Nicolae Iorga

Child prodigy Nicolae Iorga was born in Botoșani into a family of Albanian origin. His father, Nicu Iorga, was a practicing lawyer; he ultimately descended from a Albanian merchant who had settled in Botoșani in the 18th century five generations before Nicolae Iorga's birth. His mother, Zulnia Iorga (née Arghiropol), was a woman of Phanariote Greek descent. Iorga claimed direct descent from the noble Mavrocordatos and Argyros families. He credited the five-generation-boyar status received from his father's side (e.g. the Miclescu and Catargi families) and the "old boyar" roots of his mother (e.g. the Mavrocordatos family) with having turned him into a politician. His parallel claim of being related to noble families such as the Cantacuzinos and the Craiovești is questioned by other researchers. Iorga is generally believed to have been born on 17 January 1871, although his birth certificate provides a date of 6 June. In 1876, aged thirty-seven or thirty-eight, Nicu Sr. was incapacitated and then died of an unknown illness, orphaning Nicolae and his younger brother George. Nicolae would later write that the loss of his father dominated the image he had of his childhood. In 1878, he was enlisted at the Marchian Folescu School, where he discovered a love for intellectual pursuits and took pride in excelling in most academic areas. At age nine, he was allowed by his teachers to lecture his schoolmates on Romanian history. His history teacher, a refugee Pole, sparked his interest in research and his lifelong polonophilia. Iorga also credited this period with having shaped his lifelong views on Romanian language and local culture: "I learned Romanian... as it was spoken back in the day: plainly, beautifully and above all resolutely and colorfully, without the intrusions of newspapers and best-selling books". He credited the 19th-century polymath Mihail Kogălniceanu, whose works he first read as a child, with having shaped this literary preference. Aged thirteen, while on extended visit to his maternal uncle Emanuel "Manole" Arghiropol, he also made his press debut with paid contributions to Arghiropol's Romanul newspaper, including anecdotes and editorial pieces on European politics. The year 1886 was described by Iorga as "the catastrophe of my school life in Botoșani": on temporary suspension for not having greeted a teacher, Iorga opted to leave the city and apply for the National High School of Iași, being received into the scholarship program and praised by his new principal, the philologist Vasile Burlă. Iorga was already fluent in French, Italian, Latin and Greek; he later referred to Greek studies as "the most refined form of human reasoning". By age seventeen, Iorga was becoming more rebellious. He first grew interested in political activities for the first time but displayed convictions which he later strongly disavowed; a self-described Marxist, Iorga promoted the left-wing magazine Viața Socială and lectured on Das Kapital. Before readmission, he decided not to fall back on his family's financial support and instead returned to tutoring others. University of Iași and Junimist episode In 1888, Nicolae Iorga passed his entry examination for the University of Iași Faculty of Letters, becoming eligible for a scholarship soon after. Upon the completion of his second term, he also received a special dispensation from the Kingdom of Romania's Education Ministry, and, as a result, applied for and passed his third term examinations, effectively graduating one year ahead of his class. Before the end of the year, he also passed his license examination magna cum laude, with a thesis on Greek literature, an achievement which consecrated his reputation inside both academia and the public sphere. Hailed as a "morning star" by the local press and deemed a "wonder of a man" by his teacher A. D. Xenopol, Iorga was honored by the faculty with a special banquet. Three academics (Xenopol, Nicolae Culianu, Ioan Caragiani) formally brought Iorga to the attention of the Education Ministry, proposing him for the state-sponsored program which allowed academic achievers to study abroad. The interval witnessed Iorga's brief affiliation with Junimea, a literary club with conservative leanings, whose informal leader was literary and political theorist Titu Maiorescu. In 1890, literary critic Ștefan Vârgolici and cultural promoter Iacob Negruzzi published Iorga's essay on poet Veronica Micle in the Junimist tribune Convorbiri Literare. Having earlier attended the funeral of writer Ion Creangă, a dissident Junimist and Romanian literature classic, he took a public stand against the defamation of another such figure, the dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale, groundlessly accused of plagiarism by journalist Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion. He expanded his contribution as an opinion journalist, publishing with some regularity in various local or national periodicals of various leanings, from the socialist Contemporanul and Era Nouă to Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu's . This period saw his debut as a socialist poet (in ) and critic (in both Lupta and Literatură și Știință). Also in 1890, Iorga married Maria Tasu, whom he was to divorce in 1900. He had previously been in love with an Ecaterina C. Botez, but, after some hesitation, decided to marry into the family of man Vasile Tasu, much better situated in the social circles. Xenopol, who was Iorga's matchmaker, also tried to obtain for Iorga a teaching position at Iași University. The attempt was opposed by other professors, on grounds of Iorga's youth and politics. Instead, Iorga was briefly a high school professor of Latin in the southern city of Ploiești, following a public competition overseen by writer Alexandru Odobescu. While preparing for his second diploma, Iorga also pursued his interest in philology, learning English, German, and rudiments of other Germanic languages. In 1892, he was in England and in Italy, researching historical sources for his French-language thesis on Philippe de Mézières, a Frenchman in the Crusade of 1365. Iorga presented his dissertation and, in 1893, left for the German Empire, attempting to enlist in the University of Berlin's PhD program. His working paper, on Thomas III of Saluzzo, was not received, because Iorga had not spent three years in training, as required. As an alternative, he gave formal pledge that the paper in question was entirely his own work, but his statement was invalidated by technicality: Iorga's work had been redacted by a more proficient speaker of German, whose intervention did not touch the substance of Iorga's research. On 25 July, Iorga had also received his diploma for the earlier work on de Mézières, following its review by Gaston Paris and Charles Bémont. Between 1890 and the end of 1893, he had published three works: his debut in poetry (, "Poems"), the first volume of ("Sketches on Romanian Literature", 1893; second volume 1894), and his Leipzig thesis, printed in Paris as ("Thomas, Margrave of Saluzzo. Historical and Literary Study"). Living in poor conditions (as reported by visiting scholar Teohari Antonescu), the four-year engagement of his scholarship still applicable, Nicolae Iorga decided to spend his remaining time abroad, researching more city archives in Germany (Munich), Austria (Innsbruck) and Italy (Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice etc.) Iorga's articles were also featured in two magazines for ethnic Romanian communities in Austria-Hungary: Familia and Vatra. He agreed to compete in a sort of debating society, with lectures which only saw print in 1944. He applied for the Medieval History Chair at the University of Bucharest, submitting a dissertation in front of an examination commission comprising historians and philosophers (Caragiani, Odobescu, Xenopol, alongside Aron Densușianu, Constantin Leonardescu and Petre Râșcanu), but totaled a 7 average which only entitled him to a substitute professor's position. The achievement, at age 23, was still remarkable in its context. The first of his lectures came later that year as personal insight on the historical method, ("On the Present-day Concept of History and Its Genesis"). He was again out of the country in 1895, visiting the Netherlands and, again, Italy, in search of documents, publishing the first section of his extended historical records' collection ("Acts and Excerpts Regarding the History of Romanians"), his Romanian Atheneum conference on Michael the Brave's rivalry with condottiero Giorgio Basta, and his debut in travel literature (, "Recollections from Italy"). The next year came Iorga's official appointment as curator and publisher of the Hurmuzachi brothers collection of historical documents, the position being granted to him by the Romanian Academy. The appointment, first proposed to the institution by Xenopol, overlapped with disputes over the Hurmuzachi inheritance, and came only after Iorga's formal pledge that he would renounce all potential copyrights resulting from his contribution. In 1897, the year when he was elected a corresponding member of the academy, Iorga traveled back to Italy and spent time researching more documents in the Austro-Hungarian Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, at Dubrovnik. He published several new books in 1899: ("Manuscripts from Foreign Libraries", 2 vols.), ("Romanian Documents from the Bistrița Archives") and a French-language book on the Crusades, titled ("Notes and Excerpts Covering the History of the Crusades", 2 vols.). Xenopol proposed his pupil for a Romanian Academy membership, to replace the suicidal Odobescu, but his proposition could not gather support. Also in 1899, Nicolae Iorga inaugurated his contribution to the Bucharest-based French-language newspaper ''L'Indépendance Roumaine'', publishing polemical articles on the activity of his various colleagues and, as a consequence, provoking a lengthy scandal. The pieces often targeted senior scholars who, as favorites or activists of the National Liberal Party, opposed both and the Maiorescu-endorsed Conservative Party: his estranged friends Hasdeu and Tocilescu, as well as V. A. Urechia and Dimitrie Sturdza. The episode, described by Iorga himself as a stormy but patriotic debut in public affairs, prompted his adversaries at the academy to demand the termination of his membership for undignified behavior. Tocilescu felt insulted by the allegations, challenged Iorga to a duel, but his friends intervened to mediate. Another scientist who encountered Iorga's wrath was George Ionescu-Gion, against whom Iorga enlisted negative arguments that, as he later admitted, were exaggerated. Among Iorga's main defenders were academics Dimitrie Onciul, N. Petrașcu, and, outside Romania, Gustav Weigand. and Transylvanian echoes The young polemicist persevered in supporting this anti-establishment cause, moving on from to the newly established publication , interrupting himself for trips to Italy, the Netherlands and Galicia-Lodomeria. His scholarly activities resulted in a second trip into Transylvania, a second portion of his Bistrița archives collection, the 11th Hurmuzachi volume, and two works on Early Modern Romanian history: ("16th Century Acts Relating to Peter the Lame") and ("A Short History of Michael the Brave"). His controversial public attitude had nevertheless attracted an official ban on his Academy reports, and also meant that he was ruled out from the national Academy prize (for which distinction he had submitted ). In 1901, shortly after his divorce from Maria, Iorga married Ecaterina (Catinca), the sister of his friend and colleague Ioan Bogdan. Her other brother was cultural historian Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, whose son, painter Catul Bogdan, Iorga would help achieve recognition. Soon after their wedding, the couple were in Venice, where Iorga received Karl Gotthard Lamprecht's offer to write a history of the Romanians to be featured as a section in a collective treatise of world history. Iorga, who had convinced Lamprecht not to assign this task to Xenopol, also completed ("The History of Romanian Literature in the 18th Century"). It was presented to the academy's consideration, but rejected, prompting the scholar to resign in protest. Iorga was by then making known his newly found interest in cultural nationalism and national didacticism, as expressed by him in an open letter to Goga's Budapest-based Luceafărul magazine. Returning to Bucharest in 1903, Iorga followed Lamprecht's suggestion and focused on writing his first overview of Romanian national history, known in Romanian as ("The History of the Romanians"). and 1906 riot '', March 1905. The table of contents credits Iorga as an editorialist and political columnist Also in 1903, Nicolae Iorga became one of the managers of Sămănătorul review. The moment brought Iorga's emancipation from Maiorescu's influence, his break with mainstream Junimism, and his affiliation to the traditionalist, ethno-nationalist and neoromantic current encouraged by the magazine. The school was by then also grouping other former or active Junimists, and Maiorescu's progressive withdrawal from literary life also created a bridge with : its new editor, Simion Mehedinți, was himself a theorist of traditionalism. A circle of Junimists more sympathetic to Maiorescu's version of conservatism reacted against this realignment by founding its own venue, Convorbiri Critice, edited by Mihail Dragomirescu. In tandem with his full return to cultural and political journalism, which included prolonged debates with both the "old" historians and the Junimists, Iorga was still active at the forefront of historical research. In 1904, he published the historical geography work ("Roads and Towns of Romania") and, upon the special request of National Liberal Education Minister Spiru Haret, a work dedicated to the celebrated Moldavian Prince Stephen the Great, published upon the 400th anniversary of the monarch's death as ("The History of Stephen the Great"). Iorga later confessed that the book was an integral part of his and Haret's didacticist agenda, supposed to be "spread to the very bottom of the country in thousands of copies". During those months, Iorga also helped discover novelist Mihail Sadoveanu, who was for a while the leading figure of literature. In 1905, the year when historian Onisifor Ghibu became his close friend and disciple, he followed up with over 23 individual titles, among them the two German-language volumes of ("A History of the Romanian People within the Context of Its National Formation"), ("The History of the Romanians in Faces and Icons"), ("Villages and Monasteries of Romania") and the essay ("Thoughts and Advices from a Man Just like Any Other"). These referred to Tsarist autocracy as a source of "darkness and slavery", whereas the more liberal regime of Bukovina offered its subjects "golden chains". He remained politically independent until 1906, when he attached himself to the Conservative Party, making one final attempt to change the course of Junimism. His move was contrasted by the group of left-nationalists from the Poporanist faction, who were allied to the National Liberals and, soon after, in open conflict with Iorga. Although from the same cultural family as , the Poporanist theorist Constantin Stere was dismissed by Iorga's articles, despite Sadoveanu's attempts to settle the matter. According to one of Iorga's young disciples, the future journalist Pamfil Șeicaru, the mood was such that Iorga could have led a successful ''coup d'état. These events had several political consequences. The Siguranța Statului'' intelligence agency soon opened a file on the historian, informing Romanian Premier Sturdza about nationalist agitation. , Peasants' Revolt and Vălenii de Munte Iorga eventually parted with in late 1906, moving on to set up his own tribune, Neamul Românesc. The schism was allegedly a direct result of his conflicts with other literary venues, The newer magazine, illustrated with idealized portraits of the Romanian peasant, was widely popular with Romania's rural intelligentsia (among which it was freely distributed), promoting antisemitic theories and raising opprobrium from the authorities and the urban-oriented press. His published scientific contributions for that year include, among others, an English-language study on the Byzantine Empire. A seminal moment in Iorga's political career took place during the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt, erupting under a Conservative cabinet and repressed with much violence by a National Liberal one. The bloody outcome prompted the historian to author and make public a piece of social critique, the pamphlet ("God Forgive Them"). However, Iorga's popularity was still increasing, and, carried by this sentiment, he was first elected to Chamber during the elections of that same year. he decided, in 1908, to set his base away from the urban centers, at a villa in Vălenii de Munte town (nestled in the remote hilly area of Prahova County). Although branded an agitator by Sturdza, he received support in this venture from Education Minister Haret. Once settled, Iorga set up a specialized summer school, his own publishing house, a printing press and the literary supplement of , as well as an asylum managed by writer Constanța Marino-Moscu. He published some 25 new works for that year, such as the introductory volumes for his German-language companion to Ottoman history (, "History of the Ottoman Empire"), a study on Romanian Orthodox institutions (, "The History of the Romanian Church"), and an anthology on Romanian Romanticism. He followed up in 1909 with a volume of parliamentary speeches, ("In the Age of Reforms"), a book on the 1859 Moldo–Wallachian Union (, "The Principalities' Union"), and a critical edition of poems by Eminescu. Visiting Iași for the Union Jubilee, Iorga issued a public and emotional apology to Xenopol for having criticized him in the previous decade. 1909 setbacks and PND creation At that stage in his life, Iorga became an honorary member of the Romanian Writers' Society. He had militated for its creation in both and , but also wrote against its system of fees. Once liberated from government restriction in 1909, his Vălenii school grew into a hub of student activity, self-financed through the sale of postcards. Its success caused alarm in Austria-Hungary: Budapesti Hírlap newspaper described Iorga's school as an instrument for radicalizing Romanian Transylvanians. The consequences hit Iorga in May 1909, when he was stopped from visiting Bukovina, officially branded a persona non grata, and expelled from Austrian soil (in June, it was made illegal for Bukovinian schoolteachers to attend Iorga's lectures). In 1910, the year when he toured the Old Kingdom's conference circuit, Nicolae Iorga again rallied with Cuza to establish the explicitly antisemitic Democratic Nationalist Party. Partly building on the antisemitic component of the 1907 revolts, its doctrines depicted the Jewish-Romanian community and Jews in general as a danger for Romania's development. During its early decades, it used as its symbol the right-facing swastika (卐), promoted by Cuza as the symbol of worldwide antisemitism and, later, of the "Aryans". Also known as PND, this was Romania's first political group to represent the petty bourgeoisie, using its votes to challenge the tri-decennial two-party system. Also in 1910, Iorga published some thirty new works, covering gender history (, "The Early Life of Romanian Women"), Romanian military history (, "The History of the Romanian Military") and Stephen the Great's Orthodox profile (, "Stephen the Great and Neamț Monastery"). Reinstated into the academy and made a full member, he gave his May 1911 reception speech with a philosophy of history subject (, "Two Historical Outlooks") and was introduced on the occasion by Xenopol. In August of that year, he was again in Transylvania, at Blaj, where he paid homage to the Romanian-run ASTRA Cultural Society. He made his first contribution to Romanian drama with the play centered on, and named after, Michael the Brave (), one of around twenty new titles for that year—alongside his collected aphorisms (, "Musings") and a memoir of his life in culture (, "People Who Are Gone"). In 1912, he published, among other works, ("Three Dramatic Plays"), grouping ("Stephen the Great's Resurrection") and ("An Outcast Prince"). Additionally, Iorga produced the first of several studies dealing with Balkan geopolitics in the charged context leading up to the Balkan Wars (, "Romania, Her Neighbors and the Eastern Question"). Iorga and the Balkan crisis '', issue no. 48–52, dated 31 December 1915 In 1913, Iorga was in London for an International Congress of History, presenting a proposal for a new approach to medievalism and a paper discussing the sociocultural effects of the fall of Constantinople on Moldavia and Wallachia. The subsequent taking of Southern Dobruja, supported by Maiorescu and the Conservatives, was seen by Iorga as callous and imperialistic. Iorga's interest in the Balkan crisis was illustrated by two of the forty books he put out that year: ("The History of Balkan States") and ("A Historian's Notes on the Balkan Events"). and inaugurated the international Institute of South-East European Studies or ISSEE (founded through his efforts), with a lecture on Albanian history. Again invited to Italy, he spoke at the Ateneo Veneto on the relations between the Republic of Venice and the Balkans, His attention was focused on the Albanians and Arbëreshë—Iorga soon discovered the oldest record of written Albanian, the 1462 Formula e pagëzimit. In 1916, he founded the Bucharest-based academic journal ("The Historical Review"), a Romanian equivalent for Historische Zeitschrift and The English Historical Review. Ententist profile Nicolae Iorga's involvement in political disputes and the cause of Romanian irredentism became a leading characteristic of his biography during World War I. In 1915, while Romania was still keeping neutral, he sided with the dominant nationalist, Francophile and pro-Entente camp, urging for Romania to wage war on the Central Powers as a means of obtaining Transylvania, Bukovina and other regions held by Austria-Hungary; to this goal, he became an active member of the , and personally organized the large pro-Entente rallies in Bucharest. A prudent anti-Austrian, Iorga adopted the interventionist agenda with noted delay. His hesitation was ridiculed by hawkish Eugen Lovinescu as pro-Transylvanian but anti-war, costing Iorga his office in the Cultural League. Iorga was also introduced to the private circle of Romania's young King, Ferdinand I, whom he found well-intentioned but weak-willed. who reportedly attended the Vălenii school. In his October 1915 polemic with Vasile Sion, a Germanophile physician, Iorga at once justified suspicion of the German Romanians and praised those Romanians who were deserting the Austrian Army. The Ententists' focus on Transylvania pitted them against the Poporanists, who deplored the Romanians of Bessarabia. That region, the Poporanist lobby argued, was being actively oppressed by the Russian Empire with the acquiescence of other Entente powers. Poporanist theorist Garabet Ibrăileanu, editor of Viața Românească review, later accused Iorga of not ever speaking in support of the Bessarabians. in 1933 Political themes were again reflected in Nicolae Iorga's 1915 report to the academy (, "The Small States' Right to Exist") and in various of the 37 books he published that year: ("The History of the Romanians in Transylvania and Hungary"), ("The Austrian Policy on Serbia") etc. He also gave a final touch to the collection ("Studies and Documents"), comprising his commentary on 30,000 individual documents and spread over 31 tomes. Still a member of Parliament, Iorga joined the authorities in the provisional capital of Iași, but opposed the plans of relocating government out of besieged Moldavia and into the Russian Republic. The argument was made in one of his parliamentary speeches, printed as a pamphlet and circulated among the military: "May the dogs of this world feast on us sooner than to find our happiness, tranquility and prosperity granted by the hostile foreigner." He did however allow some of his notebooks to be stored in Moscow, along with the Romanian Treasure, and sheltered his own family in Odessa. while contributing to R.W. Seton-Watson's international sheet The New Europe. His contribution for that year included a number of brochures dedicated to maintaining morale among soldiers and civilians: ("The Current War and Its Effects on the Moral Life of Mankind"), ("The Role of Private Initiative in Public Life"), ("Advices and Teachings for Romania's Soldiers") etc. The heightened sense of crisis prompted Iorga to issue appeals against defeatism and reissue from Iași, explaining: "I realized at once what moral use could come out of this for the thousands of discouraged and disillusioned people and against the traitors who were creeping up all over the place." The goal was again reflected in his complementary lectures (where he discussed the "national principle") and a new set of works; these featured musings on the Allied commitment (, "The Romanians' Relations with the Allies"; , "The History of Relations between France and the Romanians"), the national character (, "The Romanian Soul") or columns against the loss of morale (, "The Armistice"). In May 1918, Romania yielded to German demands and negotiated the Bucharest Treaty, an effective armistice. The conditions were judged humiliating by Iorga ("Our ancestors would have preferred death"); The German authorities in Bucharest reacted by blacklisting the historian. He was reelected to the lower chamber in the June 1918 election, becoming President of the body and, due to the rapid political developments, the first person to hold this office in the history of Greater Romania. The year also brought his participation alongside Allied envoys in the 360th anniversary of Michael the Brave's birth. Shortly after the creation of Greater Romania, Iorga was focusing his public activity on exposing collaborators of the wartime occupiers. The subject was central to a 1919 speech he held in front of the academy, where he obtained the public condemnation of actively Germanophile academicians, having earlier vetoed the membership of Poporanist Constantin Stere. He failed at enlisting support for the purge of Germanophile professors from university, but the attempt rekindled the feud between him and Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș, who had served in the German-appointed administration. The two scholars later took their battle to court and, until Iorga's death, presented mutually exclusive takes on recent political history. Although very much opposed to the imprisoned Germanophile poet Tudor Arghezi, Iorga intervened on his behalf with Ferdinand. Following the November 1919 elections, Iorga became a member of the Senate, representing the Democratic Nationalists. Although he resented the universal male suffrage and viewed the adoption of electoral symbols as promoting political illiteracy, his PND came to use a logo representing two hands grasping (later replaced with a black-flag-and-sickle). The elections seemed to do away with the old political system: Iorga's party was third, trailing behind two newcomers, the Transylvanian PNR and the Poporanist Peasants' Party (PȚ), with whom it formed a parliamentary bloc supporting an Alexandru Vaida-Voevod cabinet. This union of former rivals also showed Iorga's growing suspicion of Brătianu, whom he feared intended to absorb the PND into the National Liberal Party, and accused of creating a political machine. Together with French war hero Septime Gorceix, he also compiled ("An Anthology of Romanian Literature"). That year, the French state granted Iorga its Legion of Honor. A founding president of the Association of Romanian Public Libraries, Iorga was also tightening his links with young Transylvanian intellectuals: he took part in reorganizing the Cluj Franz Joseph University into a Romanian-speaking institution, meeting scholars Vasile Pârvan and Vasile Bogrea (who welcomed him as "our protective genius"), and published a praise of the young traditionalist poet Lucian Blaga. He was in correspondence with intellectuals of all backgrounds, and, reportedly, the Romanian who was addressed the most letters in postal history. Iorga was awarded the title of doctor honoris causa by the University of Strasbourg, while his lectures on Albania, collected by poet Lasgush Poradeci, became ("Concise History of Albania"). During the spring 1920 election, Iorga was invited by journalist Sever Dan to run for a deputy seat in Transylvania, but eventually participated in and won the election of his earlier constituency, Covurlui County. In March 1921, Iorga again turned on Stere. The latter had since been forgiven for his wartime stance, decorated for negotiating the Bessarabian union, and elected on PȚ lists in Soroca County. Iorga's speech, "Stere's Betrayal", turned attention back to Stere's Germanophilia (with quotes that were supposedly taken out of context) and demanded his invalidation—the subsequent debate was tense and emotional, but a new vote in Chamber confirmed Stere as Soroca deputy. Iorga, whose PND had formed the Federation of National Democracy with the PȚ and other parties, was perplexed by Averescu's sui generis appeal and personality cult, writing: "Everything [in that party] was about Averescu." His partner Cuza and a portion of the PND were however supportive of this force, which threatened the stability of their vote. Iorga's suggestions that new arrivals from Transylvania and Bessarabia were becoming a clique also resulted in collisions with former friend Octavian Goga, who had joined up with Averescu's party. he issued the two volumes of ("The History of the Romanians and Their Civilization") and the three tomes of ("The History of the Romanians in Travels"), alongside ("The Idea of a Romanian Dacia"), ("The History of the Middle Ages") and some other scholarly works. Iorga also resumed his writing for the stage, with two new drama plays: one centered on the Moldavian ruler Constantin Cantemir (, "Cantemir the Elder"), the other dedicated to, and named after, Brâncoveanu. Centering his activity as a public speaker in Transylvanian cities, Iorga was also involved in projects to organize folk theaters throughout the country, through which he intended to spread a unified cultural message. The year also brought his presence at the funeral of A. D. Xenopol. In 1921, when his 50th birthday was celebrated at a national level, Iorga published a large number of volumes, including a bibliographic study on the Wallachian uprising of 1821 and its leader Tudor Vladimirescu, an essay on political history (, "The Development of Political Institutions"), ("The Secret of French culture"), ("Our War as Depicted in Daily Records") and the French-language ("The Oriental Latins"). In politics, Iorga began objecting to the National Liberals' hold on power, denouncing the 1922 election as a fraud. He resumed his close cooperation with the PNR, briefly joining the party ranks in an attempt to counter this monopoly. In 1923, he donated his Bonaparte Highway residence and its collection to the Ministry of Education, to be used by a cultural foundation and benefit university students. Receiving another honoris causa doctorate, from the University of Lyon, Iorga went through an episode of reconciliation with Tudor Arghezi, who addressed him public praise. The two worked together on Cuget Românesc newspaper, but were again at odds when Iorga began criticizing modernist literature and "the world's spiritual crisis". Among his published works for that year were ("Byzantine Forms and Balkan Realities"), ("The History of the Romanian Press"), ("Folk Art in Romania"), ("The History of Medieval art") and ("The Romanian Nation in Transylvania"). Iorga had by then finished several new theatrical plays: ("The Death of Dante"), ("Molière Gets His Revenge"), ("The Man We Need") and ("Sărmală, Friend of the People"). International initiatives and American journey , 1928 photograph A major moment in Iorga's European career took place in 1924, when he convened in Bucharest the first-ever International Congress of Byzantine Studies, attended by some of the leading experts in the field. Also then, Iorga was appointed Aggregate Professor by the University of Paris, received the honor of having foreign scholars lecturing at the Vălenii de Munte school, and published a number of scientific works and essays, such as: ("A Short History of the Crusades"), ("Books Significant for Mankind's Existence"), ("Picturesque Romania") and a volume of addresses to the Romanian American community. More controversial still was his decision to use excess funds from the International Congress to improve his Vălenii printing press. His work for 1926 centered on the first of four volumes in his series ("Essay on the Synthesis of World History"), followed in 1927 by ("The History of Industry among the Romanians"), ("The Origin and Sense of Democracy"), a study of Romanian contributions to the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War (, "The War of Independence") etc. A honoris causa doctor of Genoa University, he opened his course at the University of Paris with lectures on France's Levantine policy (1927) and, during 1928, was again invited to lecture in Spain, Sweden and Norway. His published works for that time grouped the political essay ("The Evolution of Liberty as an Idea"), new historical studies and printed versions of his conferences: ("The History of Education"), ("Four Conferences on the History of England"), ("The Remotest Latin Country in Europe: Portugal"). In addition to his Bucharest Faculty of History chair, Iorga also took over the History of Literature course hosted by the same institution (1928). For a while, he also held the university's concise literature course, replacing Professor Ioan Bianu. Iorga's circle was joined by researcher Constantin C. Giurescu, son of historian Constantin Giurescu, who had been Iorga's rival a generation before. Iorga embarked on a longer journey during 1930: again lecturing in Paris during January, he left for Genoa and, from there, traveled to the United States, visiting some 20 cities, being greeted by the Romanian-American community and meeting with President Herbert Hoover. He was also an honored guest of Case Western Reserve University, where he delivered a lecture in English. His new works included ("Romania and the Romanians of America") and ("Swiss Landscapes"), alongside the plays ("Saint Francis") and ("The Lost Son"). In 1931–1932, he was made a honoris causa doctor by four other universities (the University of Paris, La Sapienza, Stefan Batory, Comenius), was admitted into both Accademia dei Lincei and the Accademia degli Arcadi, and published over 40 new titles per year. Prime minister , receiving his Honoris Causa Doctorate Iorga became Romanian Premier in April 1931, upon the request of Carol II, who had returned from exile to replace his own son, Michael I. The authoritarian monarch had cemented this relationship by visiting the Vălenii de Munte establishment in July 1930. A contemporary historian, Hugh Seton-Watson (son of R.W. Seton-Watson), documented Carol's confiscation of agrarian politics for his own benefit, noting: "Professor Iorga's immense vanity delivered him into the king's hands." Iorga's imprudent ambition is mentioned by cultural historian Z. Ornea, who also counts Iorga among those who had already opposed Carol's invalidation. Iorga wilfully rejected PNȚ policies. There was a running personal rivalry between him and PNȚ leader Iuliu Maniu, Iorga survived the election of June, in which he led a National Union coalition, with support from his rivals, the National Liberals. During his short term, he traveled throughout the country, visiting around 40 cities and towns, In recognition of his merits as an Albanologist, the Albanian Kingdom granted Iorga property in Sarandë town, on which the scholar created a Romanian Archeological Institute. The backdrop to Iorga's mandate was Carol's conflict with the Iron Guard, an increasingly popular fascist organization. In March 1932, Iorga signed a decree outlawing the movement, the beginning of his clash with the Guard's founder Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. At the same time, his new education law enhancing university autonomy, for which Iorga had been campaigning since the 1920s, was openly challenged as unrealistic by fellow scholar Florian Ștefănescu-Goangă, who noted that it only encouraged political agitators to place themselves outside the state. Also holding the office of Education Minister, he allowed auditing students to attend university lectures without holding a Romanian Baccalaureate degree. Reserving praise for the home-grown youth movement Micii Dorobanți, he was also an official backer of Romanian Scouting. In addition, Iorga's time in office brought the creation of another popular summer school, in the tourist resort of Balcic, Southern Dobruja. To the detriment of financial markets, the cabinet tried to implement debt relief for bankrupt land cultivators, and signed an agreement with Argentina, another exporter of agricultural produce, to try to limit deflation. The mishandling of economic affairs made the historian a target of derision and indignation among the general public. The reduction of deficit with pay cuts for all state employees ("sacrificial curves") or selective layoffs was particularly dramatic, leading to widespread disillusionment among the middle class, which only increased grassroots support for the Iron Guard. Other controversial aspects were his alleged favoritism and nepotism: perceived as the central figure of an academic clique, Iorga helped Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică's family and Pârvan, promoted young historian Andrei Oțetea, and made his son in law Colonel Chirescu (m. Florica Iorga in 1918) a Prefect of Storojineț County. His premiership also evidenced the growing tensions between the PND in Bucharest and its former allies in Transylvania: Iorga arrived to power after rumors of a PNȚ "Transylvanian conspiracy", and his cabinet included no Romanian Transylvanian politicians. It was however open to members of the Saxon community, and Iorga himself created a new government position for ethnic minority affairs. Nicolae Iorga presented his cabinet's resignation in May 1932, returning to academic life. This came after an understanding between Carol II and a rightist PNȚ faction, who took over with Alexandru Vaida-Voevod as Premier. The PND, running in elections under a square-in-square logo (回), was rapidly becoming a minor force in Romanian politics. It survived through alliances with the National Liberals or with Averescu, while Argetoianu left it to establish an equally small agrarian group. Iorga concentrated on redacting memoirs, published as ("Under Three Kings"), whereby he intended to counter political hostility. He also created the Museum of Sacred Art, housed by the Crețulescu Palace. Mid-1930s conflicts '', issue no. 34, dated 2 March 1939 The political conflicts were by then reflected in Iorga's academic life: Iorga was becoming strongly opposed to a new generation of professional historians, which included Giurescu the younger, P. P. Panaitescu and Gheorghe Brătianu. At the core, it was a scientific dispute: all three historians, grouped around the new Revista Istorică Română, found Iorga's studies to be speculative, politicized or needlessly didactic in their conclusions. The political discrepancy was highlighted by the more radical support these academics were directing toward King Carol II. In later years, Iorga also feuded with his Transylvanian disciple Lucian Blaga, trying in vain to block Blaga's reception to the academy over differences in philosophy and literary preference. On Blaga's side, the quarrel involved philologist and civil servant Bazil Munteanu; his correspondence with Blaga features hostile remarks about Iorga's "vulgarity" and cultural politics. On his way to a pan-European congress, Iorga stirred further controversy by attending, in Rome, the tenth anniversary of the 1922 March, celebrating Italian Fascism. He resumed his participation in conference cycles during 1933, revisiting France, as well as taking back his position at the University of Bucharest; he published another 37 books and, in August 1933, attended the History Congress in Warsaw. Early in 1934, Iorga issued a condemnation of the Iron Guard, following the assassination of National Liberal Premier Ion G. Duca by a Legionary death squad. However, during the subsequent police round-ups of Guardist activists, Iorga intervened for the release of fascist philosopher Nae Ionescu, and still invited Guardist poet Radu Gyr to lecture at Vălenii. At the same time, he was again focusing his attention on the condemnation of modernists and the poetry of Arghezi, first with the overview ("History of Contemporary Romanian Literature"), then with his press polemics. Also in 1934, Iorga also published a book which coined his image of Romania's early modern culture— ("Byzantium after Byzantium"), alongside the three-volume ("A History of Byzantine Life"). He followed up with a volume of memoirs ("My Horizons. The Life of a Man as It Was"), while inaugurating his contribution to Romania's official cultural magazine, Revista Fundațiilor Regale. Iorga again toured Europe in 1935, and, upon his return to Romania, gave a new set of conferences under the auspices of the Cultural League, inviting scholar Franz Babinger to lecture at the ISSEE. Again in Iași, the historian participated in a special celebration of 18th century Moldavian Prince and Enlightenment thinker Dimitrie Cantemir, whose remains had been retrieved from the Soviet Union to be reburied in the Romanian city. Also in 1935, Iorga and his daughter Liliana co-authored a Bucharest guide book. Early in 1936, Nicolae Iorga was again lecturing at the University of Paris, and gave an additional conference at the Société des études historiques, before hosting the Bucharest session of the International Committee of Historians. Upon his return, wishing to renew his campaign against the modernists, Iorga founded Cuget Clar, the neo- magazine. By that moment in time, he was publicly voicing his concern that Transylvania was a target of expansion for Regency-period Hungary, while cautioning the public against Nazi Germany and its revanchism. Similarly, he was concerned about the Soviet threat and the fate of Romanians in the Soviet Union, working closely with the Transnistrian anti-communist refugee Nichita Smochină. Such worries were notably expressed by Iorga in a series of Bucharest Radio broadcasts, ("Advice at Dark", soon after published in brochure format). He completed several new volumes, among which were ("Evidence on the Conscious Origin of the Romanians"), the polemical essay ("My Fight against Stupidity"), and the first two volumes of the long planned . 1937 retirement and Codreanu trials in National Renaissance Front uniforms (10 May 1939) Nicolae Iorga was officially honored in 1937, when Carol II inaugurated a Bucharest Museum of World History, placed under the ISSEE director's presidency. However, the publicized death threats he received from the Iron Guard eventually prompted Iorga to retire from his university position. He withdrew to Vălenii de Munte, but was still active on the academic scene, lecturing on "the development of the human spirit" at the World History Institute, and being received as a corresponding member into Chile's Academy of History. With his disciple N. Georgescu-Cocoș, he was also continuing his fight against modernism, inspiring a special Romanian Academy report on the modernists' "pornography". The early months of 1938 saw Nicolae Iorga joining the national unity government of Miron Cristea, formed by Carol II's right-wing power base. A Crown Councillor, he then threw his reluctant support behind the National Renaissance Front, created by Carol II as the driving force of a pro-fascist but anti-Guard one-party state (see 1938 Constitution of Romania). Iorga was upset by the imposition of uniforms on all public officials, calling it "tyrannical", and privately ridiculed the new constitutional regime's architects, but he eventually complied to the changes. In April, Iorga was also at the center of a scandal which resulted in Codreanu's arrest and eventual extrajudicial killing. By then, the historian had attacked the Guard's policy of setting up small commercial enterprises and charity ventures. This prompted Codreanu to address him an open letter, which accused Iorga of being dishonest. Premier Armand Călinescu, who had already ordered a clampdown on Guardist activities, seized Iorga's demand for satisfaction as an opportunity, ordering Carol's rival to be tried for libel—the preamble to an extended trial on grounds of conspiracy. An unexpected consequence of this move was the protest resignation of General Ion Antonescu from the office of Defense Minister. Iorga himself refused to attend the trial; in letters he addressed to the judges, he asked the count of libel to be withdrawn, and advised that Codreanu should follow the insanity defense on the other accusations. Iorga's attention then moved to other activities: he was Romanian Commissioner for the 1938 Venice Biennale, and supportive of the effort to establish a Romanian school of genealogists. In 1939, as the Guard's campaign of retribution had degenerated into terrorism, Iorga used the Senate tribune to address the issue and demand measures to curb the violence. He was absent for part of the year, again lecturing in Paris. Steadily publishing new volumes of , he also completed work on several other books: in 1938, ("For the Defense of the Western Frontier"), ("German Thought and Action"), ("National Borders and Spaces"); in 1939 ("History of Bucharest"), ("Parliamentary Addresses"), ("World History as Seen through Literature"), ("Nationalists and Frontiers"), ("Spiritual States and Wars"), ("N. Iorga's Complete Poetry") and two new volumes of . and an anti-war cycle of poems. Iorga was again Romanian Commissioner of the Venice Biennale in 1940. The accelerated political developments led him to focus on his activities as a militant and journalist. His output for 1940 included a large number of conferences and articles dedicated to the preservation of Greater Romania's borders and the anti-Guardist cause: ("The Mark of Cain"), ("Ignorance, Mistress of the World"), ("A Wayfarer Facing Wolves") etc. Iorga was troubled by the outbreak of World War II and saddened by the fall of France, events which formed the basis of his essay ("Recollections from the Current Scenes of a Tragedy"). He was also working on a version of Prometheus Bound, a tragedy which probably reflected his concern about Romania, her allies, and the uncertain political future. ==Death==

The year 1940 saw the collapse of Carol II's regime. The unexpected cession of Bessarabia to the Soviets shocked Romanian society and greatly angered Iorga. At the two sessions of the Crown Council held on 27 June, he was one of six (out of 21) members to reject the Soviet ultimatum demanding Bessarabia's handover, instead calling vehemently for armed resistance. and tirades from the Guardist section in Vălenii. He further antagonized the new government by stating his attachment to the abdicated royal. Nicolae Iorga was forced out of Bucharest (where he owned a new home in Dorobanți quarter) He was kidnapped by a Guardist squad, the best-known member of which was agricultural engineer Traian Boeru, on the afternoon of 27 November, and killed in the vicinity of Strejnic (some distance from the city of Ploiești). He was shot at some nine times in all, with 7.65 mm and 6.35 mm handguns. Iorga's killing is often mentioned in tandem with that of agrarian politician Virgil Madgearu, kidnapped and murdered by the Guardists on the same night, and with the Jilava massacre (during which Carol II's administrative apparatus was decimated). These acts of retribution, placed in connection with the discovery and reburial of Codreanu's remains, were carried out independently by the Guard, and enhanced tensions between it and Antonescu. Memorial Iorga's death caused much consternation among the general public, and was received with particular concern by the academic community. Forty-seven universities worldwide flew their flags at half-staff. The final oration was delivered by philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, who noted, in terms akin to those used by Focillon, that the murdered scientist had stood for "our nation's intellectual prowess", "the full cleverness and originality of the Romanian genius". Iorga's remains were buried at Bellu, in Bucharest, on the same day as Madgearu's funeral—the attendants, who included some of the surviving interwar politicians and foreign diplomats, defied the Guard's ban with their presence. Iorga's last texts, recovered by his young disciple G. Brătescu, were kept by literary critic Șerban Cioculescu and published at a later date. Gheorghe Brătianu later took over Iorga's position at the South-East Europe Institute and the Institute of World History (known as Nicolae Iorga Institute from 1941). ==Political outlook==

Conservatism and nationalism Nicolae Iorga's views on society and politics stood at the meeting point of traditional conservatism, ethnic nationalism and national conservatism. This fusion is identified by political scientist Ioan Stanomir as a mutation of s ideology, running contrary to Titu Maiorescu's liberal conservatism, but resonating with the ideology of Romania's national poet, Mihai Eminescu. A maverick Junimist, Eminescu added to the conservative vision of his contemporaries an intense nationalism with reactionary, racist and xenophobic tinges, for which he received posthumous attention in Iorga's lifetime. Identified by researcher Ioana Both as a source for the "Eminescu myth", Iorga saw in him the poet of "healthy race" ideas and the "integral expression of the Romanian soul", rather than a melancholy artist. This ideological source shaped the attitudes of many Sămănătorists, eroding s influence and redefining Romanian conservatism for the space of one generation. A definition provided by political scientist John Hutchinson lists Iorga among those who embraced "cultural nationalism", which rejected modernization, as opposed to "political nationalism", which sought to modernize the nation-state. Borrowing Maiorescu's theory about how Westernization had come to Romania as "forms without concept" (meaning that some modern customs had been forced on top of local traditions), Iorga likewise aimed it against the liberal establishment, but gave it a more radical expression. A significant point of continuity between Junimism and Iorga was the notion of two "positive" social classes, both opposed to the bourgeoisie: the lower class, represented by the peasantry, and the aristocratic class of boyars. Like Maiorescu, Iorga attacked the centralizing 1866 Constitution, to which he opposed a statehood based on "organic" growth, with self-aware local communities as a source of legitimacy. Also resonating with the Junimist club was Iorga's vision of the French Revolution—according to French author René Girault, the Romanian was an "excellent connaisseur" of this particular era. The revolutionary experience was, in Iorga's view, traumatic, while its liberal or Jacobin inheritors were apostates disturbing the traditional equilibrium. His response to the Jacobin model was an Anglophile and Tocquevillian position, favoring the British constitutional system and praising the American Revolution as the positive example of nation-building. Like Junimism, Iorga's conservatism did not generally rely on religion. A secularist among the traditionalists, he did not attach a special meaning to Christian ethics, and, praising the creative force of man, saw asceticism as a negative phenomenon. However, he strongly identified the Romanian Orthodox Church and its hesychasm with the Romanian psyche, marginalizing the Latin Church and the Transylvanian School. As argued by political scientist Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, his was an "alternative" to the rationalist perspective, and a counterweight to Max Weber's study on The Protestant Ethic. His theories identified the people as a "natural entity [with] its own organic life", and sometimes justified the right of conquest when new civilizations toppled decadent ones—the conflict, he argued, was between Heracles and Trimalchio. In his private and public life, Iorga's conservatism also came with sexist remarks: like Maiorescu, Iorga believed that women only had a talent for nurturing and assisting male protagonists in public affairs. Despite the various similarities, Iorga and the Junimist loyalists became political enemies. Early on, Maiorescu would respond to his letters with disdain, while novelist Ioan Slavici called his irredentist projects "nonsense". Writing in 1920, Convorbiri Critice editor Mihail Dragomirescu accused those Junimists who followed Iorga's "chauvinist nationalism" of having forgotten that Maiorescu's art for art's sake principles "substituted the political criterion of patriotism for the criterion of truth." The conflict between Iorga and Dragomirescu was also personal, and, as reported by Iorga's disciple Alexandru Lapedatu, even caused the two to physically assault each other. Iorga's brand of national conservatism was more successful than its more conventional predecessor: while the Conservative Party disappeared from the public eye after 1918, Iorga's more nationalistic interpretation was still considered relevant in the 1930s. One of the last Conservative leaders, Nicolae Filipescu, even pondered forging an alliance with the historian, in an attempt to save the group for dissolution. According to Ioan Stanomir, Iorga and fellow historian Ioan C. Filitti were together responsible for "the most memorable pages" in Romanian conservative theory for "the 1928–1938 decade". In Stanomir's assessment, this last period of Iorga's activity also implied a move toward the main sources of traditional conservatism, bringing Iorga closer to the line of thought represented by Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson or Mihail Kogălniceanu, and away from that of Eminescu. The final years brought Iorga's stark condemnation of all statism, from the absolute monarchy to modern state capitalism, accompanied by a dystopian perspective on industrialization as the end of the individual. Like Eminescu, Iorga was essentially a conservative anti-capitalist and economic corporatist, who confessed his admiration for pre-modern guilds. In Stanomir's account, these ideals, alongside the dreams of a "ghostly" organic identity, anti-ideological monarchism and national regeneration, brought Iorga into Carol II's camp. Another factor was the rise of Nazi Germany, which, Iorga thought, could only be met by national unity under a powerful ruler. Iorga found himself in Kogălniceanu's conservative statement, "civilization stops when revolutions begin", being especially critical of communist revolution. He described the Soviet experiment as a "caricature" of the Jacobin age Iorga found the small Romanian Communist Party an amusement and, even though he expressed alarm for its terrorist tendencies and its "foreign" nature, disliked the state's use of brutal methods against its members. Antisemitism has entrusted Mr Iorga with the office of Hakham in that locality.'' (1910 cartoon by Ion Theodorescu-Sion) A major and controversial component of Iorga's political vision, present throughout most of his career, was his antisemitism. Cultural historian William O. Oldson notes that Iorga's "amazing list of accomplishments" in other fields helped give antisemitism "an irresistible panache" in Romania, particularly since Iorga shared in the belief that all good nationalists were antisemites. His ideas on the "Jewish Question" were frequently supported by violent language, which left traces on his journalist activity (even though, Oldson notes, he did not resort to racial slurs). In 1901, when he blocked Jewish linguist Lazăr Șăineanu from obtaining an academic position, Iorga wrote that Jews had a "passion for high praise and multiple earnings"; three years later, in Sămănătorul, he argued that Iași was polluted by the "dirty business" of a "heathen and hostile" community. Similar accusations were stated, in his travel accounts, where he even justified pogroms against Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews. proclaimed that local Jews were suffocating the Romanian middle class and needed to be expelled, using slogans such as ("The Jews to Palestine"). The program was criticized from early on by Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Iorga's fellow nationalist and post-Junimist, who noted that the economic rationale behind it was unsound. According to Oldson, the claim that Jews were economic "vampires" was entirely unsubstantiated, even hypocritical: "[Iorga was] a Moldavian and fully aware of the complex causes of that province's poverty". He had nevertheless opted for religious-cultural over racial antisemitism, believing that, at the core of civilization, there was a conflict between Christian values and Judaism. He also suggested that Romanian antisemitism was conjectural and defensive, segregationist rather than destructive, and repeatedly argued that xenophobia was not in the national character—ideas paraphrased by Oldson as a "humane antisemitism". Oldson also refers to a paradox in the attitude of Iorga (and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu before him): "A self-consciously proclaimed esteem for a minuscule [Jewish] elite (such as writer Gheorghe Kernbach), then, went hand in hand with the utmost contempt and condescension for the bulk of Romanian Jewry." Reviewing the impact of such ideas, literary critic William Totok referred to Neamul Românesc as "the most important platform of antisemitic agitation prior to World War I." It also specifically targeted Romanians who were friendly with Jews, one such case being that of writer Ion Luca Caragiale (attacked for his contacts with Șăineanu, dramatist Ronetti Roman and other Jews). Caragiale replied with noted irony, calling Iorga "tall but crooked". However, with the interwar period came a relaxation of Iorga's own antisemitic discourse, when he described Jews as potentially loyal to "the legitimate masters of the land". He recorded being touched by his warm reception among the Romanian American Jewish community in 1930, and, after 1934, published his work with the Adevărul group. As Cuza himself began censuring this more tolerant discourse, Iorga even voiced his admiration for the Jewish mecena Aristide Blank. As noted by researcher George Voicu, the anti-"Judaization" discourse of the far right was by then turning against Iorga. Also, as Prime Minister, Nicolae Iorga did not promote antisemitic measures. Later in life, Iorga made the occasional return to antisemitic rhetoric: in 1937–1938, he alleged that Jews were pressuring Romanians into leaving the country, and described the necessity of "delousing" Romania by colonizing Romanian Jews elsewhere. Despite his shifting attitude towards the Romanian Jewry, he opposed the Zionist movement throughout his life. Geopolitics and the Little Entente (in light green), with their nominal enemy, Regency Hungary Iorga's changing sentiment flowed between the extremes of Francophilia and Francophobia. The Romanian scholar explained in detail his dislike for the Third Republic's social and political landscape. He recalled that, in the 1890s, he had been shocked by the irreverence and cosmopolitanism of French student society. In a 1906 speech, Iorga also noted that Francophone elites and urban diglossia were slowly destroying the country's social fiber, by creating a language gap between classes. Also, showed a preference for Action Française and the French reactionary right in their conflict with the Third Republic. Shortly after the beginning of World War I, during the Battle of the Frontiers, Iorga publicized his renewed love for France, claiming that she was the only belligerent engaged in a purely defensive war; in the name of Pan-Latinism, he later chided Spain for keeping neutral. Iorga's coverage of European culture and continental affairs also opened bridges with other cultural areas, particularly so during the interwar. By that time, historian Lucian Boia notes, he was seeing Europe as a community of nations, and, "in his own way", was rejecting isolationism or "primitive" xenophobia. According to academic Francesco Guida, Iorga's political and scholarly activities displayed a "great openness towards the outside world", even as, in 1930s France, public opinion was turning against him. Instead, Iorga affirmed himself as a promoter of English culture, making noted efforts at promoting awareness of its defining traits among the Romanian public. At the time, although flirting with Pan-European nationalism, he stood in contrast with the Transylvanian-born Iuliu Maniu for displaying no sympathy toward Danubian Confederation projects, believing them to conceal Hungary's revanchism. Iorga also had strong views on Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany and Nazism in general, taking in view their contempt for the Versailles system, but also their repressive politics. He summarized this in : "Beware my people for great dangers are stalking you ... Borders are attacked, gutted, destroyed, gulped up. ... There reemerges, in its cruelest form, the old theory that small states have no right to independence, that they fall within living spaces ... I cannot forget the past and I cannot reach an agreement with Hitler's dictatorship, being a man who cherishes freedom of thought". Italian agents of influence hesitated between Iorga and the Iron Guard, but the Fascist International sought to include Iorga among its Romanian patrons; Iorga himself expressed regret that the Italian regime was primarily an ally of revanchist Hungary, but applauded the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, and, to the alarm of France, repeatedly argued that an Italian alliance was more secure than the Little Entente. Nicolae Iorga's bitterness about Romanian geopolitical disadvantages was encoded in his oft-quoted remark about the country only having two peaceful borders: one with Serbia, the other with the Black Sea. Despite these views, he endorsed the idea of minority rights in Greater Romania, attempting to find common ground with the Hungarian-Romanian community. In addition to promoting inclusive action in government, Iorga declared himself against turning Hungarians and Transylvanian Saxons into "pharisaic" Romanians by coercing them to adopt the Romanian tradition. Iorga was also noted for fostering the academic career of Eufrosina Dvoichenko-Markov, one of the few Russian-Romanian researchers of the interwar period. He was however skeptical about the Ukrainian identity and rejected the idea of an independent Ukraine on Romania's border, debating the issues with ethnographer Zamfir Arbore. Various of Iorga's tracts speak in favor of a common background uniting the diverse nations of the Balkans. Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova suggests that, unlike many of his predecessors, Iorga was not alarmed Romania being perceived as a Balkan country, and did not attach a negative connotation to this affiliation (even though, she notes, Iorga explicitly placed the northern limit of the Balkans on the Danube, just south of Wallachia). In the 1930s, the Romanian scholar spoke with respect about all the Balkan peoples, but claimed that Balkan statehood was "Oriental" and underdeveloped. ==Scientific work==

Iorga's reputation for genius method: a fragment from his private notes Iorga the European scholar has drawn comparisons with figures such as Voltaire, Jules Michelet, Leopold von Ranke and Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz. he was an exceptionally prolific author: according to his biographer Barbu Theodorescu, the total of his published contributions, both volumes and brochures, was 1,359. His work in documenting Romania's historical past could reach an unprecedented intensity, one such exceptional moment being a 1903 study trip to Târgu Jiu, a three-day interval during which he copied and summarized 320 individual documents, covering the period 1501–1833. while Enciclopedia Cugetarea deemed him the greatest-ever mind in Romania. According to literary historian George Călinescu, Iorga's "huge" and "monstrously" comprehensive research, leaving no other historian "the joy of adding something", was matched by the everyday persona, a "hero of the ages". Romanian historian of culture Alexandru Zub finds that Iorga's is "surely the richest opus coming from the 20th century", while Maria Todorova calls Iorga "Romania's greatest historian", adding "at least in terms of the size of his opus and his influence both at home and abroad". Method and biases The definition of history followed by Iorga was specified in his 1894 : "History is the systematic exposition, free from all unrelated purpose, of facts irrespective of their nature, methodically acquired, through which human activity manifested itself, irrespective of place and time." However, even at that stage, Iorga's ideas accommodated a belief that history needed to be written with a "poetic talent" that would make one "relive" the past. By 1902, he had changed his approach in historiography to include and illustrate his belief in emotional attachment as a positive value of cultural nationalism. He would speak of historians as "elders of [their] nation", and dismissed academic specialization as a "blindfold". Reflecting back on the transition, Iorga himself stated: "The love for the past, for great figures of energy and sincerity, ... the exact contrary of tendencies I had found existed among my contemporaries, had gripped me and, added to my political preoccupations, such awakenings served me, when it came to criticizing things present, more than any argument that is abstract, logical in nature." According to literary historian Victor Iova: "[Iorga's] overall activity ... did not just seek the communication of knowledge, but also expressly sought to define the social finality of his time, its ethical sense and his own patriotic ideal." A particular challenge to Iorga's historical narrative also came from rival Hungarian historiography: in 1929, Benedek Jancsó called Iorga's science a branch of "Romanian imperialist nationalism", his argument rejected as "false logic" by the Romanian. Iorga had a friendly attitude toward other Hungarian scholars, including Árpád Bitay and Imre Kádár, who were his guests at Vălenii. In his own Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, Iorga's German colleague Franz Babinger also noted that Iorga could get "carried away by national pride". Medievalist Kenneth Setton also described Iorga as "the great Rumanian historian ... who was sometimes intoxicated by the grandeur of his own historical concepts, but whose work is always illuminating." While Japanese sociologist Kosaku Yoshino sees Iorga as a main contributor to didactic and dramatized cultural nationalism in Europe, University of Trento academic Paul Blokker suggests that, although "politicized, essentialist and sometimes anachronistic", Iorga's writings can be critically recovered. Ioana Both notes: "A creator with titan-like forces, Iorga is more a visionary of history than a historian". Bordaș criticizes Iorga's habit of recording "everything" into his studies, and without arranging the facts described into an "epistemological relationship". In 1923, even an old friend like Sextil Pușcariu could accuse Iorga of behaving like a "dictator". In compensation, the historian fulfilled this function with his activity in the media and in the field of popular history, at which he was, according to historian Lucian Nastasă, masterful but vulgarizing. Iorga and Romanian ethnogenesis 's remains, as uncovered in 1920 (thought by Iorga to belong to Basarab I) Iorga's ideas on the origin of the Romanians, and his explanation for the more mysterious parts of that lengthy ethnogenesis process, were shaped by both his scientific and ideological preoccupations. Some of Iorga's studies focused specifically on the original events in the process: ancient Dacia's conquest by the Roman Empire (Trajan's Dacian Wars), and the subsequent foundation of Roman Dacia. His account is decidedly in support of Romania's Roman (Latin) roots, and even suggests that Romanization preceded the actual conquest. However, he viewed the autochthonous element in this acculturation, the Dacians (collocated by him with the Getae), as historically significant, and he even considered them the source for Romania's later links with the Balkan "Thracian" space. Through the Thracians and the Illyrians, Iorga believed to have found a common root for all Balkan peoples, and an ethnic layer which he believed was still observable after later conquests. He was nevertheless explicit in distancing himself from the speculative texts of Dacianist Nicolae Densușianu, where Dacia was described as the source of all European civilization. Iorga had a complex personal perspective on the little-documented Dark Age history, between the Roman departure (271 AD) and the 14th century emergence of two Danubian Principalities: Moldavia and Wallachia. Despite the separate histories and conflicting allegiances these regions had during the High Middle Ages, he tended to group the two Principalities and medieval Transylvania together, into a vague non-stately entity he named "the Romanian Land". Iorga cautioned about the emergence of states from a stateless society such as the proto-Romanian one: "The state is a late, very elevated, very delicate form that, under certain conditions, may be reached by a people. ... There was therefore no state, but a Romanian mass living in the midst of forests, in those villages harbored by protective forests, where it is just as true that a certain way of life could emerge, sometimes on a rather elevated level." Echoing his political conservatism, Iorga's theory proposed that the Romanized Dacians, or all their Vlach-Romanian successors, had created peasant republics to defend themselves against the invading nomads. It spoke of the rapid ruralization of Latin urban dwellers—suggested to him by etymologies such as the derivation of ("soil") from pavimentum, and the creation of "genealogical villages" around common ancestors () or the ancient communal sharing of village lands, in the manner imagined by writer Nicolae Bălcescu. Iorga's peasant polities, sometimes described by him as ("people's Romanias", "people's Roman-like polities"), were seen by him as the sources of a supposed uncodified constitution in both Moldavia and Wallachia. That constitutional system, he argued, created solidarity: the countries' hospodar rulers were themselves peasants, elected to high military office by their peers, and protecting the entire community. Unlike Ioan Bogdan and others, Iorga strongly rejected any notion that the South Slavs had been an additional contributor to ethnogenesis, and argued that Slavic idioms were a sustained but nonessential influence in historical Romanian. Until 1919, he was cautious about counting the Romanians and Aromanians as one large ethnic group, but later came to share the inclusivist views of his Romanian colleagues. Iorga also stood out among his generation for flatly rejecting any notion that the 12th-century Second Bulgarian Empire was a "Vlach-Bulgarian" or "Romanian-Bulgarian" project, noting that the Vlach achievements there benefited "another nation" (Iorga's italics). The stately foundation of Moldavia and of Wallachia, Iorga thought, were linked to the emergence of major trade routes in the 14th century, and not to the political initiative of military elites. Likewise, Iorga looked into the genesis of boyardom, describing the selective progression of free peasants into a local aristocracy. He described the later violent clash between hospodars and boyars as one between national interest and disruptive centrifugal tendencies, suggesting that prosperous boyardom had undermined the balance of the peasant state. His theory about the peasant nature of Romanian statehood was hotly debated in his lifetime, particularly after a 1920 discovery showed that Radu I of Wallachia had been buried in the full regalia of medieval lords. Another one of his influential (but disputed) claims attributed the appearance of pre-modern slavery, mainly affecting the Romani (Gypsy) minority, exclusively on alien customs borrowed from the Mongol Empire. Iorga's verdicts as a medievalist also produced a long-standing controversy about the real location of the 1330 Battle of Posada—so-named by him after an obscure reference in the Chronicon Pictum—whereby the Wallachian Princes secured their throne. A major point of contention between Panaitescu and Iorga referred to Michael the Brave's historical achievements: sacrilegious in the eyes of Iorga, Panaitescu placed in doubt Michael's claim to princely descent, and described him as mainly the political agent of boyar interests. Contradicting the Romantic nationalist tradition, Iorga also agreed with younger historians that, for most of their history, Romanians in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania were more justifiably attached to their polities than to national awakening ideals. Panaitescu was however more categorical than Iorga in affirming that Michael the Brave's expeditions were motivated by political opportunism rather than by a pan-Romanian national awareness. Iorga's writings insisted on the importance of Byzantine Greek and Levantine influences in the two countries after the fall of Constantinople: his notion of "Byzantium after Byzantium" postulated that the cultural forms produced by the Byzantine Empire had been preserved by the Principalities under Ottoman suzerainty (roughly, between the 16th and 18th centuries). Additionally, the Romanian scholar described the Ottoman Empire itself as the inheritor of Byzantine government, legal culture and civilization, up to the Age of Revolution. However, the postulated that the Ottoman decline was irreversible, citing uncompromising Islam as one of the causes, and playing down the cohesive action of Ottomanism. The post-Byzantine thesis was taken by various commentators as further proof that the Romanian historian, unlike many of his contemporaries, accepted a level of multiculturalism or acculturation in defining modern Romanian identity. Semiotician Monica Spiridon writes: "Iorga highly valued the idea of cultural confluence and hybridity." Similarly, Maria Todorova notes that, although it minimized the Ottoman contribution and displayed "emotional or evaluative overtones", such a perspective ran against the divisive interpretations of the Balkans, offering a working paradigm for a global history of the region: "Although Iorga's theory may be today [ca. 2009] no more than an exotic episode in the development of Balkan historiography, his formulation is alive not only because it was a fortunate phrase but because it reflects more than its creator would intimate. It is a good descriptive term, particularly for representing the commonalities of the Orthodox peoples in the Ottoman Empire ... but also in emphasizing the continuity of two imperial traditions". With his research, Iorga also rehabilitated the Phanariotes, Greek or Hellenized aristocrats who controlled Wallachia and Moldavia in Ottoman times, and whom Romanian historiography before him presented as wreckers of the country. ==Cultural critic==

Beginnings Iorga's tolerance for the national bias in historiography and his own political profile were complemented in the field of literature and the arts by his strong belief in didacticism. Art's mission was, in his view, to educate and empower the Romanian peasant. The rejection of art for art's sake, whose indifference in front of nationality issues enraged the historian, was notably illustrated by his 1902 letter to the like-minded Luceafărul editors, which stated: "You gentlemen should not allow aesthetic preoccupations to play the decisive part, and you are not granted such circumstances as to dedicate yourselves to pure art. ... Do not imitate ..., do not allow yourselves to be tempted by things you have read elsewhere. Write about things from your country and about the Romanian soul therein." and, according to comparatist John Neubauer, for the first time integrate "the various Romanian texts and writers into a grand narrative of an organic and spontaneous growth of native creativity, based on local tradition and folklore." and was enthusiastic about Stoica D., the war artist. Initially, with , Iorga offered a historian's manifesto against the whole cultural establishment, likened by historian Ovidiu Pecican with Allan Bloom's 1980s critique of American culture. His own theses were ridiculed early in the 20th century by Symbolists such as Emil Isac, Ovid Densusianu or Ion Minulescu, and toned down by poet Ștefan Octavian Iosif. . Nadia Bulighin's illustration to Iorga's conferences "on the Romanian nation" (1927) After his own Marxist beginnings, Iorga was also a critic of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's socialist and Poporanist school, and treated its literature with noted disdain. and local socialist Henric Sanielevici wrote that Iorga's literary doctrine did not live up to its moral goals. Iorga wrote with noted warmth about Contemporanul and its cultural agenda, Nevertheless, he was still often involved at the forefront of cultural campaigns against the various manifestations of modernism, initiating polemics with all the circles representing Romania's new literary and artistic trends: the moderate Sburătorul review of literary theorist Eugen Lovinescu; the eclectic Contimporanul magazine; the Expressionist cell affiliated with the traditionalist magazine Gândirea; and ultimately the various local branches of Dada or Surrealism. In some of his essays, Iorga identified Expressionism with the danger of Germanization, a phenomenon he described as "intolerable" (although, unwittingly, he was also among the first Romanians to tackle Expressionism). In an analogy present in a 1922 article for Gazeta Transilvaniei, Iorga suggested that the same "German" threat was agitating the avant-garde voices of Latin Europe, Futurists and Dadaist "energumens" alike. During the 1930s, as the cultural and political climate changed, Iorga's main accusation against Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga, Mircea Eliade, Liviu Rebreanu, George Mihail Zamfirescu and other Romanian modernists was their supposed practice of literary "pornography". The ensuing polemics were often bitter, and Iorga's vehemence was met with ridicule by his modernist adversaries. literary chronicler Felix Aderca saw in Iorga the driver of "the boorish carts of ", and Blaga called him "the collective name for a multitude of monsters". A lengthy polemic consumed Iorga's relationship with Lovinescu, having at its core the irreconcilable differences between their visions of cultural history. Initially an Iorga aficionado and an admirer of his attack on foreign influences, the leader left sarcastic comments on Iorga's rejection of Symbolism, and, according to Crohmălniceanu, "entire pages of ironies targeting Iorga's advice to writers that they should focus of the sufferings of their 'brother' in the village". Lovinescu also ridiculed Iorga's traditionalist mentoring, calling him a "pontiff of indecency and insult", an enemy of "democratic freedom", Other authors back Lovinescu's verdict about the historian's lack of critical intuition and prowess. According to Călinescu, Iorga was visibly embarrassed by even 19th century Romanticism, out of his territory with virtually everything after "Villani and Commynes", and endorsing the "" in modern Romanian letters. Alexandru George only supports in part this verdict, noting that Iorga's literary histories degenerated from "masterpiece" to "gravest mistake". Iorga's views were in part responsible for a split taking place at , occurring when his traditionalist disciple, Nichifor Crainic, became the group's new leader and marginalized the Expressionists. Crainic, who was also a poet with tastes, was held in esteem by Iorga, whose publications described him and his disciples as the better half of . Iorga was also the subject of a special issue, being recognized as a forerunner (a title he shared with Octavian Goga and Vasile Pârvan). There was however a major incompatibility between the two traditionalist tendencies: to Iorga's secularism, Crainic opposed a quasi-theocratic vision, based on the Romanian Orthodox Church as a guarantee of Romanian identity. Crainic saw his own theory as an afterthought of , arguing that his had erected an "azure tarpaulin", symbolizing the Church, over Iorga's nationalism. In particular, his ideas on the Byzantine connections and organic development of Romanian civilization were welcomed by both the and some representatives of more conventional modernism. One such figure, affiliated with , was essayist Benjamin Fondane. His views on the bridging of tradition with modernism quoted profusely from Iorga's arguments against cultural imitation, but parted with Iorga's various other beliefs. According to Călinescu, the "philosopher-myths" (Iorga and Pârvan) also shaped the anti-Junimist outlook of the 1930s Trăirists, who returned to ethnic nationalism and looked favorably on the Dacian layer of Romanian identity. Iorga's formative influence on such as Eliade and Emil Cioran was also highlighted by some other researchers. In 1930s Bessarabia, Iorga's ideology helped influence poet Nicolai Costenco, who created Viața Basarabiei as a local answer to Cuget Clar. ==Literary work==

Narrative style, drama, verse and fiction According to some of his contemporaries, Nicolae Iorga was an outstandingly talented public speaker. One voice in support of this view is that of Ion Petrovici, a Junimist academic, who recounted that hearing Iorga lecture had made him overcome a prejudice which rated Maiorescu above all Romanian orators. In 1931, critic Tudor Vianu found that Iorga's "great oratorical skill" and "volcanic nature" complimented a passion for the major historical phenomena. A decade later, George Călinescu described in detail the historian's public speaking routine: the "zmeu"-like introductory outbursts, the episodes of "idle grace", the apparent worries, the occasional anger and the intimate, calm, addresses to his bewildered audience. The oratorical technique flowed into Iorga's contribution to belles-lettres. The antiquated polished style, Călinescu notes, even surfaced in his works of research, which revived the picturesque tone of medieval chronicles. Critic Ion Simuț suggests that Iorga is at his best in travel writing, combining historical fresco and picturesque detail. In fact, Iorga's various reflections attack the core tenets of philosophy, and describe the philosopher prototype as detached from reality, intolerant of others, and speculative. Iorga was a highly productive dramatist, inspired by the works of Carlo Goldoni, According to critic Ion Negoițescu, he was at home in the genre, which complimented his vision of "history as theater". and a play about Jesus Christ (where Jesus is not shown, but heard). Iorga's poems include odes to Poland, written shortly after the 1939 German invasion, described by author Nicolae Mareș as "unparalleled in any other literature". Kostis Palamas, Many of the volumes were quickly written as Iorga's attempt to rehabilitate himself after a failed premiership; according to Alexandru Zub, they also fall into place within the Romanian ego-history vogue, between Xenopol's and Pârvan's. Both the diaries and the memoirs are noted for their caustic and succinct portraits of Iorga's main rivals: Maiorescu as inflexible and unemotional, Dimitrie Sturdza as avaricious, Nae Ionescu as "an awful temper", Hungarian politician István Tisza as a "Turanian" tyrant; Iorga contributed particularly emotional, and critically acclaimed, tributes for his political friends, from Vasile Bogrea to Yugoslavia's Nikola Pašić. At times, Iorga sheds a nostalgic light on his one-time opponents (similar, in Călinescu's view, to "inscriptions on their graves"). but also stated that actual collaboration with the enemy was unforgivable. ==Legacy==

Scholarly impact, portrayals and landmarks , 2005 The fields of scientific inquiry opened by Iorga, in particular his study into the origin of the Romanians, were taken up after his death by other researchers: Gheorghe Brătianu, Constantin C. Giurescu, P. P. Panaitescu, Șerban Papacostea, Henri H. Stahl. As cultural historian, Iorga found a follower in N. Cartojan, while his thoughts on the characteristics of Romanianness inspired the social psychology of Dimitrie Drăghicescu. In the postmodern age, Iorga's pronouncements on the subject arguably contributed to the birth of Romanian imagological, post-colonial and cross-cultural studies. The idea of has endured as a popular working hypothesis in Romanian archeology. In addition to the many autobiographies which discuss him, he is a hero in various works of fiction. As geographer Cristophor Arghir, he is the subject of a thinly disguised portrayal in the Bildungsroman ("Around the Time of the Revolution"), written by his rival Constantin Stere in the 1930s. Celebrated Romanian satirist and Viața Românească affiliate Păstorel Teodoreanu was engaged in a lengthy polemic with Iorga, enshrining Iorga in Romanian humor as a person with little literary skill and an oversized ego, and making him the subject of an entire collection of poems and articles, ("Stanzas in May Wormwood for Iorga Neculai"). One of Teodoreanu's own epigrams in Contimporanul ridiculed , showing the resurrected Dante Alighieri pleading with Iorga to be left in peace. Iorga was also identified as the subject of fictional portrayals in a modernist novel by N. D. Cocea and (against the author's disclaimer) in George Ciprian's play ''The Drake's Head''. Iorga became the subject of numerous visual portrayals. Some of the earliest were satires, such as an 1899 portrait of him as a Don Quixote (the work of Nicolae Petrescu Găină) and images of him as a ridiculously oversized character, in Ary Murnu's drawings for Furnica review. Later, Iorga's appearance inspired the works of some other visual artists, including his own daughter Magdalina (Magda) Iorga, painter Constantin Piliuță and sculptor Ion Irimescu, who was personally acquainted with the scholar. Irimescu's busts of Iorga are located in places of cultural importance: the ISSEE building in Bucharest and a public square in Chișinău, Moldova (ex-Soviet Bessarabia). The city has another Iorga bust, the work of Mihail Ecobici, in the Aleea Clasicilor complex. Since 1994, Iorga's face is featured on a highly circulated Romanian leu bill: the 10,000 lei banknote, which became the 1 leu bill following a 2005 monetary reform. Several Romanian cities have "Nicolae Iorga" streets or boulevards: Bucharest (also home of the Iorga High School and the Iorga Park), Botoșani, Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, Constanța, Craiova, Iași, Oradea, Ploiești, Sibiu, Timișoara, etc. In Moldova, his name was also assigned to similar locations in Chișinău and Bălți. The Botoșani family home, restored and partly rebuilt in 1965, is currently preserved as a Memorial House. The house in Vălenii is a memorial museum. Political symbol Iorga's murder, like other acts of violence ordered by the Iron Guard, alarmed Ion Antonescu, who found that it contradicted his resolutions on public order—the first clash in a dispute which, early in 1941, erupted as the Legionary Rebellion and saw the Guard's ouster from power. Reportedly, Iorga's murder instantly repelled some known supporters of the Guard, such as Radu Gyr and Mircea Eliade. Responding to condemnation of his actions from his place of exile in Francoist Spain, the Guard leader Horia Sima claimed to have played no part in the killing. Sima stated that he did not regret the act, noting that Iorga the scholar had had a long enough career, and arguing, counterfactually, that the revenge was saluted by most Romanians. Romania's communist regime, set up in the late 1940s, originally revised Iorga's role in the historical narrative: a record 214 works of his were banned by communist censors, and remained banned until 1965. From 1948, the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History was merged into a communist institution headed by Petre Constantinescu-Iași, while Papacostea was assigned as head of the reorganized ISSEE. Beginning in the 1960s, the national communist authorities capitalized on Nicolae Iorga's image, suggesting that he was a forerunner of Nicolae Ceaușescu's official ideology. Iorga was promoted to the national communist pantheon as an "anti-fascist" and "progressive" intellectual, and references to his lifelong anti-communism were omitted. The ban on his works was selectively lifted, and some of his main books were again in print between 1968 and 1989, along with volumes of his correspondence. However, the Bonaparte Highway villa, bequeathed by Iorga to the state, was demolished during the Ceaușima campaign of 1986. His work was selectively reinterpreted by protochronists such as Dan Zamfirescu, Mihai Ungheanu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor. Contrasting perspectives on Iorga's legacy were held by the various voices within the Romanian diaspora. On the 40th anniversary of his death, the Munich-based Romanian section of the anti-communist Radio Free Europe (RFE) broadcast an homage piece with renewed condemnation of Iorga's killers. RFE received death threats from obscure Iron Guard diaspora members, probably agents of the Securitate secret police. Iorga has enjoyed posthumous popularity in the decades since the Romanian Revolution of 1989: present at the top of "most important Romanians" polls in the 1990s, he was voted in at No. 17 in the 100 greatest Romanians televised poll. As early as 1989, the Iorga Institute was reestablished under Papacostea's direction. In addition to Florica Chirescu, his children from Maria Tasu were Petru, Elena, Maria; with Catinca, he fathered Mircea, Ștefan, Magdalina, Liliana, Adriana, Valentin, and Alina. Magdalina, who enjoyed success as a painter, later started a family in Italy. The only one of his children to train in history, known for her work in reediting her father's books and her contribution as a sculptor, Liliana Iorga married fellow historian Dionisie Pippidi in 1943. and then to Mihaela Bohățiel, a Transylvanian noblewoman who was reputedly a descendant of the Lemeni clan and of the medieval magnate Johannes Benkner. He was for a while attracted to PND politics and also wrote poetry. Iorga's niece Micaella Filitti, who worked as a civil servant in the 1930s, defected from Communist Romania and settled in France. Pippidi also prefaced collections of Iorga's correspondence, and published a biographical synthesis on his grandfather. the sister of award-winning filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. ==Notes==