From Periphery to Centre.The Image of Europe at the Eastern Border of Europe
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Munich Personal RePEc Archive From Periphery to Centre.The Image of Europe at the Eastern Border of Europe Şipoş, Sorin and Moisa, Gabriel and Cepraga, Dan Octavian and Brie, Mircea and Mateoc, Teodor University of Oradea, Romania, University of Padova, Italy 2014 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/59276/ MPRA Paper No. 59276, posted 15 Oct 2014 12:04 UTC Edited by: Sorin Şipoş, Gabriel Moisa, Dan Octavian Cepraga, Mircea Brie, Teodor Mateoc From Periphery to Centre. The Image of Europe at the Eastern Border of Europe Editorial committee: Delia-Maria Radu Roxana Ivaşca Alexandra Bere Ionuţ Ciorba CONTENTS Sorin ŞIPOŞ, Dan Octavian CEPRAGA, From Periphery to Centre. The Image of Europe at the Eastern Border of Europe ………..………..… 5 I. PERIPHERY VIEWED FROM THE CENTRE …………………..… 13 Lorenzo RENZI, «Terra Romena» ……………………………………..… 15 Ion Alexandru MIZGAN, The Crusades – Cause of Tension between Eastern and Western Europe ………………………………………...…..…21 Florin DOBREI, Transylvanian “Schismatics”, “Heretics” and “Infidels” in the Vision of 13th-16th Century Catholic Europe ……………………..… 47 Ioan-Aurel POP, 16th Century Venetian Bailiffs‟ Reports on Realities in the Ottoman Empire …………………………………………………..… 61 Ion EREMIA, A False Theory Still Persists at the Eastern Border of Latinity .. 76 Delia-Maria RADU, From Centre to the Periphery and the Other Way Round ………………………………………………………..……..… 88 Teodor MATEOC, Identity and Race. The Problem of Otherness in Contemporary Cultural Studies …………………………………...……..…96 II. SELF-IMAGES AT EUROPE’S EASTERN BORDERS ………..… 105 Nicolae EDROIU, The Borders – Reality and Concept ………………..… 107 Şerban TURCUŞ, Ai confini della Cristianità. Il documento “fondazionale” della città di Oradea (1113). Interpretazioni ecclesiologiche ed onomastiche .. 113 Florin SFRENGEU, An Image of the Society in North-Western Romania during the 10th-11th Centuries A.D ………………………………..……..… 212 Mihai GEORGIŢĂ, The Ennoblement of the Calvinist Romanian Priests at the Middle of the 17th Century in Transylvania …………..…………..… 133 Sorin ŞIPOŞ, Foreign Travellers in the Romanian Space and Border Symbolism (1797-1810) ………………………………..………………..… 141 Mircea BRIE, Ethnicity and Politics in the Romanian Space. The Case of North-Western Transylvania ……………………………...……………..… 158 Mihai DRECIN, Delia CORA, Sui rumeni e sugli altri (1910 – 1939). Immagini di Săcele, della Basarabia, dell‟Europa Centrale nella memorialistica e nella corrispondenza del docente universitario Victor Jinga .. 171 Anca OLTEAN, Incursions in the History of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe (19th Century-1945) ……………………………...……..… 181 Gabriel MOISA, Between Exclusion and Acceptance. The Perception of Historian Gheorghe I. Brătianu in Communist Romania ………..……..… 194 III. EUROPEAN IDENTITIES ………………………………………..…203 Sever DUMITRAŞCU, European Carpathians Vs. Marginal Carpathians .. 205 Ovidiu MUREŞAN, Projects and Attempts for the European Aggregation in the Middle Ages and at the Beginning of the Modern Period ………...… 209 Radu Romînaşu, European Images and Policies Reflected in the Modernization Process of the Romanian Extra-Carpathian Space (18th-19th Century) ….....… 217 Federico DONATIELLO, L‟opera italiana tra le selve dei Carpazi: la traduzione di Heliade Rădulescu della Norma di Felice Romani …...…..… 233 Stelian NISTOR, Bihar County – Geographical Realities Reflected in Monographic Works from the End of 19th - Beginning of 20th Century ...… 247 Ioan DERŞIDAN, An Algorithm in Mitteleuropa ……………………..… 255 Anarela CHIŞ (MESEŞAN), Ion ZAINEA¸ The European Identity of the Romanian Exile ………………………………………….…………..… 261 Dana SALA, “Cartea Şoaptelor” by Varujan Vosganian: the Palimpsest of Collective Memory ……………………………………………..……..… 272 Viorel BOLDUMA, Relations of the Republic of Moldova with the European Union between 2009-2013: Achievements, Progress and Prospects …....… 281 Antonio FAUR, Considerations on European Identity. An Investigation among Students in History at the University of Oradea (Year 2013) …..… 287 FROM PERIPHERY TO CENTRE. THE IMAGE OF EUROPE AT THE EASTERN BORDER OF EUROPE Sorin ŞIPOŞ Dan Octavian CEPRAGA I. The awareness of the space in the Eastern part of the continent had already occurred in certain Western circles, and their interest increased progressively over time. The transition from “Little” to “Great Europe” was about to be made, and the Enlightenment, with its appetite for exotic realities, with its idea of “citizen of the universe”, with its cosmopolitan discourse, would provide a suitable framework in this sense. Since the end of the seventeenth century more people had become interested in learning about the spaces at the periphery of the civilized world, where economic, cultural and human transfers were produced. “Now – wrote Paul Hazard – Italians had their taste for travel revived; and the French were as restless as quicksilver”1. “The German we refer to – added Paul Hazard – spared no effort: he climbed the mountains to the top; he followed rivers from the source to their mouths [...], he visited, taking notes, churches, monasteries, abbeys, public squares, town halls, aqueducts, fortresses, arsenals. [...] For the British, the journey was a complement to their education; the young noblemen fresh out of Oxford and Cambridge, crammed with guineas and accompanied by a wise preceptor, crossed the Strait and began the great tournament”2. The historians, the art historians and the specialists in Anglo- Saxon literature associated the years 1680-1780 with the golden years of the great tour3. A large number of writings or objects preserved advocate the importance of this ritual by which young men from the greatest families leave for three years on the major roads of Europe in the company of a preceptor or with other people in their service4. Prior to processing the information from the memoirs, diaries, reports or correspondence of the foreign travellers, we intend to clarify some issues related to the research methodology. First, we would like to specify the number of those who travelled in Eastern Europe, and especially in the Romanian space, and left 1 Paul Hazard, Criza conştiinţei europene 1680-1715. Traducere Sanda Şora. Prefaţă Romul Munteanu, Bucureşti, 1973, p. 5. 2 Ibidem, p. 6. 3 Gilles Bertrand, Voyager dans l‟Europe des années 1680-1780, in Les circulations internationales en Europe, années 1680- années 1780. Sous la direction de Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire et Pierrick Pourchasse, Rennes, 2010, p. 243. 4 Ibidem. 5 From Periphery to Centre documentary records. Both the number of those who left notes and the quality of the records on the Romanian territory are important. If a certain piece of information is recorded by several authors, for example the quality of the communication pathways, the historian may take it into consideration and compare it at the end with other internal documentary sources to check the reliability of the information. A second problem that we address is to establish the formation of the traveller, the purposes of the travel and the direction from which he came to the Romanian Principalities. Why is the intellectual formation of the traveller important? It is important because the traveller who holds degrees in a particular area can make pertinent, diverse comments, but more importantly, critical comments. Also, his intellectual formation enables him to obtain information, at least theoretically, from previous works and from his contemporaries. The reasons of his travel are also important for the information gathered. A traveller hurried to get to the destination has less time and interest to describe the places he has been to and the people he encountered. In exchange, the political and economic missions he was charged with would therefore be more documented. The scientist, the art lover, the ethnographer would be more attentive to the natural resources, the natural landscape, the people, the customs and traditions, the past and the contemporary political realities. II. “Like many others of my generation, I also believed, in the years before and after the war, in a Europe politically united under the seal of reason and equality of languages and cultures. And I still believe in it, even if this Europe, of which Federico Chabod wrote very suggestively, tracing the history of its idea together with that of the parallel and opposite one of “nation”, this Europe has not yet been born, on the contrary, ever since its first institutions have been 5 established, seems more distant than ever...” These words opened Gianfranco Folena‟s famous book L‟italiano in Europa (1983), where it is not incidentally mentioned the name of the great Italian historian Federico Chabod, prominent representative of that generation of intellectuals who, after the war, believed in another, more dignified idea of Europe, with a civic enthusiasm and a high perspective, which is almost absent today. Although different in intention and disciplinary perspectives, Chabod‟s studies on the parallel and opposite ideas of Europe and nation, and Folena‟s research on the Italian language and European heteroglossia of the Enlightenment, had a common spiritual horizon, starting from similar ideal assumptions, considering Europe and the nation as a kind of homeland that can be freely and unconstrainedly joined, “under the seal of reason and equality of languages and cultures”6. 5 Gianfranco Folena, L‟italiano in Europa. Esperienze linguistiche del Settecento, Torino, 1983, p. IX. 6 Cfr. Federico Chabod, Storia dell‟idea d‟Europa, Roma - Bari, 1961. 6 The Image