{"id":253041,"date":"2019-09-26T16:44:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T13:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/?p=253041"},"modified":"2019-09-26T16:44:57","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T13:44:57","slug":"on-the-european-day-of-languages-we-celebrate-a-romanian-saint-who-was-a-polyglot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/on-the-european-day-of-languages-we-celebrate-a-romanian-saint-who-was-a-polyglot\/","title":{"rendered":"On the European Day of Languages we celebrate a Romanian Saint who was a polyglot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The European Day of Languages (EDL) was first celebrated in 2001 during the European Year of Languages. At the end of this campaign the Council of Europe&#8217;s Committee of Ministers decided to make EDL an annual event, to be celebrated each 26 September.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Every year, millions of people in the Council&#8217;s member states and elsewhere organise or take part in activities to promote linguistic diversity and the ability to speak other languages.<\/p>\n<p>The general aim is to draw attention to Europe&#8217;s rich linguistic and cultural diversity, which has to be encouraged and maintained, but also to extend the range of languages that people learn throughout their lives in order to develop their multilingual skills and reinforce intercultural understanding.<\/p>\n<p>EDL is an opportunity to celebrate all of Europe&#8217;s languages, including those that are less widely spoken and the languages of migrants.<\/p>\n<p>On the same day, several local Orthodox Churches celebrate the memory of Ruler Prince Saint Neagoe Basarab, who knew six foreign languages.<\/p>\n<p>Saint Neagoe Basarab was a ruler prince of Wallachia between 1512 and 1521, and spoke Romanian (mother tongue), Slavonic, Greek, Latin, Turkish, German and Hungarian.<\/p>\n<p>Before taking any office in the Wallachian state structures, Neagoe Basarab travelled to several countries in central Europe and in the Ottoman Empire, and the knowledge he acquired during his travels helped him in the Romanian state\u2019s external relations.<\/p>\n<p>He was a great postelnic from 1501 to 1509 and a great comis for one year (1510 \u2013 1511).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_208276\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-208276\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-208276 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Neagoe-Basarab.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"357\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-208276\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">St. Neagoe Basarab and his wife Despina. \u00a9 capodopere2019.ro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Saint Neagoe also remained in the memory of the Romanian people and of the Orthodox tradition as a great personality thanks to his writing \u2018The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to his son Theodosius\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>This is a \u201cspiritual, pedagogic, philosophic and encyclopaedic testament\u201d and a true collection of Christian, scriptural and patristic pieces of advice.<\/p>\n<p>Given his great generosity, Prince Neagoe Basarab was considered by everyone a descendent of the generous emperors of the Byzantine Empire, and, from his position, he helped all the Orthodox peoples under the occupation of the Crescent, paying their debts, repairing many monasteries and churches and endowing them with everything necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Photo: <em>The Epoch Times Romania<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Follow us on Twitter: @BasilicaNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Day of Languages (EDL) was first celebrated in 2001 during the European Year of Languages. At the end of this campaign the Council of Europe&#8217;s Committee of Ministers decided to make EDL an annual event, to be celebrated each 26 September. Every year, millions of people in the Council&#8217;s member states and elsewhere&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":208275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20893,20894,3939,11659],"class_list":["post-253041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anniversaries-and-commemorations","tag-european-day-of-languages","tag-polyglot","tag-romanian-saints","tag-saint-neagoe-basarab"],"better_featured_image":{"id":208275,"alt_text":"","caption":"(FILES) A file photo taken on April 24, 2009 shows the European Union flag and national flags in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France. The Nobel Peace Prize was on October 12, 2012 awarded to the European Union, an institution currently wracked by crisis but is credited with bringing more than a half century of peace to a continent ripped apart by World War II.\n AFP PHOTO \/ FREDERICK FLORIN","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":1920,"height":1080,"file":"2018\/09\/De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot.jpg","sizes":{"thumbnail":{"file":"De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot-360x360.jpg","width":360,"height":360,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot-360x360.jpg"},"medium":{"file":"De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot-890x501.jpg","width":890,"height":501,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot-890x501.jpg"},"large":{"file":"De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot-1024x576.jpg","width":1024,"height":576,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot-1024x576.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"AFP","camera":"","caption":"(FILES) A file photo taken on April 24, 2009 shows the European Union flag and national flags in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France. The Nobel Peace Prize was on October 12, 2012 awarded to the European Union, an institution currently wracked by crisis but is credited with bringing more than a half century of peace to a continent ripped apart by World War II.\r\n AFP PHOTO \/ FREDERICK FLORIN","created_timestamp":"1240563120","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"-","orientation":"1","keywords":["POLITICAL BUILDING","EUROPEAN FLAG","ILLUSTRATION","HORIZONTAL"]}},"post":253041,"source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/De-Ziua-Limbilor-Europei-serb\u0103m-un-sf\u00e2nt-rom\u00e2n-poliglot.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253041\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=253041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253041\/revisions\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208275\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=253041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=253041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=253041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}