Chapter 9 - Post-Byzantine Empire or Romanian National State?

Summary

This chapter focusses on the period of Ceaușescu’s ‘cultural revolution’ and its implications for historical scholarship. During the 1970s and 1980s a large-scale historiographical re-evaluation began, underpinned by nationalist exaltation, cultural megalomania and assertive autochthonism and supplemented by a retrieval of the big names of pre-war nationalist historiography and their works. Two topics dominated the debate on Byzantium: the actual contact of the Romanian countries with the empire and the transmission of its cultural legacy to the Romanians. The concept of ‘active reception’ of Byzantine culture established itself in cultural, art and architectural studies, testifying to the maturity of the receiving culture. The adaptation of the Byzantine institutional ‘model’ and political ideology, however, proved a more contentious and politicised matter.