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Quaderni 2001
doc. Ştefan
Andreescu
The Revista Istorică [Historical Review] was founded by Nicolae Iorga in 1915
and published under the direction of the Romanian historian until his tragic
death in November 1940. It was initially entitled Accounts, Documents, Notes. In other words, its goals were less
than ambitious, as the review merely aimed to inform and publish historical
sources identified in public and private collections. However, Iorga’s Historical Review soon started to
publish papers and studies of various lengths as well. Only the second section
of each issue continued to bear the initial title, slightly modified: Chronicle, Accounts, Notes. For a quarter of a century, this section was almost entirely
written by Nicolae Iorga himself. And one should recognize in it a vast journal
of readings, outstanding in its richness and variety.
Throughout the years, the Historical
Review published numerous contributions on the relations of Venice to the Romanian
space, often by Nicolae Iorga’s collaborators and students, including Contemporary Venetian News on the Battle of
Baia, by P. P. Panaitescu (an. VIII, 1922, 1-3, pp. 47-50), The Relations of Moldavia to Poland in a
Report by a Venetian Ambassador (1575), by C. Marinescu (an. XI, 1925,
10-12, pp. 270-274) and Three Ducal
Letters to Alexandru Lăpuşneanu, by Al. Ciorănescu (an. XIX, 1933, 1-3, pp.
36-39). However, what I find more interesting to deal with is the direct
interventions which Nicolae Iorga made especially in the second section of the
review and which speak of his vivid and consistent interest in all that had to do with the image of Venice.
Before a more close examination of the aspect, I wish to
point out to a gesture of the scholar made in 1930, the exact year when the
cultural establishment of Venice, Casa
Romena, had been put into operation. The rubric Chronicle of issue no. 7-9/1930 published without any comments the
text of a letter received from Venice from Valeriu Papahagi. This letter is in
fact an archive research report by this young student, whom Iorga had sent on a
scholarship to Paris, to the Romanian School of Fontenay-aux-Roses (1929-1931),
and who had made a short trip from there to Venice[1].
Of course, the reason for publishing this letter resided not as
p. 77
much in the weight of the
archive discoveries as in Iorga’s satisfaction at seeing the freshly founded
establishment bear such early fruits, since young Papahagi must have put up
there while in Venice …
In 1917, Iorga published a short note entitled : A Romanian History of Venice (an. III,
1, pp. 23-24). According to Aron Densusianu, the manuscript in question
included, alongside Gheorghe Brancovici’s chronicle, a “short treaty of the
history of Venice”, no longer than five pages, which from the chronological
point of view went as far as the year 1689. Iorga believed that the “short
treaty” should be attributed to stolnic
Constantin Cantacuzino, one of the greatest Romanian scholars of the
seventeenth century and, at a certain time, a student in Padoua.
Another series of “Venetian echoes” is given by the
inscriptions collected by Iorga during his numerous stays in the city of the
dodges, during which one can easily imagine him in his free moments, exploring
the intricate streets and the medieval quarters of the town with unending
pleasure. Here he is now, during one such a walk, transcribing the inscription
noticed on a house in Campo San-Zaccaria,
one that had called his attention as it spoke of the “order measures in seventeenth-century
Venice”: “In questo campo nella clausura
dentro delli portoni sono prohibiti tutti li giochi, il tumultuar, strepitar,
dir parole obscene, commeter disonestà, far imonditie, metervi alberi,
antene, rotamine, qualsivoglia altra sorte di robbe, sotto gravissime pene et
è per decreto degli illustrissimi signori esecutori contro la blasfemia,
de XVI luglio et 8 agosto 1620[2]“.
On a different occasion, in 1925, Iorga signalled the
presence in the museum of the San Giorgio
dei Greci Church of “the portrait of scholar ‘Vlah’ Gherasim, Cretan,
archbishop of Philadelphia, bearing the following inscription: ‘Gerasimus Vlachus, Cretensis, archiepiscopus
Philadelph, Bibliotecham, inter alia, et plures quorum operum mss. codices
nostrae ecclesiae et nationi legavit, anno MDCLXXXV, aetatis suae LXXVIII[3].’
“
Iorga had always shown a clear preference for every piece of
information on Venetian figures coming into contact, in one way or antoher,
with the Romanian space. Therefore, from Epistolario
scelto di Apostolo Zeno, a book published in Venice in 1829, he reproduced
the beginning of a letter of 14 September 1720 speaking of physician Mihail
Schendos van der Beck – a Macedonian of origin, born in Venice around 1691 – ,
who in 1719 cured prince Nicolae Mavrocordat of malaria, in Bucharest: “Il nostro signor dottore Schendo mi ha
consegnato una cassetina per voi, ripiena di bellisimi pezzi di minerali
ch’esso ha raccolti e portati dalle miniere della Valacchia e Transilvania”,
wrote Apostolo Zeno from Vienna
p. 78
to professor Antonio
Valisnieri of Florence. And in another letter by the same Apostolo Zeno, the
official poet of the Court in Vienna, the interval spent by physician Schendos
in Transylvania and Wallachia is given explicitely: “diciotto mesi egli fu in
queste parti, donde ne riportò moltissime cose di raro pregio[4]“.
In fact, one should add that in this case Iorga was rather completing the
information on Mihail Schendos he had used in volume two of his synthesis Istoria românilor prin călători [The
History of the Romanians by Travellers], published in 1928 in a second edition[5].
Another completion to a work from the scholar’s young years –
Operele lui Constantin Cantacuzino [The
Works of Constantin Cantacuzino], Bucharest, 1901 –, is given by the following
note published in an issue of the Historical
Review of 1933: “bearly anything was
known on Albano Albanese, who counted among the professors of stolnic Constantin Cantacuzino. I
learned from Molmenti, Vita Privata dei
Veneziani, III, p. 340, n. 3, that professor <public lecturer> [lettor publico] Guido Antonio Albanese
was murdered by a student in 1657[6].”
In his constantly resumed studies of the chronicle texts, the
historian would also extract information probably with no immediate use to his
works under way, but worth being remembered. For instance, in Sanudo, Vite dei dogi (Muratori, XXII, c. 962)
he came upon the information according to which “in the list of the military
forces of all the states around the year 1400, ‘the Wallachians’ were recorded
with 20,000 people.” And in the “Venetian-Cipriote chronicle of Amadi” he found
the expression “lissia per lavarsi al
capo”. With the explanation that “lissia”
has as a Romanian equivalent “leşie”.
And again, he noticed that the Romanian “vara”
was reproduced by an identical word in the chronicle of Strambaldi: “La vera[7]“.
It is quite obvious that Iorga showed a constant interest in
similarities between some linguistic forms from some regions of Italy and those
from some regions of Romania. At a certain moment, he published in the
“Historical Review” such notes occasioned by the reading of the volume Antologia della lirica veneziana dal 500 ai
nostri giorni, by Antonio Pilot (Venice, 1913). He even entitled them “Venetianisms”. Here they are:
p. 79
“Where does the Moldavian form talger come from, as a variant to the Wallachian taler?
I read in the poetry of Maffio Venier, a Sixteenth century
Venetian:
Magna in tel pugno ognun
co’fa’l falcon,
senza o tola o tageri.”
Further on:
“Also there, among superstitions, the one according to which it is an ill omen when ‘una galina canta da galo,’(p. 88).
Again, a cata (to look for) also exists in the Venetian dialect :
Se intenda de quei primi che se cata
Quela
prima matina e che se trova
In strada a puro caso (p. 90).
It brings ill luck to keep pigeons in the home:
Segno xe bon, no, quando le Cisile
O i colombi xe in casa a farse el nio (p. 92).
For dandanà, see Giulio Cesare Bona (the same period) ibid., p. 137:
Un strepito, un rumor, un tananai.
And the Venetian dialect also exhibits the rotacism arente for anente, which is ours înainte[8]“.
The Venetian
periodicals presented by Iorga in his review in a consistent manner were: Atti della reale deputazione di storia
patria per le Venezie, Nuovo archivio
veneto, Atti del reale Istituto
veneto, Almanaco veneto or Ateneo veneto. It is neither the time
nor the place to make here a review of the Romanian historian’s comments
on these periodicals. Sufice it to say that at times he succeeded
in identifying links to the Romanian artistical phenomenon. Like for
instance in the case of the S. Maria
Mater Domini Church of Vicenza, a subject approached by Giuseppe Frasson in
an issue of Ateneo Veneto. Iorga
noted in this monument the “details of vault, similar to those in the Moldavian
churches of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries[9]“.
One should also add that these notes sometimes bear the expression of personal
feelings, like for instance the commemoration of the British historian Horatio
F. Brown - a friend of Iorga’s - who “died in his Cà Torresella, at Zattare,
p. 80
in 1926”. In homage to the departed,
the Romanian historian wrote briefly that, “he intended not only for his work
but for his life as well to identify with that of Venice[10]“.
Iorga’s admiration for all that Venice stood for in world
history shows clearly his selection and record in the Historical Review of
contributions that had come up in the most unexpected places. Therefore, in Revue de l’Université de Lyon (IV,
1928), his attention was drawn by W. Thomas’ paper Venice and her Prestige in English Literature [Venise et son prestige dans la littérature d’Outre Manche], in
which he remarked that “one may notice the restructuring after old Venetian
methods of the English Conservative Party[11]“.
At times, like in a genuine breviary of ideas, the scholar
went as far as to write on the corner of a page some thoughts with a “long
impact”, such as those on the fundamental character of Italian medieval art.
The reader comes upon reflections such as those on “the Western mosaic
phenomenon”, which can be noted “in Torcello and in the mosaics of S. Marco
Church, to say nothing of those of Pirano. Vasari speaks of the ‘Greek
painters’ of Santa Maria Novella of
Florence and the paintings of Mistra and Arges, the mosaics of the Cahriè Mosque of Constantinople
give a measure of the Byzantine craftsmanship in the century to follow. Without
the relations to the Byzantium and the common life of the two worlds – Italian
and Byzantine –, the western trend might have asserted itself even more freely
in the twelfth century, when the Comnens themselves brought so much western
influence into the life of their Empire ... We should not forget the
opportunities of life lived in common
in the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Until then, the relations had been
mostly carried out with Venice, and this can be recognized in the shape of
mosaics[12]“.
Therefore, one may say that Venice was to the Romanian historian “the key
witness” of the evolution of the spiritual interrelation between the western
and eastern Europe. And this must have laid at the core of Iorga’s major interest
in the Venetian world!
Among the monographs on Venice which caught Iorga’s attention
I should mention a history of Serenissima
written by Antonio Battistella, one that in the opinion of the Romania
historian was – in 1921, the year of its publishing – “the best ever history of
Venice written in Italian,” moreover, “brilliantly” edited[13].
p. 81
Equal attention was devoted to the book of Giuseppe Merenini,
La constituzione di Venezia dalle origini
alla serrata del Magior Consiglio, Venice [1928], termed as the work “of a
constitutionalist in the field of the highly original old history of Venice.”
Iorga concluded about it: “Well-developed exposition, ample and clear[14].”
But also according to Iorga, “one of the most beautiful books, an interesting
fund full of new information, as pleasant in exposition as in illustration, is
that of Elio Zorzi on the “Venetian hostelries” (Osterie veneziane, Bologna, 1928)[15].
From this very particular book on the Venetian world, Iorga extracted among
other things the paragraph on the Italian mamaliga
– la polenta – “sung in Milan in my youth by travelling musicians:
“Nè la manna del deserto
E
così buona e saporita
Come la polenta, lenta, lenta...”
In closing to the present notes, I wish to bring to attention
Iorga’s selection from the preface by A. Fradeletto to the volume of history of
1921, turned into a precept from which the Romanian historian never
desisted:
“History cannot consist exclusively in a careful exposition of things that happened, or in the documented research of causes and effects. It should be able at times to rekindle the ideals which brought about a reality now vanished: feelings and ideals which, stripped of any changing contingencies and considered in their intimate life, form the moral and national patrimony of a people, and to which one cannot and should not remain a stranger”.
Other
articles published in our periodicals by Ştefan Andreescu:
A Genoese Scion
among the Moldavian Boyars?
Pătrăuţi e
Arezzo: un paragone e le sue conseguenze
For this material,
permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational
purposes and personal use.
Whether you intend to
utilize it in scientific purposes, indicate the source: either this web address
or the Quaderni della Casa Romena 1 (2001): Quaderni Nicolae Iorga.
Atti del Convegno italo-romeno N. Iorga organizzato all’Istituto Romeno di
Cultura di Venezia. 9-10 novembre 2000 (a cura di Ion Bulei e Şerban Marin), Bucarest: Casa Editrice
Enciclopedica, 2001
No permission is granted for
commercial use.
© Şerban Marin, October
2002, Bucharest, Romania
Last updated: July 2006
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Quaderni 2001
[1] Subsequently,
IORGA published several papers by V. PAPAHAGI in the Revista Istorică, all based on the documentary material gathered in
Venice: 17 (1931), 4-6: 169-176; 18 (1932), 4-5: 107-132 and 10-12: 306-313; 20
(1934), 4-6: 152-166.
[2] Historical Review 18 (1932), 10-12: 391.
[3] ibidem 11 (1925), 1-3: 70.
[4] ibidem 19 (1933), 1-3: 102.
[5] See N. IORGA, Istoria românilor prin călători, second
ed., completed, vol. II, Bucharest, 1928: 93-94; see also, Călători străini în ţările române [Foreign Travellers to the
Romanian Principalities], vol. IX, Bucharest, 1997: 78-92.
[6] Historical Review 19 (1933), 1-3: 104.
[7] ibidem 14 (1928), 4-6: 220.
[8] ibidem 23 (1997), 10-12: 399-400.
[9] ibidem 26 (1940), 7-9: 296.
[10] ibidem 13 (1927), 10-12: 439. On the
friendship between the two, see N. IORGA, O
viaţă de om aşa cum a fost [A Man’s Life Such as It Was], ed. by the care
of Valeriu and Sanda RÂPEANU, Bucharest, 1972: 361-352 (they had known each
other since 1901).
[11] The Historical Review, 14 (1928), 10-12:
435.
[12] ibidem 24 (1938), 7-9: 287.
[13] ibidem 8 (1922), 4-6: 122.
[14] ibidem 15 (1929), 4-6: 169-170.
[15] ibidem 16 (1930), 1-3: 52.