Damaschin Bojincă – Legal Scholar and Translator in Pre-Modern Romanian Culture

Abstract

The figure of Damaschin Bojincă is linked to the activity of the Transylvanian School, even though he spent most of his life in Moldavia as a jurisconsult. Benefitting from the culturally effervescent period at the turn of the 19th century, from a varied education in several fields and in a European context, as well as from the direct contact with European prominent scholars and intellectuals, Damaschin Bojincă is known in the specialty literature as a historian, linguist, legal scholar and translator. However, all these fields of activity revolve around the ideology of the Transylvanian School, that of creating a national identity and an educated Romanian readership. The purpose of this paper is to present the personality of Damaschin Bojincă and the manner in which these goals were achieved both in his historical writings, where he acted in fact as translator, as well as in his active position as jurisconsult and professor of law in Moldavia.

Keywords

• damaschin bojincă
• transylvanian school
• enlightenment
• nationalist discourse