Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni
Romanian bishops
Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni (Romanian pronunciation: [ɡaˈvril bənuˈlesku boˈdoni]; 1746 – 30 March 1821) was a Romanian clergyman who served as Metropolitan of Moldavia (1792), Metropolitan of Kherson and Crimea (1793–1799), Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych (1799–1803), Exarch of Moldo-Wallachia (1806–1812), and Archbishop of Chișinău (1812–1821), being the first head of the church in Bessarabia after the Russian annexation.
Biography
Early life
Born in Bistrița, Transylvania to a family originating from Câmpulung, Moldavia, Bănulescu studied at the Kiev Theological Academy (1771–1773), then at the Greek-language academy in the Island of Patmos, Smyrna and the Athonite Academy in Vatopedi (1773–1786). At Patmos, he befriended Nikephoros Theotokis, a Greek cleric and enlightenment figure, with whom he taught at the Princely Academy of Iași in 1776.
In 1779 he became a monk in Constantinople, then continued his studies in Patmos, returning to Moldavia in 1781 to be a preacher at the Metropolitan cathedral. Then, between 1782–1784, he taught philosophy and Greek language in Poltava at the Slavic Seminary, then in the Russian Empire.
Clergyman in Moldavia
In 1784, Bănulescu-Bodoni returned to Iași to serve under Metropolitan Gavriil Callimachi, then moved to the diocese of Huși. In 1784 he was nominated to become a bishop of Roman, but the phanariote ruler declined his nomination. After the second Russo-Turkish War began, he fled to Ukraine, together with the phanariot ruler of Moldavia, Alexander Mavrocordatos Firaris. In Imperial Russia, he became the rector of the Poltava Seminary.
In 1789, as Russians occupied the Danubian Principalities, Catherine II of Russia and the Holy Synod appointed Archbishop Amvrosii Serebrennikov of Ekaterinoslav to be the locum tenens Exarch of Moldo-Wallachia, naming in 1791 Bănulescu-Bodoni bishop of Cetatea Albă.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.