Romania

ROMANIA. - It is the southernmost of the Danubian-Carpathian states, and the easternmost among the Neo-Latin ones; closed in between Hungarians and Slavs, at the boundary toward the Balkan and the Russian world. The war of 1915-1918 doubled it in comparison with 1914 (295,000 sq km), that of 1939-45 reduced it to 238,000 sq km, mutilating it of Bessarabia, of northern Bukovina (ceded to the U.S.S.R.) and of southern Dobruja (ceded to Bulgaria). From Dec. 1947, then, R., having become a "People's Republic," entered the orbit of Soviet communism.

I. GEOGRAPHY

The territory of R. has an almost circular shape, delimited for a long stretch by rivers (the Danube and the Prut) and for the rest by conventional borders, which between Banat and Maramureș separate it from Yugoslavia and Hungary. The landscape is varied, alternating more (Wallachia) or less (Banat) extensive plains with hilly (Transylvania, Moldavia) and mountainous (Carpathians, Transylvanian Alps) zones; the only outlet of the otherwise ample territory is the short coastline on the Black Sea to the S. of the mouth of the Danube. Although a predominantly agricultural country - over 2/3 of the population lives from working the fields, which ensures, among other things, a conspicuous surplus of cereals (wheat) for export - R. has aimed to strengthen its own economy by exploiting the abundant mineral resources at its disposal, capable of imparting a decisive impulse to its industrial development. More than fossil fuels (lignites) and iron ore (Banat, Transylvania), the oil deposits with which the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps are rich, the largest in Europe, have benefited it, and these, together with the abundance of methane, have guaranteed it a large availability of motive power and a favorable development of trade. In recent years industry has registered progress in many branches, especially in textiles, mechanical engineering, milling, and paper.

The population, today fairly homogeneous (80% Romanians, with minorities of Hungarians, Germans and Jews), is quite variously distributed (minimum densities in Dobruja, maximum in Wallachia). Of the cities, many of which retain a rural character, fewer than a dozen reach or exceed 100,000 inhabitants (Cluj, or Claudiopolis, Iași, Timișoara, Ploești, Brăila, Galați, Oradea Mare, or Gran Varadino), while Bucharest (București), the capital, now counts more than a million.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. CIVIL HISTORY

The territory of present-day R., in particular Transylvania, constituted in the 1st century B.C. the center of the Kingdom of Burebista, who had succeeded in unifying the various Dacian tribes and peoples under his scepter. Upon the death of this sovereign, which occurred around the middle of the century, the state formation fell apart, but in the course of the 1st century A.D. Decebalus succeeded once again in establishing in Dacia, north of the Danube, a powerful State, which gave the Romans a great deal of trouble.

In the times of the emperor Domitian, Rome, merely to avoid the raids of the Dacians into the territories occupied by it, obligated itself to the payment of an annual tribute, a tribute that was subsequently disdainfully refused by Trajan. The latter indeed, in 101 A.D., began a war against Decebalus, crossed the Danube, forced the King to peace and practically reduced Dacia to a Roman protectorate. Four years later, Decebalus, eager to escape the Roman yoke, rebelled, but his attempted defection was bloodily repressed and he himself, taken prisoner, committed suicide, preferring death to the prospect of being an object of mockery in Rome during the imperial triumph. Dacia, reduced to a province of the Empire, became an important military bastion for the defense of the Roman positions in the Balkans and was intensively colonized. In the face of the pressure of the barbarian populations, Aurelian nevertheless decided in 271 on the evacuation of Dacia (v.), whose inhabitants, for the most part, moved south of the Danube, probably to regions of present-day Serbia. From then until the 13th century, when historical documents speak of the existence of a

"Wallachian" or Romanian population, there is only scant information about the ethnic continuity and the vicissitudes of the Daco-Romans. The lack of sources and of valid data for the reconstruction of Romanian history in that period has favored disparate interpretations, not always characterized by a rigorous scientific seriousness, but tending rather to constitute juridical-historical supporting evidence for the political pretensions of individual nationalisms. The Romanian-Hungarian polemic over Transylvania led precisely to the formulation of two diametrically opposed hypotheses to solve the enigma of the historical continuity or non-continuity of the Daco-Romans during the early Middle Ages. Romanian historians, who consider Transylvania the cradle of their people, maintain in fact that they descend directly from the Daco-Romans, since the transplantation south of the Danube in the times of Aurelian would have been, according to these scholars, only partial and not total, and many colonists, having taken refuge in the valleys of the Carpathians during the invasions of Goths, Avars, Bulgars and other peoples, would have guaranteed the Daco-Roman ethnic continuity until the 13th century, when they themselves descended again into the plains and assumed the name of Wallachians; Hungarian historians, on the other hand, reply that the abandonment of transdanubian Dacia was total, that the Romanization of the province itself was irrelevant, that the colonization had been entrusted for the most part to non-Italic elements, and that the persistence of many Slavic terms in the present Romanian language would demonstrate that the Romanians must descend from the Balkan Romanians of cis-Danubian Dacia, who arrived in Transylvania in the late Middle Ages. These, in brief, are the respective positions of the Romanian and Magyar historians, both guided in their reconstructions by the will to affirm the right of their own country to the possession of Transylvania: the Romanians through the demonstration of a supposed ethnic-historical continuity of their nation from the times of imperial Rome; the Hungarians, through the proofs of a very late immigration of the ancestors of the present-day Romanians, posterior to the occupation of the country by the Magyars.

The first historical notices about the voivodates of Wallachia and Moldavia, constituted beyond the Carpathians through the initiative of Romanian nobles, eager to escape the sovereignty of the kings of Hungary and conversion to the Catholic faith (the Romanians were "Orthodox"), fix the genesis of the principality of Wallachia to the 13th century and that of Moldavia around the middle of the 14th, when Bogdan, having rebelled against Louis the Great of Anjou, king of Hungary, having crossed the Carpathians, founded precisely in the plain of the Moldova the new independent principality. The vicissitudes of the two voivodates are subsequently closely linked to those of the neighboring States: of Hungary, of Poland and of Turkey. Wallachia, at first in a relationship of vassalage toward the crown of St. Stephen, in a single century, the 14th, found itself subjected, alternately, now to the sovereignty of one, now of another of the aforementioned three States. In the 15th century Turkish sovereignty therefore became preponderant there, affirming itself in a clear and explicit manner after the battle of Mohács of 1526. Moldavia, in the same period, recognized instead the high Polish sovereignty, but it too was forced, after Mohács, to the payment of an annual tribute to the sultan, who in the second half of the 16th century also noticeably strengthened his dominion in this voivodate. Toward the end of the 16th century the election as voivode of Wallachia of Michael the Brave in 1593 marked for some years a clearing on the background of the long night of Turkish domination. This prince, guided perhaps in his complex political designs more by ambition than by a vivid feeling of indignation toward the spoliations carried out by the sultan's tax collectors, after having come to an agreement with the voivode of Moldavia, upon a prearranged signal, had all the Turks residing in the two principalities massacred. He then occupied Dobruja and, in order to successfully confront the Ottoman attempts at reconquest, recognized the high sovereignty of Sigismund Báthory, prince of Transylvania.

Subsequently he himself succeeded in obtaining the title of prince of Transylvania and also conquered Moldavia. His sudden political fortune nevertheless alarmed the Habsburg general Basta, who on 19 Aug. 1601 had him killed. The disappearance of Michael the Brave, who had been the first to constitute the regions of R. (Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Dobruja, Bukovina and Bessarabia, the latter two then integral parts of Moldavia) into a territorial unity, marked the beginning of the saddest period of Ottoman domination. Until then the princes had in fact enjoyed a certain, though very vague, internal independence, guaranteed by the election of native princes. From the 17th century onward the voivodes became supine instruments of the sultans, who appointed and dismissed them at their pleasure. Constrained, merely to preserve their office, to maintain relations with influential courtiers of Constantinople, who had their benevolence and their intercessions at the Ottoman court paid for at a very high price, the voivodes, in order to meet their financial obligations toward these men, introduced into the principalities an ever more burdensome fiscalism. Any attempt at an independent policy was by then rendered impossible a priori. Nevertheless, both in Moldavia and in Wallachia the princely dignity continued to be held by native nobles. From the second half of the 17th century, however, Greek influence grew ever greater, and little by little the voivodates themselves became the preserve of the highest bidder. Thus former diplomatic advisers and Greek interpreters of the sultans, at the beginning of the 18th century, settled permanently in the two principalities: the Moldavians and Wallachians no longer even had the meager consolation of being exploited by native voivodes. This so-called period of the Phanariots (from Phanar = diplomatic quarter of Constantinople) lasted until 1821. In Wallachia 23 and in Moldavia 24 princes succeeded one another; some governed at various times and passed with easy indifference to administering now one now the other voivodate. Among them there was no lack of men of worth, cultured and intelligent, but they could do nothing against the omnipotence of the sultans. The Phanariot regime ceased only in 1822, when the Turks, following the stance taken by the voivodes in favor of the Philhellenic movement of Alexander Ypsilantis, decided to confer once again the government of the two principalities on native voivodes. Meanwhile in Transylvania, under the influence of the Hungarian and German national awakening, the Romanians too had begun in the course of the 18th century to acquire awareness of their national individuality, and in 1791 they had addressed the regional Diet, so that, alongside the Magyar and Saxon ones, the qualification of "nation" might be recognized for them as well. This request, set out in the Supplex libellus Valachorum, was not however granted. In 1829, with the Peace of Adrianople, the two principalities, while continuing to be tributaries of the sultan, were subjected to a Russian protectorate, which remained in force until 1856. In that latter year the Treaty of Paris replaced the Russian protectorate with a collective guarantee of the great European powers, a commission of which, resident in Bucharest, proceeded to revise the laws in force in the two principalities. Following the vote of the assemblies of the two voivodates, constituted by virtue of the Treaty of Paris, Alexander Cuza was elected in Jan.-Feb. 1859 prince of Moldavia and of Wallachia. Thus the union of the two voivodates, recognized in 1861 by the great powers, was an accomplished fact. Cuza remained in power until 1866, when he had to abdicate following a conspiracy. His frankly liberal policy was characterized above all by the law on agrarian reform, with which serfdom was abolished. In his place Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was elected, who reigned as Charles I until 1914 and under whose long reign the proclamation of the Kingdom of R. took place on 25 March 1881, constituted at that time not only by Wallachia and Moldavia but also by northern Dobruja (Bukovina and Bessarabia had been incorporated into Austria and Russia in 1774 and 1812 respectively). During the First World War R. at first remained neutral; having then entered the war in Aug. 1916 alongside the Entente, it was rapidly occupied by the Central Powers and forced to cede southern Dobruja, conquered during the Second Balkan War of 1913, to Bulgaria. The collapse of Austria-

Hungary, Germany and imperial Russia marked the resurrection of R.: during the course of 1918 the Romanian National Assemblies of Chisinau, Cernăuți and Alba Iulia proclaimed respectively the union of Bessarabia, Bucovina and Transylvania with the Kingdom of R. Between 1920 and 1940 Romanian internal politics were characterized by a complete failure of the parliamentary regime and by a continuous struggle among the parties, which brought about the strengthening of totalitarian and racist currents, the monarchical dictatorship of King Carol II, and after 1940, the military dictatorship of General Antonescu.

During the Second World War Russia took advantage of Romania's diplomatic isolation to have Bessarabia and Bucovina ceded to it in June 1940: Bulgaria to acquire Southern Dobruja (21 Aug. 1940); Hungary to obtain a large part of Transylvania (30 Aug. 1940). Having therefore entered the war against Russia in 1941 alongside Germany, the new King Michael, after the coup d'état of 23 Aug. 1944, signed the armistice with the Soviet Union and joined the anti-German coalition. The Peace Treaty restored Transylvania to R., but not the other regions ceded in 1940. On 30 Dec. 1947 the Romanian People's Republic was proclaimed.

Silvio Furlani

III. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

In R. Christianity penetrated first into the Danubian part of the Roman Empire, then into ancient Dacia (v.). The northern Romanians, in the Middle Ages, were still in contact with the "Olahi Romani" and with the monasteries of Mitrovija, ancient Sirmium, capital of Illyricum, homeland of St. Demetrius ("Dmitrovija"), the great Saint of the Romanians and of all the Balkans.

The contact of Dacia with the Christian world certainly could not be interrupted by the invasions. On the right bank of the Danube there was a series of Latin bishoprics. The barbarians made the usual incursions into the Empire; the legions - of Constantine and of Justinian - crossed the river again to pursue them. Especially the Goths, the Slavs and the Avars dragged along with them many prisoners, among whom were not a few Christians, perhaps even priests. The Goths, then masters also of the future Romanian lands, had martyrs in the future Wallachia and bishops: the famous Ulfilas (d. 391) preached also in Latin.

In Transylvania Christian inscriptions (Zenovius) later than Constantine and from the beginning of the 5th century are found. The Christianity of the Romanians, earlier than that of the Slavs and without special dependence on the Greek one, springs directly from the Christianity of the Balkans in their Latin period. It seems that, far from Rome and dependent on Byzantium, the Romanized populations of the Balkans and of the Danube - for whom the Byzantines, the "Romei," adopted not the name of Vlachs, which the Slavs had received from the Germans (Vlachs = Welsh, Welsch, Wallon, etc.) - had lost, together with the ancient episcopal cities destroyed by the barbarians, also the Latin clergy and had accepted the Greek liturgy, especially after the eastern Illyricum passed under the patriarchate of Constantinople (732). With the conversion of the Bulgarians and their submission to the Greek patriarch (870), the Romanians, who also depended on them politically, had finally to accept the Slavic rite. Only at the beginning of the 18th century was it possible for them to introduce definitively the Romanian language into the churches. In 1860 the Latin alphabet replaced the Cyrillic one.

After the terrible defeat of the Bulgarians, Basil II placed all the Romanians of his Empire under the archbishopric - then of Greek hierarchy - of Ochrid (1018). Almost immediately afterwards a bishop specifically of the Romanians (τῶν Βλαχῶν) is found in a place of uncertain location, Vreanons. The Greek schism of 1054 also involved the Romanians, because of their geographical position and political circumstances, in the Byzantine camp. The union with Rome, made by the great "emperor" Ionitza (v. MACEDONIA) in 1204 for his Romanian and Bulgarian subjects, was broken in 1235 by his nephew John Asen II.

North of the Danube, before the founding of the principalities, the Romanians had only wooden churches and the clergy consisted solely of priests of peasant origin, consecrated without choice by more or less canonical "hierarchs" who lived in the monasteries (or came from Bulgaria) in the manner of those "pseudo-bishops" mentioned in a brief of Gregory IX as early as the beginning of the 13th century (Iorga). The founders of the principalities thought also of endowing the new lands with a particular ecclesiastical organization.

Wallachia. - The Romanians of Wallachia turned for their religious needs to the bishops of Vidin, Silistra or Vicina. Bishop Iakint of the latter see was requested by Prince Nicholas Alexander, son of the "founder" Basarab, in 1359, and the patriarch of Constantinople granted him to them as metropolitan of Wallachia or Ungro-Wallachia, with residence at Curtea de Argeș; the see was transferred in 1508 to Târgoviște and, toward the end of the 17th century, to Bucharest. In 1370 a bishopric was erected at Severin, later transferred to Râmnicu-Vâlcea. A third bishopric was founded in 1508 at Buzău. The last bishopric erected in Wallachia (or Muntenia) was that of 1794 at Curtea de Argeș. Ancient monasteries: Vodița, Tismana (14th century), Cozia, Cotmeana, Snagov, Glavacioc, Dealul, Brădet (1st half of the 15th century).

Moldavia. - At the time of the founding of this principality (1359), the Moldavian Romanians turned to the metropolitan of Halicz (Galicia) or to the bishop of Cetatea Albă, on the Black Sea. Only in 1401 was recognition obtained for a Romanian metropolitan, Iosif, with residence at Suceava, the capital of the country. In 1564 the capital and the metropolis were transferred to Iași. The bishoprics of Roman and Rădăuți were founded in 1401 and 1402. Other bishoprics were erected at Huși (1595) and at Hotin (1713). The metropolis of Brăila or Proilavia (Wallachia), founded toward the end of the 16th century for the Christians of the Turkish "raià," from time to time placed its residence at Galați, Ismail or Căușani (Moldavia) or even at Dubăsari, beyond the Dniester; after 1812 it remained a metropolis only of Brăila and Siliatra and was definitively suppressed in 1829. After the annexation of northwestern Moldavia (Bukovina) to Austria, the bishopric of Rădăuți was transferred to Cernăuți (1781) and elevated to the rank of metropolis of Bukovina and Dalmatia (1873), while the bishopric of Hotin, taking up residence at Chișinău (Kishinev) following the annexation of eastern Moldavia (Bessarabia) to Russia, became an archbishopric in 1813.

Ancient monasteries: Neamț (14th century), Bistrița, Moldovița, Căpriana, Vărzărești, Horodnic, Humor (beginning of the 15th century), Putna, Volovaț, Voroneț, Dobrovaț (end of the 15th century), Pobrata, Slatina, Sucevița (16th century).

In Moldavia in 1401 the relics of St. John the New were transported from Cetatea Albă to Suceava; in 1641 Prince Vasile Lupu had the relics of St. Parascheva brought from Ismail to Iași.

Transylvania. - The Romanians of Transylvania, cradle of the two other principalities, remained under the Hungarians and did not at first have an ecclesiastical hierarchy but resorted both to Halicz and to the bishoprics of Bulgaria, then to those of Serbia, Wallachia or Moldavia. In the 15th-16th centuries bishops are found sporadically at Hunedoara (Hunyad), Maramureș, Feleac, Geoagiu, Silvaș and Ineu. Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457-1504) wanted for eastern Transylvania a bishopric at Vad, whose titulars were consecrated at Suceava and obeyed the metropolitan of Moldavia. In the Treaty of 20 May 1595 between Michael the Brave of Wallachia and Sigismund Báthory, it was decided that all the Romanians of Transylvania, under their own bishop, should depend on the metropolitan of Târgoviște. John of Prislop was the first metropolitan of all the Romanians of Transylvania.

After 1700, when almost all the Transylvanian Romanians together with their bishop united with Rome, the "Orthodox" who did not unite remained without bishops for more than sixty years and afterwards had them from the Serbs. Only in 1811 did they receive Romanian bishops again. Under Andrei Șaguna the "Orthodox" bishopric of Transylvania acquired in 1863 the title of metropolis with residence at Sibiu and as suffragans the bishopric of Caransebeș, then created, and the older one of Arad.

Ancient monasteries: Peri, Prislop (14th century), Rămet, Geoagiu, Vad, Feleac, Hodeș-Bodrog (15th century). In the 13th century (1216) the "metochia" dependent on the Palestinian and Macedonian monastery of Beria touched the Romanian regions at Mitrovitza (Sirmium) and at Satmar.

In 1859, Wallachia and Moldavia formed the State of R. The huge landed properties of the monasteries were confiscated in 1863 by the State. The law of ecclesiastical organization of 1872 established that bishops and metropolitans were to be elected by Parliament and chosen only from among Romanians. In 1884 the Faculty of Theology was erected at the University of Bucharest. The bishopric, founded in 1864 at Ismail, was transferred to Galați in 1878 following the cession of southern Bessarabia to Russia. The patriarchal "tomos" of 25 April 1885 granted the Romanian Church autocephaly.

After the First World War, Transylvania — with its western appendages (part of the Banat, etc.) and with Maramureș in the north — Bessarabia and Bucovina were incorporated into R. The organization of the entire Romanian "Orthodox" Church was then unified on the basis of the Statute of Saguna (1925). New bishoprics were erected at Oradea, Cluj, Satu-Mare (with the title of Maramureș), Hotin, Constanța, Cetatea Albă, Timișoara, and a military bishopric at Alba Julia; the bishopric of R. Vâlcea was promoted to the metropolis of Oltenia, while the metropolitan see of Bucharest became, in 1925, a patriarchate. Another Faculty of theology was created at Chișinău (Bessarabia). At Cernauti in Bucovina one had existed since the times of Austrian rule. In Transylvania, besides the theological Academy of Sibiu, three others were founded at Arad, Oradea and Cluj.

Catholics. — After the founding of the principalities, one encounters a small number of Catholics in the main cities of Wallachia: Argeș, Câmpulung, Târgoviște. More numerous, on the other hand, are they in Moldavia, where their mass — formed by the "Ciangăi", a population perhaps Cuman, Magyarized and then Romanianized — lives also in the countryside, especially in the districts of Roman and Bacău; at the beginning of this century there were about 80 thousand of them. In Transylvania the Catholic element was represented by the Hungarians, Szeklers and Saxons living there. When the majority of these passed over to Protestantism, the principal support of the Catholic Church were the "Suabi", German colonists of the Austrian era.

The first known Catholic missionary activity in the principalities is that carried out by the Dominican preachers after 1222 for the conversion of the Cumans. Bishop Theodoric, installed in 1227 at Milcov, depended directly on Rome. With the Mongol invasion of 1241 the bishopric disappeared, and survived only as an honorary title for about three centuries. Equally ephemeral were the bishoprics of Severin — where one finds a bishop in 1246 and another in 1380 — of Siret (1370), of Argeș (1381) and of Baia (1413). That of Bacău functioned for about two centuries, although its titulars resided for the most part in Poland. Also at Akkerman (Cetatea Albă) there is mention of a Catholic bishop under Stephen the Great until the conquest of the city by the Turks (1484). The care of the faithful was exercised from the 17th century onward by the bishop of Nicopolis, in Bulgaria, by visitors and by apostolic prefects.

On 27 Apr. 1883 Leo XIII founded the bishopric of Iași, with Giuseppe Camilli, and that of Bucharest, with bishop Paoli.

In 1700, almost the entirety of the Romanians of Transylvania, headed by their own bishop Athanasius, united with Rome, preserving the Eastern rite. The episcopal residence was transferred in 1721 from Alba Julia to Făgăraș, then, under Innocent Micu (Klein), to Blaj (1737), which city with its schools was to be a hearth of national rebirth for all Romanians. On 6 June 1777 Pius VI created for the united a new bishopric at Oradea. Pius IX erected on 26 Nov. 1853 two other bishoprics, at Gherla and at Lugoj, and subjected them, together with that of Oradea, to the bishopric of Blaj, elevated on the same date to an archbishopric or metropolis with the title of Alba Julia and Făgăraș.

Following the Concordat of 10 May 1927 — ratified in 1929 — between R. and the Holy See, Pius XI, with the bull Solenni conventione of 5 June 1930, created the bishopric of Maramureș — with residence at Baia Mare — subject to the same metropolis, while the bishopric of Gherla was transferred to Cluj, the civil capital of Transylvania. With the same bull the Church of the Latin rite was organized, by subjecting to the archbishopric of Bucharest the Latin dioceses of Alba Julia, Timișoara, Satu-Mare and Iași; for the united Armenians an apostolic administrator was appointed, residing at Gherla (or at Bucharest) and depending directly on Rome.

As regards the religious Orders, while for the Latins there are many of their rite, the United have only the Basilians (since 1747) with the monasteries of Bixad, Moisei (1933), Nicula (1936) and Prislop; the sisters of St. Mary of Blaj (1921); an Eastern branch among the Assumptionists (1923) and the Jesuits (1927).

The statistics of 1930 found in R.: "Orthodox":
13,067,000 (72.2%); united Catholics: 1,350,000 (7.3%);
Latin Catholics: 1,200,000 (6.5%); Calvinists: 717,000
(3.9%); Lutherans: 360,000 (8.2%); Israelites: 984,000
(5.5%); Muslims: 234,000 (1.6%).

At the advent of the communist regime, the united had
5 dioceses, 1834 priests, 2588 churches, 9 religious Orders and congregations, 28 houses with 424 religious, 34 educational institutes with 6152 pupils, 220 associations of Marian congregations with 24,600 members, 20 periodicals with
252,000 copies.

The Latins: 5 dioceses, 1086 priests, 1220 churches,
22 religious Orders and congregations, 158 houses with 1690
religious, 126 schools and educational institutes with 31,696
pupils, 120 associations of Marian congregations with
6000 members, 1 daily newspaper with 35,000 copies and 23 periodicals with 338,000 copies (Vatican Exposition 1950,
sect. Catholic activity).

Petre Vălimăreanu

IV. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

The first official act of the new communist regime against the Church, preceded by an entire campaign of systematic defamation, was the unilateral denunciation of the Concordat of 1927 (without the prior six months' notice to the other party, as provided by art. 23), decided by the Council of Ministers on 17 July 1948 and made public on the 19th following.

Once the juridical instrument that constituted, by its very nature, too conspicuous an obstacle to the persecutory plans against the Church had been removed, it was easy for the government to proceed with their implementation. On 4 Aug. 1948 the Monitorul Oficial published the decree on the "General Regime of Religious Cults," which dealt a blow of incalculable gravity to religious freedom in general, and in particular to the organization of the Catholic Church in R. Suffice it to recall art. 22, which regulates the erection and functioning of dioceses, reduced from ten to four; arts. 40 and 41, which attack the universality of the Church in R. and its dependence on the Roman Pontiff; arts. 44-45, concerning the formation of the clergy, subjected to a state control so extensive that, by a subsequent decision of the Ministry of Cults issued on 13 Nov. of the same year, the ecclesiastical authority did not deem it opportune to request permission for the opening of the only theological seminary provided for by law. Violent and radical was the struggle against Catholic schools. In 1947 the Ministry of National Education, by decree 117, began to strip the bishops of the right to appoint professors in those schools, itself proceeding to appoint morally unsuitable elements, often belonging to another religious creed. The use of school textbooks was moreover imposed, in which statements are found in conflict with the Catholic faith and morals, and Marxist teaching was made obligatory in Catholic schools. Finally, art. 27 of the new Constitution sanctioned the total suppression of confessional schools.

A few months later, this fundamental law was integrated and specified by decree 175, whose art. 1 establishes that instruction "is organized exclusively by the State on the basis of unity of structure" and has a "lay character." Art. 35 reaffirms "that all confessional and private schools of every category become State schools." Another decree of 3 Aug. 1948 declared to be the property of the State "all movable and immovable goods that have belonged to the Churches, to the congregations, to the religious communities, to private associations, with or without profit-making purpose... and that have served for the functioning of the schools of instruction, passed to the State, in conformity with art. 35 of the law on public instruction." It is superfluous to say that in the state schools instruction is stamped with the crudest materialism, nor can it be thought that the religious instruction of the state school could constitute an antidote to so much poison. Already in 1948 in the middle schools the time allotted to it was reduced by half, and in the last two classes of schools of this type as in all those of the industrial, technical and professional schools, it was totally excluded. Nor has the Catholic press had a better fate. All periodical publications have been suppressed.

Particularly painful has been the fate of the Catholic Church of the Greek rite, officially suppressed by the regime in Oct. 1948, with the open favor of the prelates of the dissident Church. The Greek Catholics numbered about 1,500,000, grouped in six ecclesiastical circumscriptions. In Sept. the government deposed all the Greek-Uniate bishops, except Msgr. Hossu of Cluj. Then they began to collect, by fraud and terror, first from the priests and then from the faithful, signatures for the "spontaneous" passage to Orthodoxy. On 21 Oct., the 250th anniversary of the union of the Greeks with the Catholic Church, at Alba Julia, a Greek-Uniate metropolis, the return of the people to the Orthodox Church was celebrated. The six Greek-Uniate bishops, who had refused to lead or to follow their flock on the road to schism, were arrested and interned pending trial. Four Catholic cathedrals were immediately transferred to the dissidents, and an entire series of Catholic hospitals was confiscated. On 2 Dec., finally, in the Monitorul Oficial, a decree of the presidium of the Grand National Assembly declared terminated the dioceses, the religious communities and all the other institutions of the Greek-Catholic Church, and confiscated their goods, except those of the parishes, which were attributed, along with others to be specified, to the Orthodox Church.

The situation of the Catholics of the Latin rite meanwhile became ever more grave. In the same month of Sept. 1948, in application of art. 22 of the decree on the "General Regime of Religious Cults," which reduced the dioceses to one for every 750,000 inhabitants, a decree fixed only two ecclesiastical circumscriptions for the approximately one million Latin Catholics. Three of the five dioceses were therefore arbitrarily suppressed, and the relevant bishops deposed. In the following Jan. the Ministry of Cults took a step to try to obtain from the Catholic hierarchy a recognition, at least implicit, of the accomplished fact, that is, by subordinating the payment of the stipends to the clergy, who were entitled to them, to the presentation of the names of the priests distributed among the only two recognized diocesan centers. The episcopate and clergy, faced with such a demand, which meant formally recognizing the reduction in the number of dioceses, decided to renounce the stipends provisionally, and the sums that the government had sent nonetheless were refused, in the hope that the clergy would not accept the bishops' proposal. On the following 10 May the government decided to deprive of their stipend the two bishops still recognized and 135 priests. In the following June the two bishops were placed under arrest, so that the entire Catholic hierarchy of both rites in less than a year had been eliminated.

Nor have there been lacking on the part of the government attempts to give life to a schismatic movement, which should accept the Statute of the Catholic cult, a necessary condition so that, in accordance with art. 14 of the decree of 4 Aug. 1948, the Church may continue to exist juridically. It has been prepared by the government, which drafted it after having rejected the one presented by the bishops, first, and, after their deposition, by the vicars general, and in which an attempt had been made to safeguard the requirements of divine and ecclesiastical law.

The ecclesiastical authority, however, has always refused to accept it, because that would be equivalent to sanctioning all the anti-ecclesiastical laws and the government's interference in the affairs of the Church.

To get around this obstacle the so-called Catholic Action Committee was supposed to serve, composed of pro-communist priests, excommunicated, and the Status catholicus Transilvaniae. Having arisen in the 18th century - it received its first official recognition in 1653 - the Status was nothing other than a representation of Catholics in the Diets, without any autonomy with respect to the ecclesiastical authority, with which it had to proceed in agreement and in subordination for the protection of the interests of the Catholics of the Transylvanian region alone. Today they want to restore it, conferring on it rights it has never had, extending its competence to the entire Republic, and making of it an instrument for accepting all the government's demands and, first of all, the Statute and a vicar exclusively dependent on it. In other words, the revived Status should have the task of governing the Catholic Church of R. independently of the Holy See, according to the spirit of the resolution approved at the Congress of the Status itself at Cluj on 15 March 1951.

The last apostolic nuncio, Monsignor Andrea Cassulo, was recalled by the Holy See as a person no longer acceptable to the new regime, and was replaced in February 1947 by Monsignor Gerald O'Hara, bishop of Savannah-Atlanta in the United States, in the capacity of regent of the apostolic nunciature of Bucharest. On July 4, 1950, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the regent that the presence of the pontifical representative and his collaborators was no longer desirable in R., and the same were notified to leave R. within three days.

Pietro Palazzini

V. ROMANIAN RITE

It is the Byzantine rite according to the use of the 'Orthodox' Church and of the Catholic Church in Romania. Today it is celebrated in modern Romanian, more Latinized by the Catholics, more Slavized by the dissidents; it displays particularities in the calendar, in sacred music, in the ornamentation of churches, and in some, relatively few, liturgical texts and offices, e.g., the proskomedia.

After the erection of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the 14th century, a new Church began to organize itself, whose rite remained for a long time especially close to that of Halicz and of Kiev, with the latter of which it had many contacts in the 17th century. The language was Church Slavonic, until the introduction of the Romanian language into the liturgical books, made in Transylvania under Protestant influence by the deacon Coresi (Vangeliorio, 1561; Liturgicon and Psalter, 1570; Apostolos, 1588), progressively reached its full effect in the 18th century. The growth of a civilization of its own made the detachment from Slavonic ever more marked, and the Greek influence in the time of the Phanariots could not divert it from its natural course. Only in the 19th century, thanks especially to the united Church of Blaj, was the Cyrillic script replaced by the Latin alphabet in the Romanian liturgical books.

The editions of these books are numerous both among the Catholics and among the dissidents.

Alfonso Raes

VI. LITERATURE

Determined by folklore, by Eastern (Byzantine, Slavic) and Western (Italian, Polish, French) currents, in its aspiration to express moral humanitas (Rom. omenie), man's ties with nature and with national events, Romanian literature — popular until the 15th century, then eminently ecclesiastical and historical, and from the 19th century onward informed by Western genres and tendencies — is characterized by a clear orientation toward realism. Hindered in its development by Slavism, it was recalled to significance and originality by the promoters of classicism (Cantemir, Odobescu, Pârvan), by the critics (Rusu, Kogălniceanu, Maiorescu, Ibrăileanu, Lovinescu) and by the historians and philologists (Maior, Hasdeu, Iorga, Densusianu). The publication of the Elementa linguae Daco-Romanae sive Valachicae (1780) by Micu and Șincai and of the Romanian grammar (1787) by Văcărescu marks off two literary epochs: an ancient one, dominated by the country's geographical and political situation, in which the Cyrillic alphabet is used and only sporadically the Latin one; and a modern one, energetically oriented toward Latin spirituality and Western culture, in which the Latin alphabet, introduced little by little, becomes officially obligatory (1860).

Historical and philological research has also identified a period of the origins. The four dialects (Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian), which remained without mutual contact after their separation, which occurred before the year 1000, offer not only ancient linguistic data but also archaic literary elements for the reconstruction of the past.

Beginning with the laws in verse sung by the Agathyrsi of ancient Transylvania (Aristotle, Problemata, IX, 28), with the probable traces that the exiled Ovid (Ex Ponto, IV, 13) would have impressed on certain popular songs, with the chartae (Martial, IX, 35) and with the mushroom (Cassius Dio, LXVIII, 8, 14-17) on which King Decebalus sent his Latin messages to the Romans, the study of the earliest age must clarify the meaning and the historicity of that gentle folk lyric called doină (of Dacian origin, according to Cantemir and Hasdeu), the development of the complex specific feelings dor (nostalgia, melancholy, longing, joy; derived from Lat. dolere) and urit (tedium, spiritual emptiness, anguish; from Lat. horrescere), and finally the value of the Latin inscriptions and the importance of the writers of Dacia, Upper and Lower Moesia and Pannonia for Romanian culture. St. Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana (365-420), teaches the Dacians and the Bessi to laudare Christum corde Romano (St. Paulinus of Nola), and in his writings shows that he takes the aesthetic factor into account in education when he states that song penetrat animum, dum delectat. Significant is the Latin origin of the folkloric literary terminology: viers or ghiers (melody), cântec bătrân or bătrânesc (ancient, ancestral song), descântec (incantation), colindă or cărind (Christmas carol), bocet (funeral song), etc. The short poem known under the name of Miorița (The Ewe Lamb), which has counterparts in Aromanian (according to Odobescu and Caracostea), a song of amor fati et artis, of a mournful, resigned lyricism, recalls the ancient mysteries. Only by chance does Theophanes the Confessor of the 7th century give, for the year 587, the first Romanian gloss: τῶρα, τῶρα, τῶρα (torna in the local, still living sense of "to overturn"). Despite Slavic pressure, the awareness of Roman origin persists among the people, devoted in the first millennium to the Byzantine or Frankish emperor, and tenacious in its law and tradition (lex romana, ius valachicum - legea românească). The 15th-century attestation, still unpublished, of Pietro Ranzano is decisive: Valacchi igitur se Italorum esse posteros affirmant. The Transylvanian Corvins (Hunyadi), who derive their name from Corvinus, accentuate the feeling of origin which, through the humanist historian and poet Nicolaus Olahus (1493-1568), later through the work of Grigore Ureche, Miron Costin — historians of the Renaissance — and of the Enlightenment figures Constantin Cantacuzino and Cantemir, and by means of the Transylvanian School leads to the modern Risorgimento.

Ancient age. - It begins with the translations (the Acts of the Apostles and the Psalms) of the 15th century, preserved in 16th-century copies, and is characterized by a strong Slavic, "Orthodox" influence, in conflict with the humanism that came from Italy and Poland (Catholicism) or from Bohemia (Hussitism). The first private letter (the epistle of Neacșu) dates to 1521. The beginnings of printing activity present an interesting aspect. While the princes publish the first Slavic books (1508, 1510, 1512, 1545, 1547), the Reformed of Transylvania print a Lutheran catechism in Romanian (1544, 1559), and the deacon Coresi, in parallel with the Slavic printing activity, reworks, for Lutheran propaganda, according to the speech in use between Târgoviște and Brașov, the religious translations in circulation and prints at Brașov ten books in Romanian (1557-83). Thus the foundations of the literary language are laid. The annals written in Romanian have been lost, while those in Slavic are preserved; likewise the Political Norms of Neagoe Basarab (1512-21), founder of the "Curtea" cathedral of Argeș (1517). From that epoch dates the tragic popular poem

Meșterul Manole (Master Manole), compiled from various oral motifs, which fantastically narrates the construction of Neagoe's cathedral and how the master builder's own wife is fatally walled up alive: a symbol of human sacrifice for any perfect work. A Latin revival is attempted by Despo Vodă (1561-63) and Petru Cercel (1583-85), the latter also a poet in Italian (Iuno a Dio), who dream of reconstituting ancient Dacia, a dream briefly realized by Michael the Brave (1593-1601). The Renaissance, a consequence of this ideal and of this cultural moment, is promoted by the voivodes Vasile Lupu (1634-53) and Matei Basarab (1632-54). The Moldavian metropolitan Varlaam fights against Calvinism (1645) and, in his sermons (Carte românească de învățătură, 1643), contributes to literary development, while the Transylvanian metropolitan Simion Stefan, in the preface to his Noul Testament (1648), maintains the advisability of preferring in written language words of general and not merely regional use. At Govora (1640), Iași (1646) and Târgoviște (1652) codes of law translated from Greek and Italian are printed. The statesmen Grigore Ureche (1590-1647) and Miron Costin (1633-91), more than chroniclers, as they modestly define themselves, are authentic historians and memoirists, trained in the Jesuit schools of Poland, who vigorously affirm the Latinity of the Romanian people. The metropolitan Dosoftei (1624-93), while fighting for the introduction of the Mass in Romanian, with Pultirea în versuri (1673) and Viața și petrecerea sfinților (1682-86) appreciably enriches the literature. With the classicizing odes of Mihail Halici (1674), the love songs of Nicola Petrovai of Petrova and of the Saxon Valentin Franck von Franckenstein, and the short poem Viața lumii (The Life of the World) by Costin, in parallel with the Calvinist religious songs of Transylvania, the Dosoftei psalms reveal the need for a refined form adhering to local picturesqueness. The Jesuit Gavril Ivul (1619-79) composes philosophical writings in Latin. From the Franciscan Ioan Kajoni Valachus de Kis-Kajon, who writes in Latin and Hungarian, there has come down to us the Codex Kâjoni, containing also Romanian verses, among them Cântecul voivodezei Lupul (The Song on Princess L.). In Rome in 1677 there appears, in Latin characters, the Catholic catechism translated into Romanian by Bishop Vito Piluzio. The pereruditus Moldavian Nicolae Milescu (1637-1708), translator of the Old Testament, defends in Latin the dogmas of the Catholic Church against the Calvinists (1669) and narrates his journey to China as ambassador of the tsar. The Bible of Șerban (1688) imposes Romanian in the liturgy and completes the unity of the literary language. In the time of Brâncoveanu (1688-1714), patron of the architectural style that bears his name, the Academy founded in Bucharest in 1679 by Șerban rises again, with teaching in Greek and Latin. Relations with Italy intensify and the need is increasingly felt to affirm concretely a consciousness at once Roman and Romanian. With Dimitrie Cantemir and Constantin Cantacuzino the era of the first Enlightenment opens. In the 17th century, Miron Costin differentiated the concepts of historical reality and fantasy; in the 18th century, rationalism seeks to give consciousness to reality and reality to consciousness. It is not enough to feel Roman: one must behave in the Roman manner; it is not enough to call oneself Christian: one must act as a Christian and struggle in solidarity against the pagans. Thus it is explained how the policy of Brâncoveanu and Cantemir abandons the Ottomans and takes its stand on the side of Austria and Russia, and how the Transylvanian Church unites with the Catholic one (1700) in the name of mother Rome. Dimitrie Cantemir (1674-1723), voivode of Moldavia (1710-11), polyglot and polygraph, observes, in a certain way anticipating Vico, that all things have a growth (incrementum) and a decrease (decrementum) predestined by a universal rhythm, and that man, made in the likeness of God, is the creator of his own civil world (cult, institutions, art). The distinction between natural facts (God's creation) and ethical ones (human work), already foreshadowed in Divanul sau gălceava înțeleptului cu lumea (The Tribunal or the Dispute of the Wise Man with the World, Iași 1698) — a true catechism of the Romanian Enlightenment — is then developed in Istoria ieroglifică (ms. 1703), a complex transfigured memorial, and in the metaphysical work Sacrosanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago. In Hronicul vechimii Romano-Moldo-Vlahilor, Cantemir demonstrates that — in customs, language, popular literature — the Romanians continue Roman spirituality, and affirms the existence of an ethnic classicism. A Byzantinizing humanist and Latinizing Orientalist, he gives the language an elaborate mosaic structure, in which fresh popular expressions beat rhythmically and rhyme easily with learned Ciceronian modulations in a highly varied cursus, present also in the Istoria Țării-Românești* of Constantin Cantacuzino (1650-1716), who studied at the University of Padua. Cantemir's complex style, however, remains isolated, while the simple and restrained style of Ion Neculce (1672-1746), the most spontaneous writer of the old literature, prevails. Separating legendary and anecdotal facts from historical truths, of equal importance for his epic intuition, Neculce in his own chronicle outlines, with lively rapidity, characters and events, and establishes himself as the founder of Romanian artistic narrative.

With the Elementa linguae Daco-Romanae sive Valachicae (1780) the second Enlightenment begins. The ideas of Cantemir and of his disciple C. Cantacuzino become more operative thanks to the action of the Catholic Church, which creates schools and sends the Greek Catholics to complete their studies in Vienna and Rome. In contact with Leibnizian and Wolffian philosophy, with the humanitarianism of Joseph II, Lessing and Herder, with the studies of Muratori, with ancient and Christian Rome, scholars collect historical material, compare languages and customs, and meditate on the relationship between the essence of things and their external appearance, to conclude that the Romanians are allotted a Latin destiny of faith, language and history. Thus a militant cultural movement is created, a scientific and Enlightenment school, called the Transylvanian or Latinist School, whose main promoters are Samuel Micu (1745-1806), Gheorghe Șincai (1754-1816), Petru Maior (1760-1821) and Ion Budai-Deleanu (1760-1820). Common is the program of replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin one, of studying history and language and elevating the prestige of the nation, of purifying the language of non-Latin elements and of creating a science and literature worthy of the name. Despite theoretical exaggerations, derived in large part from the passion that animates them, in practice they produce sober works of capital importance: Micu, Istoria, lucrurile și întâmplările Românilor (1806); Șincai, Cronica Românilor și a mai multor neamuri (1853); Maior, Istoria pentru începutul Românilor în Dachia (1812), Istoria bisericii Românilor (1813), Lexicon... de Buda (1825).

Modern age. — With the first leaders of the Latinist School (Micu, Șincai, Maior), the Wallachian Ienăchiță Văcărescu (1740-1800), a traditionalist and at the same time a fervent Enlightenment figure, with his Observații sau băgări de seamă asupra regulilor și orânduielor gramaticii românești (Observations or Remarks on the Rules and Norms of Romanian Grammar, 1787) and with sensual lyrics echoing Metastasian, Modern Greek and folkloric elements, constitutes a bridge of transition toward modern literature. The last Transylvanian Enlightenment figure, Ion Budai Deleanu, in whom reminiscences of learned and popular poetry, ancient and modern, Italian, French, English and German are gathered, inaugurates the new era, which represents stylistic secularization and the conscious affirmation of spiritual peculiarities. His mock-heroic epic Tiganiada (The Gypsyiad) is a concealed confrontation between the Roman ideal and the wretched political reality, which he contemplates plastically and satirically and lowers to the triviality of the nomadic Gypsies. With Gheorghe Lazăr (1779-1825) and Gheorghe Asachi (1788-1869), founders of academies and promoters of culture, animators of the masses, narrators and versifiers, the Risorgimento (Deșteptarea națională — National Awakening) begins, marked in 1821 by the revolution of Tudor Vladimirescu. Apart from the representatives of the Latinist current (Cipariu, Laurian, Bărnuț, Massim), who apply Transylvanian ideology to excess, creating a laboratory language, the Romantics (Iancu Văcărescu, Conachi, Cârlova) modernize the traditional language in a love and patriotic lyric that describes nature and glorifies the past. Mention should be made of Ion Eliade Rădulescu (1802-72); Mihail

Kogălniceanu (1817-91): historian and short-story writer, statesman and defender of the peasants, he gathered around his journals Dacia literara (1840) and Propășirea (1844) the most distinguished writers of the time; Grigore Alexandrescu (1812-1885), an elegiac, satirical, meditative fabulist, of profound intuitions and musical expressive inventions; the historian Nicolae Bălcescu (1819-52), a scholar of social institutions and a biographer, a fighter for freedom and national unity, a fervent leader of the Wallachian Revolution of 1848, an evoker of the deeds of Michael the Brave; Costache Negruzzi (1806-68), creator of the modern historical and social novella; Alecu Rusu (1817-59); the first modern critic to evaluate the lyrical beauties of folk poetry and to draw the attention of the Latinists to the realities of the country, to contemporaneity and to good sense, opposing to their abstractions the living folk art in which he finds a hidden Dacian classicism; Vasile Alecsandri (1841-90), lyric poet of love and nature, civil and national bard, witty prose writer, light playwright and dramatic poet, skilled in finding the right word, the phrase and the correct syntactic agreement; alongside his own creation, he raises monumentally his collection of Poecii populare ale Românilor (1852, 1866), carried out with a vigilant aesthetic spirit, although he introduced into it personal elements and elaborations; Ion Ghica (1816-97): a statesman and economist convinced that through science and organization the homeland can progress, he is an incisive memoirist and evoker. Complex personalities are the three spiritual guides of the nineteenth century: the archaeologist and classicist Alexandru Odobescu (1834-95), the philologist Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu (1836-1907) and the critic and philosopher Titu Maiorescu (1840-1917). Odobescu takes up the ideas of Cantemir and Rusu and, explaining the ethnic classicism founded on disciplined Roman activity and on the Dacian spiral of the ancient terracottas, surviving in rustic decorative art, postulates an original aulic artistic creation, a synthesis of folklore and classicism. A stylist of broad scope, Odobescu deals the final blow to the Latinist glottological exaggerations nesting in the Romanian Academy founded in 1867. Hasdeu, linguist, historian, short-story writer, playwright, poet, notes, in natural and human facts, the law that moves them, the spirit that quickens them, and thus reveals an ignored Romanness and humanity in acts judged by others to be barbarous. Maiorescu rises up against worthless production, against empty rhetoric and the intoxication of words, promoting the ideal of art for art's sake, under whose banner he founds the literary society Junimea (Youth), with the journal Convorbiri literare (1867-1944). In the atmosphere created by them arises the golden age of Romanian literature, with Mihai Eminescu (1850-89), Ion Creangă (1835-1889), Ion L. Caragiale (1852-1912), members of the Junimea and contributors to Convorbiri literare; to introduce into his pessimistic poetry a dramatic vision and, at the same time, one of religious contemplation. In conflict with the unstable city world. Creangă turns to the peasant world of his childhood and discovers there inexhaustible moral and aesthetic energies, memories that he makes the object of his contemplation. Childhood takes on a decisive significance for the formation of the mature man, becomes identified with the village, and this becomes the expression of primordial Romanian life. The narrator does not gather, but selects particular data and moments of rustic life in their genuine expression, purified of overload and of the regional, condensed in locutions, sayings, proverbs, petrified structures, which form the concision and the classicism of his art. The playwright Caragiale reduces to the essential and maximizes the agitations of an unconscious bourgeoisie in formation, which has entered into ridiculous contrast with modern democratic institutions. Gestures, speech, institutions, environments flow picturesquely from the facts and from the language of his corpulent heroes who, even in their names, as in Ghica's memoirs, wave the banner of their own destiny: citizens loving their homeland and progress, yet driven by ignorance and petty interests to become enthusiastic over empty forms and abstractions, they clash clumsily against reality. The neoclassical poet and novelist Duiliu Zamfirescu (1858-1917) and the rustic short-story writer Ion Slavici (1848-1925) accentuate the realistic tones along the line of the three great creators. The epic and idyllic George Coșbuc (1866-1918) discerns in the ethnic spirit particularities and expressions worthy of ancient classicism. Together with the poet Alexandru Vlahuță (1858-1919), in 1901 he founded the journal Semănătorul (The Sower), with which he inaugurated a new literary orientation, calling writers back to knowledge of the language and of rustic tradition, to the ethnic spirit and to national history, a directive given dynamism by the critic Ilarie Chendi (1872-1913) and especially by Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940), a polygraph and polyglot humanist, who postulated the condemnation of aesthetic fashions of Parisian stamp and inspiration from ethnic contingencies. The journal Viața Românească (Romanian Life, 1906), directed by the critic Garabet Ibrăileanu (1871-1936), emphasized the principle of national character and of aesthetic-historical selection, constituting the populist current. Expressions of such contingencies are Octavian Goga (1881-1938), poet of peasant sufferings and energies, of Magyar oppression and of the First World War; Ștefan O. Iosif (1875-1913), a patriarchal lyric poet; the meditative poet Panait Cerna (1881-1913); Ion Alexandru Bătescu-Voinesti (1868-1946), a concise and deeply humane short-story writer, psychologist of a delicate bourgeois world and of solitary people; Mihail Sadoveanu (b. 1880), short-story writer and novelist of atavism and of elementary human forces, singer of nature. In antagonism with Sămănătorism and Populism, the urbanist, modernist current manifests itself, informed by Parnassianism and Symbolism, led by the bitter poet Alexandru Macedonski (1854-1920) and promoted by the criticism of Ovid Densuianu (1873-1938), glottologist and literary historian, scholar of folklore, and by the impressionist and classicizing critic Eugen Lovinescu (1881-1943), with poets such as the decadents Ștefan Petică (1877-1904) and Mihail Săulescu (1888-1926), the elegant Dimitrie Anghel (1872-1914), the erotic Ion Minulescu (1881-1944), the melancholic Gheorghe Bacovia (b. 1881), the Catholic Ion Rașcu (b. 1890), a delicate poet and sensitive critic. In the twenty years of national and spiritual integrity (1918-1940) — amid the antagonism of the modernist journal Sburătorul (The Elf, 1919) of Lovinescu, the Populism of Ibrăileanu, the historicism of Iorga, the Byzantine-style traditionalism of "Gândirism" (promoted by the journal Gândirea, Thought, 1921-44) of Nichifor Crainic (b. 1889) and Lucian Blaga (b. 1895) — the accent is increasingly placed on ethnic humanism and on humanism, on popular stylistics (Ibrăileanu, Leca Morariu) and on classicism (Ștefan Bezdechi, Gheorghe Murnu, Nicolae Herescu, Dan Botta), interpreted in the Cantemirian and Odobescian sense by the archaeologist Vasile Pârvan (1882-1927). It is an epoch of thick literary efflorescence: lyric poets impose themselves, even on world attention, such as the pluralist visionary Tudor Arghezi (b. 1880), the bucolic Ion Pillat (1891-1945), Aron Cotruș (b. 1891) poet of workers' sovereignty, the mystic poet, essayist and playwright Lucian Blaga, the hermetic Ion Barbu (b. 1895), the narrators Liviu Rebreanu (1885-1944), Sadoveanu, Matei Caragiale (1885-1936), Gib Mihăescu (1894-1936), Cezar Petrescu (b. 1892), Ionel Teodoreanu (b. 1897), the playwright George Ciprian, the humorists George Topîrceanu (1890-1937) and George Brăescu. From 1933 to 1948, all the various currents found common ground in the Revista Fundațiilor Regale. From 1940 and especially from 1944, when Soviet oppression imposed tendentious principles foreign to the national spirit (accepted by Sadoveanu, Beniuc, Camil Petrescu, Toma, etc.), a literature gradually unfolds that finds profound and original accents in the soul of clandestine or exiled writers (M. Eliade, B. Munteanu, N. Herescu, Al. Busuioceanu, P. Ciureanu, Al. Gregorian, Vintilă Horia, Caranică, Rossigno-Menchinelli, Const. Virgil-Gheorghiu, Posteuca, Stamatu, Baciu), among whom the figure of Aron Cotruș, a poet also in the Spanish language, dominates.

ibid. 1907, 1913 (vol. III edited by I. Bianu - G. Nicolaiasa, Craiova 1931); for journals: W. Hodoş and Al. Sadi Ionescu, Publicaţiunile periodice româneşti, Bucureşti 1912. Literary histories: N. Iorga, Istoria literaturii româneşti, Bucureşti 1902, 2nd ed., 2 vols., ibid. 1925, 1933); id., Ist. lit. rom. în veacul al XIX-lea, 3 vols., Valenii-de-Munte 1907-1909; O. Dennealanu, Literatura română modernă, 3 vols., Sibiu 1920-33; G. Bogdan-Duică, Ist. lit. rom. mod., Cluj 1923; N. Cartojan, Breve storia della letter. romena, Roma 1926; S. Puşcariu, Ist. lit. rom.: Epoca veche, Sibiu 1930; N. Iorga, Ist. lit. rom. contemporane, 2 vols., Bucureşti 1934; E. Lovinescu, Ist. lit. rom. contemporanei, ibid. 1937; N. Cartojan, Ist. lit. rom. vechi, 3 vols., ibid. 1940-45; id., Cărţile populare în literatura românească, 2 vols., ibid. 1929-38; B. Munteanu, Littérature roumaine, Paris 1938, Italian trans., Bari 1947; D. Murăraşu, Ist. lit. rom. Bucureşti 1940, 4th ed., ibid. 1946; R. Ortiz, Letteratura romena, Roma 1941. Contribuţi văii: E. Lovinescu, Istoria civilizaţiei române moderne, 3 vols., ibid. 1924-25; Th. Capidan, Romanitatea balcanică, ibid. 1936; C. Tăgălăvini, Civiltà ital. in R., Roma 1940; P. Iroaie, Omenia românească (La dignità umana romena), Bucureşti 1941; B. Munteanu, Literatura românească în perspectivă europeană, in Transilvania, 73 (1942), pp. 417-30; P. Iroaie, Vita e poesia popolare romina, Bucureşti 1943; P. Ciureanu, La poesia romena contemp., Genova 1944; D. Popovici, La littér. roumaine à l'époque des Lumières, Sibiu 1945; P. Iroaie, Umanismo popolare romeno, in La cultura nel mondo, 1 (1945), pp. 117-23; Em. Turdeanu, La littér. bulgare du XIVe siècle et sa diffusion dans les pays roumains, Paris 1947; Vintilă Floria, Antologia poeților români în exil, Buenos Aires 1950; Gh. Cosma, Legea strămoșească (La legge degli avi), in Suflet Românesc, 2 (1950), pp. 66-90; P. Iroaie, Perioada peregrină a literaturii romane, ibid., 3 (1951), pp. 180-14; Fr. Railliez, Un peuple né chrétien, in Indreptar, II, nos. 1 and 3, Monaco 1951 and 1952.

Petru Iroaie

VII. ART

The archaeological discoveries that have occurred even recently in the ancient territory of Dacia have brought into great prominence certain typical values of Roman provincial art in R., whose traces, like those of the Byzantine monuments of the 5th and 6th centuries in Dobruja, were not entirely annihilated by the subsequent barbarian invasions. Nevertheless, the history of Romanian art proper can be said to begin only with the Romanesque age. In any case, it develops with distinct characteristics in the three great regions of Muntenia, Transylvania and Moldavia until, in the 19th century, the more intense relations of modern R. with all the other European nations conferred a new character on the art of the entire nation. During the Romanesque period in Muntenia, architecture, on the foundation of a persistent Byzantine influence, also shows connections with the artistic culture of central Europe; thus in the small church of St. Nicholas at Curtea de Argeș and in the two small churches of Turnu Severin and finally in the larger princely church, with a Greek cross plan, of the same Curtea de Argeș. Moreover, while in the likewise princely Palace of the same center Gothic elements are also evident, in other constructions an influence of nearby Serbia and of the intense artistic center of Mount Athos is instead clear, whence come other elements that, variously graded, evolve until well into the 16th century. Thus in the princely church of Târgoviște and in that of the monastery of Dealu and finally in the episcopal church of Argeș. Later, in the advanced 16th century and in the 17th, Moldavian influences also manifest themselves, recognizable in a greater soaring of the architectural forms and in a greater diffusion of Gothicizing elements. But toward the end of the 17th century, elements of Constantinopolitan Baroque and of distant Italian origin also reach Muntenia. They persist throughout the entire 18th century, as in the monastery of Văcărești and in the church of Stavropoleos in Bucharest. In Muntenia, sculpture resolves itself, throughout this time, essentially into the activity of popular masters who worked the decorations of the architectures.

Painting, on the other hand, presents in the first half of the 14th century a truly extraordinary complex in the fresco decoration in the princely church of Curtea de Argeș, where it is possible to distinguish two fairly differentiated groups of painting: one to be connected with the art of Macedonia and the other with that of the island of Crete. Other paintings, likewise of derivation from the great Byzantine stock, appear still during the 16th century in the church of the hospital and of the monastery of Cozia and in the church of the Snagov monastery, where elements of Italian taste also seem to appear, as in the later decoration of the church of

Săcueni, which date back to 1655. In these paintings, as in the other later ones of the region, naturalistic elements appear that represent late Renaissance influences, sometimes strangely mixed with those of the persistent Byzantine tradition.

In Transylvania the oldest church constructions belong to the 13th century and, apart from some case of buildings with a central plan, they recall in their rectangular plan the oldest small churches of Curtea de Argeș and Sernu; then Romanesque elements from central Europe penetrate the region, as in the cathedral of Alba Julia; and then Gothic elements, as in the Cistercian abbey of Cârta.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, however, some element of German-Gothic taste also spreads in the region, while Italian Renaissance forms reach the soil of Transylvania in the early years of the 17th century: thus in the castle of Făgărăș. Then elements of Baroque taste also arrive in Transylvania, while wooden churches that repeat traditional schemes are still frequent.

The vicissitudes of the sculpture and painting of Transylvania are not unlike those of Muntenia, but it should be remembered that in the 18th century a nucleus of popular painting develops at Nicula, into which, on the Byzantine foundation, elements of Renaissance and late-Gothic art deriving from the various southern German schools also flow.

In Moldavia, as in the other Romanian regions, the wooden churches preserved there, which are always later than the 17th century, suggest very ancient traditional modes. While those in stone later than the 14th show Romanesque and Gothic influences, the latter characterized by the great soaring in height of constructions coming from central Europe and having arrived through Wallachia (Rădăuți and Baia). In the 16th century, in many churches of Moldavia new elements of Byzantine taste appear, deriving this time from Russia, as in the constructions of the monastery of Galata and of Aroneanu. And so on until the beginning of the 19th century. Of notable importance in the region are numerous castles, partly reflecting influences of Byzantine architecture, others Polish. Also very numerous between the 15th and 16th centuries are the pictorial decorations both inside and outside the churches. They almost always reflect elements of Asian origin that arrived through Serbia; then, from the end of the 16th century, the modes deriving from Russia prevail, evident also in the abundant production of icons. This continues until the elements of the Baroque of central Europe lead to a degeneration of the most ancient schemes.

It was during the 19th century that Romanian art, having come into more direct contact with the Western world, assumed from it its most evident characteristics, reflecting in the work of local architects, sculptors and painters the variety of the new tendencies. Interesting in any case continued to be the production of carvings, reliefs, goldsmith work, fabrics, embroideries, of a popular character, which evolved in the region on motifs deriving from the constant Byzantine foundation but elaborated with freedom and imagination.

Emilio Lavagnino

VIII. SCHOOL SYSTEM

The new direction imparted to R. in social life with the advent of the communist regime also brought several important reforms in the school field.

The aim was to spread education and culture also among the lowest popular strata in order to elevate them and make possible for them the conquest of better situations, and for this purpose the following means were adopted: first of all, education from the ages of 7 to 14 was made compulsory, free and uniform; the 4 years of elementary instruction are followed by three years of a single-type gymnasium, which replaces all the other types of differentiated secondary schools. At 14 the pupils are selected and directed toward those types of school that are most in keeping with their abilities and aptitudes, without any regard to their economic and social situation. And the greatest facility is also granted for passing from one type of school to another; as well as assiduous assistance and ample welfare provision for poor pupils, workers and children of workers. The realization of these programs encounters numerous obstacles in everyday reality.

As for the various types of lyceum that follow the single gymnasium (theoretical, administrative, technical, agricultural, commercial), the pupils must as far as possible be oriented toward the types of specialized technical course, so as to be able within a short time to form the cadres of personnel that will have to promote the industrialization of the country, above all in the agricultural sector. The theoretical lyceum type, on the other hand, was abolished, because "it serves rather the exploiters and the bourgeoisie." For this reason the school must remain as closely attached to life as possible, especially to the life of labor. Hence the contact of pupils with workshops, agricultural enterprises, building sites and compulsory manual labor. Supreme importance is also given to physical and civic education. The lyceums are followed by two categories of institutes: a) universities and polytechnics, lasting 4-6 years, whose task is to prepare the cadres for the teaching body of secondary and especially the higher cadres of specialists and researchers in the different branches of science, for higher education. The number of pupils is fixed year by year by the Council of Ministers, according to the criterion of necessity; b) institutes of higher education, lasting 3-4 years, with the task of creating the higher cadres of specialists destined for production (engineers, agronomists, etc.) or of teachers for secondary education.

In broad outline, the present-day Romanian school system reproduces the aspects of the Soviet school. Aversion to the classical tradition; interpretation of history, philosophy, literature, art history according to the dictates of historical materialism; a tendency to want to link teaching with "life," which often results in the anxious search for immediate practical results and in the insertion, into the various branches of culture, of the problems of the day. - See plates LXXVII-LXXVIII.

Celestino Testare