Un apologet paradoxal al ortodoxiei: D. Cantemir în Loca obscura
A Paradoxical Apologist for Orthodoxy: D. Cantemir in Loca obscura

Summary/Abstract: Editing Loca obscura in catechisi..., written from the perspective of the Orthodox rigorist thought, in Latin, towards the end of the year 1720, seems surprising indeed, if the entire work of Dimitrie Cantemir – a nonconformist humanist scholar, with a generally free thinking, unhindered by dogma – wouldn’t be marked, in every respect, by a long series of contradictions and paradoxes. The opuscule of the Moldavian prince is a polemic reply to the manual published in the same year in St. Petersburg, by Theophan Prokopovich, bishop of Pskov, who was, at the time, the main assistant of czar Peter the Great in his attempts to reorganize the Russian Orthodox Church. This catechism allowed certain Reformed, Lutheran, and Calvinist insertions, disputed one by one by Dimitrie Cantemir in Loca obscura, by developing a polemics, in the spirit of Orthodox tradition, on subjects such as: the priority of the New Testament teachings over the Old Testament, the dogma of the Holy Trinity, the veneration of the holy icons, the mystery of repentance and confession, and the cult for Virgin Mary

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