Scarlat Vasile Vârnav, or Sofronie Vârnav (also known as Charles Basile Varnav,Nistor, pp. 534, 535 Charles de Wirnave,Ghibănescu (1915), p. 350 Varnavu or Vîrnav; died ), was a Moldavian and Romanian political figure, philanthropist, collector, and Orthodox clergyman. The scion of an aristocratic family, he was made to study for a career in the church, but fled Moldavia and studied abroad. Acquainted with the Romanian liberal movement and the Romanian nationalist movement, he helped establish bodies of intellectuals dedicated to cultural and political cooperation across the Danubian Principalities and beyond, including the 1846 Romanian library of Paris. His purchase of mainly Baroque paintings, donated by him to Academia Mihăileană, forms the core of the Iași Museum of Art.
With Nicolae Bălcescu and C. A. Rosetti, Vârnav also managed the Society of Romanian Students in Paris, whose revolutionary agenda brought him into conflict with European governments. He then played a small part in the French Revolution of 1848, before returning to take orders at Neamț Monastery, a Hieromonk and Starets. Throughout the 1850s, he and his brother Constantin, who was the son-in-law of Gheorghe Bibescu, took part in the nationalist movement that established the United Principalities, and was especially active as an electoral campaigner. However, his support of modernization in schools and the church was not welcomed by the religious establishment, and his stand-off with the conservative monks of Neamț resulted in the establishment of a dissident monastery. Subsequently, Vârnav lost the backing of Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, although he still approved of Cuza's authoritarian agenda.
After campaigning nationally in support of Carol I, Vârnav ended his career in Tutova County. Active in antisemitic circles, he was allied with the Free and Independent Faction. On this basis, he contested a seat in the Assembly of Deputies during December 1867, but died from a sudden illness just days after winning. Rumors the he was poisoned by Romanian Jews sparked a riot, which had to be quelled by armed intervention, and an official inquiry. He was survived by his brother Constantin and his nephew, engineer and politician Scarlat C. Vârnav.
Biography Early activities It is known that Vârnav was a native of Hilișeu (or Silișeu), Dorohoi County, but other details remain sketchy, with his year of birth given as far back as 1801Dimitrie R. Rosetti, Dicționarul contimporanilor, p. 190. Bucharest: Editura Lito-Tipografiei Populara, 1897 or as recent as 1813.Bejenaru, p. 188; Dimitrescu, p. 65; Isar, p. 1442; Zahariuc (2020), pp. 112–113, 114 Historian Petronel Zahariuc notes that it may be impossible to pinpoint the exact date, though he believes that the most likely one was provided by Vârnav himself as being October 14, 1813. Zahariuc also points out that another record from Vârnav's day had 1810, and sees 1801 as unrealistic.Zahariuc (2020), pp. 112–113, 114 A family manuscript, which has September 29, 1816, also notes that Vârnav was baptised by, and named after, the reigning Prince Scarlat Callimachi.Zahariuc (2020), p. 113
Vârnav belonged to a large family of the Moldavian boyar nobility, attested back to 1621; he was distantly related to Teodor Vârnav, the Bessarabian writer.Arthur Gorovei, Monografia Orașului Botoșani, pp. 142–153. Botoșani: Ediția Primăriei de Botoșani, 1938. See also Iorga, pp. 170–175; Nistor, p. 531; Stino, p. 88 His immediate ancestors had taken up liberal causes, inspired by the Carbonari.Xenopol, pp. 100–102 One relative, Petrachi, also led the Moldavian resistance to the "Sacred Band" during the civil war of 1821, alongside Gavril Istrati.Iorga, pp. 173–175 Scarlat was generally believed to have been the son of Ban Vasile Vârnav (died 1824), noted as a book collector and translator to Romanian—in particular for his renditions of Dimitrie Cantemir's Descriptio Moldaviae,Iorga, p. 172; Stino, p. 88 Condillac's Logique,Iuliu Bud, "Cartea românească și străină de istorie. Antonie Plămădeală, Lazăr-Leon Asachi în cultura română", in Revista de Istorie, Issue 4/1988, p. 456 Dionisie Fotino's Istoria tis palai Dakias,Nistor, p. 531 and Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments.Cristian Preda, Rumânii fericiți. Vot și putere de la 1831 până în prezent, p. 25. Iași: Polirom, 2011. As argued by Zahariuc, this identification is partly misleading: Scarlat's father was indeed a Vasile Vârnav, but not the same as the translator; his wife, and Scarlat's mother, was Maria née Gheuca.Zahariuc (2020), p. 112 The future monk's distant cousins included Sofronie Miclescu, who would later serve as Metropolitan Bishop of Moldavia.Zahariuc (2020), p. 144
Scarlat had a brother, Constantin (also known as Costandin or Costache), who trained himself as a surgeon. Together, the two inherited Hilișeu estate and part of Liveni.Ghibănescu (1929), pp. 35–36. See also Iftimi & Iftimi, p. 102 After an early education allegedly provided by his father,Dimitrescu, pp. 65–66 Scarlat began trying his hand at copying manuscripts. Zahariuc notes that both Scarlat and Constantin were sent to study abroad in Bukovina District "immediately after" the 1821 troubles, but that Scarlat had made it back to his home village in 1826.Zahariuc (2020), pp. 112–114 Following the death of his father, Maria remarried to another boyar, Costache Roset of Botoșani.Zahariuc (2020), p. 114 One account is that Scarlat was selected by his mother to take orders in the Moldavian Church. According to this reading, he was tutored at home by his cousin Miclescu, but escaped to his relatives in Bukovina, and later made his way to Paris.Dimitrescu, p. 66 His departure, whether or not prompted by the incident, is tentatively dated to between 1832Bejenaru, p. 188 and 1836.Isar, p. 1433; Zahariuc (2020), p. 114
Vârnav lived in France until 1848. He attended Paris Law Faculty between 1837 and 1840, but he never took a diploma; he probably also heard literature courses at the College of Sorbonne.Isar, pp. 1433–1434. See also Dimitrescu, p. 66 With his own private funds, he purchased the art collection of Aguado de las Marismas on the recommendation of Gheorghe Panaiteanu Bardasare. It included paintings by Caravaggio, Philippe de Champaigne, Egbert van Heemskerck, Eustache Le Sueur, Pietro Liberi, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and François Stella;Ichim, pp. 318–319 Vârnav also owned a copy of Philippoteaux's La Retraite de Russie, which was probably done by the artist himself, and which he may have purchased at the Exposition nationale des beaux-arts of Brussels, in 1842.Grigorescu, pp. 256–257 In 1847, he donated all artworks in his possession to the Moldavian state, which took little interest in the offer. The collection was left to deteriorate at a shipyard in Galați.Dimitrescu, p. 66; Ichim, pp. 318–319, 325. See also Paradais, pp. 11–12, 19–20; Zahariuc (2020), pp. 130–131
Taking up the cause of Romanian nationalism, Vârnav established in 1846 a Romanian library, which he dedicated to the "new era" of European liberalism,Nistor, p. 532; Stino, pp. 85–86 and also set the foundation for a Romanian Orthodox chapter in Paris.Bejenaru, p. 188; Dimitrescu, p. 66; Pocitan Ploeșteanu, pp. 83, 89 Regulars included Nicolae Bălcescu, who described the library as actually a salon and a "reunion center for us Romanians." According to the Moldavian liberal writer Gheorghe Sion, Vârnav was good friends with a Rom, Dincă, born into slavery at Pașcani. He tried to persuade Dincă not to return to his owners to Moldavia, offering to employ him as a secretary of the library.Gheorghe Sion, Suvenire contimporane, p. 38. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1915. In the mid 1840s, Vârnav was also in contact with the agronomist and political thinker Ion Ionescu de la Brad, sponsoring his attempts to set up a model farm in southern Moldavia, and also offering to employ Ionescu as a trainer of peasants.Bogdan-Duică, p. 103; Zahariuc (2020), pp. 122–123. See also Isar, pp. 1440, 1441–1442
In his address to the library's patrons, which he printed in over 3,000 copies,Zahariuc (2020), p. 117 Vârnav explained that he regarded the Romanian language and the church as the two "protective genii of our nationhood."Stino, p. 86 Like Rosetti, he made reference to Romanians entering an "era of transition", explaining that "Phanariote" mores were "dead", but also that the "new ideas and new beliefs" had not yet settled. The prospects worried him: "we are at times troubled as to whether our so very backward nation might be allowed the time to enjoy those future joys".Cazimir, p. 9 Vârnav's manifesto chided Westernized Romanians for forgetting their modernizing mission, and even their native language, suggesting that the two were inextricably linked. Overall, he proposed that the emerging Romanian literature needed to keep cosmopolitan tendencies in check: the predominant themes needed to display "originality and Romanianism" rather than the "illusions of the senses" and "chimeras of individual hurdles."Isar, pp. 1438–1439 His disregard for what he termed the "outer forms of civilization" was picked up by cultural historian Adrian Marino as prefiguring the conservative liberalism later embraced by Junimea society.Adrian Marino, Pentru Europa. Integrarea României: Aspecte ideologice și culturale, pp. 240–241. Iași: Polirom, 2005.
Vârnav's focus was on providing young intellectuals with a cultural training that was already in their vernacular language; this included efforts to discard the Cyrillic orthography as "foreign", and familiarize students with the various adaptations from Latin.Stino, pp. 86–88. See also Iorga, pp. 175–179 He specifically asked book publishers to specify whether their books were in Latin or Cyrillic, intending to prioritize the former.Cazimir, p. 118 His own experiments resulted in what historian Nicolae Iorga deems a "bizarre personal orthography".Iorga, p. 175 While the nationalist movement was struggling to popularize the name "Romanian" for the shared ethnicity and culture, and trying to settle on a spelling of that word, Vârnav suggested the variant Roumén(é), later replaced by român and română.Pocitan Ploeșteanu, p. 26. See also Zahariuc (2020), pp. 117–118 He also proposed that linguists from the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), as well as from other Romanian-speaking regions, meet up in congress "somewhere central to the Romanian lands".Iorga, p. 176; Stino, pp. 87–88; Zahariuc (2020), pp. 117–118
Revolutionary