Romanian culture

The culture of Romania is an umbrella term used to encapsulate the ideas, customs and social behaviours of the people of Romania that developed due to the country's distinct geopolitical history and evolution. It is theorized and speculated that Romanians and related peoples (Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians) are the combinations of descendants of Roman colonists and people indigenous to the region who were Romanized.

The Dacian people, one of the major indigenous peoples of southeast Europe, are one of the predecessors of the Proto-Romanians. It is believed that a mixture of Dacians, Thracians, Romans, and Illyrians are the predecessors of the modern Romanians, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians. In addition, Romanian culture shares several similarities with other ancient cultures, such as that of the Armenians.

Background

During the Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, the major influences came from medieval Greeks and the Byzantine Empire; from the Hungarians; from the Germans, especially ( Saxon settlers in Transylvania) as well as from several other neighboring peoples.

Romania's history has been full of rebounds: the culturally productive epochs were those of stability when the people proved quite an impressive resourcefulness in the making up for less propitious periods and were able to rejoin the mainstream of European culture. This stands true for the years after the Phanariote- Ottoman period, at the beginning of the 19th century, when Romanians had a historical context and Romania started to become westernized, mainly with French influences, which they pursued steadily and at a very fast pace. From the end of the 18th century, the sons of the upper classes started having their education in Paris, and French became (and was until the communist years) a genuine second language of culture for Romanians.

The modeling role of France, especially in the fields of political ideas, administration, and law, as well as in literature, was paralleled, from the mid-19th century down to World War I, by German culture as well, which also triggered constant relationships with the German world not only at a cultural level but in daily life as well. With the arrival of Soviet Communism in the area, Romania quickly adopted many soviet influences, and Russian was also widely taught in the country during Romania's socialist years.

History

Middle Ages

Until the 14th century, small states (Romanian: ''voievodate'') were spread across the territory of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. The medieval principalities Wallachia and Moldavia arose around that time in the area on the southern and eastern sides of the Carpathian Mountains.

Moldavia and Wallachia were both situated on important commercial routes often crossed by Polish, Saxon, Greek, Armenian, Genovese, and Venetian merchants, connecting them well to the evolving culture of medieval Europe. Grigore Ureche's chronicle, ''Letopisețul Țărîi Moldovei'' (''The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia''), covering the period from 1359 to 1594, is a very important source of information about life, events, and personalities in Moldavia. It is among the first non-religious Romanian literary texts; due to its size and the information that it contains, it is, probably, the most important Romanian document from the 17th century.

The first printed book, a prayer book in Slavonic, was produced in Wallachia in 1508, and the first book in Romanian, a catechism, was printed in Transylvania, in 1544. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, European humanism influenced the works of Miron Costin_and_Ion_Neculce,_the_Moldavian_chroniclers.html" ;"title="Ion_Neculce.html" ;"title="rom the rule ...