Second Period: 1710-1830.—The Phanariote period has been described as one of total decay; political degradation was thought to be reflected in spiritual life. The facts do not warrant this opinion. The few students of Rumanian literature disregarded the vast ms. material accumulated during the Phanariote regime, and out of ignorance and political bias condemned the whole period as sterile. Another influence was far more potent than the con duct of the Greek princes, though some of the latter were bene factors of the people. In Transylvania one section of the Ru manian population had accepted the spiritual rule of the pope; they now became Greek Catholic, instead of Greek Orthodox. Rome strove to educate the priesthood above Orthodox standards, and developed a vigorous proselytizing activity. The substitution of the Latin alphabet for the Cyrillic, and the movement em phasizing the Roman origin of the Rumanian people, were among the means employed by the Roman Church to win over the Ru manians of Transylvania from the fold of Orthodoxy. Thus a great change was wrought towards the end of the 18th century and in the first half of the i9th century in the whole spiritual life of the Rumanian race. It suited the promoters of the Latin move ment to pretend that they started a new era. But this movement imposed a handicap upon Rumanian literature from which authors have begun to free themselves only recently.
By the end of the 17th century Rumanian had become the au thorized language of the church, and the Rumanian translation of the Gospel, printed in 1693, had become the authorized version. Most of the liturgical books adopted in this period are still used. Such are the Ceasoslov, revised by Bishop Kliment of Ramnicu Valcea the Evhologion (1764), the Kataviasar The 12 folio volumes of the Mineiu, by Bishops Kesarie and Filaret of Ramnicu Valcea (1776-8o), and the monumental Lives of the Saints, also in 12 folio volumes, translated from the Russian and published (1809-12) under the auspices of the Metropolitan Veniamin of Moldavia, compare in beauty, richness and lucidity of language with the Bible of 1688. The most important works of the Fathers were also translated from the original Greek into Rumanian in this period.
In Transylvania, with the conversion to Greek-Catholicism of Bishop Athanasius in 1701, the Greek Orthodox had to place them selves down to 185o under the protection of the Serbian metro politan of Karlovatz. No writer of any consequence arose among them. The "United" fared better, and many a gifted young Ru manian was sent to Rome and helped from Vienna to obtain a seri ous education and occasionally also temporal promotion. With a view probably to counteract the literary activity in Rumania, the bishops P. P. Aaron and Joan Bobb were indefatigable in the translation of Latin writers. First and foremost a new translation of the whole Bible was undertaken by Samuel Klain. It appeared at Blazh (1793-95). It falls short of the older version of 1688; it was modernized in its language, and no doubt a careful ex amination would reveal differences in the translation of those passages in which the Catholic tradition differs from the Eastern.
Bobb translated Thomas a Kempis's Imitatio Christi (Blazh, 1812) and wrote a Theologhie moralei After 1727 Rumanian was recognized as the language of the law-courts, and through the annexation of Bukovina by Austria (1774) and of Bessarabia by Russia (1812), codes for the civil and political administration of those provinces were drawn up in Rumanian. Such legal codes reflect the German or Russian original. They were, however, of importance as they served as models (to some extent) for the new legislative code compiled in Moldavia under Prince Calimach ; this was originally published in Greek (1816), and afterwards translated into Rumanian with the assist ance of G. Asaki (Jassy, 1833). The Walachian civil laws and local usages were collected and arranged under the direction of Prince Ypsilanti (178o) in Greek and Rumanian; and under Prince Caragea another code was published (1817), which re mained in force until 1832.
The last and probably the best writer of Rumanian history in the Phanariote period is Neculcea. He wrote a history of Mol davia to his own time, but for the period before 1684 his work is more or less an abstract from older writers. The original part covers the period 1684-1743, and is to some extent an auto biography of a very adventurous life. Neculcea adds to his chronicle a collection of historical legends, many of them still found in the ballads of Moldavia. In Walachia there was not a single historian of importance in the first half of the i8th cen tury. In the second we have the chronicle of Dionisie Eclesiarh (1764-1815), a simple-minded and uncritical writer who describes contemporary events. The ancestor of a great family of poets and writers, I. Vacarescu described the history of the Ottoman empire from the beginning to 1791, interpolating doggerel verses.
Whilst a political and national revival was taking place in Moldavia and Walachia, towards the beginning of the 19th cen tury, the Latin movement went on in Transylvania. There ethical and religious tendencies got the upper hand. Three historians had been partly educated in Rome under the protection of Prince Borgia and the influence of the Jesuit Minotto and the College of the Propaganda ; they were Samuel Klain, Petru Maior and George Sincai. To Klain's initiative can be traced most of the work of the three. Unfortunately his writings, with a few excep tions, are still in ms. He is the author of the first history of the Rumanians in Dacia written according to Western standards. The tendency is to trace the modern Rumanians directly from the an cient Romaris, and to prove their continuity in these countries from the time of Trajan to this day. Political and religious aims were combined in this new theory. A conflict was raging between the Hungarians and Rumanians, and history was required to f urn ish proofs of the greater antiquity of the Rumanians in Transyl vania.