Marginalized upon his return, he withdrew into regular monastic life, witnessing Oltenia's ruin, brought on by warlord Osman Pazvantoğlu—whom he depicted as a half-legendary figure—and the economic constraints introduced by the Napoleonic Wars.

It was here that he began writing his chronicle, known as Hronograful Țerei Românești, which also outlines his political vision—his critique of the Phanariotes, balanced by nuanced portrayals of individual princes such as Nicholas Mavrogenes, his contempt toward Westernization, and his appreciation for the Russian Empire.

Constantinescu notes that, in Dionisie's day, Phanariote dynasties had abandoned their early practice of regulating the "despotic system of taxation", and, beginning with Ștefan Racoviță's reign in the 1760s, were pushing for all-out spoliation.

Sorescu describes Dionisie's "wonderful lettering" in Romanian Cyrillic, Church Slavonic, as well as Latin; the same author takes this to mean that Eclesiarhul was a polyglot, in addition to being exceptionally versed in the canons of Orthodoxy.

[22] Some clues about his debut as a historian are found in his account of the Austro-Turkish War of 1788, which includes "strategic details, portraits of commanders, and troop movements", discussing at length the occupation of Craiova and Bucharest (respectively, Oltenia and Wallachia's capitals) by the Imperial Army of the Habsburg monarchy, ending in decimation by an outbreak of typhoid fever.

Here, he clarifies that he was a captive in Craiova, alongside the other monks, being closely watched by the cumpliți volontiri nemțești ("terrifying German volunteers");[24] he also reports learning from a Logothete's aide in Bucharest that soldiers of the Habsburg and Imperial Russian armies, who together occupied the city, were engaged in raucous fistfights which entertained the Wallachians.

While his translation was used as a main source of information by modern historians beginning with Nicolae Bălcescu, it is criticized as inaccurate by Constantin C. Giurescu, who believes that the incriminated words were not present in the Mihnea original (but rather added by Dionisie).

[33] At some point before 1796, he copied and translated Slavonic diplomas from the Tismana archives, attributed to Sigismund of Luxemburg, Holy Roman Emperor (whom he knew as Zicmond) and John Hunyadi (Ianoș).

[48] His political ideas and lifetime lessons were conflated in Hronograful Țerei Românești, which he began writing at Craiova in 1814; its date of completion is unknown, given as 1815 by Simota and Sorescu,[49] as 1818 by Constantinescu,[50] and as 1820 by Nedelcea.

[54] Hronograful itself suggests that such information came to Wallachia by means of gazettes and biographies, avidly sought after by boyars such as Barbu C. Știrbei;[55] Constantinescu writes that the Ecclesiarch was himself a follower of the press, which he mostly read through digests published in Buda.

[56] According to researchers Cornelia Papacostea-Danielopolu and Lidia Demény, it is an established fact that both Dionisie and Naum compiled news picked up from Efimeris and other newspapers of the Modern Greek Enlightenment, arriving in the Austrian Empire.

[57] Simota similarly believes that his views were shaped by "minor works of anti-French propaganda", imported from the West; around that time, he translated from German an account of the French campaign in Russia, and another one dealing with the Battle of Waterloo (both were published at Buda, in 1814 and 1815, respectively).

[58] Dionisie continued with his work as a scribe—around 1813, he finished the register of Bucovăț Monastery, which ended up at Varlaam on Meteora;[59] this was followed by beadrolls for the priest in Craiova's Șimnicu de Jos community (1814) and the monks of Țânțăreni (1816), between which he penned a deed to the estate of Sutești (1815).

[66] Two competing oral traditions, recorded in 1985 by art historian Paul Rezeanu, suggest that Dionisie spent his final years either at Gănescu Monastery (on the spot later occupied by the University of Craiova) or in a hut located at Brândușa Church.

His main work, "in equal parts a chronicle and a memoir",[72] "features good, novella-style pages, with hints of the Italian or Spanish short prose, with comedic or violent episodes".

"[83] Historian Paul Cernovodeanu also reports that Eclesiarhul's account of Nicholas Mavrogenes, who was famously despotic and "megalomaniac" (and whose 1780s reign marked a "crisis of the Phanariote regime"), remained generally neutral, alternating condemnation and praise.

[100] Some fragments of Hronograful display Dionisie's interest for the First Serbian Uprising, and especially for Prince Constantine Ypsilantis' attempt to assist the rebels (in what was a staged effort to ensure Wallachia's own emancipation from the Porte).

[3] This view, also taken up by Cioculescu ("[Dionisie is] a Douanier Rousseau-like figure in our historiography")[6] and by scholar Ion C. Chițimia (who admires the monk simply for his talent and "candor"),[102] was contested by literary critic Mihai Ungheanu.

As noted by Ungheanu, Eclesiarhul only appears as gauche if reading is confined to his antiquated language: "Transcribed into European, neologistic, formulas, the monk of Râmnic no longer seems at all naive, indicating to us that the paste of one's vocabulary can prevent or delay access to one's idea, in any given text.

According to him, Hronograful provides some insight into Dionisie's take on world politics, which sometimes evidences the role of personalities—Dionisie argues that Leopold, Holy Roman Emperor, had a peaceful disposition and "enough countries" to rule upon; he also believes that the similarly unwarlike Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich was a major factor in appeasing Napoleon.

[105] Dionisie also genuinely believed that Louis XVII had survived the Revolution and made his way into Russia, and had a vague idea about the Egyptian campaign as securing a trade route—"leading into faraway lands, perhaps to America.

"[106] Hronograful pioneers comparative history and determinism by closely monitoring events occurring in the Ottoman Empire, and throughout Europe—as noted by Nedelcea, he was not alone in his "European vision", which was by then a "healthy Romanian tradition" in history-writing.

"[108] Boia suggests that Dionisie is not a reliable source, specially not on the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (where he reaches "peak absurdity"), but finds value in the implicit aspects: "[Hronograful] is an extremely precious psychological and historical document, perhaps unique in our literature.

[111] Dionisie declares himself perplexed by another Phanariote, Alexander Mourouzis, whom he describes as an incompetent administrator, strecurând țânțariul și înghițind cămila ("sieving out mosquitoes and gulping camels", as in: "penny-wise and pound-foolish").

[115] The chapter includes an episode of national humiliation, in which Hangerli dresses up muieri podărese, curve și cârciumărese ("female prostitutes, whores and barmaids"), presenting them as boyaresses and encouraging Ottoman soldiers to have sex with them.

[116] This portion of the text is closely followed by catastrophe: Ottoman Sultan Selim III decides to simply discard Hangerli, and, in another embarrassing episode, has the Kapucu execute him and desecrate his body in front of his entire court.

[120] Constantinescu also posits that, while Wallachian art in the Phanariote century had tied itself to the "Balkan and oriental realm", Dionisie's was still "rustic and nonconformist", drawing much of its inspiration from the "universe of the village"; some of his paintings show Vâlcea as it was back then, with its "green flames" of fir-tree and spruce, with the "shabby appearances of country homes and churches.

[133] Figurative drawings and watercolors that are also clearly attributable to Dionisie include a number of highly decorative depictions, such as "mustachioed heads of queue-wearing Austrians" (nemți cu coadă), as well as sketches of Arnauts and Ottomans, as "grotesque symbols of a horrifying reality.

[135] He also did a sequence of animal illustrations—from snakes and dragons blended in with his initials, to yellow starlings nibbling down on violet grapes, flamingos, and a number of deer; as noted by Constantinescu, these are overall inferior to similar works by his less known contemporary monks.

[6] Writing in 1982 for a preface of albums by Dionisie and his pupils, Constantinescu summarized the status of scholarship: "Surely, he was the subject of some lines of text, albeit ones that would be fully supportive, or even somewhat benevolent, in obscure publications and not available to most readers.