ANALELE ǚTIINǜIFICE ALE UNIVERSITﾄǜII „AL. I. CUZA” IAǚI TOMUL LXVII, SUPLIMENT, ǚTIINǜE JURIDICE, 2021 DOI: 10.47743/jss-2021-67-3-5 55 Damaschin Bojincﾅ – Legal Scholar and Translator in Pre-Modern Romanian Culture 1 Alina Bruckner 2 Abstract: The figure of Damaschin Bojincﾅ is linked to the activity of the Transylvanian School, even though he spent most of his life in Moldavia as a jurisconsult. Benefitting from the culturally effervescent period at the turn of the 19 th century, from a varied education in several fields and in a European context, as well as from the direct contact with European prominent scholars and intellectuals, Damaschin Bojincﾅ is known in the specialty literature as a historian, linguist, legal scholar and translator. However, all these fields of activity revolve around the ideology of the Transylvanian School, that of creating a national identity and an educated Romanian readership. The purpose of this paper is to present the personality of Damaschin Bojincﾅ and the manner in which these goals were achieved both in his historical writings, where he acted in fact as translator, as well as in his active position as jurisconsult and professor of law in Moldavia. Keywords: Damaschin Bojincﾅ, Transylvanian School, Enlightenment, nationalist discourse 1. Introduction: The figure of Damaschin Bojincﾅ in the context of early modernity Born at the beginning of the 19 th century in a region dominated ideologically by the Habsburg rule, Damaschin Bojincﾅ may be regarded as a typical representative of the Transylvanian intellectuals of the time, even though the specialty literature does not include him in the category of prominent members of the Transylvanian School movement. 3 Nonetheless, educated initially in present- day Romania, then at the University of Pest, graduating in the legal field, Bojincﾅ fully benefitted from the contact with both the Romanian intellectuals, as well as the European Enlightened scholars of the time. In the former half of the 19 th century, the Hungarian capital city hosted an impressive number of Romanian- 1 This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI –UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2019-0721. 2 Lecturer, PhD, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaġi, Romania, alina.bruckner@uaic.ro. 3 Ion Lungu states that the true representatives of the Transylvanian School are Samuil Micu, Gheorghe ǚincai, Petru Maior and Ioan Budai-Deleanu, whereas Bojincﾅ belongs together with others to a group of “Enlightened scholars only affiliated to the Transylvanian School”, according to: I. Lungu, ǚcoala ardeleanﾅ. MiǛcare ideologicﾅ naǝionalﾅ iluministﾅ, Editura Minerva, BucureǛti, 1978, p. 109. See also O. Papadima, who considers Bojincﾅ to belong to “a second generation of the Transylvanian Enlightenment”, according to: O. Papadima, Ipostaze ale iluminismului românesc, Editura Minerva, BucureǛti, p. 245.