Origin and early life Through his paternal family, Filitti descended from historical figures whose careers were intertwined with the history of
Wallachia, the Romanian subregion and former autonomous state. It originated with
ethnic Greek migrants from the
Epirus—where the Filitti family was known to be residing in the 17th century. The main settlers were male monks, whose presence was attested in
Buzău County around 1786: rising through the ranks of the
Romanian Orthodox Church,
Dositei Filitti served as
Wallachian Metropolitan Bishop, assigning nephew Constandie to preside over the
Diocese of Buzău. Although his Epirote father was a noted
Russophile, the Metropolitan regarded himself as a liberal-minded Wallachian patriot: he founded the local school of divinity, provided scholarships to young Wallachians, and sponsored the growing printing industry. In tandem, he spoke out against the
practice of slavery, protecting
Romani women from their Wallachian masters and donating money for the release of
devșirme victims. The historian claimed lineage from the non-monastic branch of the Filitti clan. A Silvestru Filitti, active ca. 1810, was among the first private practitioners in Wallachia. Fully
Romanianized, By then, the family owned a country estate, at
Alexeni,
Ialomița County. The Filittis preserved strong connections with the Ialomița region, where Colonel Filitti had twice served as Prefect. Ioan inherited from him a deep dislike and mistrust toward the dominant
National Liberal Party (PNL), sentiments which carried him into Conservative politics: Constantin regarded himself as a political victim of the PNL establishment, and in particular of the
Brătianu family. Colonel Filitti had another son, Alexandru—better known under the moniker
Filitti-Robănești. The mother, Elena, was born into the
Ghica family. Her father, Mihail Ghica, was a staff officer of the
Royal Army, who had been married for a while to writer
Elena Văcărescu. Thorough his mother's other relatives, Ioan also descended from the eponymous boyar line of
Slatina (the Slătineanus). I. C. Filitti studied at
Saint Sava National College, where he was colleagues with future politician (and adversary)
Ion G. Duca. it was probably his
licence ès lettres, and, although receiving good reviews, was never listed by its author in his official résumés. He became a
Doctor of Law in 1904, when he published the first draft of his study about
Regulamentul Organic as the first ever
Romanian constitution. Filitti was by then also in contact with
Junimea, an inner-Conservative club dedicated to cultural criticism, presided upon by the aged literary patron Titu Maiorescu. As noted in 2008 by political scientist
Ioan Stanomir, the young diplomat was "an orthodox
Junimist who survived the end of his world." Like other historiographers and doctrinaires raised by
Junimea, Filitti the scholar firmly believed in the preservation of boyar
demesnes and, as political scientist Victor Rizescu suggests, took part in the century-long debate opposing elitist historians to the advocates of
natural law. Filitti's biographer and posthumous daughter-in-law, Georgeta Penelea-Filitti, also writes that, even in the 1910s, he had become a Conservative apologist, who felt compelled to justify the party line in a "trenchant and unresponsive" manner. Filitti's first important postings were received from the Conservative cabinet of P. P. Carp, wherein Titu Maiorescu held the Foreign Affairs portfolio. After 1910, Maiorescu appointed Filitti head of the Ministry's Political Section in Bucharest, and then granted him supervision of the Consular and Litigation sections. Filitti was also sent on regular missions to France,
Austria-Hungary, the
Ottoman Empire,
Serbia and
Italy. The missions allowed Filitti to expand his activity as a historiographer and archivist. The main stimulus of this activity was, according to Filitti's son Manole, a sense of filial duty: "since destiny wished for his parents to have such assets as would allow him to study in Paris for a couple of years, [my father] felt compelled to repay them by publishing works which would live up to that degree of education." Georgeta Penelea-Filitti argues that I. C. Filitti's work, indicative of his personality, covers an impressively "large horizon." In this context, he also helped Titu Maiorescu with drafting
Cartea Verde ("The Green Book"), that is the official justification of Romanian foreign policy. Decades later, he recalled that the congress had been a magnificent affair, noting especially the triumphant arrival of
King Carol I, that "old
Nestor of European monarchs". The Conference, he recalled, "was the
swan song of the old Conservative Party." His services during the Conference earned him public praise from Maiorescu, and Filitti, who feared for his prospects, was kept on at the Ministry even after the National Liberal
Emanoil Porumbaru became Minister in January 1914. In tandem with his diplomatic endeavors, he spent time researching at the
Vatican Library in
Rome. As noted by Manole Filitti, Ioan C. received "special recommendations", which allowed him entry into the less accessible archives of the
Holy See.
Germanophile polemicist and Domniile române... World War I was a turning point in Filitti's diplomatic career. Like many of his fellow Conservatives, and against the lobby which dominated the PNL, he believed in tying Romania to the
Central Powers, especially to the
German Empire and
Austria-Hungary. The
Entente Powers alternative, he argued, was bankrupt, because Romania would find herself manipulated by a hostile Russian Empire. His core idea, paraphrased by Georgeta Filitti, was that: "Any entente, any attempt to collaborate, any concession made to [Russia] would sooner or later turn against us." In restaurants such as
Casa Capșa, "Franco-hysteria and Russo-Frenchitude [have reached] a peak", and "people of no significance" were even proposing to assassinate the Germanophile King Carol. The pamphlet was also noted for its unfulfilled prophecy that Italy would also join the war as a German ally, and for arguing that, either way, Austria-Hungary was set to collapse after the war. The text's reception, he noted, was disastrous: no reviews were printed, almost no bookstores would sell it, and the few who looked over it attributed it to an
agent of influence or to some "paid-off
Jew". In the same vein, his diary documents earlier instances where (he argued) France had gambled with Romania's independence. The institution also granted him its prestigious Năsturel Herescu Award. The book also speaks about the 1832 manhunt for, and forced
sedentarization of, Wallachia's Romani people, both the
fugitive slaves and the free nomads.
Domniile române... was simultaneously published in Bucharest (by
Editura Socec),
Leipzig (
Otto Harrassowitz) and
Vienna (
Carl Gerold). It was then reprinted by the official
Editura Academiei press, under the supervision of historian
Nicolae Iorga. The encounter was confrontational: Iorga decided to cut out entire passages where, he argued, the author had gone into too much detail. His research produced the article
România față de capitulațiile Turciei ("Romania in Relation to the Turkish Capitulations"), taken up by the Academy's official yearbook. It saw print at the same time as his new collection of documents, sampling the archives of
French Ambassadors to the Porte:
Lettres et extraits concernant les relations des principautés roumaines avec la France, 1728-1810 ("Letters and Excerpts on the Relations between the Romanian Principalities and France"). He was soon after drafted into the
Romanian Land Forces, as officer of the
Second Field Army, and stationed in Bucharest. When the German-led counteroffensive forced the army on the retreat, resulting in the Central Powers'
occupation of southern Romania, Filitti took his most controversial decision. In circumstances that are largely unknown, he opted to stay behind in occupied territory, and greeted the enemy. According to Boia, Filitti received two contradictory orders: one to follow the
Imperial Russian Army as
liaison officer, the other to stay behind in Bucharest; he conveniently opted to follow the latter. instead, Ioan C.'s own brother Alexandru entered history when he led a cavalry charge on a German machine gun
turret, located outside of
Balș. However, Filitti himself was troubled by his association with the puppet regime. According to Georgeta Filitti, the diary he kept shows "the efforts to interpose himself between the foreign military authorities and his own administrators, to alleviate the unbearable regime of requisitions, the abuse and
Prussian arrogance, [efforts which] were, for the most part, ineffectual." He had similar trouble getting along with some of his Romanian colleagues, in particular
Virgil Arion, the phantom Minister of Education (whom he described as
nepotistic, aloof, and especially "lazy"). Both of his assignments failed to satisfy him: he was, according to Boia, a "strange" choice for the Theater leadership, and gave up on this office in April 1917; Filitti himself viewed his Prefect's job as inane, and repeatedly presented his resignation (only accepted in February 1918). His departure from the Theater was in fact hastened by the Germans, who took over the location for their own purposes. Filitti informed the troupe members that they had to pay rent, and they moved out in protest. While in Ialomița, Filitti combined his administrative missions (retold as short notes in his diaries) with historical research, and tapped into a documentary fund at Alexeni. Although only a junior member of the administrative staff, Filitti aimed for a position at the core of government, and demanded from Kostaki a post better suited to his intelligence, "in Bucharest". Meanwhile, the legitimate government had relocated to
Iași, in besieged Moldavia. Late in 1916, it
court-martialled Filitti
in absentia, and
sentenced him to death for the crime of high treason. By January 1918, the collapse of Russian forces on the
Eastern Front led the Iași administration into negotiating a separate peace with the Central Powers. Germanophile
Alexandru Marghiloman took over as Premier, in what seemed to spell a moral victory for the pro-German camp. However, Filitti was drawing closer to the more disgruntled Germanophiles, led by P. P. Carp, who wanted to sign peace on their own terms: "I ask Carp, should he leave to negotiate for Romania, to take me with him. He says that he'll take along his son. I note that one does not exclude the other. He agrees" (January 12, 1918). In addition to presenting evidence of his efforts to curb German excesses, he enlisted the testimony of Ialomița citizens, who vouched for him.
Post-1918 controversy Upon the end of 1918, when the Central Powers succumbed on the
Western Front, the pro-Entente forces regained power. I. C. Filitti faced the political repercussions: blocked out of the Foreign Ministry and diplomatic corps, he had to reinvent himself as a full-time historian, publicist and essayist. He largely immersed himself in his decades-long work, in effect a multilevel historical narrative covering the history of the Danubian Principalities, from the
foundation of Wallachia (14th century) to the emergence of
United Romania (1859). Much of his interest, marked by what Georgeta Filitti calls "excessive accuracy", As the Conservative Party itself collapsed into obscurity, he remained largely cut off from the outside world, and rejected many of the recent innovations. Reportedly, he wrote all his books and articles in
dip pen, and never watched a motion picture. and
Hungarian archivist
Endre (Andrei) Veress. In addition to the anti-Germanophile Nicolae Iorga, his rivals in academia included a new generation of leading historians, who were targets of his polemical articles:
Gheorghe I. Brătianu,
George Fotino,
Constantin C. Giurescu and
P. P. Panaitescu. The author tracked down Nababul's origins to Michael "Șeytanoğlu" Kantakouzenos, a
Byzantine Greek in Ottoman service, active around 1580. The factual errors of this study caused Filitti great distress, to the point where he planned to entirely revise his version of the Cantacuzino
family tree. Filodor, Gheraki and Plagino. Filitti the politician returned in 1921 with an extended
pro domo covering his wartime stances: '''' ("Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany Confront Romania"). He still struggled with prejudice against Germanophiles: also in 1921, he tried to obtain the History Chair at the
University of Iași, but lost once his old adversary Iorga intervened against him. Two years later, he was present at the funeral ceremony of
Dimitrie Onciul, a fellow historian and
Junimist. Onciul, whose Germanophila had been the topic of a major scandal in 1919, was honored by Filitti with a funeral oration. It stated: "All of us, we are what our known or unknown ancestors have accumulated in our beings; we are that which preceding generations have planted in us; we are the echo of our dead." Filitti subsequently turned his attention to some of the earliest sources on Wallachian history, adding his opinion to the debate surrounding the historicity of
Negru Vodă (described by some early modern sources as Wallachia's state-builder). His topical study, published by in the 1924 Romanian Academy annals, concluded that Negru Vodă was in fact the stuff of legend, concocted by the 17th-century
Wallachian Lord Matei Basarab. The next year, he returned to social history, with the book
Clasele sociale în trecutul românesc ("Social Classes in the Romanian Past"). It mainly explained the difference between the concepts of nobility in Western Europe, on one hand, and the Danubian Principalities, on the other: Moldo-Wallachian nobility had no concept of
knighthood, as all boyars were defined by their
demesnes. Eventually, in 1926, King Ferdinand allowed Filitti to resume his political career, making him a member of the
Romanian Legislative Council. An emanation of the
1923 Constitution, it comprised experts tasked with reviewing laws endorsed by
Parliament, and whose exact role sparked a series of controversies. Filitti was among those who described the Council as a necessary branch of the legislature, rather than as an organ of the executive. Also in 1926, Filitti was one of the authors of a
legal history overview,
Contribuții la istoria justiției penale în Principatele române ("Contributions to the History of Penal Justice in the Romanian Principalities"). He returned in 1927 with a work tracing the very history of the Legislative Council:
Originea și menirea Consiliului Legislativ ("The Origin and Purpose of the Legislative Council"). Filitti demonstrated that, at only 4.6 ‰ of the Wallachian population, Wallachian boyars formed one of the thinnest layers of European aristocrats proportional to the respective population. While still involved in the disputes over Legislative Council attributions, Some of Filitti's biographical work was dedicated to the 16th-century Wallachian hero
Michael the Brave. In 1931, he published an investigation of Michael's early career as titular
Ban of
Oltenia. In 1932, returning to the history of Oltenian Bans, he gave an account on the
Craiovești family history, taken up by
Arhivele Olteniei journal. His ongoing research into social issues of the early 19th century produced another book,
Frământări politice și sociale în Principatele române de la 1821 la 1828 ("Political and Social Turmoil in the Romanian Principalities from 1821 to 1828",
Cartea Românească, 1932). It has been described as a "non-partisan analysis" of the
Wallachian uprising of 1821 and its reverberations,
Conservative theories and Principatele române... By 1928, I. C. Filitti's writing was moving from sheer historical research, as he was taking a stand in political theory. As noted by Ioan Stanomir, Filitti's evolution in this direction marks a final cycle in the history of classical, "
Burkean", conservatism in Romania, which did not have a political aspect, but was complementary and contemporary with the views of his rival Nicolae Iorga. According to Stanomir, the objectivity professed by Filitti the historiographer was at odds with his ambition to rehabilitate
Junimea and the Conservative cause, to prolong their relevancy into the 1930s. Directly influenced by the agrarian skepticism of Carp and Maiorescu, Filitti argued that the division of large estates into non-lucrative plots had only enhanced endemic problems, such as poverty or an unskilled workforce, and had prevented an organic growth toward
good governance. Filitti's diary chides the political establishment of Greater Romania for not obtaining sufficient guarantees of territorial integrity—particularly so against Russia's successor, the
Soviet Union—and for deprofessionalizing the diplomatic corps. In his post-
Junimist studies, Filitti angrily noted that the PNL regime had only increased the ranks of the bureaucracy (and implicitly enlarged their
political machine), perpetuating
etatism. He proposed measures to counter this trend by encouraging a "rural bourgeoisie", "self-reliant", determined to reemerge "from the darkness and routine" of country life, and, in time, capable of supporting a national industry. In 1932, Filitti, who kept a vivid interest in Romanian Orthodox history, published
Biserici și ctitori ("Churches and
Ktitors").
Principatele române... includes additional data on the rift between the liberal youth, with its ideal of national liberation, and the peasantry, more determined to terminate the
corvée system. He continued to publish on topical issues of legal history, documenting the antique Wallachian form of
Weregild (
plata capului, "head payment"), and on historiography, with a
Revista Istorică biography of Wallachian chronicler
Radu Greceanu. His other book for that year was an extended political manifesto,
Rătăcirile unei pseudo-burghezii și reforme ce nu se fac ("The Aberrations of a Pseudo-bourgeoisie and Reforms Not Effected"). In 1935, Filitti completed his
Proprietatea solului în Principatele române până la 1864 ("Land Ownership in the Romanian Principalities to 1864") and
Contribuții la istoria diplomatică a României în secolul al XIX-lea ("Contributions to the Diplomatic History of Romania in the 19th Century"). A fourth book, on literary history, saw print with the title
Cărți vechi privitoare la români ("Old Books Relating to the Romanians"). Also in 1935, he released a selection of his memoirs, as
Câteva amintiri ("Some Recollections"), and set in print his conferences for the state
Radio Company:
Dezvoltarea politică a României moderne ("The Political Development of Modern Romania"). Building on his previous research in
Arhiva Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, Filitti also contributed an article about the Romanian origins of French diplomat
Maurice Paléologue (
Adevărul daily, September 29, 1935) and edited for print the letters of Oltenian engineer
Petrache Poenaru (
Arhivele Olteniei, 74-76/1934). His other contribution for 1935 was a collection of texts on
political history, called
Pagini din istoria României moderne ("Pages from the History of Modern Romania"). The volume criticized the PNL's historical narrative, Romania's answer to
Whiggishness, and noted that, from the beginning, the Conservatives were closer to the models of
classical liberalism than their revolutionist opponents. Published with the
Lupta Graphic Arts Institute in 1936, Filitti's new essay revisited the birth and evolution of conservatism in the Danubian Principalities and then Romania:
Conservatori și junimiști în viața politică românească ("Conservatives and
Junimists in Romanian Political Life"). The work postulated that local conservatism had in fact originated within the first phase of
Romanian liberalism, grouping opponents of the "extremist", "utopian", "exulted" force which became the National Liberal elite. He argued that, since the National Liberals had become the establishment and did away with their republican agenda, the Conservatives, "in reality moderate liberals", came to be falsely depicted as "
reactionaries". His retrospective portrait of
Junimea was, according to Stanomir, particularly "melancholy", his own
Junimism "never abjured". His revised work on the Cantacuzinos, published in Bucharest as
Notice sur les Cantacuzène du XIe au XVIIe siècles ("Note on the Cantacuzinos from the 11th to the 14th Century"), traced the family links between Cantacuzino-Nababul and 14th-century
Byzantine Emperor John VI, whom Filitti identified as a usurper. Also then, he republished a political pamphlet by the 18th-century poet
Alecu Văcărescu, with the journal
Preocupări Literare. Filitti was preparing his retirement from public life, and designated his only son Manole as a curator of the Filitti Archive. Filitti Jr was a lawyer, financier and amateur
rugby footballer, who would later serve as manager of the Phoenix Oil Factory. The two authors offered praise to the supposedly increased representative powers of
communes, and to the laws protecting private property within urban domains. As noted by Georgeta Filitti, I. C. Filitti was again dissatisfied with the finished product: "The [
Enciclopedia] copy he left comprises numerous rectifications to his own entries and observations made on those of other authors, which would be welcomed for any future reediting." From May 1938, Filitti was also General Administrative Inspector of the kingdom. The outbreak of
World War II again pushed him away from public life. Romania was an
Axis country, and, as such, Bucharest endured
heavy bombardments by the
United States Air Force. The air attack of April 4, 1944, effectively destroyed the Filitti residence, its art collection (including
Murano glassware) and scores of unedited documents. The historian survived, but, according to Georgeta Filitti, the incident "hastened his death". I. C. Filitti died in September 1945, almost a year after
King Michael's Coup broke with the Axis. By his own account, he had published 82 volumes, 267 topical articles, and completed some 700
family trees. Many of these texts were circular of "rectifications" to previous editions, addressed to the community of scientists at large. ==Legacy==