The Angel, the Demon, and the Priest: Performing the Eucharist in Late Medieval Moldavian Monastic Written and Visual Cultures

Abstract

Manuscript 50 (46) from the library of the monastery of Putna contains a text entitled “Discourse on the appropriate manner of standing in the church.” The first part explains the Eucharistic liturgy, from the vesting of the priest to the moment before the epiclesis. The service is dramatized as an interaction between the priest and an angel of God, who later enters a battle with a demon that distracts the congregation. The second part of the text consists of the vision of the monk who lost his faith in the Eucharist. At the prayers of the community, he receives a revelation of the reality of the liturgical mystery, in which he is shown a child slaughtered on the altar table. The visionary text in the first section is part of a tradition attested in the Slavonic environment of the Balkans, which later became popular in the Russian world. These Slavonic versions are based on a similar visionary text attested in Greek manuscripts, but the similarities are only partial. The present study places the text from the Putna manuscript in relation to the iconography of the liturgical space and highlights the relevance of this type of literature for understanding the local monastic culture.

1. Looking for Textual Sources

The iconography of Moldavian mural paintings from the period when commissions were at their peak, in the last two decades of the fifteenth century, under the patronage of Stephen the Great and the noble elite close to the sovereign, attests to the circulation of late-Byzantine visual formulas. The iconographic schemes used in the articulation of the programs for each liturgical space in church interiors have already been commented on in the specialized literature in the light of cultural exchanges with late Byzantium and its Balkan or Russian periphery (Turdeanu 1942; Elian 1964; Dragnev 2021).1 However, scholarly consensus prioritized a problematic perspective, in which the Byzantine imagery is considered as a staple of immutable stability, spread through the circulation of muralist workshops. In the case of Moldavia, this paradigm informed the hypothesis of the circulation of models through itinerant workshops that link the local wall painting to the activity of a workshop in the central Balkans, derived from the so-called Ohrid school (Garidis 1989; Georgitsoyanni 1993).

However, recent analyses with different methodological approaches have highlighted the fact that the supposed invariable character of the iconographic schemes is rather a projection of scholars’ preconceptions. These biases enhance the tendency to overemphasize the so-called Byzantine traditionalism, while, in fact, the appearance of a “recipe book” often disguises a nexus of flexible formulas. The increasing attention paid to the variables of the iconographic formulas, informed by the methodology proposed by Jérôme Baschet for Western medieval art, who coined this approach as “seriality” (Baschet 1996), alongside the analysis of images in relation to their placement in space, showcases, in fact, the enactment of adaptation processes.

Thematic repositories specific to each compartment of the sacred space, structured by its liturgical use, constitute resources for various selections.

A closer look at the interaction between images and the architectural volumetry, cautious of discursive strategies such as juxtapositions of images or their placement on opposite or converging surfaces, reveals the creation of visual relays within the worship space. The iconographic schemata could, therefore, be seen as recessive systems through which a fixed thematic inventory is selectively activated. This process is driven by the architectural structures of the space in which the images are to be installed and, probably, by the specificities of the commission, as Andrei Dumitrescu has shown in recent analyses of late medieval Moldavian wall paintings (Dumitrescu 2021, 2022b).

It is, therefore, of paramount interest to analyze processes in which the local Moldavian culture, a branch within the so-called Slavia Ortodossa (Picchio 1959), functioned as a filter that operated upon the inventory of images vehiculated by the teams of painters sponsored at the turn of the fifteenth century by the ruling family and its close associates, members of the gentry or of the clergy. Unfortunately, the attempts to assess the approach of the Moldavian cultural milieu, on the issue of images, are hampered by the silence of the written sources.

For instance, a recurring theme in the preserved manuscripts consists of the appraisal of the legitimacy of icons. This consistent written corpus is occasioned, in fact, by the liturgical structuring of the collections of homilies that constitute the largest part of the theological literature copied in local scriptoria. Many of these compilations (zborniki) are dedicated to the liturgical time of the Triodion, that comprises the Sunday of Orthodoxy as the feast for the first Sunday of the Lent. This liturgical celebration generates a focal point for the accretion of homiletic materials that extoll the final defeat of iconoclasm. For example, an early fifteenth-century zbornik copied at the monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople, currently preserved in the manuscript collection at the monastery of Dragomirna (Ms 1813/724), belonging in fact originally to the library of the monastery of Moldovița, contains homilies for the Lent, from the Sunday of Orthodoxy up to Palm Sunday. Within this selection, four texts that commemorate the triumph of iconodules refer to the veneration of icons in their very titles (Iufu and Brătulescu 2012, pp. 158–59, cat. 156, nos. III, V, VI, VII). Although this abundant literature does highlight a concern of the Moldavian monastic milieu for the issue of iconicity, it does not allow for a glimpse at the operationalization of this interest in the construction and reception of iconographic programs.

The survey of such zborniki remains, however, a constant task for art historians, given that the relationship between the discourse of images and the rite of the Byzantine Church became an influential venue of research in the scholarship produced in second half of the last century, inaugurated by the fundamental work of Ioan D. Ștefănescu (Ștefănescu 1936). The correspondences between the theological interpretations of the Eucharistic liturgy and the iconography of the altar apse were the preferred case study for such approaches (Gerstel 1999). Unfortunately, in the case of Moldavia at the end of the Middle Ages, extensive texts explaining the liturgy have not yet been traced in the preserved corpus, generating, therefore, a need to identify any opuscule that can be assimilated to this thematic sphere.

2. A Rare Visionary Text Copied in Late Medieval Moldavia

At a first glance, such a text would seem to be the hitherto unedited “Discourse on the appropriate manner of standing in the church,” preserved between folios 83v and 88r of manuscript 50 (formerly 46) in the library of the monastery of Putna, a zbornik copied in the late fifteenth century. This collection has been surveyed by Paulin Popescu (Popescu 1962), but the text under scrutiny has not yet received proper scholarly attention. The anonymous opuscule is structured in two parts, with a shared visionary character that undermines its assimilation to the tradition of Byzantine liturgical mystagogies, an issue on which I will insist later. The second section, which explicitly quotes St. Ephrem, coincides with a discourse about the liturgy attributed to the great ascetic. This homiletic material is independently preserved in a zbornik from the collection of the Library of the Romanian Academy of Sciences, BAR Ms. Sl. 298, that originated at Mount Athos and was written in the decade 1360–1370 (Mircea 2005, p. 58; Panaitescu 1959, p. 39). The text, which begins in the manuscript from the Library of the Romanian Academy on fol. 76v, is well known and informs the iconography of Christ in the paten as an image of the Eucharistic sacrifice, a detail noted and commented upon by Christopher Walter (Walter 1982, pp. 200–12), Sharon Gerstel (Gerstel 1999, pp. 40–47), and other scholars who have analyzed this iconographic tradition and its heterogeneous literary counterpart. This text focuses on a vision granted to a monk who was tricked by the devil into questioning the reality of the Eucharistic transubstantiation. The victim of diabolic persuasion witnesses the slaughter of a child upon the altar table during the office and the admixture of his blood and flesh into the liturgical offering. This narrative tradition is shared by a copious number of so-called “beneficial tales” (on which see infra) surveyed by John Wortley (Wortley 2010), allowing, therefore, a comparison to other similar opuscules attributed to other spiritual fathers.2

On the other hand, the first part of the text copied in the manuscript produced at the monastery of Putna is a distinct piece of writing with equally visionary character, but which, nevertheless, addresses the episodes of the liturgy. It thus offers a perspective on the so-called “liturgical sentiment” that could tentatively contextualize the perception of the liturgy as background for the perception of religious images. The text stages an interaction between the priest and an angelic entity (broadly identified as “the angel of God”) during the preparation for the liturgical rite, followed by a struggle between this angel and the devil during the various stages of the performance of the liturgy. The actions of each of the two protagonists are directed at the congregation, which the devil tries to distract from active participation in the service. Those who resist these temptations enjoy the assistance of the angel of God. This first sequence of the text from the Putna manuscript (an opuscule that was not identified by Ion R. Mircea in his inventory, Mircea 2005), also appears in a manuscript from the collection of the Library of the Romanian Academy of Sciences, BAR Ms. Sl. 552, a zbornik from Dobrovăț Monastery, where it appears at ff. 81r–88v (Panaitescu 2003, p. 403). An alternative version of this text is attested in another manuscript from the Library of the Romanian Academy of Sciences,3 but this copy unfortunately lacks a significant section, from the beginning until the remarks on the second antiphon of the Eucharistic liturgy.

This visionary material has as distant reference within the Byzantine tradition in an apocryphal text attributed to St. Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Disclosure of the Divine Liturgy,” edited by Mihail Zheltov (Zheltov 2015; see also Mirkovich 1931). Slavonic parallels to this text are found in abundance in the Russian world (Afanasyeva 2012, p. 63) but also in the Balkan environment. A version of the text preserved in a Bulgarian manuscript has been edited by Klimentina Ivanova (Ivanova 2002), showing substantial correspondences, but not a perfect coincidence, with the version copied in the manuscript from Putna. It is of the utmost relevance that these Slavonic versions attribute the narration to St. Basil the Great, as a report from St. Ephrem. This claimed authorship would thus explain the conjunction, in the Moldavian version, of this visionary material with the second section, that constitutes another report of St. Ephrem on the issue of the Eucharist.

Eliminating the passages that represent moralizing platitudes, the first section of the visionary text contains the following information (see also the edition of the text in Appendix A):

[…] when the priest comes to the church to sing the divine liturgy, the angel greets him at the gates of the church and cleanses him of all his sins. And when the priest enters the church, he is as bright as the morning star. And when […] he puts on the sticharion, the angel of the Lord crowns him. And when he puts on the epitrachelion, the angel pours perfumed oil on his head. When he puts on the cincture, he girds himself with the blood of God. And when he puts on his outer garment [sc. the felon], a sunny crown descends upon his head. And when he says, “In remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ,” the angel bows down to him. And when the priest cuts the Lamb, I saw a little child sacrificed [emphasis mine, it represents an anticipation of the second section of the text]. And when he places the ribs [sic, scil. the asterisk], a bright star descends and stands above that child. And the devil distracts the people outside, so that they do not come to church. And when [the priest] places the covers, the angel covers the child with his wings. And when the priest receives the branch (the sponge?) [sic, recte the censer], the devil flees from the church. And when the deacon says, “Bless, Lord,” the angel lifts the roof of the church; and again, the angel returns to the church. And when [the priest] says, “It is good to confess to the Lord” [Ps. 91/92:1], the angel leads the people who are standing properly in prayer; and the devil flees and receives the people who do not listen to the singing, and says to them, “I am with you.” And when he says, “The Lord reigns” [Ps. 92/93:1], the Holy Spirit covers the people who stand with true faith in the church; but the devil calls those who do not listen outside the church with his arms wide open and says to them, “Come, my guests, do not listen to the songs there.” And when he says, “Come, let us rejoice in the Lord” [Ps. 94/95:1], the devil brings despair upon the people, so that they do not listen to the songs; the angel of the Lord crowns the righteous. And when the priest says, “That they may praise with us,” then the devil lets the people return to the church. And when the priest says, “Those who are called [leave],” then the angel of the Lord throws the bones of the unbelievers out of the grave; but to the righteous he says, “Rejoice with us, for with us there will be honor in heaven.” [cf. Mt. 5:12] And when the Cherubic Hymn is sung, the angels invisibly carry the gifts; and to the righteous they say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you in heaven” [Mt. 25:34]. But the devil cries out in anguish, “Do not forget me, the old comforter.” And when the priest says, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, according to your great mercy [sic], then the devil incenses the unbelievers with his censer. And when the priest says, “Perfect angel,” then the angel of the Lord drives away the devil. And when the priest says, “Let us stand well, let us stand in fear,” then the devil whispers in the ears of the unbelievers, so that they cannot hear the songs. And when the priest says, “Singing the triumphal hymn,” the angel of the Lord receives those who stand as they should. And when the priest says, “Take, eat” [Mt. 26:26], the angel of the Lord gives communion to those who stand as they should in the church.4

At the end of this first section, the text includes an exhortation to the potential participants at the service, insisting on the glorification of those that enjoy angelic assistance and the mockery that the devil inflicts upon those led astray. This brings forth the fundamental message of the text, namely that those participating in the liturgy must believe in the mystery of the Eucharist, thus introducing the second section, that recounts the well-known vision of the monk who, due to diabolical persuasion, doubted the reality of transubstantiation. The dramatic orchestration of the text leads to a core with strong theophanic imprint:

[…] I saw the heavens open and fire descending, with a multitude of angels. And above them were two figures of great beauty, whose glory I am not so phony as to tell, for their light was like lightning; and between the two faces [was] a little child. And the angels stood by the holy table, and the two figures on the holy table, the child [being] still between them. And when the divine books were finished [scil. at the end of the Liturgy of the Word], the deacons approached the clergy to break the bread of the offering; I saw the two figures, who were on the holy table, untying the hands and feet of the child who was on it, and they took the knife and stabbed the child, and his blood flowed into the chalice that was on the holy table. And they crushed his body and placed it on the bread, and the bread became flesh. Then I remembered the apostle who says, “For Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us” [1 Cor 5:7]. And when the brothers approached to receive the holy bread, they were given the body, and because they invoked saying, “Amen,” it became bread in their hands. And I, when I went to receive it, was given the body, and I could not receive it. And I heard a voice in my ears saying to me, “Man, why do you not take communion? Is this not what you desired?” I said, “Be merciful to me, Lord, for I cannot receive the body.” And he spoke to me again, “If man could receive the body, the body itself would be revealed to him as it is revealed to you. But no one can receive the body. That is why God commanded that the offering of bread be made. For in the beginning, Adam was formed from the hands of God, and the breath of life was breathed into him from outside; and the body was formed from the earth, but the spirit was already in it. So now Christ, with the Holy Spirit, with whom he shows mercy to man. For the spirit dwells in the heart, so that if you have faith, you may partake of what you hold in your hands.” And if I said, “I believe, Lord,” when I said that, the body I held in my hands became bread. I praised God and took the holy prosphora.5

3. Visual Counterparts to the Visionary Text

Christopher Walter, asking the rhetorical question of whether the iconography of the Christ Child on the altar represents an erudite or a popular image (Walter 2000), pointed out the centrality, in the process of its creation, of a literature labeled by Hippolyte Delehaye as narratio animae utilis (tales beneficial for the soul), in which the central piece is the text attributed, in the Moldavian manuscripts, to St. Ephrem. This text corresponds to the beneficial tale inventoried by Wortley under no. W014.6 Walter characterized the iconography of the Christ Child on the altar as a visual echo of three fundamental ideas: the real presence of Christ in the consecrated species, the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, and the manner in which the breaking and distribution of the Eucharistic bread (melismos) should be performed (Walter 2000, p. 233). His conclusions disparage the hypothesis of a “popular” character of the image, considering that it was strictly addressed to the clergy, and echoes, therefore, elevated theological ideas that are only nuanced by the intersections with the so-called “monastic folklore” (Walter 2000, pp. 241–42).

However, it is legitimate to ask whether even the members of the clergy did not in fact participate to the poorly literate strata, or, to borrow Walter’s terminology, to the “popular” side in the hierarchy of knowledge (Rigo 2012). Relevant insight on this issue comes from the assessment of Antonio Rigo, who invokes the authority of St. Gregory of Sinai. This late-Byzantine spiritual authority recommends that monks should only read books that are useful for asceticism: “Leave other readings aside for now, not because you reject them, but because they do not serve the purpose: they lead the mind to mental representations and distract it from prayer” (Gregory of Sinai, Brief Note on Hesychia,7 chapter “On Reading”). The visual counterparts for miracles recounted in the beneficial tales, which represented the most common reading material, cannot be, therefore, considered mere underlying nuances, but rather essential guidelines for the viewer, regardless of their cultural background. This consideration is grounded in the role of spiritual culture in informing the reception of images by their monastic beholders. Their lectures and other encounters with texts, mediated by oral transmission, contained, in fact, rudiments of theological arguments, disguised in rhetorical or poetical formulas. In my understanding, the visual experience activates in its beholder(s) emotional responses informed by homiletic exhortations and ritual practices, through processes linked with memory. The visual culture of Moldavia, at the end of the fifteenth century and in the first half of the sixteenth century, offers, therefore, a counterpart to the devotional ethos of the monastic milieu. This devotion was informed by specific literary references that were assimilated either through private lectures or through oral transmission within the cultural processes that could be described as “monastic folklore”. The interplay between textual and visual evidence in the monastic culture of post-Byzantine Moldavia brings to the fore the multilayered links between literary culture in its broader sense—including the oral circulation of ideas—and the creation of images.

In the following sections, I will attempt to assess, within the iconographic programs of churches painted at the end of the fifteenth century and in the first four decades of the sixteenth century, underpinnings that hark back to the visionary text from the Putna manuscript.

Regarding the Eucharistic vision of the sacrificed infant, that constitutes the narrative acme of St. Ephrem’s account, predictable correspondences are registered in the iconography of Moldavian mural painting from the period that aligns with the writing of the manuscript from Putna. A noteworthy connection forms with the image of the melismos from the monastery of Probota (Figure 1), whose probable similitudes with the Russian iconography have already been pointed out by Constantin I. Ciobanu (Ciobanu 2007, pp. 335–41). Similar representations were noted by Chara Konstantinidi in two monuments from the early fifteenth century, at Sarmasikli-Matzouka, in the province of Pontos, and at Kokkini Panaghia in Konitsa (Konstantinidi 2008, pp. 113–14). Images in which the body of the child Christ is cut in pieces by the liturgical knife wielded by a holy bishop (on which see Konstantinidi 2008, pp. 97–107) are not attested in Moldavia. However, a completely exceptional iconography, whose parallels remain to be established, appears in the Church of St. George in the monastery of Voroneț (c. 1496).

From the axis of the liturgical space, placed in the upper part of the window opening, an infrequent depiction of the Christ Child on the altar dominates the selection of apsidal images (Figure 2). Upon a closer inspection, this infant appears more like a puer dolorum, as his eyes are closed, suggesting a death mask, while wounds on his feet refer to the Western iconography of the ostentatio vulneris. Blood and water pour out from the wound on his flank. All these pictorial details resonate with the insistence on the bloody nature of the Eucharistic sacrifice, hidden through divine grace under the appearance of materiality, which constitutes the central theme of the vision granted to the monk tempted by the devil. Byzantine parallels to the iconography of the Christ Child on the altar deprived of the attributes of life are extremely scarce. The only parallels that could be established at the current stage of research come from the Cretan milieu during the Palaiologan Renaissance (Konstantinidi 2008, pp. 95–97). It is, however, unlikely that they can be invoked as sources for the iconographic choice registered at Voroneț, especially since the signs of the Passion (the stigmata and the wound in Christ’s flank) are not to be found in the Cretan versions. Parallels in which the body of Christ in the paten shows the wound in his flank, from which blood and water pour out, are specific for the pictorial traditions of Laconia (Konstantinidi 1998), but in these selections the Eucharistic sacrifice is depicted as the adult, dead Christ.8

The very popular spirit, devoid of mystical depths, characteristic for the vision allegedly recounted by St. Ephrem, is even more pronounced in the first section of the Moldavian text, in which the liturgical drama is depicted as a confrontation between the angel of the Lord and the devil, enriched by frequent eschatological accents. This clash between the demon and the angelic entity does not belong to the textual tradition registered in “The disclosure of the divine liturgy”, the apocryphal text attributed to St Gregory of Nazianzus (Zheltov 2015) that constitutes the background for the Slavonic group (Afanasyeva 2012; Ivanova 2002; Mirkovich 1931) to which the studied Moldavian recension belongs.

4. Liturgical Information Offered by the Visionary Text

This autonomous unity of text can be fruited for various research interests. Firstly, in the absence of liturgical books with clearer indications regarding the actual performance of the ritual, this visionary narrative sheds light on the structure of the Eucharistic liturgy in use in Moldavia at the turn of the fifteenth century.9 The text quotes the opening lines of the antiphons of the liturgy, proving that, at this stage of the local evolution of the rite, they consisted strictly of material taken from the Psalms (the incipits of Psalms 91, 92, and 94): “It is good to give thanks to the Lord,” “The Lord has reigned,” and “Come, let us rejoice in the Lord.” This is the selection characteristic of the enarxis in the Constantinopolitan rite, attested in the Historia ecclesiastica attributed to St. Germanos I of Constantinople, and established in the liturgical tradition of both Byzantium and the Slavic-speaking churches of the Balkans since the thirteenth century. This tradition was disrupted in Constantinople by the Diataxis of Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos in the fourteenth century, which introduced the practice specific to Palestinian monasticism, consisting of Ps. 102, 145, and the Beatitudes. The liturgical texts preserved in the Slavonic area indicate a persistence of the conservative practice of reciting Psalms 91, 92, and 94 until late in the sixteenth century (Glibetic 2014).

On the other hand, the text describes the proskomede as a rite performed by the priest, the placement of the asterisk and of the veils for the liturgical vessels being explicitly mentioned as actions of the priest. This information is important, given that, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, St. Symeon of Thessalonika, in his treaty “On the Divine Liturgy (sections 115-6), mentions that, in the Athonite rite, the proskomede was officiated by deacons alone, and Moldavia was maintaining intense links with Athos throughout that century. The bishop vehemently reacts against this liturgical practice (Hawkes-Teeples 2011, pp. 238–39).

Secondly, the text echoes rudiments of symbolic interpretations characteristic for a mystagogy. They are linked with the beginning of the liturgical action, describing the vesting of the priest. In this context, each of the liturgical garments is associated with a divine intervention upon the officiant that mirrors metaphors from the secret prayers for the rite of vesting. The metaphor of coronation, associated with the sticharion and the phelonion, or the metaphor of anointment, associated with the epitrachelion, represent a shared symbolic discourse that informs both the liturgical prayers and the mystagogic interpretations of the rite. Special attention should be paid to the metaphor of the myrrh dripping on the head of the priest at the vesting of the epitrachelion, reflecting a mystagogic tradition found in Kabasilas and, later, in Symeon of Thessalonika, based also on the text of the prayer for the placing of this sign of the priesthood, attested since the thirteenth century (Woodfin 2012, p. 106). In this context, an enigmatic correlation consists of the association of the girdle with the metaphor of Christ’s blood, which is impossible to trace back to the corresponding prayer form of the vesting rite, or to any known mystagogy. However, the same description of the cincture as the blood of Christ is used in the Bulgarian version of the text, edited by Klimentina Ivanova (Ivanova 2002). It is important, nonetheless, to stress that the general mood of the text is not characteristic of the literary tradition of the Byzantine liturgical mystagogies. Suffice to compare a line such as, “when […] he puts on the sticharion, the angel of the Lord crowns him” with the explanation of the sticharion given by St. Symeon of Thessalonika: “The sticharion shows the shining garment of the angels. […] But it also shows the pure and righteous nature of the priesthood […] it also shows the divine illumination that it brings to the faithful through the Gospel” (Explanation of the Divine Temple, section 31).10

5. Performative Readings of Images Mediated by the Visionary Text

Another level of significance of the visionary text copied at the monastery of Putna consists of its possible connections with particular choices in the selection and coordination of images within the Moldavian wall paintings created during the same interval.

The eschatological accents of Moldavian iconography from the turn of the fifteenth century have been repeatedly discussed, usually when trying to speculate upon the elaborate late-Byzantine mystagogies, such as the glorious vision of a cosmic liturgy proclaimed by St. Symeon of Thessaloniki in his explanation of the Eucharistic rite (Bedros 2012). The text under scrutiny here offers, however, a clearer framework for this liturgical sentiment, explicitly pointing to apocalyptic visions. For instance, at the dismissal of the catechumens, the angel of the Lord ransacks the graves in the church and scatters the bones of the unbelievers on the pavement. Later, during the chanting of the cherubic hymn at the Great Entrance, a host of angels invisibly carry the Eucharistic offering, addressing to those who are properly attending the liturgical mystery the famous verdict of Christ as judge: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father.” In the light of this visionary narrative, the connection between the liturgical procession of the Great Entrance, performed in the naos of a Moldovan church, and the image of Christ Pantocrator placed in the tetramorph (Figure 3), a striking apocalyptic undertone for the usual iconography of the dome (Iacubovschi 2015), takes on a brutal immediacy, unmediated by layers of spiritual elevation through mystical contemplation.

Furthermore, the actions of the unidentified angel of the Lord could refer to another peculiarity of the local iconographic programs. In general, the text does not present the liturgy as a ritual actualization of Christ’s sacrifice, an anamnesis of his ministry and his passions. It does not constitute support for the mystical contemplation of a dense Christological symbolism. Instead, the liturgical performance consists of a set of actions performed by the angel of the Lord, culminating in the moment when he distributes communion to those who have earned it, at the moment of the proclamation of the words of the Last Supper. It can be thus speculated that this visionary text could constitute a literary counterpart to the iconography of the angelic liturgy (Figure 4), that circulated from the inventory of Balkan wall paintings into the iconography of Moldavian churches painted in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, usually placed at the base of the nave tower (Sinigalia 2015).11

However, the most striking angelic action occurs at the beginning of the Eucharistic liturgy, when, during the proclaiming of the opening blessing by the priest, the angel lifts the roof of the church, a visionary detail included also in the distant Greek possible source, “The Disclosure of the divine liturgy”, that ascribes this angelic intervention to the moment of the evangelic lecture. The abundance of angelic presence in the Moldavian iconography of the domes (Figure 5) or, in their absence, of the barrel vault of the nave, has been noted and commented upon in previous research (Sinigalia 2007). The reference to the raising of the roof by the angel of the Lord at the beginning of the liturgical action may offer a new perspective on this particular iconographic choice, emphasizing its theophanic meaning and the intention to intensify the feeling of divine presence. This sense of presence is not conveyed in a mystagogic manner, that would require the mediation of spiritual contemplation targeted at the symbolism of the image. Instead, this sense of divine presence is channeled through the multiplicity of angelic hosts in the upper part of the iconographic complex, hinting at the angelic intervention on the materiality of architecture, described by the visionary text. This detail of this textual tradition has been, in fact, already mirrored in the iconography of the naos in Markov Manastir, that constitutes the earliest fruition of the discussed visionary text as reference for the iconographic choices (Mirkovich 1931).

The angelic agency upon the materiality of the church architecture echoes the legend of the angel trapped inside the Church of Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), who became the sacred guardian of the building through a ruse of the patron (Dumitrescu 2022a, p. 73). The son of the head of the team of master masons remained on the scaffolding to guard the tools one Saturday morning when the team had gone to eat after finishing the north arches and south galleries. An angel appeared to him in the form of a eunuch with a beautiful face and shining clothes and sent him to call the masons back. The child refused, fearing that the unguarded objects would be stolen. The angel offered to take his place until he returned. Justinian found out about this and ordered that the child should never return to the church, so that the angel would remain trapped inside, as a guardian of St. Sophia until the end of the world. This narrative of the guardian angel of Justinian’s basilica, commonly identified as the archangel Michael, appears in most accounts of Russian pilgrims during the fourteenth century. The corroboration of this mythical element with the inscribing, according to legend, of the verse “God is in the midst of the city, she shall not be moved” [Ps 45/46:5] on the bricks used to build the dome probably constituted the reference for an exceptional iconography. The Kiev Psalter (c. 1397) associates this verse with a spectacular image of a church, identified as St. Sophia, in the middle of which an angel wearing imperial robes (purple tunic and loros) supports the three arches of the building on his raised arms (Dumitrescu 2022a, pp. 73–74, Figure 37).

The mysterious presence, called “the angel of the Lord” in the visionary text that constitutes the first section of the opuscule preserved in the manuscript from the monastery of Putna, does not clearly refer to one of the nine degrees of the pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy, but rather to an indeterminate angelic being. The diversity of early Christian angelology, and its reflection in the medieval Byzantine iconography, has been insightfully discussed by Glenn Peers (Peers 2001). A specific point made by Peers hints at the prolixity of the anthropomorphic images of angelic beings, that could cover many of the pseudo-Dionysian species. On the other hand, the statement that, at the placement of the liturgical veils for the vessels during the proskomede, the angel of the Lord covers the infant on the paten with his wings, might inform the choice of placing winged angelic beings in the vicinity of the Christ Child on the altar, on the arches that vault the niches that serve as pastophoria12 in the apses of Moldavian churches, and inside the openings of windows that illuminate these annexes. Similarly, the multitude of angelic presences in the vision recounted by St. Ephrem, who claims that the angelic host descended and stayed near the cross of the altar table, may be relevant for the abundance of winged angelic beings (Figure 6)—rarely identified as cherubim, seraphim, “those with many eyes,” or “those with six wings”—at the base of the apsidal conch and on the western arch of the sanctuary (Vasiliu 1994, pp. 64–65).

On the other hand, demonic action should not be overlooked. Unlike the explanations of the divine liturgy typical for the Byzantine tradition, which presuppose an aseptic environment, prepared for mystagogic contemplation through undisturbed spiritual elevation, the Moldovan text seems to be set in a battlefield between benevolent and evil forces, where victories are fleeting. The angel of the Lord drives away the devil only to resume, a few moments later, his fight against this trickster who generates a constant background noise in the solemnity of the ritual, swinging, for example, his own censer. This devil recalls the diabolical iconography of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Moldavian painting, which does not feature the frail, ghostly, and diminished silhouettes of demons from Byzantine iconography, discussed by Cyril Mango in his seminal study Diabolus Byzantinus (Mango 1992). In Moldavian art, the image of the devil is reminiscent of the teratomorphic corpulence of the demons depicted in late Gothic painting (Higgs Strickland 2003, pp. 74–77). Two episodes of Christ’s temptations painted in the former burial chamber of the Neamț monastery, for example, feature grotesque, gigantic figures of large-scale demons (Figure 7), which reappear in later images of Adam’s negotiation with the devil during the settlement of the protoplasts on earth, after their expulsion from Eden, or in the episode of the death of the sinner, from the complex iconography of the Last Judgment. These other visual contexts do emphasize the relevance of the theological threads linked with the angelic and demonic interventions for the quest of spiritual purity and ascetic prowess that stands at the core of the monastic solitary life.

6. Visionary vs. Mystagogic Character

One question that remains open regarding the analyzed text is raised by the identification of the presumed audience to which it was addressed. The straightforward moralizing character and the lack of profound symbolism that characterizes the Byzantine mystagogical tradition seem to suggest that the recipients of this text belonged to a cultural horizon whose theological culture was limited to elementary literacy. They had, therefore, the ability to attentively follow the sung text of the service, most probably inscribed in their memory. Moreover, the sacerdotal actions appear only at the beginning, when the vesting rite and the preparation of the offering are discussed. Otherwise, the text aligns with the liturgical experience of the congregation, focusing on hymns, acclamations of the priest, and liturgical actions outside the apse. It can be speculated that, in the absence of a completely opaque visual barrier between the sanctuary and the naos, the priest’s vesting and the preparation of the offering could still be perceived by the congregation, with the enclosure of the central doors and of the intercolumniation only at solemn moments of the rite (Bedros and Scirocco 2019, p. 75). On the other hand, it is certain that this congregation is one that rarely receives the Eucharist, in line with a tendency analyzed by Robert Taft who has documented the transformation of the communion into a reward for penance, thus leading to increasingly rare reception of the consecrated species by the faithful (Taft 2000). This practice could be discerned from the final section of the visionary text that claims that the participants receive communion, obviously in a mystical way, from the hand of the angel, at the moment when the priest pronounces the biblical formula of the Last Supper. This visionary projection may indicate an accidental or even a deliberate agreement with the Western thesis of transubstantiation. It is strange, in the otherwise radically polemical, anti-Latin context of monasticism in Moldavia, that the proclamation of the words “Take, eat” could be presented as a moment when the matter of the offering has already been changed into the Eucharistic species, invisibly offered by the angel of the Lord to those who have duly attended the liturgical celebration. The exact moment of the Eucharistic transformation of the gifts constituted a central issue in the Byzantine liturgical controversy with the West (Taft 1996, pp. 222–26). More recently, Mihail Zheltov has proposed a re-evaluation of the issue, insisting on the elevation of the gifts at the moment of the proclamation “The holy [gifts] for the holy [people of God]” as the moment perceived as the act of consecration (Zheltov 2011). In any case, the association of the words of institution with the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic offering is a theological position specific to the West, disparaged in late-Byzantine liturgical thought that emphasized the importance of the epiclesis (invocation of the Holy Spirit) in the process of Eucharistic transformation. This is an appropriate moment to also mention that the core themes of this visionary text, namely the Christ Child as visionary manifestation of the consecrated offering, enhancing the doctrine of the real presence, and the role of demons in the liturgical performance, are also present in Western production.13

In conclusion, the text copied at the monastery of Putna offers a perspective on the perception of liturgy that was probably shaped by monastic folklore, which was, in turn, nourished by beneficial tales based on the vivacity of the visionary tradition. The thematic area shared with the corpus of narrationes animae utiles is vast, and the following presentation is only of an indicative nature. The central idea, namely the assigning of an angelic presence to each sanctuary, is in line with the vision of Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem (cataloged by Wortley as W115), to whom the procession of angels of all the churches was revealed, each bringing forth their liturgical offerings, but waiting for the angel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, who had the role of introducing them to the heavenly court (Wortley 2010, pp. 116–17). The interaction of the angel with the priest before entering the church, and at the moment of his vesting, and the use of the metaphors of illumination and coronation in this context, echo visions attributed to Abba Piammonas (Wortley 2010, p. 126)14 and St. Mark the Egyptian (Wortley 2010, p. 172).15 Angelic protection for those who participate appropriately in the liturgy is also thematized in one of the narratives attributed to Dorotheus of Gaza, in a concentrated form (Wortley 2010, p. 258),16 which does not involve all the actions of the angel as they appear in the text of Pseudo-Gregory of Nazianzus and in its Slavonic parallels. One of these acts, throwing the bodies of the dead out of the graves, also refers to a theme found in stories useful to the soul, in which the bodies of those illegitimately buried in the church, because they died in sin, are moved by angels outside the sanctuary (Wortley 2010, pp. 243, 102).17 It is also worth noting that receiving communion from the hand of an angel is a theme found in a narratio animae utilis, included in the corpus of accounts by Anastasius of Sinai (Wortley 2010, p. 118).18

On the other hand, the abundance of acts of the devil is found only in the Slavonic parallels of the apocryphal text attributed to St. Gregory of Nazianzus, as pointed out by Tatyana Afanasyeva and Klimentina Ivanova (Afanasyeva 2012; Ivanova 2002).

7. Conclusions

Due to these abundant intersections with the monastic folklore, with which it shares not only significant thematic material but, above all, its visionary character and moralizing purpose, the Moldavian text is difficult to assimilate into the tradition of the Byzantine mystagogies. Despite the protests of Michael Zheltov, who strives to place “The Disclosure of the Divine Liturgy”, the apocryphal text attributed to St. Gregory of Nazianzus, within this literary tradition, visions of this sort are lacking precisely the mystagogic reference to the symbolic horizon. The exclusion of “The Disclosure of the Divine Liturgy” from the corpus of erudite explanations of the rite is, therefore, not a blameworthy omission on the part of Robert Bornert or of other liturgists, as Zheltov polemically asserts (Zheltov 2015, pp. 215–16). A properly mystagogic text should offer a symbolic interpretation of the sensorial density implied by the liturgical rite: secret prayers, proclamations aloud, hymns, gestures and manipulations of liturgical objects, the performance of actions within the sacred space, and the stimulation of sight, smell, and touch through the choreographic alternation of concealment and revelation. In a true mystagogy, the hidden, intelligible reality is accessed through mystical contemplation, and through the initiation into a set of relationships that the sensory sign builds with its divine referent, relationships that are perceived through the “elevation of the mind.” A veil of mystery constantly floats between the material reality of the liturgical performance and the hidden, sacred reality, while the intellect is called upon to catch a glimpse behind this veil through a personal effort of mystical contemplation (see, for the liturgical mystagogies in general, Schultz [1964] 1986; Bornert 1966).

The visions, including those contained in “The Disclosure of the Divine Liturgy” and in the related corpus, to which the text from Putna takes part, are lacking in this mystagogic depth. In such opuscules, the relationship between sign and meaning is short-circuited by the immediacy of the vision. The mystagogies are addressed to an audience familiar, even at an elementary level, with the Neoplatonic outlook of the Byzantine religious thought (Mariev 2013, pp. 1–12). The visions that inform the beneficial tales generate instead a Christian folklore, accessible for a poorly literate audience. The evident participation of this corpus of monastic stories with the oral tradition further qualifies them as beacons of a religious culture characteristic of communities that are opaque to scholarly refinement. This opacity is sometimes grounded by circumstantial reasons, such as the lack of connections with the intellectual networks of the cultural elite, but could also be a result of an assumed contempt for such elitism. We must stay permanently aware of the anti-intellectualism of the monastic communities, perfectly foreshadowed in the prescriptions of lectures imposed by Gregory of Sinai to the ideal Hesychast monk (Rigo 2012).

Composed as an exhortation to the congregation participating in the Eucharistic mystery, the visionary text copied at the monastery of Putna presents, therefore, few specific intersections with the themes that characterize the Byzantine mystagogical tradition. It, nevertheless, offers a perspective upon the local liturgical sentiment, highlighting possible layers of meaning enshrined into the Moldavian religious imagery produced at the turn of the fifteenth century, once we presume that information from this visionary text, possibly circulating via the monastic folklore, was actively shaping the imagination of those to whom this text was addressed.