Arthur J. Evans, Henry Trotter and Moses Gaster

“ In Transylvania one section of the Rumanian population had accepted the spiritual rule of the pope; they became now Greek-Catholic, instead of Greek Orthodox. Rome took good care to educate the priesthood far above the status of the Orthodox priests, and continued an extensive proselytizing activity. So long as the Rumanians were spiritually united with the other Orthodox nations, and so long as they used the Slavonic or Cyrillic alphabet, they would practically be cut off from the Latin West. ”

“ On the 20th of May he landed at Turnu Severin, where he was enthusiastically welcomed. He reached Bucharest on the 22nd, and on the same day, in the presence of the provisional government, took the oaths to respect the laws of the country and to maintain its rights and the integrity of its territory. In October Prince Charles proceeded to Constantinople and was cordially received by his suzerain, the sultan, who bestowed on him the firman of investiture, admitted the principle of hereditary succession in his family, and allowed him the right of maintaining an army of 30,000 men. ”

“ Of the character of the Moldavian people Cantemir does not give a very favourable account. Their best points were their hospitality and, in Lower Moldavia, their valour. They cared little for letters, and were generally indolent, and their prejudice against mercantile pursuits left the commerce of the country in the hands of Armenians, Jews, Greeks and Turks. The pure-blood Ruman population, noble and plebeian, inhabited the cities and towns or larger villages; the peasantry were mostly of Little Russian and Hungarian race, and were in a servile condition. ”

“ A Russian army occupied the country until the Porte fulfilled its promises. The principalities were to enjoy commercial freedom, and the right of establishing a quarantine cordon along the Danube or elsewhere. The internal constitution of the countries was to be regulated by an “Organic Law,” which was drawn up by assemblies of bishops and boiars at Jassy and Bucharest, acting, however, under Russian control. The Organic Law thus elaborated was by no means of a liberal character, and amongst other abuses maintained the feudal privileges of the boiars. ”

“ Even when the Rumanian language at last supplanted the Slavonic, it did not emancipate itself from the original; the new was merely a translation from the old, and at the beginning it was as literal as possible. We have therefore in the first period a medieval literature transplanted to Rumania and consisting of translations from the Slavonic. The reason of the change from Slavonic into Rumanian is to be sought in the influence the Reformation had among the Rumanian inhabitants of Transylvania. ”

“ The intellectual development of Rumania has never until modern times been affected by Latin culture, but it has been profoundly influenced first by Slavonic literature, then by the Greek or Byzantine literature, and last, by the Western, notably French and Italian novels. The history of Rumanian literature can be divided into three distinct periods: the Slavonic, from the beginnings of Rumanian literature in the middle of the 16th century down to 1710 ”

“ If any land remained after satisfying the wants of the peasants, it was to be sold by public auction in lots of 50 to 621⁄2 acres. All lots in both cases were declared inalienable for thirty years. The sale of the larger lots gave rise to so many abuses that in 1896 a law was passed abolishing their further sale. As a result of these measures the majority of Rumans are peasant proprietors; but the smallness of the holdings renders scientific farming difficult except by co-operation, and many proprietors can only live by working for the owners of large estates. ”

“ Religion.—The State Church of Rumania, which is governed by a Holy Synod, professes the Orthodox Oriental creed. Its independence was formally recognized by the oecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, in 1885. The Rumanian Church had claimed its independence from very ancient times, but under the Turkish suzerainty and Phanariote hospodars Greeks were generally elected as bishops, and the influence of the Greek patriarch at Constantinople came to be more and more felt. ”

“ Land Tenure.—The Rumanian system of land tenure dates from 1864, when most of the land was held in large estates, owned privately, or by the state or by monasteries. There was also a small class of peasant proprietors, called mochenéni in Walachia, résèchi in Moldavia, living and working in family communities; but the great mass of the peasantry cultivated the lands of the large proprietors, giving a certain number of days' work to their manorial lord, in addition to a tithe of the raw produce. ”

“ Vladimirescu was slain by a Greek revolutionary agent, but Ypsilanti rashly continuing his enterprise after he had been repudiated by the Russian emperor, his forces were finally crushed by the Turks at Dragashani, in Walachia, and at Skuleni, in Moldavia; and the result of his revolt was a Turkish occupation of the principalities. In 1822 the Turkish troops, who had committed great excesses, were withdrawn on the combined representations of Russia, Austria and Great Britain. ”

“ Fauna.—In its fauna, Walachia has far more affinity to the lands lying south of the Danube than to Transylvania, although several species of Claudilia, once regarded as exclusively Transylvanian, are found south of the Carpathians. Moldavia and the Baragan Steppe resemble the Russian prairies in their variety of molluscs and the lower kinds of mammals. Over 40 species of freshwater mussels (Unionidae) have been observed in the Rumanian rivers. The lakes of the Dobrudja likewise abound in molluscs; parent forms, in many cases, of species which reappear, greatly modified, in the Black Sea. ”

“ In 1821 Alexander Ypsilanti, a son of the voivode, and an aide-de-camp of the tsar Alexander I., entered Moldavia at the head of the Hetaerists, and, representing that he had the support of the tsar, prevailed on the hospodar Michael Sutzu to aid him in invading the Ottoman dominions. To secure Walachian help, Ypsilanti advanced on Bucharest, but the prince, Theodore Vladimirescu, who represented the national Ruman reaction against the Phanariotes, repulsed his overtures with the remark “that his business was not to march against the Turks, but to clear the country of Phanariotes.” ”

“ The dead are borne to the grave with uncovered faces, and a Rumanian funeral is a scene of much barbaric display. All classes delight in music and dancing. Women hold spinning-parties at which the leader begins a ballad, and each in turn contributes a verse. A number of satirical folk-tales (largely of Turkish origin) are current at the expense of Jew, gipsy or parish priest. The Rumanian folk-songs, sung and often improvised by the villagers, or by a wandering guitar-player (cobzar) , are of exceptional interest and beauty (see Literature, below) . ”

“ G. Coşbuc, who has risen more recently to fame, is the poet of the unfortunate Rumanian peasant, emancipated only in name and on paper, and a prey to greedy landowners and to a medieval administration. The poets of this school drew their inspiration from popular poetry, and all of them were sons of the lower middle class or of peasants, who by dint of heavy work and great hardship were able to rise above the narrow social conditions in which they were born. ”

“ The Greeks form a floating population of merchants and small traders, anxious to amass a fortune and return home. German and Austrian business men visit the country in large numbers, and colonies of German farmers flourish among the mountains of Little Walachia. In central Moldavia there is a large population of Magyar descent, and the Servian and Bulgarian elements are strong near the Danube. The interior of the Dobrudja is occupied largely by Turks and Bulgarians, with Tatars, Russians and Armenians, but here the Ruman steadily gains ground at the expense of the alien. ”

“ In 1881, Prince Charles was proclaimed king. As he proved childless, the succession was accepted by his brother, Prince Leopold, on behalf of his son William; and in 1888 William renounced his claim in favour of Ferdinand his younger brother. Thus the monarchy became hereditary in the family of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. No woman may ascend the throne; and, in default of a male heir, the representatives of the people can choose a king among the royal families of western Europe.
Parliament consists of a senate, elected for eight years, and a chamber of deputies, elected for four years. ”

“ The new ministry, of which Bratianu was the leading spirit, showed considerable energy: a concession was granted for the construction of the first Rumanian railway, from Bucharest to Giurgevo, and the reorganization of the army was undertaken. Among other less judicious measures, a decree was passed ostensibly directed against all vagabond foreigners, but really aimed at the Jews, large numbers of whom, including many respected landowners and men of business, were imprisoned, or expelled, from Jassy, Bacau and other parts of Moldavia. ”

“ Petroleum, salt, lignite and brown coal are largely worked. Deposits of rock-salt, a valuable government monopoly, stretch from the department of Succava in northern Moldavia to that of Gorjiu in Walachia, and are mined in the departments of Bacau, Prahova and Râmnicǔ Sǎrat. The presence of petroleum, indicated by many ancient workings in the shape of shallow hand-dug wells, can be traced continuously at the foot of the Transylvanian Alps, from Turnu Severin into Bukovina. Rumans claim for their product a higher percentage of pure oil than is found in the American, Galician and Caucasian wells ”

“ About 1780 Riga Velestiniul, a Hellenized Vlach from Macedonia who is also known by the purely Greek name of Rigas Phereos, had founded in Bucharest a patriotic and revolutionary association known as the Society of Friends The “Hetaerist” movement. (ἑταιρία τῶν φίλων) which gradually attained great influence. In 1810 Ignatius, the metropolitan of Walachia, founded a Greek literary society in Bucharest which soon developed into a political association, and many similar bodies were formed throughout the Greek world, and finally united into one powerful secret society, the Hetairia. ”

“ The first change was introduced by Matthew Bassaraba, prince of Walachia (1633-54) , and by Basil the Wolf, prince of Moldavia (1634-53) . Basil drew up a criminal code, on the principle of “an eye for an eye.” Thus, a man guilty of arson was burned alive. No idea of equality before the law as yet existed: nobles might only be beheaded or banished. Bassaraba, besides reforming the canon law, issued a similar criminal code, with a number of civil enactments, based on Roman law, and regulating testaments, guardianship, &c. ”

“ The whole of this popular literature belongs to what may be called the cycle of the Balkan nations, in every one of which exact parallels are to be found. Not that there was any direct, deliberate borrowing by one nation from the other, but all of them seem to have stood for a long time under identical psychological influences and to have developed on similar lines. The superstitions of one are often found to be those of the others, and in such a form that they could not have been taken over independently from a third source; they show too much family likeness. ”

“ What Alecsandri was for verse, Odobescu was for prose. He also created the Rumanian historical novel, by his Mihnea Vodǎ (1858) and Doamna Kiajna (1860) . The first novel describing human nature in everyday life is the Ciocoii vechi şi noi (1863) of Nicolae Filimon (1819-1865) . In Moldavia where the knowledge of the old chroniclers had not entirely died out and disturbing philological influences were not so acutely felt, we find the vigorous writings of Mihail Cogǎlniceanu—one of the leading spirits of the 19th century, the greatest mind and the real founder of Rumania. ”

“ In Walachia there was not a single historian of importance in the first half of the 18th century. In the second we have the chronicle of Dionisie Eclesiarh (1764-1815) , a simple-minded and uncritical writer who describes contemporary events. The ancestor of a great family of poets and writers, I. Vacarescu described the history of the Ottoman empire from the beginning to 1791, interpolating doggerel verses. Alexander Beldiman describes in a rhymed epic, Eteria (1821) , the first battles between the Greeks and the Turks in Moldavia. It is a bitter satire upon the Greeks. ”

“ Nowhere has the theatre played a more important rôle in the history of civilization than in Walachia and Moldavia, more in the The Drama. former than in the latter. It formed the rallying-ground for the new generation which chafed under the tyranny of a Greek court. A certain Aristia, of Greek origin, but soon acclimatized to his surroundings as teacher at the high school in Bucharest, was the first to adapt foreign dramas for the Rumanian stage. These were first performed in Greek and afterwards translated into Rumanian. ”

“ Under Prince Charles universal and compulsory service was introduced. The present system, in which his reforms culminated, rests upon a law of 1891, modified in 1900 and 1908.
By this law the forces are divided into three sections. The first is composed of men between the ages of 21 and 30, enrolled in the field army and its reserves. Every citizen capable of bearing arms must serve from his 30th to his 36th year in the second section, or territorial militia, which musters in spring for shooting-practice and in the autumn for field manœuvres. ”

“ Proud of their race and country, they acquired, with their independence, an ardent sense of nationality; and they look forward to the day which will reunite them to their kinsmen in Transylvania and Bessarabia. They have been taught, originally in the interests of Transylvanian Roman Catholicism, to regard themselves as true descendants of the Romans. The peasants retain their distinctive dress, long discarded, except on festivals and at court, by the wealthier classes. Men wear a long linen tunic, leather belt, white woollen trousers and leather gaiters, above Turkish slippers or sandals. ”

“ Carried away by the Russians in his early youth, he settled in Rumania, learned Church music, and became one of its best exponents, married four times, had an adventurous life, but lived among the people for whom he wrote and composed his tunes. In about twenty years he published no less than fifty books, all of them still popular. Besides his edition of the Rumanian Church service-books with musical notation, he published a series of tales, proverbs and songs either from older texts or from oral information ”