Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/137

 realms of Hungary and Poland. Latin bishops officiated in both capitals in the 14th, and, to a lesser extent, in the 15th century. But the people remained faithful to their ancient oriental creed. Not by discrimination of dogma, but because Orthodoxy, a religion of poor village priests, of improvised bishops was not the gift of a foreign hierarchy, but the arduous and protracted creation of their own evolution, a Christianity of folk-lore. The two churches, each with its own metropolitan (that of Moldavia having, at the end of the 16th century, almost patriarchal rights), remained, but intercourse between them was that of perfect fraternity. When, in the 17th century, the Greek Creed was endangered by Calvinist propaganda led by the Hungarian princes in Transylvania, both the Roumanian religious chiefs acted in concert to oppose it successfully. Where this did not avail, the inmates of the numerous and well-populated monasteries of ancient tradition, a unitary organisation of calligraphers, miniaturists and artists of all branches, a truer product of the religious sense of the single nation, were there to uphold the Rite.

The highest expression of a people is through its art and literature. In this branch too, the accomplishment of the Roumanian unity took place with amazing rapidity.

The first churches and their ornaments were imported. Two Latin buildings in the former capitals of the principalities were the first to be erected, followed by good copies of Byzantine and Serbian models in Wallachia. Skilful silversmiths from Transylvania or from Dalmatia provided the metal work. But in the middle of the 15th century the younger principality of Moldavia was courageous enough to set in motion the elaboration of an artistic synthesis. The form of the Byzantine church, with the