People

An enigma and a historical miracle

     Asked by a foreigner why he is proud of his people, a Romanian would most probably answer: because it is Romanian. This comes not only from a penchant for shocking retorts, actually a characteristic of the Romanians; it is a way of asserting the awareness that this is a unique people in the region where it has been fated to live. Because to be Romanian means to be Romance/Latin (the word comes from the Latin romanus) and the Romanians are the only Romance people in Central and Eastern Europe. As a nation, they emerged when the native Dacians were conquered by the Romans at the same time with the other Romance peoples, in the first millennium AD. Yet early in their existence they were separated from the rest of the family and left to form an island of Latinity among Slavic peoples to the south, east and north and a Finno-Ugric people the Hungarians to the west. That is why certain historians considered the fact that Latinity was preserved here as "an enigma and a historical miracle."

At the crossroads of history

     In the big Romance family, the Romanians are the only nation of Byzantine Orthodox rite, just as among the Slavic peoples there is one Catholic nation the Poles. The explanations pertain to history, a history that has not been very fair to the Romanians. From the Middle Ages until the 19th century they lived in three neighboring but distinct principalities, Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. These three countries lay at the crossroads of big kingdoms and empires, which coveted them. At various stages in their history they were forced to give up territories in favor of one or another of the mighty neighbors. But they have preserved their national being and their specific civilization. And they have been not just proud of being descendants from Rome, but also faithful to its legacy.

     Between the 11th-12th and 19th centuries, other populations, of various confessions, settled in the regions inhabited by Romanians. In Transylvania, besides the Romanians there have lived Hungarians and Szecklers, divided between Catholicism and Calvinism, and Lutheran Saxons or Germans; the Catholic Swabians from Banat, too, were ethnic Germans. The communities of Armenians and most of the Gypsies, who settled down here beginning in the Middle Ages, are Orthodox, while the Jews belong to the Mosaic faith. The majority population, though, is Romanian so that there has not been any interethnic strife to generate convulsions or bloody conflicts.

The Romanian way

     In their relations with the others, the Romanians have always applied the principle of both and not the one of either-or. This is not a mark of naivety but a sign of their vivid and flexible intelligence that also accounts for the Romanians' unusual capacity of adjustment. This adaptability is a quality, since they have favored dialogue over aggression, being convinced that, as an old proverb says, "soft words break no bones." Likewise, they have favored generosity, always keeping in mind the proverb "He who gives to another bestows on himself." But the same quality has translated also into a shortcoming, when they have considered that "the meek won't have their head struck off." As a matter of fact, it has been said that the Romanian psyche is a mixture of gifts and tendencies that usually exclude each other: a sense of reality and a penchant for dreaming, a predilection for the idyllic and for Epicureanism, lyricism and scathing irony.Romanians are naturally hospitable people and always eager to share stories of their village with travellers passing-by. You might even be invited into their home for a home-cooked traditional Romanian meal.