Literature of Romania

Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.

The earliest surviving document in Romanian is Neacşu's Letter written in 1521, to the jude ("judge and mayor") of Braşov, Hans Benkner.

Romanian culture was heavily influenced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the official stance of the Romanian Church being that Orthodoxy was brought to the Romanian land by the Apostle Andrew. According to some modern Romanian scholars, the idea of early Christianisation is unsustainable, being used for propaganda purposes in the totalitarian era as part of the ideology of protochronism, which purports that the Orthodox Church has been a companion and defender of the Romanian people for its entire history. The earliest translated books into Romanian were Slavonic religious texts from the 15th century. The Psalter of Şchei (Psaltirea Şcheiană) of 1482 and the Voroneţ Codex (Codicele Voroneţean) are religious texts that were written in Maramureş.

The first book printed in Romania was a Slavonic religious book in 1508. The first book printed in the Romanian language was a catechism of Deacon Coresi in 1559. Other translations from Greek and Slavonic books were printed later in the 16th century. Dosoftei, a Moldavian published in Poland in 1673, was the first Romanian metrical psalter, producing the earliest known poetry written in Romanian.

Early efforts to publish the Bible in Romanian started with the 1582 printing in the small town of Orăştie of the so-called Palia de la Orăştie - a translation of the first books of the Old Testament - by Deacon Şerban (a son of the above-mentioned Deacon Coresi) and Marien Diacul (Marien the Scribe). Palia was translated from Latin by Bishop Mihail Tordaş et al., the translation being checked for accuracy using Hungarian translations of the Bible.

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Wikipedia