Consumul de alcool şi beţia în Moldova şi Ţara Românească, secolul al XVI-lea – începutul secolului al XIX-lea: semnalări documentare
Drunkenness and the Consumption of Alcohol in Moldavia and Wallachia in the 16th to the beginning of the 19th Centuries – Documentary Findings

Summary/Abstract: In the 16th century, the authorities of some cities in Western Europe adopted drastic measures in order to stave off the unpleasant consequences of a behavior that had quickly generalized: the consumption of alcohol in public places. Thus I was left wondering what was happening during the same period in Moldavia and Walachia, and then followed the events up to the beginning of the 19th century. In search of answers, I primarily investigated those sources which attest the consumption of alcoholic beverages: purchase lists, barter lists, private letters, dowry lists, wills, court decisions, royal documents, without ignoring the observations of foreign travelers and chroniclers. Occasions and reasons for Moldavians and Vlachs, both rich and poor alike, to consume a wide variety of alcoholic beverages have existed, in the same way as those who would lose count of the number of rounds they had existed, but there is no clear mention of how many they were in any document. What the documents do show however is the fact that neither the Church, the State nor the Society remained indifferent towards this behavior, each trying to sanction it in its own way.

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