The Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch and his book donation for the St. Sava monastery în Iassy. A needed reconsideration

The personality of the patriarch Sylvester is unsufficiently known to us, despite the fact that he lived on our territory several years, being close to voivodes and intellectuals of the Romanian countries. His actions focused generally on helping Arabic speaking Christians, both secular and clerics, who were threatened on one hand by the impossibility of continuing their spiritual mission because of the shortage of books for learning and worship, and on the other hand, by the aggressive missionarism initiated by the Catholic missions in the Levant.
As long as he activated in Iassy, the patriarch Sylvester resided at the St. Sava monastery of the Jerusalem Patriarchy. Feeling close to the monastery community at St. Sava in Iassy, which reminded him of the monastery with the same name at the Holy Places, the patriarch Sylvester donated here some books on which he noted some interesting facts. This information unfortunately reached us incomplete and distorted. Through the present paper, we intend to re-establish the truth according to our own recent research.