The study object of my thesis is represented by two unknown and unedited texts (A Greek-
Romanian letter and an encomium addressed to Constantin Brâncoveanu), from the end of the
17 th
century (1692 – the year for the Greek text, 1694-1697, probably, the period of its translation into Romanian). The author of the Greek text is Gherasim Pallada, Alexandria's patriarch; he addresses to the Romanian prince, Constantin Brâncoveanu, a letter and an encomium, both being translated into Romanian by a monk, Athanasie from Agapia.
My intention, within this study, is to realize a complete critical edition of the Romanian manuscript, which was transliterated only partial by Ghenadie Enăceanu and Nicolae Iorga. I mention the fact that original texts can be found at the library of the Romanian Academy,
Bucharest, where they were registered as ms. BAR 766. For my personal research, I have used the microfilm texts, from the collection of N. A. Ursu (probably, from the Iași branch of the
Romanian Academy), and for the philological questions I consulted the originals).
Existing only the original text within the library of the Romanian Academy, this Romanian text hasn't been subject – until now – to a complete critical edition; in this direction, bringing a modern critical edition among the scientific line becomes necessary for facilitating its approaching by the linguists, historians and by those whose prove some interest in this way.
The historical and the artistic criterion offers an indisputable value to these rare documents
(we are dealing with a manuscript ordered by a Greek patriarch for a Romanian prince, according to the byzantine standards – regarding the form and the content – a document that represents a juncture between the Alexandria's patriarchate and Walachia), which, until now, haven't been included in the papers regarding old literary Romanian.
The researches I have taken until now show how these text were approached by theologians (starting with the bishop of Râmnic, Ghenadie Enăceanu, Dimitrie G. Ionescu), by historians (Nicolae Iorga, Popescu-Vîlcea, Tereza Sinigalia, Violeta Barbu), and less by philologists (Giorge Pascu).
The present study can be defined as having an aplicative character, being strucured according to the standards of a classical critical edition, as we can see: a philological study and a linguistic one.
A. Within the philological analysis, I have tried to complete the existing information regarding these two unknown texts from the 17 th
century ( A Greek-Romanian letter and an encomium addressed to Constantin Brâncoveanu (ms. BAR 766
), which do not have yet a modern critical edition; more than that, the texts under discussion got to library of the
Romanian Academy with no precise indications regarding the place and the date of their accomplishment. I started this study with a presentation of the encomium as a type of texts

which entered the literature under the Church influence, with defining the encomium, as well as the inventory of the encomiums and of the writings with an encomiastic character addressed to Constantin Brâncoveanu. More, I intend to offer a detailed description of the manuscript, an exhaustive presentation of its content (here I had in view an enumeration and a classification of the stylistic and rhetorical figures), giving facts about the author of the Greek text, as well, about its translator, trying to clarify the question of dating and localizing the texts. Completing the information for the author of translation into Romanian of the letter and of the encomium – Athanasie from Agapia – it was a difficult task, because the activity of this translator still stays in the shadow. We benefit only of some hypothesis: that he would have known very well the most used rhetorical work of the period – that of Theophil Corydaleu - that he would have a good knowledge of Greek and, with no doubt, of Romanian, that he would have studied at Vasilian Academy from Iași; that he would have come to
Brâncoveanu's place (possible at the same time with Mitrofan's coming) or even to the monastery Hurezi to translate this „cuvînt de prăznuire”, which was going to be read for the consacretion of the monastery's church. Regarding the localization, taking into consideration the title pages, the miniature, the type of the paper used, we could conclude that the Greek text – with an obvious byzantine aspect – would have been realized in Alexandria, but judging from the fact that in that period (1692), Gherasim Pallada was at Brâncoveanu's court and from the fact that more manuscripts made in the same manner of the time within the
Romanian space, we could state that the Greek text could have been realized in the Walachia.
We cannot state firmly the exact place for this translation due to the lack of information among the researches in this direction. After a careful analysis of the phonetic, morphological and, in a certain way, of the lexical features, we can observe the interference of the particularities of the North area (the monk responsible for the translation was from Agapia) with the South ones (the revisers being from Bucharest/Hurezi).
The question of dating of the translation brings also some difficulties: the Greek text (if we take into account the year engraved on the patriarch's seal – 1692 and the fact that Gherasim mentions the name of some characters contemporary to Brâncoveanu, for example, the presence of the metropolitan Theodosie in the same year, 1692) can be dated for the year
1692; as regarding the Romanian translation, dating it becomes a real problem, having just a hypothesis based on the information concerning the construction of the big church from
Hurezi, its painting and consecration, which means the period: 1692-1694 or 1694-1697.

B. Within the linguistic study, I had in view the graphic particularities of these texts, as well as a detailed analysis from a phonetic, morphological, syntactical and lexical point of view.
In the first part, intended for the graphics, in order to establish the phonematic values of the
Cyrillic characters, I had in view some other text from that time (which already have critical editions), as well as some other linguistic studies concerning the Romanian writings with a
Cyrillic alphabet, given the fact that we do not have some other translations of that monk who translated the Greek text (for an eventual comparison).
After a brief presentation of the two methods of rendering a text with a Cyrillic graphics
(transliteration and interpretative transcription), with each other's advantages and disadvantages, I made out the case for the method I used in order to reproduce the given text, that is, the one of the interpretative transcription, which allows to maintain the phonetical and graphic aspects of the original text, as well as clarifying the situation of the letters which have more phonetic values.
Furthermore, I presented the inventory of the letters from this text, offering examples for each letter and insisting on the situations which raise problems with the interpretation of the phonematic value: the case of the graphic inconstancy which makes difficult the text's transcriptions, the case of the letters which were kept due to some graphic habits, with no phonetic values, letters which come from the Slavonian alphabet, letters kept in some words coming from Greek. A particularity of the Cyrillic graphics, especially for the manuscripts, is represented by the presence of the contractions and of the overwriting, which are all the time accompanied by examples from the text. I also took into account the prosody signs, presenting the ones which bring some phonetic changes, as well as the ones with no value.
At the same level, I underlined the errors belonging to the translator, errors which were corrected in the text and were mentioned in the footnotes; the punctuation of the text is arbitrary; when I accomplished the transliteration of the text, I reestablished the punctuation according to the logic of the phrase, to the context and, especially to the norms of the contemporary Romanian.
In the chapter intended for the phonetic analysis, I searched for the situations specific to the old literary Romanian, phenomena which are no longer part of the contemporary linguistic stage or they have an exclusively regional use. Taking into account the hypothesis that this text belongs to a Moldavian translator (Athanasie from Agapia), who came to Brâncoveanu or even to Hurezi (the place where the given manuscript was discovered), I intended to keep track of the interference of the phonetic phenomena specific to the North dialects with the

South ones, as well as the question of the accent: forms with accents different from the contemporary norms (as a result of copying the original Greek words) and the way of establishing the accent regarding the names of countries. At the same level, I gave details for the phenomena such as: vocalism, consonants (palatalization, velarization), as wells as for the case of the words which have consonant groups, as a reflection of the etymon. Regarding the morphological features, I had the intention of presenting (in some ways, I could say exhaustive) the ones specific to the old literary Romanian, as well as the dialectal forms.
Concerning the words etymology, I followed the works of C. Frâncu, V. Arvinte, O.
Densusianu, DA și DLR; all the linguistic facts are permanently followed by examples from the text.
Concerning the syntactic level, I had the intention of discussing the particularities of this text from the end of the 17 th
century, particularities which cannot be found anymore within the actual linguistic norms (consequently, the ones specific only to the old literary Romanian), as well as the ones specific only to the analyzed text. Besides the classical details for each syntactic element, I had in view the problem affirmation/negation, as well as the topic of the sentence phrase (action due to fact the Romanian text represents a translation from Greek, a language with a topic totally different from Romanian, and which, in a certain extent, can be found in the translator's way of expressing).
The lexical analysis had as a starting point the idea that old literary Romanian represents the basis of the contemporary literary language; consequently, I considered that approaching the vocabulary of this text from the 17 th
century becomes necessary, my intention being that of observing the words specific to old literary Romanian and disappeared from the present use
(or have only a regional or popular use), as well as presenting the cases in which a semantic evolution or a different form from the present one is registered; I also observed some series of synonymic relationships, their significant number suggesting the conclusion that this text offers us a language in a developing stage. I had also the intention of rendering the ways of forming words (derivation, compounding, conversion), as wells as enlarging the vocabulary by the means of borrowings and loan translations; the words whose first dating within the dictionaries of Romanian should been reevaluated, as well as the situation of the undated words ( eghinei , delfini , melambodilor ) represented also a point of interest for my research.
We bring to your attention the cases of lexical creativity – fiire , crucească
, constandinescu ,
împithona
, siricescu . Given the large number of proper names, a classification was required with the following structure: anthroponyms, toponyms, teonyms, ethnonyms, with an obvious effort of underlining their adjustment (from a phonetic and morphological point of view) to

the Romanian structure. The fact the encomium is a type of text remarked under the Church's influence required an identification and enumeration of the ecclesiastical terms. The words etymology was established by a permanent consultation of the specialized Romanian dictionaries: DA, DLR, MDA, TRDG, Scriban, DER, Miklosich.
The philological and linguistic studies are coming together with an auxiliary part which consists of the texts transcription with the Latin alphabet and facsimiles of the Greek and
Cyrillic text.
In order to put an end to this speech, I mention one more time the fact that this scientific step can be considered as another attempt meant to join the other old Romanian text editions with the target of creating a complete image for the Romanian of the 17 th
century.