35 Facts About Constantin Sion

Constantin Sion, known as Costandin or Cothi Sion, was a Moldavian political conspirator, genealogist, and polemicist.

Constantin Sion was born into the lower ranks of the boyar aristocracy, and, though his brothers were able to climb the social ladder, he mostly had petty offices in the provinces.

Constantin Sion experienced an episodic rise in status during the Greek War of Independence, when he supported the Ottoman Empire and had his loyalism rewarded with the title of Paharnic; however, he quickly reverted to the position of a minor copyist for the Moldavian Treasury, in which capacity he began gathering notes for his genealogical manuscript, Arhondologia Moldovei.

Constantin Sion reluctantly followed his brother in supporting Grigore Sturdza as a candidate for the Moldavian throne.

The Constantin Sion brothers are widely credited as authors, or co-authors alongside Saulescu, of a supposed ancient narrative document, the Chronicle of Huru.

The Constantin Sion forgery was convenient to them for offering an account of life in the largely undocumented Romanian Dark Ages, and for suggesting that Moldavian boyardom had its origins planted in the Roman Empire; in addition the work offered justification for the restoration of Greater Moldavia and its separation from Wallachia.

Constantin Sion survived the formation of the United Principalities, which he had opposed, and died before the Huru controversy had been resolved in his disfavor.

Constantin Sion was the third of six sons of the court official Iordache Sion and his wife Catrina, nee Danu.

Constantin Sion's elders were Antohi and Ionita Sion; Costache, Neculai and Toader were younger.

Dissatisfied with his seemingly modest origin, and unaware of any records that would prove a more ancient lineage, Constantin Sion invented a prestigious pedigree, whereby they descended from the Khan Girays of the Crimean Khanate.

Constantin Sion was born at a time when Moldavia and Wallachia, as Romanian-inhabited vassals of the Ottoman Empire, were entering the final stages of rule by Greek elites, the Phanariotes.

The wife of a reigning Phanariote, Michael Drakos Soutzos, had grown fond of Ionita Constantin Sion, and obtained that he made a Paharnic.

Constantin Sion was educated at Iasi, where he became rather fluent in Greek; by his own account, he was sent to do work for the Moldavian Treasury at the age of 12.

In old age, Constantin Sion still complained that the only inheritance left to him by his father was a riding horse.

Constantin Sion acted as a messenger for Serasker Yusuf Pasha deep in occupied territory.

Constantin Sion was seconded there by his in-law, Vasile Mihalache Alecsandri, son of the famous poet Vasile Alecsandri and an in-law of his.

Also in 1822, Constantin Sion began his work as a biographer and historian, seeing out elderly boyar and using their testimonies as sources; "around 1826", he was consulting documents including the treasury register for 1793 and what he called "historical manuscripts".

Constantin Sion then became a deputy of the Staroste for the entire Putna County; he married there, to Eufrosina, daughter of Ban Toma Stamatin and sister of Spatharios Gavril.

Constantin Sion would later claim, spuriously, that she was a descendant of the Movilesti dynasty.

Constantin Sion confessed that he applied punishments with great severity and complained that the inflation of boyar titles increased the fiscal load on non-boyars.

Constantin Sion was briefly detained in Bucharest, Wallachia by General Pavel Kiselyov, who then apologized to him for the inconvenience and offered him a Russian state decoration; he served the regime, as an Ispravic at Bacau.

The Regulamentul regime assigned titular princedom to Mihail Sturdza, who made sure that members of the Constantin Sion clan were no longer allowed to advance socially and politically.

Gheorghe Constantin Sion himself writes than, in the aftermath of the Crimean War, one of his uncles turned against Russia and demanded from the Sublime Porte that he be recognized as ruler of a revived Crimean Khanate.

Constantin Sion saw unionism as a "fools' project", and backed Grigore Sturdza, son of Mihail, as the anti-unionist candidate in the princely election of 1858.

The latter choice, which required him to electioneer for the younger Sturdza in areas "north of Focsani", was imposed on him by his brother Costache; secretly, Constantin Sion despised Grigore as well as Mihail, and detailed his contempt for both in Arhondologia.

Constantin Sion admired the younger Sturdza for his sanguine temperament, while dismissing Mihail as a "thief".

Constantin Sion describes them as descending from "a publican in my father's pay", who owed his status to having once discovered a buried treasure.

In one portion of Arhondologia, Constantin Sion speculates that the Ottomanist boyar Stefan Scarlat Dascalescu was a passive homosexual, kept by his Turkish lover.

Constantin Sion's title is rendered as "Consul" rather than Voivode, with his election and subsequent leadership of the Moldavian military forces taking place when he was an elderly man of 83.

Ghibanescu's preface contained some errors, including by suggestion that Constantin Sion had died "before the Union".

In that same context, Ghibanescu publicized proof that Constantin Sion was the behind the Huru hoax, noting intertextuality between the Chronicle and Arhondologia, particularly when it came to Constantin Sion's genealogy as it appears in both; this moved focus away from Saulescu, who was still seen as the main culprit.

Some dissenting authors, beginning with Ionescu and Ioan Tanoviceanu, have continued to suggest that Constantin Sion's Chronicle was in fact based in part on a more authentic document from the 17th or 18th century.

The Giray myth, once consigned to writing by Paharnic Constantin Sion, remained a family favorite.

The original Demir Sion died in 1884, aged 23, leaving a tract of political sociology to be published by G Gavanescul.

Constantin Sion was a leftist by conviction, having joined the Social Democratic Party and supported the campaign for universal suffrage.