What is it about?
An ethical treatise on how to live virtuously so as to gain Paradise, this is a collection of citations form classical Greek and Latin authors, Oriental poets, Moldavian traditional wisdom, all filtered through the erudition and enlightened mind of a Romanian prince who lived in exile in Istanbul for 20 years.
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Why is it important?
This is the first edition of the Arabic version of Dimitrie Cantemir’s The Divan or the Sage’s Dispute with the World (Iaşi, 1698), his first printed book, the earliest ethical treatise in Romanian literature, a testimony of his wide knowledge, readings, and foreign languages proficiency. Achieved in 1705 by Athanasios Dabbās, Patriarch of the Antiochian Church (1684-1694, 1720-1724), the Arabic text is accompanied by the first translation in a modern language – English. Book III encloses Cantemir’s translation of the Latin work Stimuli virtutum, fraena peccatorum (Amsterdam, 1682) by the Unitarian Andzrej Wiszowaty (Andreas Wissovatius) of Raków (Poland), a chief representative of the Polish Brethren. Thus, in twenty-three years Central-European Protestant ideas reached the Christian Arabs of Ottoman Syria by way of Greek and Arabic.
Perspectives
This book can be of use to modern people in search of a lofty view on daily living, who need spirituality in their life, and are curious about the way people back in the early modern times solved these aspirations. It is also an essential source for researchers of pre-Renaissance thinking in Eastern Europe, of Polish Protestant Brotherhoods, of Andreas Wissovatius and Demetrius Cantemir, of the history of Romanian literature and philosophy, and the Ottoman period.
Ioana Feodorov
Romanian Academy
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Dimitrie Cantemir, Salvation of the Sage and Ruin of the Sinful World, March 2016, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004311022.
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