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nor the local authorities, the clergymen or the teachers spared the bombastic epithets celebrating "the ardent zeal and the restless activity" ¹³ of the prince for the well-being of the country and people. The prince's person mightjohange from time to time, the tonę and epithets remained the same. Therefore, it seems ąuite elear that these avowals of devotion were circumstantial, most speakers feeling that so was expected from them and some of them trying also a captatio benevolentio for obtaining a promotion, or in the case of Petrache Poenaru the support of the prince in their relationship with the General Assembly-

Civism being the precondition for patriotism, implicitly a good Citizen was assumed to be also a good patriot. Keeping 4he socially dictated yalues was considered to represent the supreme attachment to the fatherland. A Citizen was good and loyal only if he acted as the society expected from him, all transgression being regarded as an attack to the established order and thus as bad-civility and non-patriotism. Prince Barbu $tirbey stated this very clearly: ‘‘Patriotism, gentlemen, means not loud and pompous speeches, but strenuous, systematic and patient work. Strive to give to our fatherland men leamed in yarious positive and special Sciences, so that they may compare with the best from wherever; this is the only means to open to our country fountains of happiness and to count ourselves between the civilized peoples; all other means are only misleading” ^M. We can notice that even in the 1850's we are in the morał and mental universe of enlightenment, education being considered the only valid way for improving the situation of the country and as a prereąuisite for surpassing the State of original barbary and for aligning the Romanian culture to the European civilization. Although these accents are morę intense in Wallachia, they are not absent in Moldavia, where prince Mihail Sturdza also declared that ‘‘the only way to make the happiness of our beloved fatherland is the just enlightenment of its sons" ¹⁸.

During this period the school had to educate state-citizens and not yet national-patriots. The brave Romanian imbued with ethnical and histo-rical self-conscience was not yet an official educational model. The idea of nationality was shadowed by Christian civism. Despite some ephemeral conflicts, the relations between school and church were ąuite cooperative. One of the teachers claimed that “you have built school which is one of the pil-lars of the Holy Church, and from school there will come out good christians who will defend our holy faith”¹⁶. Yet, Aaron Florian, one of the most impor-tant teachers and historians of this period, seems to notice in one theoretical work about patriotism that there was a potential contradiction between patriotism and the feeling of being a member of the great Christian family: ‘ ‘Although it seems that the Christian, being in debt to love all people as he loves him-self, could not fulfil all the duties of a good patriot, because his sentiment disperses and gets lost throughout the wide world; but this is not true, because religion cannot force him to let his fatherland in danger and his

¹³    Discursul D-lui Directorului P. Poienarul, "Curierul Romclnesc", 1847, no. 3, p. 10.

¹⁴    Barbu $tirbei, Cuvint zis de Indlfimea Sa Domnul Stdptnitor la li Iulie cu prilejul tmpdrfirei premiilor in Colegiul Nafional, in “Vestitorul Rom&nesc", 1852, XVI, no. 52, p. 206.

¹⁸ V. A. Urechia, op. cii., vol. I, p. 287.

¹⁴ Cuvintul Dlui profesor D. Jianu, in “Muzeul National”, I, 1836 nr. 31, p. 254 [corect

121].