ROMANIA

ROMANIA. — It is the southernmost of the Danubian-Carpathian states and the easternmost among the Neolothic peoples, enclosed between Hungarians and Slavs at the boundary between the Balkan and Russian worlds. The war of 1915–1918 doubled its territory compared to 1914 (295,000 sq. km.), while that of 1939–45 reduced it to 238,000 sq. km., mutilating Bessarabia, northern Bucovina (ceded to the U.S.S.R.) and southern Dobruja (ceded to Bulgaria). From December 1947, then, Romania, having become a “People’s Republic,” entered the orbit of Soviet communism.

I. GEOGRAPHY

The population, now fairly homogeneous (80% Romanians, with minorities of Hungarians, Germans, and Jews), is unevenly distributed (minimum density in Dobruja, maximum in Wallachia). Of the cities, many of which retain a rural character, fewer than ten reach or exceed 100,000 inhabitants (Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Timișoara, Ploiești, Brăila, Galați, Oradea, and Arad), while Bucharest, the capital, now has over a million.

II. CIVIL HISTORY

In the time of Emperor Domitian, Rome, in order to avoid the incursions of the Dacians into the territories it occupied, was obliged to pay an annual tribute, a tribute that Trajan later scornfully refused. Indeed, in 101 A.D., Trajan began a war against Decebalus, crossed the Danube, forced the king to make peace, and practically reduced Dacia to a Roman protectorate. Four years later, Decebalus, desirous of shaking off the Roman yoke, rebelled, but his attempted defection was bloodily suppressed, and he himself, taken prisoner, committed suicide, preferring death to the prospect of being paraded in Rome during the imperial triumph. Dacia, reduced to a province of the Empire, became an important military bastion for the defense of Roman positions in the Balkans and was intensively colonized. Faced, however, with the pressure of the barbarian peoples, Aurelian decided in 271 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 From then until the 13th century, when historical documents speak of the existence of a Vlach or Romanian population, only scant information is available on the ethnic continuity and the events of the Daco-Romanians. The lack of sources and reliable data for reconstructing Romanian history in that period has favored disparate interpretations, not always characterized by rigorous scientific seriousness, but rather tending to provide juridical-historical support for the political aspirations of individual nationalisms. The Romanian-Hungarian controversy over Transylvania has led precisely to the formulation of two diametrically opposed hypotheses to resolve the riddle of the historical continuity or lack thereof of the Daco-Romanians during the early Middle Ages. Romanian historians, who consider Transylvania the cradle of their people, maintain that they descend directly from the Daco-Romanians, since the transplantation south of the Danube at the time of Aurelian was, according to these scholars, only partial and not total, and many colonists, taking refuge in the valleys of the Carpathians during the invasions of the Goths, Avars, Bulgars, and other peoples, would have ensured the ethnic continuity of the Romanians until the 13th century, when they themselves moved into the plains and assumed the name of Vlachs; Hungarian historians, on the other hand, reply that the abandonment of transdanubian Dacia was total, that the very Romanization of the province was insignificant, that colonization had been entrusted largely to non-Italian elements, and that the persistence of many Slavic terms in the current Romanian language demonstrates that the Romanians should descend from the Balkan Romanians of cisdanubian Dacia, who arrived in Transylvania in the late Middle Ages. These, in brief, are the respective positions of Romanian and Hungarian historians, each guided in their reconstructions by the desire to assert their country’s right to possess Transylvania: the Romanians through the demonstration of a supposed ethnic-historical continuity of their nation since the time of imperial Rome; the Hungarians, by means of evidence of a very late immigration of the ancestors of today’s Romanians, subsequent to the occupation of the country by the Magyars.

The first historical records concerning the voivodeships of Wallachia and Moldavia, established beyond the Carpathians at the initiative of Romanian nobles eager to escape the sovereignty of the kings of Hungary and forced conversion to the Catholic faith (the Romanians being "Orthodox"), place the genesis of the principality of Wallachia in the 13th century and that of Moldavia around the mid-14th century, when Bogdan, revolting against Louis the Great of Anjou, king of Hungary, crossed the Carpathians and founded in the plain of the Moldova River the new independent principality. The fortunes of the two voivodeships were thereafter closely tied to those of neighboring states: Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. Wallachia, initially in a vassal relationship with the crown of St. Stephen, within 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 became predominant there, asserting itself clearly and explicitly after the Battle of Mohács in 1526. Moldavia, in the same period, recognized instead the high sovereignty of Poland, but it too was compelled, after Mohács, to pay an annual tribute to the sultan, who in the second half of the 16th century significantly strengthened his own dominion in this voivodeship as well. Toward the end of the 16th century, the election in 1593 of Michael the Brave as voivode of Wallachia marked for a few years a bright spot against the backdrop of the long night of Turkish domination. This prince, perhaps guided in his complex political designs more by ambition than by a strong sense of indignation at the exactions of the sultan’s tax collectors, after reaching an agreement with the voivodeship of Moldavia, upon a prearranged signal, massacred all the Turks residing in the two principalities. He then occupied Dobruja and, to successfully counter Ottoman attempts at reconquest, recognized the high sovereignty of Sigismund Báthory, prince of Transylvania.

Subsequently, he himself managed to obtain the title of prince of Transylvania and also conquered Moldavia. His sudden political fortune, however, alarmed the Habsburg general Basta, who on August 19, 1601, had him killed. The disappearance of Michael the Brave, who had first united the regions (Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Dobruja, Bukovina, and Bessarabia—the latter two then integral parts of Moldavia) of the Romanian state into a single territorial entity, marked the beginning of the most sorrowful period of Ottoman rule. Until then, the principalities had indeed enjoyed a certain, albeit very vague, internal independence, guaranteed by the election of native princes. From the 17th century onward, the voivodeships became mere instruments of the sultans, who appointed and deposed them at will. Compelled, in order to retain their office, to maintain relations with influential courtiers in Constantinople—who exacted a very high price for their favor and intercession before the Ottoman court—the voivodes, to meet their financial obligations to these figures, introduced increasingly onerous fiscal policies in the principalities. Any attempt at independent policy was now rendered impossible from the outset. 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 stronger, and little by little the voivodeships themselves became the fief of the highest bidder. Thus, former diplomatic advisors and Greek interpreters of the sultans, at the beginning of the 18th century, established themselves 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 Phanariot period (from Phanari = the diplomatic quarter of Constantinople) lasted until 1821. In Wallachia, 23, and in Moldavia, 24 princes succeeded one another; some governed repeatedly and passed with easy indifference from administering one voivodeship to the other. Among them were not lacking men of worth, cultured and intelligent, but they could do nothing against the omnipotence of the sultans. The Phanariot regime ended only in 1822, when the Turks, following the stance taken by the voivodes in favor of the Philhellenic movement of Alexander Ypsilanti, decided to entrust the government of the two principalities once more to native voivodes. Meanwhile, in Transylvania, under the influence of the Hungarian and German national awakenings, the Romanians had also begun in the course of the 18th century to become conscious of their national identity, and in 1791 they had turned to the regional Diet to request that, alongside the Magyar and Saxon nations, their own might also be recognized. This request, set forth in the Supplex libellus Valachorum, was however not granted. In 1829, with the Peace of Adrianople, the two principalities, while remaining tributary to the sultan, were placed under Russian protectorate, which lasted until 1856. In that 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 voivodeships, constituted under the Treaty of Paris, Alexander Cuza was elected in January–February 1859 prince of Moldavia and Wallachia. Thus the union of the two voivodeships, recognized in 1861 by the great powers, became an accomplished fact. Cuza remained in power until 1866, when he was forced to abdicate following a conspiracy. His frankly liberal policy was characterized above all by the agrarian reform law, which abolished serfdom. In his place, Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was elected, who reigned as Carol I until 1914, and under whose long principate the proclamation of the Kingdom of Romania took place on March 25, 1881, at which time it consisted, in addition to Wallachia and Moldavia, also of Northern Dobruja (Bukovina and Bessarabia had been incorporated into Austria and Russia in 1774 and 1812, respectively). During the First World War, Romania initially remained neutral; then, entering the war in August 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-

The Romanians of the north, in the Middle Ages, were still in contact with the "Vlachs" of the Roman Empire and with the monasteries of Mitrovita, the ancient Sirmium, capital of Illyricum, home of St. Demetrius ("Dmitrovita"), the great saint of the Romanians and of all the Balkans.

Contact between Dacia and the Christian world could certainly not have been interrupted by the invasions. On the right bank of the Danube there was a series of Latin bishops. The barbarians carried out their usual raids into the Empire; the legions—of Constantine and Justinian—crossed the river in pursuit. The Goths, Slavs, and Avars in particular took many prisoners with them, among whom were not a few Christians, perhaps even priests. The Goths, who then also ruled the future Romanian lands, had martyrs in the future Wallachia and bishops: the famous Ulfilas (d. 391) preached even in Latin.

Christian inscriptions (Zenovius) dating from after Constantine and the beginning of the 5th century are found in Transylvania. The Christianity of the Romanians, earlier than that of the Slavs and without any special dependence on the Greek, sprang 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 the Danube—for whom the Byzantines, the “Romei,” adopted the name of Vlachs, and which the Slavs had received from the Germans (Vlachs = Welsh, Welsch, Walloon, etc.)—lost, together with the ancient episcopal cities destroyed by the barbarians, also their Latin clergy and 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 were also politically dependent on them, were finally obliged to accept the Slav rite. Only at the beginning of the 18th century was it possible for them to introduce the Romanian language definitively into the churches. In 1860 the Latin alphabet replaced the Cyrillic.

After the terrible defeat of the Bulgarians, Basil II placed all the Romanians of his empire under the archbishop—then of Greek hierarchy—of Ohrid (1018). Almost immediately afterwards a bishop of the Romanians (τῦν Βλαχῶν) is found in a place of uncertain location, Vranontis. The Greek schism of 1054 involved the Romanians also, because of their geographical position and political circumstances, in the Byzantine sphere. The union with Rome made by the great “emperor” John Asen I (q.V. Macedonia) in 1204 for his Romanian and Bulgarian subjects was broken in 1235 by his nephew John Asen II.
To the 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 selection by “hierarchs” more or less canonical who lived in monasteries (or came from Bulgaria) in the manner of those “pseudo-bishops” to which a brief of Gregory IX alludes as early as the beginning of the 13th century (Iorga). The founders of the principalities thought to provide the new countries also with a particular ecclesiastical organization.

Wallachia. — The Romanians of Wallachia looked to the bishops of Vidin, Silistra, or Vicina for their religious needs. Bishop Iakint of the last-named see was requested by Prince Nicholas Alexander, son of the “founder” Basarab, in 1359, and the patriarch of Constantinople granted him as metropolitan of Wallachia or Ungro-Vlachia, 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: Vodita, Tismana (14th century), Cozia, Cotmeana, Snagov, Glavacioc, Dealul, Brădet (first half of the 15th century).

Moldavia. — At the time of the founding of this principality (1359), the Moldavian Romanians looked to the metropolitan of Halicz (Galicia) or to the bishop of Cetatea Albă on the Black Sea. Only in 1401 was the recognition obtained of a Romanian metropolitan, Iosif, with residence at Suceava, the capital of the country. In 1564 the capital and the metropolitan see 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 metropolitan see of Brăila or Proilavia (Wallachia), founded toward the end of the 16th century for the Christians of the Turkish “raia,” sometimes had its residence at Galați, Ismail, or Căușani (Moldavia) or even at Dubăsari, beyond the Dniester; after 1812 it remained a metropolitan see only of Brăila and Silistra and was definitively suppressed in 1829. After the year 1812 the bishopric of Rădăuți was transferred to Cernăuți (1871) and elevated to the rank of metropolitan see of Bucovina and Dalmatia (1873), while the bishopric of Hotin, taking up residence at Chișinău (Kishinev) after the year 1812, became in 1813 an archbishopric.

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

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

Transylvania. — The Romanians of Transylvania, the cradle of the other two principalities, remained under the Hungarians and at first had no ecclesiastical hierarchy but resorted either to Halicz or to the bishoprics of Bulgaria, then to those of Serbia, Wallachia, or Moldavia. In the 15th–16th centuries bishops are sporadically found at Hunedoara (Hunyad), Maramureș, Feleac, Geoagiu, Silvaș, and Ineu. Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457–1504) desired for eastern Transylvania a bishopric at Vad, whose incumbents were consecrated at Suceava and were subject to the metropolitan of Moldavia. In the treaty of May 20, 1595, between Michael the Brave of Wallachia and Sigismund Báthory, it was decided that all the Romanians of Transylvania, under their own bishop, should be dependent on the metropolitan see of Târgoviște. John of Prislop was the first metropolitan of all the Romanians of Transylvania.

After 1700, when almost the entire body of Transylvanian Romanians, together with their bishop, united with Rome, the “Orthodox” non-united remained without bishops for more than sixty years and subsequently received them from the Serbs. Only in 1811 did they again have Romanian bishops. Under Andrei Șaguna the “Orthodox” bishopric of Transylvania acquired in 1863 the title of metropolitan see 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), Râmet, Geoagiu, Vad, Feleac, Hodoș-Bodrog (15th century). In the 13th century (1216) the “metochia” dependent on the Palestinian and Macedonian monastery of Beria reached the Romanian regions at Mitrovica (Sirmium) and at Satu Mare.

In 1859 Wallachia and Moldavia formed the state of Romania. The extensive landed properties of the monasteries were confiscated by the state in 1863. The law on ecclesiastical organization of 1872 established that bishops and metropolitans should 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 Apr. 25, 1885, granted to the Romanian Church its 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 Romania. The organization of the entire “Orthodox” Romanian Church was then unified on the basis of the Statute of Șaguna (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 Iulia; the bishopric of Râmnicu Vâlcea was promoted to the metropolitan see of Oltenia, while the metropolitan see of Bucharest became, in 1925, a patriarchate. Another Faculty of Theology was created at Chișinău (Bessarabia). At Cernăuți in Bucovina there had existed one since the time of Austrian rule. In Transylvania, besides the Theological Academy of Sibiu, three others were founded at Arad, Oradea, and Cluj.

Catholics. — After the foundation of the principalities, a small number of Catholics is found in the main cities of Wallachia: Argeș, Câmpulung, Târgoviște. They are more numerous, however, in Moldavia, where their mass — formed by the “Cianăi,” a population perhaps of Magyarized and then Romanianized humans — also lives in the countryside, especially in the districts of Roman and Bacău; at the beginning of this century there were about 80,000 of them. In Transylvania the Catholic element was represented by Hungarians, Szeklers, and Saxons living there. When the majority of these turned to Protestantism, the main support of the Catholic Church were the “Suabi,” German colonists from the Austrian period.

The first known Catholic missionary activity in the principalities was that carried out by Dominican preachers after 1222 for the conversion of the Cumans. Bishop Teodorico, installed in 1227 at Milcov, depended directly on Rome. With the Mongol invasion of 1241 the bishopric disappeared, and it survived only as an honorary title for about three centuries. Equally short-lived were the bishoprics of Severin — where a bishop is found 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 mostly resided in Poland. A Catholic bishop is also mentioned at Akkerman (Cetatea Albă) under Stephen the Great until the city’s conquest by the Turks (1484). From the 17th century onward, the care of the faithful was entrusted to the bishop of Nicopolis in Bulgaria, as well as to apostolic visitors and prefects.

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

In 1700, almost all the Romanians of Transylvania, led by their own bishop Atanasie, united with Rome, retaining the Eastern rite. The episcopal see was transferred in 1721 from Alba Iulia to Făgăraș, and then, under Inocențiu Micu (Klein), to Blaj (1737), a city that, with its schools, was to become a center of national revival for all Romanians. On 6 June 1777, Pius VI created a new bishopric at Oradea for the Uniates. Pius IX, on 26 November 1853, erected two more bishoprics, at Gherla and Lugoj, and subjected them, along with that of Oradea, to the bishopric of Blaj, which on the same date was elevated to an archbishopric or metropolitan see with the title of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș.

Following the Concordat of 10 May 1927 — ratified in 1929 — between the Romanian state and the Holy See, Pius XI, with the bull Solemni conventione of 5 June 1930, created the bishopric of Maramureș — with its seat at Baia Mare — subject to the same metropolitan see, while the bishopric of Gherla was transferred to Cluj, the civil capital of Transylvania. With the same bull, the Latin-rite Church was organized, with the Latin dioceses of Alba Iulia, Timișoara, Satu-Mare, and Iași being subjected to the archbishop of Bucharest; for the Armenian Uniates, an apostolic administrator was appointed, resident at Gherla (or Bucharest) and directly dependent on Rome.

As regards religious orders, while the Latins have many of their own rite, the Uniates have only the Basilians (since 1747) with monasteries at 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 1930 census found in Romania: “Orthodox: 13,067,000 (72.2%); Greek-Catholic Uniates: 1,350,000 (7.3%); Latin Catholics: 1,200,000 (6.5%); Calvinists: 717,000 (3.9%); Lutherans: 360,000 (2.0%); Jews: 984,000 (5.5%); Muslims: 234,000 (1.6%).”

At the advent of the communist regime, the Uniates had 5 dioceses, 1,834 priests, 2,588 churches, 9 religious orders and congregations, 28 houses with 424 religious, 34 educational institutes with 6,152 pupils, 220 associations of Marian congregations with 24,600 members, 20 periodicals with 252,000 copies.

The Latins: 5 dioceses, 1,086 priests, 1,220 churches, 22 religious orders and congregations, 158 houses with 160 religious, 126 schools and educational institutes with 31,606 pupils, 120 associations of Marian congregations with 6,000 members, 1 daily newspaper with 35,000 copies, and 23 periodicals with 338,000 copies (Vatican Exhibition 1950, section on Catholic activity).

Pere Vàlimàreanu

IV. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

With the removal of the legal instrument that, by its very nature, constituted too obvious an obstacle to the persecutory plans against the Church, it was easy for the government to proceed with their implementation. On 4 August 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 Romania. Suffice it to recall Article 22, which regulates the establishment and functioning of dioceses, reduced from ten to four; Articles 40 and 41, which infringe upon the universality of the Church in Romania and its dependence on the Roman Pontiff; Articles 44-45, concerning the formation of the clergy, subjected to such extensive state control that a subsequent decision of the Ministry of Cults, issued on 13 November of the same year, led the ecclesiastical authority to deem it inappropriate to request permission for the opening of the only theological seminary envisaged by the law. Violent and radical was the struggle against Catholic schools. In 1947, the Ministry of National Education, with Decree 117, began to strip bishops of the right to appoint teachers in these schools, proceeding instead to appoint morally unfit individuals, often belonging to other religious creeds. Moreover, the use of school textbooks was imposed, in which statements contrary to Catholic faith and morals were found, and Marxist instruction was made compulsory in Catholic schools. Finally, Article 27 of the new Constitution sanctioned the total suppression of denominational schools.

A few months later, this fundamental law was supplemented and specified by Decree no. 175, whose Article 10 made it clear that education «is organized exclusively by the State on the basis of structural unity» and has «a secular character». Article 35 reiterates that all denominational and private schools of every kind become State schools». Another decree of 3 August 1948 declared State property «all movable and immovable property that belonged to Churches, congregations, religious communities, private associations, whether for profit or not... and that served the operation of teaching schools transferred to the State, in accordance with Article 35 of the law on public education». Needless to say, in State schools education was steeped in the crudest materialism, nor could the religious instruction offered in State schools be considered an antidote to such poison. Already in 1948, in secondary schools the time allotted to it was halved, and in the last two years of such schools, as well as in all industrial, technical and vocational schools, it was entirely excluded. Nor did the Catholic press fare any better: all periodicals were suppressed.

Particularly painful was the fate of the Greek-Rite Catholic Church, officially suppressed by the regime in Article 1948, with the open favour of the prelates of the dissident Church. The Greek-Catholics numbered about 1,500,000, grouped into six ecclesiastical circumscriptions. In September the government deposed all the Greek-Unite bishops except Monsignor Hossu of Cluj. Then began the collection, by fraud and terror, first from the priests and then from the faithful, of signatures for «spontaneous» conversion to Orthodoxy. On 21 October, the 250th anniversary of the union of the Greeks with the Catholic Church, in Alba Iulia, the metropolitan see of the Greek-Unite Church, the return of the people to the Orthodox Church was celebrated. The six Greek-Unite bishops, who had either led or followed their flock into schism, were arrested and interned pending trial. Four Catholic cathedrals were immediately transferred to the dissidents, and a whole series of Catholic hospitals were sequestered. Finally, on 2 December, a decree of the Presidency of the Grand National Assembly, published in the Monitorul Oficial, declared the dioceses, religious communities and all other institutions of the Greek-Catholic Church to have ceased to exist and confiscated their property, except for parish assets, which, together with others to be specified, were assigned to the Orthodox Church.

Meanwhile, the situation of Latin-Rite Catholics was becoming ever more grave. In the same month of September 1948, in application of Article 22 of the decree on the «General Regime of Religious Worship», which reduced 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 their respective bishops deposed. In the following January the Ministry of Cults took a step to try to obtain from the Catholic hierarchy at least implicit recognition of the fait accompli, making payment of clergy stipends, to which they were entitled, conditional on the submission of the names of priests assigned to the two only recognized diocesan centres. Faced with this demand, which would have meant formally acknowledging the reduction in the number of dioceses, the episcopate and clergy decided to renounce their stipends provisionally, and the sums sent by the government were returned, in the hope that the clergy would not accept the bishops’ proposal. On 10 May the government decided to withhold stipends from the two still-recognized bishops and 135 priests. In the following June the two bishops were arrested, so that within less than a year the entire Catholic hierarchy of both rites had been eliminated.

Nor did the government fail to attempt to create a schismatic movement that would accept the Statute of Catholic Worship, a necessary condition, under Article 14 of the decree of 4 August 1948, for the Church to continue to exist legally. It was drafted by the government after rejecting one submitted first by the bishops and, after their deposition, by the vicars general, 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, since this would amount to sanctioning all the anti-Church laws and the government’s interference in Church affairs.

To circumvent this obstacle, recourse was had to the so-called Catholic Action Committee, composed of pro-communist, excommunicated priests, and the Status catholicus Transilvaniae. Founded in the 18th century—the first official recognition of which dates to 1653—the Status was nothing more than

a representation of Catholics in the Diets, with no autonomy vis-à-vis ecclesiastical authority, with which it had to proceed in agreement and in subordination for the protection of the interests of Catholics in the Transylvanian region alone. Today it is sought to be revived by conferring on it rights it never had, extending its competence to the entire Republic, and making it an instrument to accept all the government’s demands and, above all, the Statute and a vicar exclusively dependent on II. In other words, the revived Statute would be tasked with governing the Catholic Church in R. independently of the Holy See, in the spirit of the resolution approved at the Congress of the Statute itself in 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 replaced in February 1947 by Monsignor Geraldo O’Hara, Bishop of Savannah-Atlanta in the United States, as Regent of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bucharest. On 4 July 1950 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Regent that the presence of the Pontifical representative and his collaborators was no longer desired in R. and warned them to leave the country within three days.

Pietro Palazzini

V. ROMANIAN RITE

After the erection of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the 14th century, a new Church began to take shape, whose rite long remained especially close to that of Halicz and Kiev, with which it had many contacts in the 17th century. The language was Church Slavonic until the introduction of Romanian into liturgical books, effected in Transylvania under Protestant influence by the deacon Coresio (Vangelario, 1561; Liturgicon and Psalter, 1570; Apostolos, 1588), which gradually took full effect in the 18th century. The growth of a distinct civilization made the break with Slavonic ever more marked, and Greek influence at the time of the Phanariotes could not deflect it from its natural course. Only in the 19th century, thanks especially to the Uniate Church of Blaj, was the Latin alphabet substituted for Cyrillic in Romanian liturgical books.

Editions of these books are numerous both among Catholics and among dissidents.

VI. LITERATURE

Historical and philological research has also clarified a period of origins. The four dialects (Daco-Rumanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Rumanian, and Istrorumanian), left without mutual contact after their separation before the year 1000, offer not only linguistic data but also archaic literary elements for the reconstruction of the past.

Beginning with the verse laws that celebrated the Agathyrsi of ancient Transylvania (Aristotle, *Problema*, IX, 28), with the probable traces that the exiled Ovid (Ex Ponto, IV, 13) might have left in some folk tales, with the *chartae* (Martial, IX, 35) and the fungus (Dio Cassius, LXVIII, 8, 14-17) on which King Decebal sent his Latin messages to the Romans, the study of the earliest age must clarify the meaning and historicity of that gentle folkloric lyric called *doina* (of Dacian origin, according to Cantemir and Hasdeu), the development of the complex specific sentiments *dor* (longing, melancholy, desire, joy; from Lat. *dolere*) and *urît* (tedium, spiritual emptiness, anguish; from Lat. *horrescere*), and finally the value of Latin inscriptions and the importance of the writers of Dacia, Upper and Lower Moesia, and Pannonia for Rumanian culture. St. Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana (365–420), taught the Dacians and Bessi to praise Christum corde Romano (St. Paulinus of Nola), and in his writings he shows an awareness of the aesthetic factor in education when he states that song penetrat animum, dum delectat. Significant is the Latin origin of folkloric literary terminology: *viens* or *ghiers* (melody), *cântec bătrân* or *bătrânesc* (ancient song), *descântec* (incantation), *colindă* or *cârind* (Christmas carol), *bocet* (funeral lament), etc. The little poem known as *Miorița* (The Little Lamb), which has correspondences in Aromanian (according to Obodescu 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 Rumanian gloss: τόξαν, τόξαν, φράξις (in the local sense, still alive, of “to overturn”). Despite Slavic pressure, the consciousness of Roman origin persisted in 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 (of Hunedoara), whose name derives from *Corvinus*, accentuate the sense 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 the Enlightenment figures Constantin Cantacuzino and Cantemir, and by means of the Transylvanian School, leads to the modern Risorgimento.

Ancient Age. — It begins with translations (the Acts of the Apostles and the Psalms) from the year 400, preserved in copies from the year 500, and is characterized by a strong Slavic, “Orthodox” influence, in conflict with the humanism coming from Italy and Poland (Catholicism) or from Bohemia (Hussitism). The first private letter dates to 1521 (the epistle of Năsăudean). The beginnings of printing activity present an interesting aspect. While the princes published the first Slavic books (1508, 1510, 1512, 1545, 1547), the Transylvanian Reformers printed in Rumanian a Lutheran catechism (1544, 1559), and the deacon Coresi, alongside his Slavic printing activity, reworked, for Lutheran propaganda, according to the speech in use between Târgoviște and Brașov, the religious translations in circulation and printed ten Rumanian books in Brașov (1557–83). Thus the foundations of the literary language were laid. Rumanian annals have been lost, while those in Slavic are preserved; as are the *Political Norms* of Neagoe Basarab (1512–21), initiator of the “Curtea” cathedral in Argeș (1517). From that epoch comes the tragic little popular poem

Mesterul Manole (Master Manole), compiled from various oral sources, tells in a fantastic manner the story of the construction of Neagoe’s cathedral and how the master builder’s wife is fatally walled up alive: a symbol of human sacrifice for any perfect work. A Latin revival was attempted by Despo Vodă (1561–63) and Petru Cercel (1583–85), the latter also a poet in Italian (*Unno a Dio*), who dreamed of restoring ancient Dacia—a dream briefly realized by Michael the Brave (1593–1601). The Renaissance, a consequence of this ideal and cultural moment, was promoted by the voices of Vasile Lupu (1634–53) and Matei Basarab (1632–54). The Moldavian metropolitan Varlaam Iotta opposed Calvinism (1645) and, in his sermons (*Carte românească de învățătură*, 1643), contributed to literary development, while the Transylvanian metropolitan Simion Ștefan, in the preface to his *Noul Testament* (1648), advocated preferring in written language words of general usage rather than merely regional ones. At Govora (1640), Iași (1646), and Târgoviște (1652), legal codes translated from Greek and Italian were printed. The statesmen Grigore Ureche (1590–1647) and Miron Costin (1633–91), more than mere chroniclers as they modestly called themselves, were authentic historians and memoirists, trained in the Jesuit schools of Poland, who vigorously affirmed the Latinity of the Romanian people.

The metropolitan Dosoftei (1624–93), while Iotta introduced the Romanian Mass, enriched literature significantly with *Psaltirea în versuri* (1673) and *Viața și petrecerea sfinților* (1682–86). Alongside the Calvinist religious songs of Transylvania and the psalms of Dosoftei, the classical odes of Mihail Halici (1674), the amorous songs of Nicolae Petrova of Petrova and the Saxon Valentin Franck von Franckenstein, and the poem *Viața lumii* (The Life of the World) by Costin, all fostered the demand for an elevated and locally picturesque form. The Jesuit Gavril Ivol (1619–78) composed philosophical writings in Latin. From the Franciscan Ioan Kajoni Valachus de Kis-Kajon, who wrote in Latin and Hungarian, there survives the *Codex Kájonii*, containing also Romanian verses, including *Cântecul voivodesei Lupul* (The Song of Princess Lupul).

In Rome in 1677, a Romanian-language Catholic catechism translated by Bishop Vito Piluzio appeared in Latin characters. The highly learned Moldavian Nicolae Milescu (1637–1708), translator of the Old Testament, defended Catholic dogma in Latin against Calvinists (1669) and recounted his journey to China as ambassador of the Tsar. The Șerban Bible (1688) imposed Romanian in the liturgy and completed 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 revived, with instruction in Greek and Latin. Relations with Italy intensified, and the need to affirm concretely a consciousness both Roman and Romanian grew ever stronger.

With Dimitrie Cantemir and Constantin Cantacuzino, the era of the first Enlightenment began. In the 1660s, Miron Costin distinguished the concepts of historical reality and fantasy; in the 1670s, rationalism sought to give consciousness to reality and reality to consciousness. It was not enough to feel oneself Roman: one had to act in a Roman manner; it was not enough to call oneself Christian: one had to act as a Christian and struggle in solidarity against the pagans. Thus it is explained how Brâncoveanu’s and Cantemir’s policy abandoned the Ottomans and aligned with Austria and Russia, and how the Transylvanian Church united with the Catholic Church (1700) in the name of the Mother Rome.

Dimitrie Cantemir (1674–1723), living in Moldavia (1710–11), a polyglot and polymath, anticipated in a way Giambattista Vico by observing that all things have a growth (*incrementum*) and a decline (*decrementum*) predestined by a universal rhythm, and that man, made in the image of God, is the creator of his civilized world (cult, institutions, art). The distinction between natural facts (God’s creation) and ethical ones (human works), already foreshadowed in *Divanul sau gâlceava înțeleptului cu lumea* (The Tribunal or the Dispute of the Sage with the World, Iași 1698)—a true catechism of Romanian Enlightenment—was later developed in *Istoria ieroglifică* (manuscript 1703), a complex, transfigured memoir, and in the metaphysical work *Sacro-

Kogălniceanu (1817–91): historian and novelist, statesman and defender of the peasantry, gathered around his journals *Dacia literară* (1840) and *Propăşirea* (1844) the most distinguished writers of the day: Grigore Alexandrescu (1812–85), elegiac, satirical and meditative fabulist of profound insight and musical expressiveness; the historian Nicolae Bălcescu (1819–52), student of social institutions and biographer, champion of liberty and national unity, ardent leader of the 1848 Wallachian Revolution, and chronicler of Michael the Brave; Costache Negruzzi (1806–68), creator of the modern historical and social short story; Alceu Rusu (1817–59), first modern critic to assess the lyrical beauties of folk poetry and to direct the attention of Latinists to the realities of the country, to contemporaneity and to common sense, opposing their abstractions with the living popular art in which he discerned a hidden Dacian classicism; Vasile Alecsandri (1821–90), lyric poet of love and nature, civic and national bard, witty prose writer and light dramatist, master of the apt word, phrase and syntactical cadence, he elevated alongside his own compositions his monumental collection of *Poezii populare ale Românilor* (1852, 1866), executed with vigilant aesthetic judgment though he introduced personal elements and elaborations; Ion Ghica (1816–97), statesman and economist convinced that national progress comes through science and organization, incisive memoirist and evocative writer.

Three complex spiritual guides dominate 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 resumed the ideas of Cantemir and Rusu and, explaining ethnic classicism founded on Roman discipline and the Dacian spiral of ancient pottery, surviving in rustic decoration, postulated an original lofty artistic creation, a synthesis of folklore and classicism. A stylist of broad scope, Odobescu dealt the final blow to the Latinate philological exaggerations that had nested in the Romanian Academy founded in 1867. Hasdeu, linguist, historian, novelist, dramatist and poet, discerned in natural and human facts the law that moves them, the spirit that vivifies them, and thereby revealed an unsuspected Roman and human quality in deeds others deemed barbarous. Maiorescu opposed worthless production, empty rhetoric and word-grease, promoting the ideal of art for art’s sake under whose banner he founded the literary society *Junimea* (Youth) and its journal *Convorbiri literare* (1867–1944).

In the atmosphere they created there arose the golden age of Romanian literature with Mihai Eminescu (1850–89), Ion Creangă (1835–89) and Ion L. Caragiale (1852–1912), members of *Junimea* and contributors to *Convorbiri literare*. Eminescu infused his pessimistic poetry with dramatic vision and, at the same time, with religious contemplation. In opposition to the unstable urban world, Creangă turned to the peasant world of his childhood and discovered there inexhaustible moral and aesthetic energies, memories that he made the object of his contemplation. Childhood assumes decisive significance for the formation of the mature man, identifies with the village and this becomes the expression of the native Romanian life. The narrator does not merely collect but selects particular moments and data of rustic life in their genuine expression purified of excess and regionalism, condensed into phrases, many proverbs and petrified structures that form the concision and classicism of his art. The dramatist Caragiale reduces to essentials and heightens to the utmost the agitations of an incipient bourgeoisie in formation, which comes into ludicrous contrast with modern democratic institutions. Gestures, speech, institutions and settings spring picturesquely from the deeds and language of his robust characters who, even in their names as in Ghica’s memoirs, wave the banner of their own destiny: patriotic citizens devoted to progress yet driven by ignorance and petty interests to enthuse over empty forms and abstractions, they clumsily collide with reality.

The neoclassical poet and novelist Duiliu Zamfirescu (1858–1917) and the rustic short-story writer Ion Slavici (1848–1925) intensify the realistic hues along the line of the three great creators. The epic and idyllic George Coșbuc (1866–1918) perceived in the ethnic spirit particular qualities and expressions worthy of ancient classicism. Together with the poet Alexandru Vlahuță (1858–1919), in 1901 he founded the journal *Sămănătorul* (The Sower), inaugurating a new literary orientation that called writers back to the knowledge of the rural language and tradition, to ethnic spirit and national history; this direction was dynamized by the critic Ilarie Chendi (1872–1913) and especially by Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940), polygraphic humanist and polyglot, who urged the rejection of Parisian aesthetic fashions and inspiration from ethnic contingencies. The journal *Viața Românească* (Romanian Life, 1906), edited by the critic Garabet Ibrăileanu (1871–1936), emphasized the principle of national character and aesthetic-historical selection, constituting the populist current. Expressions of these contingencies are Octavian Goga (1881–1938), poet of peasant sufferings and energies, of Magyar oppression and the First World War; Ștefan O. Iosif (1875–1913), patriarchal lyricist; the meditative poet Panait Cerna (1881–1913); Ion Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești (1868–1946), concise and profoundly human short-story writer, psychologist of a delicate bourgeois world and solitary folk; Mihail Sadoveanu (b. 1886), short-story writer and novelist of atavism and elemental human forces, singer of nature.

In antagonism to the *Sămănătorism* and populism there emerged the urbanistic, modernist current informed by Parnassianism and Symbolism, led by the acerbic poet Alexandru Macedonski (1854–1920) and promoted by the criticism of Ovid Densusianu (1873–1938), folklorist and literary historian, and by the impressionist and classicizing critic Eugen Lovinescu (1881–1943), with poets such as the decadent 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), delicate poet and sensitive critic.

In the twenty-year span of national and spiritual integrity (1918–1940)—amid the antagonism of Lovinescu’s modernist journal *Sburătorul* (The Elf, 1919), Ibrăileanu’s populism, Iorga’s historicism, the Byzantine-traditionalist thought of *Gândirea* (Thought, 1921–44) promoted by Nichifor Crainic (b. 1889) and Lucian Blaga (b. 1895)—increasing emphasis was placed on ethnic humanism and 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 was an era of abundant literary efflorescence: poets imposing themselves even on the world stage included the visionary pluralist Tudor Arghezi (b. 1880), the bucolic Ion Pillat (1891–1945), Aron Cotruș (b. 1891), poet of working-class sovereignty; the mystical poet, essayist and dramatist Lucian Blaga, the hermetic Ion Barbu (b. 1895), the novelists Liviu Rebreanu (1885–1944), Sadoveanu, Matei Caragiale (1885–1936), Gib Mihăescu (1894–1936), Cezar Petrescu (b. 1892), Ionel Teodoreanu (b. 1897), the dramatist George Ciprian, the humorists George Topârceanu (1890–1937) and George Brăescu.

From 1933 to 1948 all currents found common ground in the *Revista Fundațiilor Regale*. From 1940 and especially from 1944, when Soviet oppression imposed tendentious and alien principles upon the national spirit (accepted by Sadoveanu, Beniuc, Camil Petrescu, Toma, etc.), a literature emerged that found profound and original accents in the souls of clandestine or exiled writers (M. Eliade, B. Munteanu, N. Herescu, Al. Busuiocanu, P. Ciureanu, Al. Gregorian, Vintilă Horia, Caranică, Rossigno-Menchinelli, Const. Virgil-Gheorghiu, Posteuca, Stamatu, Baciu), among whom Aron Cotruș stands out as a poet also in the Spanish language.

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without regard to their economic and social situation. The greatest ease is also granted for transferring from one type of school to another; as well as assiduous assistance and broad provision for poor students, 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 unified gymnasium (theoretical, administrative, technical, agricultural, commercial), students should as far as possible be oriented toward specialized technical tracks, so as to quickly train the personnel who will promote the industrialization of the country, especially 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 tied to life as possible, especially to working life. Hence the students’ contact with workshops, agricultural enterprises, construction sites, and compulsory manual labor. Great importance is also placed on physical and civic education.

Following the lyceums are two categories of institutes:
a) universities and polytechnics, lasting 4–6 years, which have the task of training personnel for the teaching corps of secondary education and especially the higher-level specialists and researchers in the different branches of science for higher education. The number of students is fixed each 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 training the higher-level specialists destined for production (engineers, agronomists, etc.) or for teaching in secondary education.

In broad outline, the current Romanian school system reproduces aspects of the Soviet school. Aversion to classical tradition; interpretation of history, philosophy, literature, and art history according to the dictates of historical materialism; a tendency to link teaching with “life,” which often results in a frantic search for immediate practical results and the insertion of current issues into various branches of culture. — V. tavv. LXXVII–LXXVIII.