Crosses. Plead for Pre-Restoration

Essay

text, drawing, photos: Mihaela DUMITRU TRANCĂ

"Tomorrow's world cannot exist without morality, faith and memory." (King Michael I)

I owe this endeavor first to my grandmother, the one who let me accompany her to the cemetery, in her ritual of incense and remembrance of the dead, an occasion for me, as a child, to marvel at the crosses all around and the stories about those who have passed Beyond.

In the spring of 2017, when I was returning "home" to the village of my grandparents and my childhood, Ilie Sandu, a villager whose occupation is farming, a young man, with a sound mind and a good soul, took me "to the marnea" of the locality, in the middle of the plain. There, together with another descendant of the Ștefănești, Ștefan Dumitru, they showed me the devastated crosses on the outskirts of the villages of Odaia (Protopopului) and Ștefănești, telling me that "it's a pity about them, because they resisted the hard years of communism, but they were knocked down, dislocated just now", during the years of "freedom" and were dragged by the newly rich in the mud, among the garbage. (Figs. 6, 8, 14, 19, 20) "It's not right to leave them like that" - they told me. My meeting with Mr. Severin Dinu, a lover of these places and passionate about their history, confirmed my belief that we must do something together to save what remains.
First of all, we are talking about the crosses, whose first origin can be traced back about a century and a half ago, when transhumance sheep herders used to take their flocks from the mountains to the plains for the winter or to settle in a better place. From that time, territories may have been marked with a cross: to commemorate, to mark a boundary, to establish a foundation, to establish a cure, to confirm a covenant, to exempt the dead from dues, etc. (Fig. 1) It is known that trophies and crosses played an important role in the life of communities and can be considered 'monuments of art'^1. They were erected to commemorate those who had fallen in battle, or to record a law, to commemorate the persons who erected them, or to draw attention to the ^donors2. This latter aspect has been common since the second half of the 17th century, when the number of crosses erected to commemorate those who built them increased, reflecting the rise in their ^social prestige3. Donations also began to be made by the less well-off, people of average means who wished to stand out and be remembered.
The crosses also had a practical function, to mark boundaries and provide orientation, and became part of the place name; they could be placed on the edge or at the crossroads to guide travelers, often shepherds herding their flocks. Wherever it was erected, the cross was the sign by which man marked his link with God, seeking protection for himself and at the same time conferring sacredness on the place. (Fig. 2)
In the immensity of the Bărăgan plain, on the old road to the sea, large stone crosses can be found in almost every village, laboriously transported with chariots from the mountainous area, "for the glory of God" or to commemorate "the servants of God...". It remains for researchers to establish the reasons why these people brought large monuments (between 1 and 3 m) from distant places. They are carved from sarmatitic limestone, according to the geologist Cristian Lascu, and they may have come from Dobrogea or from the mountainous area of Istriței in Buzău county, where several settlements of stone carvers are known: Năieni, Bădeni, Greceanca, Pietroasele, Pietroasele, Dara, Ciuta, Măgura, etc. Here, Professor Mihai Mîncu, a passionate history, geography and geology of the place, helped me to discover the similarities between the gravestones in the cemeteries dotted in the plain of Bărăgan and those in the hill of Istrița.
Looking at the images accompanying this text, one can see the recurrence of the motifs on the crosses: Mother of God, Jesus Crucified, Flower of Life, Tree of Life, Sun, Triangle and Eye, Hand supporting the Wreath of the Recognition of Virtues. In addition to the use of the decorative motifs listed, there are striking stylistic similarities. Both the structure of the crosses - sarmatic limestone or, more rarely, sandstone - as well as the motifs and the way they are carved would lead to the hypothesis that the village of Greceanca, in Buzău County, could be the place where some of the crosses in the cemetery of Ștefănești originate. (Fig. 2-3)
The Tree of Life motif, which we found on a dislocated cross on the outskirts of the village of Odaia, Călărași county, (Fig. 5, 6, 7, 8) is very similar to the one on a cross in the above-mentioned cemetery in Ștefănești (Fig. 9), and also to the one carved on a monument at a crossroads in the village of Bădeni, Buzău county (Fig. 10).