THE INTEREST FOR THE HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM IN THE WORK OF DIMITRIE CANTEMIR

By knowing and using information from his predecessors, Greek and Roman historians and many historians of Byzantium and Medieval Europe, endowed with a special memory and an exceptional capacity to analyse and synthesize the information, the historian Dimitrie Cantemir acquired and used information related to a vast historical and geographic area and to numerous nations. He tried to place the history of the Romanians in a universal context, describing first the history of the Romanian in the Roman Empire, then in the Byzantine Empire, and later during the migration of tribes in the newly formed states: Hungary, Cuman, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and Serbia. Dimitrie Cantemir intended to awake the sense of dignity to the Romanian elite and to highlight the prestige the Romanians deserved. He also highlights the idea of the historical mission of the Romanians in the European space.