Tradiţia toleranţei la români – nivele şi forme de manifestare
The Romanian Tradition of Tolerance – Levels and Forms of Manifestions

Summary/Abstract: The traditional organization of the Romanian villages included a series of realities, human statutes, interhuman relationships and, as a consequence, mental patterns, which required specialized terms in order to be identified. As time went on, the Romanian traditional society suffered brutal transformations forthbringing social relations, but most of all, mental patterns that had not existed before. As a natural consequence, the old specialized language – ‘relic notions’ – became insufficient to cover the new realities. So, those notions that were not simply removed from usage, were adapted, changing their applicability. Clear examples are the notions of ‘cneaz’, ‘boier’ and ‘mişel’. The word ‘cneaz’ came to have the meaning of “ruler of a ‘cnezat’”, while, before, it had indicated a free man. The same way, the notion of ‘boier’, used to identify the land owner in a village, came to have the meaning of a Romanian nobleman and aristocrat, besides the ‘land owner’. The word ‘mişel’, derived from ‘misselus’ (miser)ment ’poor’ and also ’leper’ in Vulgar Latin. The traditional organization of the Romanian villages changed its meaning and gave it a new one, that of a stranger who was attached to a village, but lived isolated outside its borders.

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