Journal Analele Banatului N.S. Archaeology-History

Miodrag Milin

Drago Njegovan

Mitropolia de Karlowitz şi relaţiile sârbo-române din cuprinsul Monarhiei habsburgice / The Metropolitanate of Karlowitz and Serbo-Romanian Relations within The Habsburg Monarchy

Jan. 1, 2015

Abstract

The connections between Serbian and Romanian orthodoxy reach far into the past. Orthodox Romanians, monks and rulers have close connections to the Serbian monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, and those relationships were further expanded during the era of the Branković, with Maksim as a Romanian metropolitan and the foundation of monastery Krušedol on Fruška gora in Sirmium, under the patronage of the Vlach Duke Basaraba. Upon the establishment of the Metropolitanate of Krušedol and afterwards the Metropolitanate of Karlowitz (Sremski Karlovci) all Orthodox believers, even the Orthodox Romanians, came under the spiritual protectorate of the Serbian Church in the Habsburg Monarchy. In the struggle for preservation of orthodoxy among Romanians in Transylvania, in the middle of the 18th century, under the guidance of metropolitan Pavle Nenadović, a Serbian monk, reverend Visarion Saraj stood out. He was beatified bz the Romanian Church. In the first half of the 19th century, under the influence of lay people, among Romanians arose the idea about allocating their own, Romanian hierarchy, and separate from the protectorate of the Metropolitanate of Karlowitz. This process had already been institutionally approved (at the May 1848 Assembly in Sremski Karlovci) and it ended with the creation of the Romanian Metropolitanate of Sibiu in 1864, with the support of first the Austrian and later the Hungarian, in the legal form of an act from 1868. Separation of Orthodox Serbs and Romanians into two Church organizations was achieved by a mutual consensus, and the only controversies arose during the division of Church proprieties and possessions in some mixed municipalities in Banat. In some cases, the issues of what belongs to whom were resolved in court. When they were embroiled in these disputes, the mutual acts of Serbian and Romanian civil forces were reinforced with the participation of Slovakian middle class, with the goal of resisting hungarization, wich tended to efface the national identity of both Serbs and Romanians in Dualistic empire, after the Austro-Hungarian agreement in 1867. The process was ended with the Congress of Minorities (1895) where non-Hungarians showed they were a majority in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. After the doom of Austro-Hungary (1918) and the creation of modern Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians), the Serbo-Romanian relations continued to develop in completely new historical circumstances.