Why did a shepherd walk to Rome?

Chapter

1849 – 1882

Born

24 January 1849, Cârțișoara

Letters

23 May 1867, with Ion Cotigă

Soldier

1877 volunteer; discharged 8 May 1881

He was born in 1849 at Cârțișoara, in the Făgăraș country, into a shepherd household that smelled of the sheepfold and kept its children out of school; at eleven he was already pasturing sheep up the mountain. In 1864, still a boy, he crossed the imperial border with the flock, illegally, to see with his own eyes the country where his free Romanian brothers lived.

On 23 May 1867 he took his forty inherited sheep and crossed into Romania with Ion Cotigă, a Brașov intellectual turned shepherd by choice. Cotigă taught him some history and philosophy, then reading and writing – Plato and Socrates, Livy and Herodotus, and Trajan and Decebal, the forefathers of the Romanian people.

Armies interrupted the lessons: in 1877 the Romanian Army took his 1,200 sheep and he volunteered for the Independence War without ever reaching the battlefield; then the imperial army drafted him to the 31st Infantry at Zemun and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he learned German. Discharged on 8 May 1881, he returned to Transylvania in the spring of 1882 with 400 sheep – and lost them all to fines.

He learned to read while he walked the sheep out to pasture.

Radio România Cultural, 7 August 2020

Meanwhile Across the mountains, Romania won its independence in the war of 1877–1878 – the war he volunteered for.

Chapter

1882 – 1906

Roads

Făgăraș passes, over 30 years

Seized

4,000 volumes on 15 December 1905; 70,000 in all

Trial

indictment 893 of 25 March 1906

On a moonless night, on a Făgăraș path known only to him, he climbed toward the ridge with his traista full of Romanian books from the Old Kingdom. So he walked for over thirty years, for pupils, priests, teachers and peasants: tradition speaks of over 250,000 copies weighing over 20 tonnes; the English histories say 200,000.

The empire answered with searches, confiscations and arrests: any writing that mentioned Romanian history was banned, and in May 1894 he was arrested and beaten at Cluj for attending the Memorandists' trial – a mere shepherd could not be there on his own initiative, the gendarmes reasoned.

The documented floor stands: on 15 December 1905 the gendarmes seized 4,000 volumes in five languages, bringing the confiscated total to 70,000; the indictment of 25 March 1906 recommended heavy prison years, but the trial was stopped and the books – after a year-long trial of their own – were burned.

He is said to have carried, for over 30 years, over the mountains to Ardeal, more than 250,000 copies of books written in Romanian, weighing over 20 tonnes.

Radio România Cultural, 7 August 2020

Meanwhile At Cluj, the Memorandum trial of May 1894 put the whole national movement in the dock.

Chapter

1896

Road

1,916 km between schematic waypoints

Days

20 days to Vienna, 23 days to Rome: 43

Arrival

15 February 1896, at the Column

On a frosty January morning in 1896 he tied his traista to his back – a fistful of home soil and wheat grains for the Roman forefathers, plus the recommendation letters of professor Urechia, who backed him morally and financially – and set off on foot for Rome, through Timișoara, Szeged, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Genoa: 1,916 km summed between this map’s schematic waypoints, without a measurement of his actual road.

He walked 20 days to Vienna and 23 more to Rome: 43 days in all, arriving on 15 February. He went first to Trajan's Column, scattered the Romanian soil and wheat at its base as an offering, then lay down at the Column's feet and slept until morning.

Morning brought a crowd: seeing the folk costume, someone exclaimed that a Dacian had come down off the Column, the Roman press wrote him up, and Duiliu Zamfirescu – Romania's minister in Italy – lodged him and introduced him to professors, journalists, artists, deputies and senators. After a month in Rome he travelled homeward; on 18 March 1896 he was in Bucharest again, professor Urechia's guest.

A Dacian came down off the Column: long hair, shirt and cap, leggings and peasant sandals.

The Rome press, February 1896

Meanwhile At Leipzig, Cichorius began publishing the Column's photographic corpus in 1896 – the plates shown here.

Chapter

1896 – 1911

Paris

August 1896: Picot and the French students

Wreath

October 1899: the Orientalists' laurel

Grave

7 August 1911, Sinaia

Rome had made him famous, and the road kept him: in August 1896, in a Paris lecture hall, professor Emil Picot of the School of Oriental Languages presented the Romanian shepherd, arrived via Vienna, to French students; Belgium, Jerusalem and Rome again followed.

In October 1899 Rome hosted the 12th congress of the Orientalists, over 700 delegates from 40 countries, with a Romanian party led by professor Urechia; senator Angelo Gubernatis proposed that Cârțan himself, in his shepherd's folk costume, lay the congress's laurel wreath at Trajan's Column.

He spent his last years between Ardeal and Romania, still hounded: the Putna gathering of 2 July 1904, a winter-1910 avalanche that buried him for three days, and in July 1911 the house of Mrs. Lahovari at Poiana Țapului, where a doctor saw his days were numbered. He died on 7 August 1911 and sleeps at Sinaia in shepherd's dress, under a stone cross: here lies Badea Cârțan, dreaming of the unity of his people.

Here lies Badea Cârțan dreaming of the unity of his people.

The stone cross at Sinaia

Meanwhile Transylvania was still seven years from its 1918 union with Romania when he died at Sinaia.