La Svinica, în Slovacia, pe urmele lui Gheorghe Șincai
At Svinica, in Slovakia, searching for Gheorghe Șincai

Summary/Abstract: Historian, linguist, philologist and theologian, Gheorghe Șincai was one of the founding fathers of the modern Romanian nation. By writing the first history of all Romanians, Șincai can be considered a true prophet of the Romanians, foreshadowing the birth of Romania. But, the man who offered the documents attesting the nobility of the Romanian people, as a descendant of the Romans, died far from the dear places of Transylvania, 50 years no one knowing where he found his end. In the newspaper Concordia, no. 51 of 1866, it is recorded that Georgius Sinkay died on November 2, 1816, aged 75 years (in fact, he was 62 years old), being buried by the Greek Catholic priest, Andreas Koleszar, in the village of Szinnye (Svinica from Slovakia). Unfortunately, the years passed and no one dared to bring Șincai’s remains to the country. In 2019, the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute for Socio‑Human Research in Târgu Mureș and the City Hall of Râciu commune organized a trip to Svinica to identify the cemetery, with the intention of erecting a funerary monument in Svinica. From the cemetery, earth was brought in an urn to be deposited in the Greek Catholic Church in Râciu, symbolically representing Șincai’s return to his native land. National heroes are identity symbols, by recovering the memory of a national personality an identity is recovered. As the American researcher Katherine Verdery remarks, such gestures return the patrimonial treasure of the Romanian people.

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