Stiintele socio-umaniste in contextul evolutiei globalizate
- dezvoltarea si implementarea programului de studii si cercetare postdoctorala

Profil

Scientific researcher at the "A.D. Xenopol" History Institute, member in the team of the Romanian Academy’s fundamental project, Documenta Romaniae Historica. A. Moldavia; the objective of the project is to publish Romanian medieval sources regarding Petru Şchiopu, Aron Vodă, Ieremia Movilă, Vasile Lupu’s rule (volumes IX, XXV, XXVII, XVIII), PhD with the thesis Romanian Culture in mid-17th Century Moldavia. The research mainly aimed at underlining different aspects of the culture written in Romanian in mid-17th century Moldavia.

Areas of expertise: Cyrillic palaeography, history of medieval culture, historiography.

In October 2010, I obtained a post-doctoral scholarship within the program "Education and Professional Training in support of economic development and the development of the knowledge-based society", in the field Doctoral and post-doctoral programs in support of research. The title of the project I applied with was: Between the Memory of the Customary and the Code of Law. Crimes, Penalties and Social Identities in Pre-Modern Moldavia (17th Century – First Half of the 18th Century).

Between the Memory of the Customary and the Code of Law. Crimes, Penalties and Social Identities in Pre-Modern Moldavia (17th Century – First Half of the 18th Century). Components of the Project and the Current Stage of the Research

Both the subject of our research and the periodical classification we propose are tightly related to Moldavia’s politico-juridical relationships with the Ottoman Empire, which have direct implications in the domestic political structure and financial organization, in the criminal code practices. In the 17th century, the subordination to the Ottoman Empire increased. Afterward, the Phanariote regime introduced in 1714 implied the administration of the two countries like quasi-provinces of the Empire, with the help of Princes of Greek origin, directly appointed by the Sultan, with no consultation of the indigenous political class. These foreign Princes’ particular situation led to a political conduct that was their specific one, thus unavoidably determining a significant modification of the Romanian traditional world structures. In our investigation, this will be underlined by analysing the documents that mention criminal penalties that attest the execution of punishments, out of which the most frequent one was the redemption of the offence by paying a sum of money. We must say that the number of such papers is a limited one among the written documents, most of them being acts issued in the aftermath of civil trials and making no distinction between civil and criminal issues as far as the procedure is concerned. These situations are to be explained by the absence of the written motivation for the court order in jurisdictional procedure. Such procedure, consisting in the quoting, in the order, the juridical norm that the judges were referring to when making the decision, became compulsory after Constantin Mavrocordat’s request. This is one further reason to establish temporary limits to cover the 17th century and the first half of the 18th one.

Our project therefore makes a classification of the social identities, as they appear in the context of the confrontation between the memory of the customary norms and the discovery of the written/read juridical texts. Briefly, this is a symbolic dispute between power and authority. The customary was the authority of ancientness and of the uninterrupted practice of customs, somehow anonymised by the passage of time. The code of law became a gesture of the power, emerged from the desire of the one endowed with the necessary means of coercion to impose a unification/bureaucratization of the law practices.

Papers and articles

• Petru Schiopul, an initiator of the abolishing of princely counties in Moldavia in the Yearbook of the A.D. Xenopol Institute of History, Iasi, t. XXXVII , 2000, p. 69-79
• Greek element’s implication in Moldavia’s economy under Petru Schiopu, in Romanian-Hellenic Interferences (15th – 20th centuries), ed. Leonidas Rados, prefaced by Alexandru Zub, Iaşi, “A. D. Xenopol” Academic Foundation, 2003, p. 49–60
• "From Old Prince Stephan’s Muniment". Documentary Completion in Stephen the Great, five centuries after his death, eds. Petronel Zahariuc and Silviu Văcaru, Iaşi, Editura Alfa, 2003, p. 107–161
• Catalina Chelcu, Marius Chelcu, Injuries, thefts, compensations, punishments: between the code of law and the customary, in "Historical Archives", Bucharest, Editura Scriptorium, I, 2004, p. 98-108
• Juridical status of the princedom in Moldavia, reflected in the Romanian and foreign narrative sources (17th century), in Central power–domestic political factors relation, a reflection of the juridical status of the Romanian Principalities (17th – 18th centuries), ed. Veniamin Ciobanu, Iaşi, Editura Junimea, 2006, p. 15-51
• Manuscripts and prints under Vasile Lupu. A few observations on a cultural project, in In medias res. Studies of cultural history, eds. Andi Mihalache and Adrian Cioflâncă, Iaşi, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University’s Publishing House, 2007, p. 375-387
• The Synod of Iasi (1642) – a historiographical evaluation, in the Yearbook of the A.D. Xenopol Institute of History, vol. XLVI, 2009, p. 383-391, Cătălina Chelcu, Marius Chelcu.