ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES SOCIALES ET POLITIQUES INSTITUT DITUDES SUD-EST EUROPENNES r EL Tome XVIII-1980. N°.3 (Juillet-Septembre) Relations politiques et diplomatiques Problèmes actuels de l'historiographie Histoire des textes Correspondance EDITURA ACADEME! REPUBLICII SOCIALISTE ROMANCA www.dacoromanica.ro Comité de rédaction Rédacteur enchef: IM. BERZAI Rédacteur en chef adjoint :ALEXANDRU DUTU Membres du comité :EMIL CONDURACHI, AL. ELIAN, VALENTIN GEORGESCU, H. MIHAESCU, COSTIN MURGESCU, D. M. PIPPIDI, MIHAI POP, AL. ROSETTI, EUGEN STANESCU Secrétaire du comité:LIDIA SIMION La REVUE DES CTUDES SUD-EST EUROPÉENNES paralt 4 fois paran. Toute com- mande de I 'étranger (fascicules ou abonnement) sera adressée à ILEXIM, Departa- mentul Export-Import Presä, P.O. Box 136-137, telex 11226, str. 13 Decembrie, n°3 R-79517 Bucuresti, Romänia ou à ses représentants à l'étranger. Le prix d'un abonnement est de 8 35 par an. 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EDITURA ACADEMIEI REPUBLICII SOCIALISTE ROMANIA Cal ea Victoriei n°125, téléphone 50 76 80, 79717 Bucure0Romänia www.dacoromanica.ro :HONE:1111ES TOME XVIII 1980 Juillet-Septembre N° 3 SOMMAIRE Relations politiques et diplomatiques ANDREI BREZIANU, " Quirinus narravit" : Nicolaus Olahus and Sir Thomas More's Background Information on the Turkish Question and Buda in the "Dialogue of Comfort" 399 ERBAN RADULESCU-ZONER, Romania and the Straits Question at the Beginning of the 20th Century 413 CONSTANTIN IORDAN-SIMA, Un diplomate roumain sur la vietoire de la revolution kémaliste it Istanbul 425 Problemes actuels de Phistoriographie AURELIAN PETRE, Dix années de recherches au sujet des problémes de la continuité (1970-1979), II 437 MARIA HOLBAN, Peut-II Atre question d'une seconde occupation roumaine de Vidin par Radu I"? 443 LUCIA TAFTA, Les Etats balltaniques à l'époque moderne jusqu'en 1878 dans la vision de Nicolae Iorga 459 Histoire des textes Correspondance FELIX KARLINGER (Salzburg), La funzione del "Märchen" nel canto popolare della Romttnia esemplificata in base alle ballate popolare rumene 473 ION DEJAN (Vire), Fragments de la correspondance inédite de Ion Bianu avec Vladan Georgevié 485 DORU MIHAESCU, La plus ancienne synthese roumaine des chronographes néo-grecs et vénitiens du XVII siecle, I 493 Chronique ANDREI PIPPIDI, I MARIA-ANA MUSICESCU I 519 Comptes rendus Documente0insemnäri romine01 din secolul al XVI-lea (Bogdan Ghiu) ; PHAEDON MALIN GOUD IS,Die mittelafterlichenkyrillischen Inschriften der HAmus- Halbinsel, I (Lucia Djamo-Diaconi(a ) ; Miinchener Zeitschrift ftir Balkankunde, (CatalinaValdsescu) ;DIMITRIE BOGDANOVIC, HaTazor impnactutx pynonnea manacTnpa XnnatmapaDEJAN MEDAKOVIC, Orape nrram- nane imjnre manacmpa Xnnannapa (Ion-Rada Mircea) 521 ELIZA CAMPUS, The Lfttle Entente and the Balkan Alliance(Nicolas Dascalu); Blain:ma =manna rta Blarappm. ,Ilonymefun n maTepnann (Constantin Iordcut-Sima) 529 Notices bibliographiques 535 Livres reps 553 REV. ÈTUDES SUD-EST EUROP., XVII 1.3. P.397-554, BUCAREST, 1980 www.dacoromanica.ro Relations politiques et diplomatiques "QUIRINUS. NARRAVIT" :NICOLAUS OLAHUS AND SIR THOMAS MORE'S BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE TURKISH QUESTION AND BUDA IN THE "DIALOGUE OF COMFORT" ANDREI BREZIANU Undeservedly, Sir Thomas More's DialogueofComfort _Against Tri- bulation seems to have been less in the highlights of literary research. The neglect should appear even more striking considering the fact that this prison writing, More's last and most extensive spontaneous English prose is, from several viewpoints, a spiritual testament of the father of the Utopia. 'Whereas the Utopia, in scores of editions and half a dozen trans- lations, was quick to achieve recognition both as a literary accomplish- ment and, later on, as a futurist handbook for improved social edification, the DialogueofComfort, with only three editions in the 16th century Tottell (1553), Rastell (1557) and Fowler (1573) seems to have been less successful with the public at large. Among others, Leland Miles's careful 1965 re-edition of the Dialogue1,with an excellent introduction, has been all the more a timely and stimulating opportunity inviting new insights and fresh appraisal. It would be pointless to expatiate on the causes of this difference in fame. The Utopia for one thing was meant to entertain and divert, the pretext of its fabulation being a fantastic voyage of discovery : this, of course, among other things, was bound to appekl to wide audiences. Oddly, Luther himself, early in 1518, before the theological dispute that was to set him at odds with Thomas More, confessed his extreme eager- ness to read it : "Utopiam Morinam sitio", he wrote in a letter to abbot Johann Lang in Erfurt2.For all its literary convention, the Dialogue ofComfort was conceived as a two-voices private confession meant to soothe the writer and the moralist "a man for all seasons" ("vir omnium horarum" as Erasmus had it) in his coming to grips with the pangs of his own impeding violent death. The appeal of such a discourse was of a more limited nature : as a book of spirituality its circulation was also restricted ; as an indirect sample of personal and liminal psychology, the interest appears to have had little echo, in spite of the masterly and so special way in which Thomas More is here seen to cope with the problem of his own end. In the DialogueofComfort, the writer's moral and intel- 1 Saint Thomas More,A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation,Indiana University Press, 1965. 2 Luther,Brieftoechsel,I (19 February 1518), p. 147. REV. ÉTUDES SUD-EST EUROP., XVIII, 3, 13,399-412, BUCAREST, 1980 33 www.dacoromanica.ro 400 ANDREI BREZIANU 2 lectual grasp of the terminal predicament of human life is indeed exem- plary, above all for its -transfiguring and sublimation of reality. With the benefit of hin.dsight, one is now in a position to better appreciate the scope of Thomas Alore's craft and overall achievement in so doing, turning that is his own innermost anxieties into a spontaneous masterpiece which goes by the name of an imaginary translation : A Dyalogue of Coumfort agaynst Tribula,cion made by an Hungarian in Laten, and translated out of Laten into Frenche, and oute of Frenche into Englishe. A master of bilingual -writing who could turn his hand to Latin and English equally well (an unprecedented accomplishment in this respect was the History of Xing _Richard the Third, -written in parallel in Latin and English 3), More must have played quite naturally with the idea and conven- tion of four successive languages vesting the same discourse with Hun- garian coming first and the action set in the citadel of Buda. On a formal level, however, one of the curious things about the Dialogue of Comfort is, of course, its setting in Buda. Another is its historical background and the problem of the writer's sources of information concerning the impend- ing Ottoman conquest in the aftermath of the fall of Belgrade (1521) and the battle of Mohacs (1526). It is mostly such qu.estions that arrest one's attention when tackling the matter from the viewpoint of I6th century Balkan and Central European history. But before going into seve- ral details related to the external side of the problem, it is not out of place to make a brief assessment of the artistic and thematic kernel of the work under discussion :specifically, the Dialogue of Comfort is indeed central to Saint Thomas More's creative thought, as already pointed out, among others, by G. Marc'Hadour in a fully documented study of the writer's sources and creative stature: "C'est son troisième grand dialogue, après celui de 1516 et celui de 1529, tous trois des chefs-d'ceuvre. Ses auteurs favoris, Platon, Lucien, Erasme, sont des metres du « colloque, » forme qui implique une attitude fondamentale de tolérance envers les idées d'autrui et un souci socratique de provoquer doucement la concep- tion et l'accouchement desesprits" 4. The Dialogue's structure an amazing achievement considering the conditions of writing in the Tower of London where the author was being detained (in the Bell Tower) is indeed endowed with astounding emotional power. A notable and ver- satile stylist (even to the point of writing at times, in spite of the cireum.- stances, in a succession of witty, jocular rejoinders), Thomas More offers here poignant glimpses of the state of mind of a man awaiting capital execution, experiencing simultaneously the feeling that the whole of Western tradition and civilization was on the verge of irremediable dis- aster. The turmoil of human confusion and dread in the background of such a unique state of awareness is perhaps the raost remarkable suggestion of this prison writing. The overtones and connotations of the Dialogue have well been described by R. Adams : "Such a work now perhaps seems both archaic and fantastic, since hindsight comfortably assures us that a "The very decision to compose the Richard in two languages was a startling enough innovation. More had no models for such a dual narrative, and he has had no imitators" (R. S. Sylvester, Introduction to vol. II of Thomas More's Complete Works, The Yale Edi- tion, p. LW). 4 G. Marc' Hadour, Thomas More et la Bible, Paris, 1969, p. 328-329. www.dacoromanica.ro 3 NICOLAUS OLAHUS AND SIR THOMAS MORE 401 Western civilization was not thus destroyed and especially since our vision of the early Tudor age tends to be blinded by the dazzle of the Elizabethan cultural renaissance.