In a small square, near the intersection of Str. Cuza Vodă with Str. Vasile Alecsandri, there is the sculpted bust of Dimitrie Cantemir, creation of the artist Vl. Florea from Iași.
Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), the son of the Moldavian lord Constantin Cantemir (1685-1693), was born in Iasi and stood out for his notable passion for culture and learning. He acquired extensive knowledge in such varied fields as history, philosophy, logic, geography, philology, oriental studies and music. His works have been recognized for their merits by the contemporary European scientific community.
However, above all, Cantemir demonstrated a deep love for the country and a special devotion in his struggle on the political level and in the field of ideas for the recognition of the inalienable historical rights of the Romanian people. In his work, which surpassed the previous achievements of the Romanian intelligentsia, Cantemir highlighted this sublime love for the country and the desire to serve and defend his nation. With a remarkable erudition in his era, he surpassed even the illustrious scholars of Europe, investigating varied documentary sources, from Greco-Roman antiquity to the Byzantine, Oriental, Slavic, Polish, Hungarian, etc. medieval ages. By dismantling many false theories and preconceptions, Dimitrie Cantemir firmly supported the historical truth, demonstrating the Latin origin of the Romanian people and the uninterrupted continuity of the descendants of Trajan's colonists from the Romanization of Dacia to the formation of the first Romanian feudal states in the 14th century.
His work in Latin, "Descriptio Moldaviae", remains better known in learned circles and is closely related to the name of Dimitrie Cantemir, being considered a veritable encyclopedia of Moldavia.
"Descriptio Moldaviae" opened the way for scientific research in the field of geography in our country, being an original contribution in a field where the respective scholar had no notable predecessors.
Cantemir stood out as a dedicated patriot, considering the geographic description of Moldova essential not only for his fellow citizens, but also for the international academic community. In this work, he not only pleaded for the Daco-Roman origin of the country's inhabitants, but also provided a detailed geographical presentation of Moldova, including the latitudes and longitudes corresponding to its period, precisely expressing that "Moldova did not have the same decisions in all times , because its extent is sometimes greater, sometimes smaller, according to the state of elevation or decay of the country".
In all his writings, Cantemir, as a geographer, was complemented by his side as a historian. However, both the historian and the geographer were always accompanied by the philosopher Cantemir, by the musicologist, the philologist and the mathematician Cantemir, a fact illustrated by his numerous works, including "The couch or the entanglement of the sage with the world or the thought of the soul with the body" (in Greek and Romanian, Iasi 1698).
Source: Iași Municipality and surroundings (Ministry of Tourism, 1980)
