ine on p. 145, vol. i., of the
_Monumenta Vaticana Hungariae_ (Buda-Pest, 1887):

"Item Stephanus Sacerdos de Beesd solvit I fertonem"

appeared to lend colour to this view, for the name Beesd might have
been slavized into Besdin and this might be the record of a payment
made, between 1332 and 1337, to the Pope. It is only fair to say that
the learned Magyar Jesuit who presides over the episcopal library at
Gjula Fehervar (Alba Julia in Roumanian) did no more than say that
these surmises were possible. He was, as a matter of fact, much more
interested in the political situation and in another book, the oldest
printed Bible in Roumanian (of 1582 and in Slav characters) which, as
he pointed out with half a sigh, was published by one Magyar through
the liberality of another. The charming Bishop of Caransebes, as he
sat with me one Sunday morning in his rose garden, did not receive
Professor Iorga's idea with approbation. The Professor, he thought,
was too fond of originality and he himself preferred to claim some of
the monasteries on equitable instead of on historical grounds. They
were founded after all, he said, for the people of the Banat and of
those a majority were now Roumanian. (But in Caras-Severin, the chief
stronghold of his countrymen, there are no ancient monasteries with
the exception of some ruins. The Roumanians are not ostentatiously
religious; they do not take kindly to the building of churches and in
their portion of the Banat one usually finds churches of wood, some of
these being 150 years old.) But another librarian, this time a German
at Ver[vs]ac, poured cold water on Professor Iorga. Only one Roman
Catholic religious house, he said, was founded by that French dynasty
in the Banat and this was at Egres, near the Maro[vs], where the wife
of Louis of Anjou built a church which remained Catholic and is now in
ruins. The monastery of Besdin was founded in 1539 and a Serb-Slav
psaltery which is kept there has, on p. 270, the following words: "In
the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So that all people shall
know when a beginning was made to build the monastery of Besdin. It
was begun in the year 7058 from the creation of the world, that is
1539 from the Birth of Christ ... Joseph Milutinovi['c],
archimandrate, built it, and his monks and the Christians helped him.
Written by me: Leontic Bogojevi['c], administrator and monk." Beesd
and Besdin, said the librarian, are from the same root, signif