The stone crosses of Bucharest

Crosses have been a constant presence in the urban habitat of Romania's capital city, Bucharest. Throughout the years, no less than fifty such crosses have been placed in various points, with some of them marking military or social events, while others marked the border between properties. Some of the crosses had the role of cenotaph or diptych. There were also crosses that were displaced and placed again in the lapidary of such monasteries as Antim of the Brancoveanu palaces in Mogosoaia.

The oldest such monument in Ruler Leon's Cross, made of wood. Leon was the ruling prince of Wallachia between 1629 and 1632. Leon raised the cross to mark his win in the battle against Matei Basarab on August 23rd, 1631. The wooden cross deteriorated; Leon's son, Radu Leon, had it rebuilt, this time using stone as construction material.

Another cross, initially made of wood and rebuilt of stone, later, is the cross of Papa Brâncoveanu, Wallachian ruling prince Constantin Brâncoveanu's father. The former ruled between 1688 and 1714. Papa Brancoveanu was killed in 1655 during the uprising of the mercenary corps armed with muskets, seimeni, in Romanian, and the corps of foot soldiers, dorobanti, in Romanian. 

Cezar-Petre Buiumaci is a museographer with the Bucharest Municipality Museum. Dr Buiumaci is also a coordinator of a project t dedicated to the stone crosses from Romania's capital city Bucharest. We first asked him what the explanation was, for the emergence of the crosses as public monuments in Bucharest, prior to the modern period.

"The predicament people at that time had been going though prompted them to erect monuments with a twofold significance: first, to protect them from any misfortune, at once reminding them of the plight that befell them. A case in point is the stone cross erected by the commander of mounted troops (serdar, in Romanian) Matei Mogoș (Mogoșescu) on his estate in the early 18th century, in the hopes that the plague pandemic that ravished the city would come to an end. The cross became so important in the community's mindset that Bishop Grigore II a had a church built around the cross. Placed in the altar of the Old Obor Church, the cross, meant to remind people of plague and famine, can be seen with difficulty, today, as it became a worship object. We can find this kind of reminiscing again, in Vienna, where the emperor, in late 17th century, had a column built, dedicated to the divine charity when the plague epidemic came to an end. In Arad, in the mid-18th century, the plague column was erected, having the Holy Trinity as its main representation. We can also find similar monuments in other cities in Banat, Hungary or Germany, built in the wake of the pledge that was made, when the plague was eradicated. "The power the public crosses had over Bucharest city dwellers' lifestyle and collective psyche was impressive.

Here is museographer Cezar-Petre Buiumaci once again, this time summing up the story of one of those crosses.

"One of the crosses with a special relevance in the history of Bucharest is Neophit's Cross, a cross which is as visible as it is unknown. It was erected by Ungrovlahia's bishop, Neophit the Cretan, with the purpose of being a border stone. What prompted the bishop to do that were the repeated trespassings of the plots of land and vineyards by the Greek priors of the Mihai Voda monastery. In the wake of the inquest he carried on the ground, the bishop decided that the cross should be placed where the Paupers' Fountain was found on Barracks Street. It's just that the inquest he conducted on the ground did not take the course he thought it would take, because the father superiors in Mihai Voda talked the slum dwellers into clamming up, with respect to the old borders of the metropolitan church's plots of land. He noticed he received no info at all, capable of helping him in his endeavor, so Neophit had no choice other than placing a curse on the slum dwellers, with the purpose of finding out the truth. "The Great curse" or the" Most terrible anathema" were read out in the Albă-Postăvari, Abbot, Gorgani and Golescu churches in the first three Lent Sundays, targeting the people who knew about the measuring marks for those plots of land but who wouldn't speak up. The action turned out to be successful because, as soon as the commission tasked with solving the case showed up, the slum dwellers identified the measuring marks. "

At the heart of the capital city, in the University Square, lies one of Bucharest's most recent public crosses. Near the roadside crosses commemorating the December 1989 Revolution, the Cross of Bessarabia can be found. Cezar-Petre Buiumaci also briefed us up on the story of the entire ensemble there.

"The Cross of Bessarabia Cross is a wooden cross brought from Chisinau by a group of students from Republic of Moldova as part of the Union March, and placed there on March 27, 1992, on the very day Bessarabia's Union with Romania is celebrated. The wooden cross is the symbol of people's unity and is actually the first cross of today's ensemble that was placed on the very spot where a couple of roadside crosses used to stand, erected in December 1989. There were other eight stone crosses placed here, brought from Alexeni, Ialomita County, and which, together, make the December 1989 Revolution Heroes' Ensemble which, as of that year, has become the main place for the commemoration of the 1989 Revolution martyrs. It is a salient example of the change in significance of a monument, from a border stone into a public monument, with relevance for the recent history. "

Bucharest's stone crosses, with strong and artistically expressive messages, are part and parcel of today's urbanscape. Bucharesters may have got used to passing them by every day, yet the stone crosses still maintain their symbolic significance intact.