According to Orthodox tradition, bishops are also monks and, dating back to the fifth century, certain monasteries have also been a place of episcopal residence. Monasteries have contributed to the formation and consolidation of the local Churches as well as to the process of transmission and defense of the Orthodox faith. The same is true of Romanian Orthodox monasticism which is intimately connected to the genesis and characteristics of Romanian Christianity, taking on an important role in the doctrinal disputes of the fifth and sixth centuries through notable monastic figures such as John Cassian, Ghermanus, and Dionysius Exiguus and the well-known “Scythian monks.”

The survival of this practice in the contemporary world consists in the assumption by the diocesan headquarters of the status of a monastic place, where monks and nuns are active members of the bishop’s entourage.

This article aims to historically reconstruct the figure of bishop-monk in the Eastern Christian tradition as well as the practice of bishop cohabitation in monasteries in the Romanian Orthodox monasticism. Whether at home or in the Romanian diaspora, this is done in order to understand how coexistence of the two roles—monk and bishop—within the same person and place is experienced today, between law and factual reality. A privileged observatory will be the case of the episcopal headquarters of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Italy.

The research requires the use of a historical-critical methodology based on juridical, literary, archaeological and documentary sources as well as on an ethnographic investiga- tion in order to analyze the contemporary cases.