Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/182

 or would not appear in person—and never, indeed, appeared again after Manuel Comnene in the 12th century.

As, in Latin, the dominatio, the equivalent of the Greek basileia, was not accepted by the first Caesars, whose imperium was not to be confounded with the Eastern conception, so, in Roumanian an împărat (empire being împărăție, an emperor's wife: împărăteasă and his daughter: împărătița) dominates (Roum: domnește), no corresponding verb being formed from the title of emperor. Was this peasant emperor a conqueror? History records no war of aggression in Wallachia, as in the later formed Moldavia, where the whole sense of the domnia was adopted. The highest dignities were obtainable by election, a source of power for the elected as well as for the electors. The first characteristics of the traditional constitutional forms in the Roumanian lands are their elective and local character. The princes, except when imposed from overseas, long remained elective. The usual way of imposing a prince was for his father or predecessor first to associate him with his own power. Thus Mircea cel Bătrân (the Old) who died in 1418, associated his son Michael with him in Wallachia during his own lifetime, so that he was assured the succession. Some years later, Alexander the First adopted the same procedure towards his son Helias in Moldavia. In the middle of the 15th century, Stephen the Great, son of an assassinated prince, did not rest content with the victory which he won over the usurper: he gathered together the whole country, of every class, down to the peasantry, and had them «elect» him. In the same way, the young scholar Demetrius Cantemir, was elected at the end of the 17th century, after the death of his father. In Wallachia, Matei Basarab was proclaimed in this way by the army; Constantin Șerban and Constantin Brâncoveanu assumed power in the same way. The 168