A Georgian printer in Wallachia
Anthim was born in Georgia, historically called Iberia or Iviria; the name does not refer to Spain or Portugal. His career in the Romanian lands brought together several forms of service. He worked as a printer, served as abbot of Snagov, became Bishop of Râmnic in 1705, and Metropolitan of Wallachia in 1708. The monastery he established in Bucharest was the foundation of a bishop already deeply involved in the making and circulation of religious books.[2]
The monastery’s biography lists printing work in Bucharest, Râmnic, and Târgoviște, including liturgical books, the Psalter, and the New Testament. His sermons, known as the Didahii, belong to the same pastoral concern for communicating Christian teaching. The dedicated author page introduces his writings and wider life.[2]
Foundation, worship, and practical charity
Building began in 1713 on the site of an older wooden church. The monastery’s own history records the consecration of the main church on 20 July 1715. It connects the decision to build with the feast of Saint Agatha and a revelation to Anthim; that account belongs to the monastery’s religious tradition. The founder devoted his property and attention to the new community.[1]
The foundation document, begun in April 1713, gives the monastery a purpose extending beyond its walls. It provides for helping poor people, supporting children’s education, receiving strangers, and maintaining a lending library and Greek and Romanian printing presses. These provisions place books alongside food, shelter, and schooling as practical forms of service.[1]
The church, bell tower, and changing buildings
The main church belongs to the Brâncovenesc architectural tradition. Its open porch has ten stone columns with carved capitals. Above the entrance appears Anthim’s emblem, a snail beneath a star, which the archdiocesan account interprets through faith and humility. The bell tower forms the entrance to the courtyard; the photograph shows this gateway in its surrounding city streets.[3]
The complex has undergone repeated repairs. An earthquake damaged the original church towers in 1738, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century campaigns altered or restored parts of the buildings. During Bucharest’s redevelopment in 1984, the synodal palace was moved and rotated to preserve it. It was the palace, rather than the main monastery church, that underwent this relocation.[3]
A monastery planned around the life of books
Anthim’s foundation made provision for teaching the printer’s craft to successors. Its lending arrangements also called for a written undertaking to return a borrowed book. These details reveal an interest in maintaining both skilled labor and access to a collection. Printing was intended to continue beyond the lifetime of the founder.[3]
For a reader of Sermons of St. Anthim the Iberian, this history gives the preacher a more concrete setting. He addressed listeners through sermons while also helping build the institutions through which religious learning could endure. The sermons offer his pastoral voice; the monastery shows another expression of the same commitment.
The Burning Bush movement
In the years after the Second World War, Antim brought monks, clergy, and lay intellectuals into conversations about prayer and Christian life. The journalist Sandu Tudor, later the monk Daniil, entered the community and lived in a cell in the bell tower from 1946. The Archdiocese of Bucharest describes lectures and friendships involving university teachers, students, monks, and other believers. This circle became known as the Burning Bush.[4]
The movement was suppressed under the communist regime. The archdiocese’s memorial account distinguishes the group’s dissolution from the arrests in 1958; Daniil died in Aiud prison in 1962. His former cell was later arranged as a memorial space, with photographs, manuscripts, and books. The archdiocese provides a virtual visit to this small museum, allowing readers to explore its material history.[4]
Antim and the wider Orthodox library
The direct starting point in our catalog is Anthim’s collection of sermons. For another setting in the history of Orthodox preaching in the Romanian lands, see Metropolitan Varlaam of Moldavia. Sophronius of Vratsa offers a later Bulgarian example of religious instruction reaching readers through print. These authors worked in different periods and languages; their biographies make those distinctions clear.
For current worship information, consult the monastery’s official website listed below. This article introduces the community’s history; service arrangements are maintained by the monastery itself.