Histoires parallèles: Démétrius Cantemir et François II Rákóczi

Abstract

In the wake of the work aimed at comparing Demetrius Cantemir (1673?–1723) with various outstanding political and cultural personalities, this study proposes a comparative lecture with his illustrious contemporary Transylvanian Prince Francis II Rákóczi (1676–1735). Reigning in the two neighbouring principalities of Moldavia and Transylvania, the two princes stand out at Euro pean political level in the context of confrontations for the domination of this region between the Ottoman, Russian and Austrian empires. This comparative approach to the two personalities is not based on consistent testimonies of how each of the two protagonists considered the other, but their lives give many reasons for doing it. Representing two different princely traditions, they experienced the same hardships of a childhood marked by the death of one of their parents, and shared the same ambition for an exceptional education that provided them a prestigious place among the intellectual elites of the time. Their personalities are closer in many respects to their political action, particularly through the struggle to win independence for their principalities and the adventure of exile. Nothing, however, is as revealing as their intellectual work, which allowed them to gain recognition in the Republic of Letters of the time and, subsequently, in cultural his tory, far beyond boundaries of their principalities. A comparative analysis of the two personalities may therefore be of interest in order to better understand their role in the history of the Carpa tho-Danubian principalities at an important moment in the transition to the modern era, and to better highlight the exceptional richness of Demetrius Cantemir’s intellectual work.