The dynamics of Europe's cultural borders determined by translating the sacred text, the Holy Bible

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleDinamica graniţelor culturale ale Europei determinată de traducerea textului sacru, a Sfintei Scripturi
3. Language term Romanian
4. lemma author Stavinschi, Alexandra
5. lemma category Integration - Complementarity - Mutual dependence - Ecumenism and dialogue - Ecumenism and dialogue > Westernism and anti-westernism - Culture and national identities
6. Publication date 18-01-2017
7. lemma work Chirilă, Ioan [Author]. The dynamics of Europe's cultural borders determined by translating the sacred text, the Holy Bible
8. lemma manifestations Biblie şi multiculturalitate.
9. Keywords Bible - Transylvania - Milescu Spătaru, Nicolae - the providence of God - transcendence of God
10. Citations
    1. Dinamica granițelor culturale ale Europei determinată de traducerea și circulația textului sacru. In: Biblie şi multiculturalitate. Limes, Cluj-Napoca (2004): 5-14.
11. Lemma body

    1. For centuries, the Transylvanian geophysical context has proved to be a welcoming space for many ethnic groups and many religious structures. For this reason some historians called it Canaan. Populations from both western and eastern Europe migrated to this relatively small space. From the west there were either ethnic groups displaced for military-administrative reasons or persecuted religious groups, while from Eastern Europe there were groups who couldn’t find in their homeplace adequate conditions to practise their religion (especially Hebrew groups coming from Russia, from Galicia). They brought along new structures and new cultural patterns. In this area, the Western Europe's cultural dynamics meets the creative fervour of the East. The author analyses in detail this historical framework and this cultural phenomenon; this piece of work is the result of research conducted within the "Bible and multiculturalism in Transylvania in the XVI-XX centuries project". The author believes that it is only once we have identified and eliminated false problems that we can reach the essential. Nothing is more rigid than an institutionalized border. This border cannot be crossed. Although the main problems of the sixteenth century Christians were serious, they were nowhere as important as the issues debated in the XVIl century: the insoluble problem of divine providence and the almost paralyzing understanding of God’s transcendence. However, this characterization of the Western Christianity is not suitable for the eastern area. According to Pierre Chaunu, the rural area in the East was similar to the Western rural areas of the VIII-XII centuries. Yet the XVI and especially the XVII-XVIII centuries are crucial for the cultural exchange between East and West. The first phase of this exchange should be identified as the "cultural elite stage movement". The author gives the example of a remarkable Romanian writer and diplomat, namely Nicolae Milescu Spataru (Nikolai Spathari), whose dialogue with the Port Royal Jansenists was crucial for the dialogue between East and West. At the same time, in the education field significant changes took place that enhanced the positive image of this cultural phenomenon. It is in the sixteenth century that the first high education institutions of Transylvania, namely the University of Cluj, were set up. This shows that the eastern European cultural border was becoming more flexible; it is worth noting that this entailed a double benefit: on the one hand, the West was absorbing a Christian humanist element which was real and factual, while the East was importing the modern scientific structures which would lead to its transformation. As a result, the East opened culturally to the Christian West and borrowed the elements needed to restructure itself as a dialogic reality, both from a cultural and especially from a religious point of view.