Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/143

 the candelabra, crosses and other ornaments of the old Wallachian churches. It has been said that the inscriptions of Dealu have been identified as being of Dalmatian workmanship, and it is possible that these same hands carved the more ancient ones upon the tombs of the first princes to be interred at Argeș. This tradition of shapely and symmetrical Latin script is maintained throughout the whole of a long series of funerary inscriptions in the principality. Further than this the influence of the Italian Occident did not go.

It is otherwise with Moldavia.

The Greeks and Slavs of the south were rarely to be found in the northern state, bounded by the Transylvanian mountains and the Russo-Polish plains. More probably therefore Polish craftsmen were introduced for the building, at Baia, the first humble capital of the province, under the shadow of the Carpathians, of a Catholic church for the Polish Princess Ryngalla, the wife of Alexandra cel Bun (the Good), the true founder of Moldavia. But afterwards under the glorious rule of Stephen the Great, the artists, whose relations with the princes may be studied in contemporary documents, were Saxons from the neighbouring city of Bistrița. They were asked to erect a church corresponding to the requirements of the Eastern Rite and after to decorate it.

But, as they knew only their own Gothic style of building, which was a miniature of the great German originals, the Byzantine pattern was bound to undergo changes due to the unexpected influence of an art which was very different in origin and meaning, being based on other principles and having developed along quite other lines. In the Moldavian church of the time, the Byzantine plan was rigorously adhered to, viz: pronaos, ship and altar, the customary three apses formed the choir and the altar was