Răzvan Theodorescu, Dimitrie Cantemir and  the syncretic humanism of Eastern Europe. In Virgil Cândea’s memory (1927- 2007)

Academician Razvan Theodorescu’s study places Dimitrie Cantemir among the most representative figures in the West and East of the seventeenth century. Romanian Orthodox humanist Dimitrie Cantemir was endowed with an “extraordinary polyglot vocation, “wrote according to the rules of classical rhetorics, being concerned about the Ottoman Empire history, which he described in his “Historia incrementa atque decrementa aulae otomanicae”, much appreciated by Voltaire and Gibbon. The author proves Cantemir’s strong attachment to the Christian humanism of Orthodoxy, represented by princes from Russian, Romanian and Balkan countries, which suggests “a spiritual map of the first European modernity”.

Keywords: Cantemir, the Ottoman Empire, “Historia incrementa” Christian humanism

RĂZVAN THEODORESCU