Melchisedec Ștefănescu
He was involved in politics, especially around the time the United Principalities came into being, and was a steadfast supporter of Alexandru Ion Cuza's reforms, including the secularization of monastic estates.
After his death, his property and money went toward setting up the Romanian Academy Library, sending students on scholarship to Imperial Russia and establishing a foundation that continues its activities in Roman.
[2] As early as 1856, Melchisedec began campaigning for the union between Moldavia and Wallachia, publishing a pamphlet that aimed to convince Romanian society of the wisdom of such a step.
[4][5] The deputies drafted a program for church reform, calling for autocephaly, a solution to the problem of foreign-owned monasteries and an end to the election of foreign bishops.
Together with Mihail Kogălniceanu, he drafted the law on secularization of monastic estates, as the only bishop in the Principalities to support Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza in this endeavor.
[9][10] They handed Tsar Alexander II a letter from Carol and asked to negotiate unresolved political matters—such as reducing the special protections of Russian subjects on Romanian soil.
[9] In a letter sent to the Domnitor earlier the same year, Otto von Bismarck, who had previously served as ambassador to Russia, expressed his confidence in the bishop's success.
[10] While there, Melchisedec also tried to persuade Alexander Gorchakov to mediate between his church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in order to resolve disputed over the appointment of Romanian bishops.
He encouraged young people to study, giving them books and money; sent the most promising to Czernowitz or Kiev, and persuaded the Holy Synod to grant scholarships.
[10] Elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1870,[13] he belonged to eight other scientific and cultural societies from Paris, Tarnovo, Kiev, Saint Petersburg, Athens and Constantinople.
[5] His 1871 book on the Lipovans was the first ample study of this community in Romania and its surroundings;[15] the work covered the Romanian Old Kingdom proper as well as neighboring Bukovina and Dobruja, then under Austrian and Ottoman administration, respectively.
[10] Melchisedec was active within the academy: he presented reviews of books by Moses Gaster, Gheorghe Asachi and others; displayed original Moldavian decrees written in Old Church Slavonic; and proposed the publication of a collection comprising 64 sermons by John Chrysostom that he had translated from German,[5] in an edition by Karl Josef von Hefele.
He presented a report about the discovery, inside the Gospel Book of Humor Monastery, of a true portrait depicting Stephen the Great; as well as a series of Slavonic documents and sermons by Anthim the Iberian.
It was among the richest libraries in late 19th-century Romania, including books on history, literature, theology, political and social matters, pedagogy, economics, agriculture, science, medicine and art, as well as periodicals.
Every year, the income would help finance a recipient's theological studies at Kiev; among those who benefited from the scholarship were Ludovic Cosma, Ioan Țincoca, Vespasian Erbiceanu, Constantin Nazarie and Nicodim Munteanu.
He also willed that a kindergarten for local children be established in one of his houses, as well as a school for church singers that would only admit orphans and provide them with free room and board.
