PART 1 – Ch.VI.2
(The white Monastery with nine altars)
VI.2. The Romanian legend about the divine origin of
the White Monastery.
The Sun, the god of light, riding, emerges from the Gate of Day, and with his right hand
stretched upfront,
urges the solar horses to cross
the universe.
Metope from the
According to Ovid (Metam. II.
153), the names of the four horses were Pyroeis, Eous, Aethon and Phlegon,
and according to Isidori
(Orig. lib. XVIII.36), they represented the four seasons.
A significant body of archaic
Romanian legends exists about the foundation of the White Monastery. According
to the contents of these legends, the miraculous White Monastery from the
island of the
[1. “Argea” means in Romanian
language a rectangular room, half dug in the earth, in which the peasant women
weave linen. The word is archaic. Ephor
tells us that the Cimmerians (from
the Tauric peninsula), had a sort of underground dwellings which they called argilla,
which communicated to each other through a sort of low doors (Strabo, V.4.5). This same meaning, of semi-subterranean
rooms with low doors, has the word “argea” in folk Romanian texts.
At the island of the seas, There’s a
little “argeluta”
At the mouths of
the “argele” In which Iana weaves…
In that green little glade,
(Glambocata village, Dambovita district)
This “green little glade”
corresponds to the Danube Delta. Valerius
Flaccus says in Argonauticon, lib. VIII. 292: viridemque vident ante ostia Peucen.
Green little island in the sea, But his sister, what was she
saying?
Island of his Highness, Alas! Mighty Sun,
There are nine
“argele”, Body
without sins,
In the middle of
them You,
great one, do make me,
There’s a big marble “argea”, Over the sea do make me,
In it who is
weaving? Bridge do make me over the sea,
- Iana Ghiuzulena, At the end of the bridge
The Sun’s little sister… White monastery…
(Coltea
village,
On that island of the sea With
windows of glass,
The Sun rises, With
doors of wood,
Here in among the wattles Paved on the floor,
There are nine “argele” Weaves Iana in it,
There’s a small one, Sister of the Sun…
Small and tiny one,
(Tataresci village, Teleorman district)]
The Sun addresses his sister and
tells her to finish her weaving and prepare for wedding, to be his bride. But
Iana, bashful and pious, answers him who had ever seen and where had ever
happened, sister to marry brother and brother to marry sister? Finally, seeing
that she can’t evade his demands, she accepts with the condition that firstly
he should make for her a metal bridge, or a wax bridge over the sea, or from
the shore of the sea to the Island from where the sun emerges; and at the head
of the bridge to make her a “white monastery”, with a wax priest, or a “wax
church, with a priest, and everything else, of wax, and there to wed (Socet
village, Teleorman district); or to make her two monasteries, at both heads of
the bridge [2].
[2. Go, go and make
me, Proud bridge over the sea,
To stroll on it, when I
please, Like nobody else
has…
(Burada,
Calatorie in Dobrogea, p.171)
Make me a wax bridge, But at the head of the bridge,
With the pillars of wax, Your
Lordship do make me,
With the doors of wax, Two white monasteries …
With the rafters of wax,
(Tataresci
village, Teleorman district)
Leaf of chicory, The powerful Sun,
In the island of the sea But
he does not rise,
Fast rises he, But he goes to wed …
(Teodorescu,
Folk poems, p.410)
If you will make, And
a priest of wax,
Bridge over the seas, Churches of wax …
(Alexici,
Texte,
The sun went away Then
he returned,
Thinking and thinking To
wed …
And made straight away At
the white Monastery
What the moon wished for; With
priest of wax ….
(Communicated by
I would take you, as you say, A monastery,
If you were brave, Place for remembrance,
And you managed, to complete, Place for wedding,
Bridge on the black sea. And to
please me also.
Of iron, of steel; With
iron stair,
At the head of the bridge High to the sky ….
(Teodorescu,
Poezii populare,, p.411)
Iana or Luna (TN – the Moon), one
of the three
faces of Hecate, from
(From Archaeol. – Epigr. Mitth. V.pl.1).
Hecate, as lunar divinity, represented in her triple form Diana, Luna and Proserpina (Festus, p.170).The type of Iana or
Luna, which we reproduce here, forms the principal figure of triple faced
Hecate, one of the most original statues discovered at Apulum, or at Salinae,
in Transilvania.
Here Iana, or Luna, has a calm “soothing”
face and “tresses” fall on her shoulders, as she is also portrayed in our
folk songs. Her costume appears as a remarkable woven or sewn work. From the waist
up, the vestment shows the Sun’s bust between her breasts, and two
other figures, each of which holds out a torch towards the Sun’s rays
(Phosphorus and Hesperus). The upper part of her costume seems to be adorned
with a necklace of coins, or with four
rows of embroidered flowers, which symbolise the sky with the stars, or the
glade with the flowers. From the waist down, her costume presents in four
different sections, different scenes from the Moon’s mysteries and a “hora” (TN
– dance in a circle) of goddesses. The crescent moon, as symbol of the
divinity, is shown also on the back of the original statue, on the nape of the
main figure (Arch. – Epigr. Mitth. V. 68).
Iana’s costume is described in the same way in one of our folk songs.
She asks the Sun to make her bridal vestments before the wedding, and the
costume to depict:
The field with the flowers, The evening and morning stars.
The sky with the stars; The
sun did not wait,
On the chest put me the sun The
vestment he made
On the back put me the moon, As she
wanted it …
And on the shoulders,
(Coltea village,
Iana’s figure, as represented by the triple statue of Hecate from
The “powerful and shining Sun” fulfils everything Iana asks for. The wax
bridge and the White Monastery are built, and the wax priest too. He and his
bride start crossing the wax bridge towards the white monastery from the
island, in order to get married. But, while they pass, the wax bridge melts
from the heat of the Sun’s rays (the villages Dracsanei and Tataresci, Teleorman
district), and both fall and drown into the sea. But God pulled them out of the
water, and put them on the sky, one in the east, the other in the west; to see
one another, but to be for ever separated, to run for ever after each other,
but never to meet [3].
[3. Some Romanian legends tell us that the Sun and the Moon might
have drowned in the Danube / Dunare
(Petrari village Dambovita district). We find remains of this folk tradition
even in the ancient literature. According to Diodorus Siculus (III.57),
the Sun, ‘Helios, was drowned by
his brothers in the river called Eridan,
and Luna, Selene, who had a special
love for her brother, threw herself from the roof of the house, when hearing
about his misfortune. Also at the mouths of the river called Eridan, fell and
drowned Phaeton, the son of the Sun
(Ibid. V. 23). According to Apollodorus
(I. 9. 24.4), the Argonauts return from the Black Sea, to the Tyrrhenian Sea,
on the river called Eridan. Geographically and etymologically, the river Eri-dan is one and the same with Dun-are; the two parts of the word
being simply reversed.
In prehistoric geography the word ari
has the meaning of river (TN – riu). So, we find Aris, river in Mesenia (Pausanias,
IV. 31.2); Arar or Araris, tributary of Rhodan (Ammian, XV.11); Ararus, tributary of the Danube (Herodotus, IV.48); Arauris,
river of Galia Narbonense (Mela, II.
5)].
The Romanian legend attributes
therefore a divine origin to the
White Monastery.
It was built by the sun god himself (or
Apollo), as a memento, or monument, of his wedding with his sister Iana.
This precious prehistoric legend
about the foundation of the Apollinic temple of the Hyperboreans by the god of
the Sun himself, or Apollo, was
known and renowned in the Greek lands until late, in Roman times.
The inhabitants of Delphi, according
to Pausanias (lib.X.5.9), told that
Apollo had sent to the Hyperboreans
a church, which had been made by bees, from wax, and from the plant named
poppy. (The bees were consecrated to
Diana. The symbol of Diana of
Ephesus was a bee (Pauly, Real-Encyclopadie, p.994). In an
inscription found at Apulum, Diana bears the epithet “mellifica” (C I.L.III.No.1002).
So, this temple of the Hyperboreans was
so ancient, that its beginnings had become mythical even in Greek times, and
its magnificence and holiness were legendary even with the inhabitants of
Delphi. This Romanian legend establishes with full certainty that the renowned
temple of Apollo, or the Sun, of the Hyperboreans, which had shined with such
glory in the prehistoric world, had been situated in an island of the Black
Sea, near the mouths of the Danube.
Iana Sandiana, as the Romanian
legends tell us, had her abode in a green
little glade, on the shore, or in the island of the sea, and here she had
her beautiful marble “argea”, in which she wove and sewed [4].
[4. Iana, this archaic Danubian divinity, also appears in Romanian folk
legends with the name Ilena (Ileana,
Helena). There was also a tradition in the Graeco – Roman antiquity that Elena
(of Troy) was later to be found in Leuce
Island, married with the hero Achilles,
who led there an eternal, semi-divine life (Pausanias, III.19.11). And according to other Greek legends,
Achilles’ wife in Leuce Island was Iphigenia,
or Diana Taurica (Boeckhius, Pindari
Opera, Tomus II.2.p.385). These were simple confusions with the very ancient
legend, from the lower Danube, about the wedding of Iana or Ilena Cosindiana
with the Sun and their common cult in the island from the mouths of the
Danube].
Iana was considered as identical with Diana
and Luna even during Roman
antiquity.
Macrobius, one of the most distinguished researchers of the Latin archaic
beliefs, tells us that Iana was one
and the same with Diana
(Saturn.I.c.9); and Varro adds that Iana, as a divinity, represents Luna (R.R.I.c.37) [5].
[5. In some Romanian folk songs, which refer to this cycle, Iana is also
called Ana and Dana. Ovid (Fast.
III.v.657) mentions Ana, considered as divinity of the moon. And Dana appears
in the following folk text:
Down there and more down, He’s
neither brother, nor cousin,
Sits Dana, white girl, But
my young groom,
With the youth near her, God had sent him to me,
Down to the sea she
looked …. To make a monastery
Dana, Dana, white girl To
call it divinity …
What is this youth to
you ….
(Communicated
by Gr. Craciunas, Ciubanca village
in Transilvania)]
The Danube Delta, as a land in close
vicinity with Leuce Island, had in prehistoric times, and even until Alexander
the Great’s epoch, the character of a sacred land.
And here was the residence of Diana
also, even according to the old Greek legends.
The erudite poet Pindar tells us in one of his beautiful
odes, that Hercules, being sent by king Eurystheus to catch and bring him the
deer with golden horns, which the nymph Taygeta had dedicated to Diana, had
chased this fast animal from Arcadia, up to the Hyperboreans’ lands, in the country called Istria. Here he had arrived to the residence of Diana, Latona’s daughter, who had
received him kindly (Olymp. III. 26-28).
This passage from Pindar’s work is
of a particular importance to us, as he says, based on old religious traditions
of antiquity, that Diana’s residence was in the Hyperborean country, in the
land called Istria. This Istria must be understood especially as the region
from the mouths of the Danube, which was known more to the Greek merchants, and
where we later find an important city named Istria and Istros (Herodotus, II.33; Arrianus, 35).
And even in Roman times, Latona’s
daughter was still revered in the Danube Delta, under the name of Diana regina (an inscription from 223ad
found in the ruins of the Roman castle from Taita monastery, between Isaccea
and Tulcea – C.I.L.III.No.7497). Finally, here too we have the island called Letea, from the name of Latona (Leto),
and the port town called Selina (or
Luna), which Hecateus also mentions.
The cult and severe religion of
Diana or Luna, a pious and unmarried virgin, had its origin, as Herodotus
himself acknowledges, with the Hyperborean people, near the Black Sea.
In every place where Apollo was
venerated, Diana also, as a divinity of the Moon, had her temples and
sacrifices, and Latona too [6].
[6. The origin of the name Pontos for the Black Sea.
The tradition about the Sun’s
bridge on the Black Sea, or on the Danube (according to other Romanian
legends), hides incontestably some important historical elements.
The ancient Greek legends also mentioned that the Sun had a golden boat (Pherecydis, Fragm.33; Apollodorus,
lib.I.5.10.5), in which he returned at night on the Ocean (Danube and the Black
Sea) to his residence in the island.
The Egyptians had the same tradition. According to their beliefs, the
Sun’s barque was on the divine river Nun,
Dunare, as we shall see in the chapter about the primitive divinities of the
Egyptians.
The highest minister of the religious cult of the Romans was called pontifex, namely, bridge maker, and
according to Varro (L.L.V.83) and Plutarch (Numa, c.9), the building and
restoration of bridges were also included in the duties of the old Roman
pontiffs. Therefore the name of pontifex
was based on some antique traditions and uses of the Latin priesthood. In
fact, the old religion of the Latins was Apollinic. Ianus as a divinity, represented the cult of the Sun. Similarly,
the feasts called Latinae feriae,
celebrated every year at Alba Longa, present in everything the same character
of the Apollinic ritual and institutions, as do the haecatombs or feasts of the
Hyperboreans (Pelasgians) from the Istru, and the great festivities of Delos,
common to all the insular Pelasgians.
The Romanian tradition about the pod
(TN – bridge) built by the Sun on the Black Sea (or on the Danube), throws an
unexpected light on the origin of the name Pontos, given to the Black Sea in
ante-Hellenistic times. The Black Sea was called Pontos especially by the Greeks, but why, and which was the
fundamental meaning of this word, no author could tell.
But this name, Pontos, given to the Black Sea, had in fact become
ancient even in the times of Homer and Hesiodus.
In the modern historical literature, some writers have expressed the
opinion, that the name Pontos
probably derives from the archaic name pons
(punte or pod / TN - bridge), which might have existed in prehistoric times
at the straits between Asia Minor and Europe. But from a historical point of
view, the origin of this archaic name is not pons, but ponto(onis).
In the ancient language of the populations of Pelasgian origin, which were
spread from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, the word ponto still had during the Roman epoch the meaning of boat (TN – barca), or floating bridge
on a river (Cesar, B. civ. III. 29: pontones,
quod est genus navium; Apulejus: et
si vado non poterunt, pontonibus
transibunt; Papinianus: flumen, in
quo pontonibus trajiciatur. In
Greek: pontogefira, bridge of boats. Cf. Diefenbach, Origines, p.402).
The Sun’s bridge on the Black
Sea or on the Danube, mentioned by the Romanian legends, which appears in Greek
traditions as a boat on the Ocean
from the north of Thrace, and in Egyptian legends as a barque on the river Nun,
was therefore called ponto even
during the first period of Pelasgian domination at the Danube and the Black
Sea. In that remote prehistoric epoch, the communication on the Black Sea and
the Lower Istru appears as a particular privilege of the temple of Apollo the
Hyperborean, from the island near the mouths of the Danube. According to the
Greek legends, Hercules, wanting to
come to the Hyperboreans from the south-western lands of Asia Minor, had
crossed the sea in the Sun’s boat (Apollodorus,
Lib.II. 5.11.11).
The lower part of the Danube (or of Eri-dan), near the delta, had the
geographical name Pad-os (Diodorus, lib.V.23.3), meaning Pod (TN – bridge) even during the Roman
epoch. And Iornandes, who was
probably born in Lower Moesia, tells us that Thamiris, the queen of the Getae,
after a battle she had with king Cyr, crossed to Scythia Minor, and there, at the place called podul Moesiei (pons
Moesiae), she founded the town called Thamiris, where she was afterwards
venerated (De reb. Get. C. 10. Ed. Didot p.431).
The fact that the name Pontos was given not only to the Black
Sea, but also to a part of the north-eastern shores of Asia Minor (Pontus region), where took place the
communication across the sea, between Scythia and the higher regions of the
Euphrates, fully confirms that the origin of this geographical term of Pontos can be traced back to the name
given in prehistoric antiquity to the
stations where people embarked on the boats called ponto (Rom. pod)].