Moldavia

MOLDAVIA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - One of the 16 federated Republics of the U.S.S.R. (M.A.S.S.R.), which over an area of 33,700 km² today counts 2.4 million inhabitants, of whom 70% are Moldavians (the rest Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Tatars, Turks, etc.).

Following the Ultimatum of 27 June 1940, the U.S.S.R., which had never been willing to recognize the accomplished (1918) annexation of Bessarabia (that is, of the territory between the Dniester and the Prut) by Romania, imposed on the latter the cession not only of that region (44,482 km² with 3.1 million inhabitants), but also that of northern Bukovina (5,242 km² with 520 thousand inhabitants), as well as of the district of Horta, which had always belonged to Moldavia, that is, to the Romanian territory to which this name is more properly applied. The U.S.S.R., which had created in Oct. 1924 on the lower Dniester a fictitious autonomous Moldavian Republic (8,419 km², with 616 thousand inhabitants), after 1940 it aggregated to it about half of the 50,254 km² torn from Romania, thus constituting the new federated Republic. This, however, is far from embracing the whole of Bessarabia, because a part of that region, together with Bukovina, passed to the Ukrainian Republic.

The M.A.S.S.R. is a hilly country, with a temperate climate and fertile soil, essentially agricultural-pastoral in vocation, but also provided with good mineral resources (lignite, phosphorites, gypsum and petroleum). The main products are maize, wheat, tobacco and sugar beet. During the Russian rule (which lasted until 1918) the region was known for its abundant production of wines and fruit.

The only inhabited center of any importance is the capital Kišinev (113 thousand inhabitants, of whom 2/5 are Jews). The Soviet Republic is not to be confused with Moldavia proper (38,058 km² with 2.8 million inhabitants), which is the neighboring Romanian region comprised between the Prut and the crest of the Carpathians.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

Historically, the name M. designates the second of the two Romanian principalities that rose to political life in the 14th century on the flanks of Transylvania.

The traditional date of its founding is the year 1359, when a part of the small Romanian nobility of Maramureș, northwest of Transylvania, after having taken part in the conquests of Louis I of Hungary over the lands controlled by the Mongols beyond the eastern Carpathians, rose up against the Hungarian sovereign and settled in those parts under the leadership of the voivode Bogdan. His successors continually extended the frontiers of the new State which, under Stephen the Great (1457-1504), reached its greatest territorial extent: from the eastern Carpathians to the Dniester River, and from Wallachia, the Danube and the Black Sea to southern Poland, in Pokuttya, with an area of 94,301 sq km, of which 10,441 were in the future Bukovina and 44,442 in the future Bessarabia (regions torn from M. in 1775 by the Austrians and in 1812 by the Russians respectively). In 1859 M., or what remained of it, united with Wallachia, together forming the new Romania.

M. had to offer a stubborn and often victorious resistance to the Turks; Stephen the Great was in correspondence with Sixtus IV, who in a letter called him, for his brilliant victories, "athlete of Christ."

As regards ecclesiastical affairs, the first princes of M., a country separated from obedience to the Roman See, depended on the metropolitan of Halicz, a city that was also part, between 1387-1404, of the new State. In 1401 M. obtained, after many difficulties and laborious negotiations with the patriarch of Constantinople, the recognition of a Romanian metropolitan, Josif, with residence at Suceava, the capital of the principality; this metropolitan see was transferred in 1564, together with the capital, to Jasi. Other bishoprics were then founded.

As regards Catholicism, a first bishopric was founded in 1227 by Gregory IX at Milcov - location uncertain - for the recently converted Cumans, and had as its titular the Dominican Teodorico; the Mongol invasion of 1241 destroyed every trace of this city, but the - honorary - title of bishop of Milcov remained for another three centuries among Hungarian ecclesiastics.

A second Catholic bishopric was erected by Urban V in 1370 at Siret, at the request of the reigning prince Lațcu, who had converted to Catholicism (a personal conversion that had no followers); the titular, a Franciscan, Andrea da Cracovia, seems never to have come to M. He had 4-5 other titular successors and after 1434 this bishopric is no longer mentioned. Alexander the Good (1400-32) authorized, in 1413, a Catholic bishopric at Baia, and indeed had built at his own expense for the new bishop, the Dominican Giovanni de Ryza, a fine stone church, but this bishopric too lasted barely a little more than a century. In 1607 a bishopric was founded at Bacau, which functioned until around the end of the 18th century. Its first titular was Gir. Arsengo. Finally, on 27 Apr. 1883, Leo XIII founded the bishopric of Jasi, still existing today.

M. is the cultural cradle of Romanianism: here, in the monasteries, the first Romanian chronicles were written; the Moldavian chroniclers Ureche and Miron Costin are the first to reveal to the people its Latin origin; the prince Demetrius Cantemir (1684-1723) and the "spataro" Nicolae Milescu (v.) were scholars of world renown; literary romanticism established itself with Cogălniceanu and Alessandri; the national poet of the Romanians, Mihail Eminescu, is Moldavian, as is also the great historian Nicolae Iorga.

For Part, v. ROMANIA.

Petre Vălimăreanu