theology. The civil ceremony took place at the Chișinău Town Hall, and the religious ceremony at the Vovidenia Church in Iași, with Eugenia Badăreu, sister of Prof. Leon Ballif, as godmother. Also in 1933, he was appointed extra-budgetary deacon at the Chisinau Cathedral and, through a competition, teacher at the School of Church Singers (from 1942 to 1945, he was the director of this school).

From 1936 to 1944 he was parish priest of the Church of the Archangels (Soborul Vechi) in Chisinau. In 1942 he was awarded the title of iconographer. On 13 April 1946, Paul Mihail was appointed parish priest of the Church of St. Haralambie in Iași, having been called from Râmnicu Vâlcea. But because another priest, with political protection, wanted the post, he was transferred by his office to the Banu church, a church as big as a cathedral, but dilapidated, without a congregation, with only one habitable room, in a house full of tenants, a room with direct access from the street, without any domestic or sanitary facilities. The Banu church had not been repaired before 1940, and its oil-painted interior walls were scarred by the snow that entered through the broken windows during the war years, with cracks left over from the great earthquake of 1940. The effort to repair this imposing church in 1947 was enormous, and only with God’s help and the miracle of meeting a deeply faithful man – the engineer and builder V. Paraschiv – was the major restoration of the Banu Church, where he worked for 33 years, completed.

During the period 1946-1964, the priest Paul Mihail lived a “martyr” life, being obliged to manage and be personally responsible for the 13 buildings of the Banu parish, with 33 badly paying tenants, for which the parish had to pay double tax (due to the additional income) to the tax authorities and to ensure the maintenance of the buildings. The tenants, some of whom were activists and atheists, who had been brought in by the repairs, mocked the “administrator”, the priest, insulted him, and it is hard to believe, but they beat him, although the priest always came to collect the khili, accompanied by bishops and church councillors. The priest often paid the taxes to the state of the Banu parish out of his salary.

The most painful sacrifice he had to make for the administrative duties that came with being a parish priest was that he had no time to devote to his life’s passion, historical research. In his daily diary, he records the priest’s constant pastoral care of his parishioners during the years of the atheist offensive. The priest had little time for meditation and study, spending all his free time working at the Central Library of the University of Iași or at the Institute of History, “because until 1958 we lived four to a room and raised the grandson of the priest’s sister”.

For 45 years, priests were not allowed to speak in public, only in church. And sermons had to be written and approved by the protopope from 1949 to 1964.

At the intervention of people of culture and high spiritual life, such as Prof. I. C. Chitimia, vice-president of the Slavic Association in our country, Paul Mihail was hardly allowed to give a lecture at the scientific meeting of the Slavic Association in 1963. After that date, however, he officially participated in international congresses of Slavic studies and history, both in Romania and abroad, and he took part in the defence of Olga Stoicovici’s doctoral thesis at the University of Bucharest.

In Paul Mihail’s Bibliography and Alexandru Boldur’s Memoir of Scientific Titles, I noticed a mutual interest in their work and understood that there was a close friendship between them. How did this friendship manifest itself? With which other personalities did he have friendly relations? Assuming that he left a valuable and rich correspondence, how could this legacy be used?

Our friendship with Prof. Alexandru Boldur was mainly through correspondence, as he lived in Bucharest and we lived in Iași, but we also visited him whenever we travelled to Bucharest, as he visited us in Iași. After 1944, relations with Bessarabian personalities continued, mainly through correspondence, with Pan Halippa, Ion Pelivan, Acad. Ștefan Ciobanu, priest Vasile Gumă, prof. univ. Constantin Fedeleș, prof. univ. C. N. Tomescu, prof. univ. Leca Morariu, prof. Victor Mateevici, prof. Leon Trofin, priest Sergiu Roșea, priest Gh. Cunescu, Dr. Mihail Mihailovici Rouă de Deal, Metropolitan Efrem, Priest Nicolae Bolboceanu, Archimandrite Achipsina Rusu, Prof. I. Timuș and many others, and especially with his former students from the School of Singers, llie Bulgaru, conductor and soloist of the Radio Choir, Mihai Mârzac from Craiova. During the years of prohibition, he corresponded constantly with his fellow citizens from Cornova, about 40 people who wrote to him, most of them in Latin letters, thus creating an archive of the continuity of writing in Latin letters in Bessarabia after 1944.

In Iași he had among his friends Prof. Gh. Năstase, prof. Vasile Harea, prof. univ. Dumitru Mangcron, priest Ioan Loghin-Turcanu, president of the consistory, priest Gh. Popovici, prof. Constantin Anghelescu, as well as extensive correspondence with I.P.S. Nestor Vornicescu, Antonie Plămădeală, Protopriest Antonie Tudoreanu, with the writer Geo Bogza. The entire correspondence (with more than 3,000 persons) was deposited in the “Paul Mihail Fund” at the State Archives in Iași (also mentioned in the Archives Magazine no. 4/1985) and we must mention that his archive, as is known, was lost until 1940.

On the very last day of his life (10 October 1994) he completed a volume of more than 500 pages of correspondence with his contemporaries, hierarchs, priests, professors, writers, doctors and other intellectuals, which he sent in a letter to the researcher Dr. Gh. Buzatu. Unfortunately, despite all the assurances he received, the work has not yet seen the light of print.

By the care and power of God above, the great historian and patriot Paul Mihail returned to his native Bessarabia after 1990. How was he received by his brothers on the other side of the Prut? How is his work received in this Romanian territory?

After 1944, he maintained uninterrupted contacts with some of his acquaintances who remained in Bessarabia, especially with his fellow countrymen, and in time he established friendly relations with many people of culture in Chisinau (such as Acad. E. Russev, the historian A. Moșanu, Valeriu Matei, Prof. Vasile Șoimaru, Prof. Ion Madan, the researcher Pavel Balmuș, the editor Mihai Papuc, with his former student who became a priest Anton Tudoreanu). However, it was not until 1990 that he was able to return to his home town. On 29 June 1992, he was invited and celebrated in Chișinău by the National Library. The director of the library, the writer Alexie Rău, wrote a poem in honour of the priest Paul Mihail, with which he was greeted by a group of students. On the occasion of this celebration, on his 87th birthday, he was named “Honorary Patron of the White Church Athenaeum of the National Library of Moldova” and honorary member of the “Mitropolitul Varlaam” Cultural Society of Chișinău. The solemn meeting took place in the hall of the National Library with the participation of more than 500 people and prominent personalities from Bessarabia, who spoke and praised the “Patriarch of our culture”, as they put it.

And in 1995, on 29 June, also at the National Library in Chisinau, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of his birth, he was commemorated by intellectuals from Chisinau and guests from Romania during a scientific meeting, the articles of which were published in the journal Literature and Art in July 1995. The Society of Bibliophiles of Moldova was named after the priest Dr. Paul Mihail. In 1993, the Scientific Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Moldova published two books dedicated to him: “Mărturii de spiritualitate românească din Basarabia” (Testimonies of Romanian Spirituality in Bessarabia) and the reprint of Ion Neculce’s Chronicle, copied by Ioasaf Luca. The Mihail manuscript. Since the priest Mihail went to the Lord, many articles have been written about him, here in the country, but also many articles written with great sensitivity by Bessarabians, professors, researchers, writers and priests. He continues to be present in the Romanian cultural life and through the posthumous works published in Iași, Bucharest, Galați and Chișinău.

In addition to all this, we must point out that one of the highlights of Paul Mihail’s life was the discovery of more than 1,200 unpublished documents in the Holy Sepulchre Archives, which reveal the Romanians’ devotion to the Holy Places and the neighbouring peoples, which he saved from destruction and restored to the national heritage through publication.

The fields of historiography in which he made remarkable contributions, always unpublished, were related to the history of the Romanians, the history of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the relations of the Romanians with the South-East European world.

He himself contributed to the enrichment of the cultural heritage by preserving it. Paul Mihail was a great donor to libraries abroad (in Sofia and Belgrade) and to other cultural institutions. He donated documents and manuscripts from the 16. XVI-XX to the Library of the Academy, the Central Library of the University of Iași, the National Library, the State Archives of Iași, the National Library of Chisinau and liturgical books to the churches of Chisinau and Cornova.

He was guided by the principle that man should not collect for himself, but should make available to all, everything that represents elements of culture.

We have dozens and dozens of thanks for donations and long lists of minutes of their receipt.

He was wise and modest all his life, and above all he was a servant of God.

(Interview by Toader Buculei, 19 February 1997 – Clio in prison. Testimonies and Opinions on the Fate of Romanian Historiography in the Era of Communist Totalitarianism, Libertatea Publishing House, Brăila, 2000, pp. 163-176)

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