As a maternal member of the Callimachi family, he had high aristocratic origins, but was a commoner on his father's side; he spent most of his life in the Moldavian town of Tecuci, whose history was a focus of his academic activity.

Papadopol-Calimah's position as head of Foreign Affairs (1865–1866) saw attempts to break the Principality farther away from the Ottoman Empire, but also witnessed a final crisis of the Cuza regime.

He eventually returned to serve in the Assembly of Deputies as a perennial representative of Tecuci County—moving from left-wing Cuzism to a right-wing conservative position, fully consolidated when he became a follower of the Junimea club.

According to his own research, the Callimachis were originally from Orhei County in Bessarabia; this claim was rejected by historian Alexandru D. Xenopol, who suggests instead that they were from Bukovina, but was validated later on by genealogist Ștefan S.

"[6] Deposed by his Ottoman overlords during the Greek War of Independence, he was exiled, with his entire family, to Bolu, where he died ("poisoned and decapitated");[7] the surviving Callimachis were allowed passage back to Moldavia in 1825.

In a 1987 biography, philosopher Ionel Necula proposes that the events took place while the Callimachis were sailing home to Moldavia on Papadopol's ship; he also notes that they remained married into old age, with Alexandru as their only progeny.

[10] Such records also show that Alexandru had a sister, Smaranda Panu-Calimah (1835–1892), as well as two living brothers, Scarlat and Aristide (a fourth Papadopol son, Nechifor, died in childhood).

[18] In April–May 1856, Papadopol-Calimah was head of a political bureau at the Moldavian Foreign Ministry (or Postelnicie), and took part with Mihail Kogălniceanu and Dimitrie Ralet in legislating freedom of the press throughout Moldavia.

[19] He was becoming noted as a critic of slavery and a champion of its Romani victims; in February 1856, Kogălniceanu's almanac featured his condemnation of slave-holding peoples as unworthy of contact with civilized ones.

[21] In June 1856, Stéoa Dunărei hosted his manifesto calling on Moldavians and Wallachians to embrace a shared appellation as "Romanians", with "the unification of Romania [as] the singular and unanimous expectation of the people".

This made him the posthumous son-in-law of Grigore Plitos, a peasant famous for his good looks and charms, who allegedly owed his raising into the nobility to the affections of Marioara Sturdza, Moldavia's dowager princess in the 1840s.

[29] Writer Dimitrie C. Ollănescu-Ascanio, who was briefly the mayor of Tecuci and befriended the Plitoses, recalls that Amelia was attractive, though myopic, whereas her husband, though of "delicate" upbringing, had "irregular features and pockmarks on his cheeks".

As noted by jurist George Popovici, the evidence for this was questionable: in claiming that the Romanians' "oath on the furrow" had such an origin, Papadopol-Calimah had used a fragment passed on from Cincius, who referred to a custom that had already died out in Republican Rome.

Stan sees Papadopol-Calimah, Constantin Bosianu, and Dimitrie Cariagdi, as loyalists "whose devotion, devoid of any corresponding political qualities, proved incapable of handling the nation's needs for governance.

Papadopol-Calimah later reported that he had been informed of a looming coup, specifically during a casual meeting with Annibale Strambio, the Italian Consul: "Sir, your country sits atop a volcano".

[49] Junimist Nicolae Gane also places Papadopol-Calimah among the early members, noting that he attended sessions held in Bucharest, long before the club has been more firmly established in Iași.

[50] In a letter he addressed to Cuza in early 1867, Papadopol-Calimah again reported that he intended to withdraw from public life altogether, and only serve Romanians as a political historian; he planned to write "our critical history from 1859 to that night of February 10/11 1866"—though he never did.

[51] Necula believes that his enduring popularity made him a sought-after presence in government under the new regime, leading to his appointment as Dimitrie Ghica's Minister of Culture and Public Instruction.

[15][52] As noted by literary historian Augustin Z. N. Pop, Kogălniceanu, as Ghica's head of Internal Affairs, was largely responsible for prolonging Papadopol-Calimah's career in politics, as one of several favorites of his, "patriots known primarily for their revolutionary work and their guaranteed honesty".

[54] The acceptance of a ministerial office also implied that Papadopol-Calimah was no longer a fully committed champion of the Cuzist cause, being charmed into compliance by a new Domnitor, the Prussian-born Carol of Hohenzollern.

[57] In 1872, Hasdeu's own journal, Columna lui Traianŭ, began serializing Papadopol-Calimah's sourcebook on Dacia, the Getae, and the Dacians, as Scrieri vechi perdute atingetóre de Dacia; it covered the eighteen centuries between Scylax of Caryanda and Nikephoros Blemmydes, provided an inventory of lost books, and reviewed fragments from outside the classical world, including writings by Movses Khorenatsi.

The event was poorly welcomed even by Junimea: in one of his columns, Junimist Mihai Eminescu argued that Papadopol-Calimah was only an academician because the institution had already inducted (the implicitly mediocre) Sion and V. A.

[70] Also in 1883, Papadopol-Calimah found and published in the Junimist magazine Convorbiri Literare the original procès-verbal of 1859, whereby all National Party factions declared Cuza as their preferred candidate.

[72] In December 1884 and January 1885, the journal also hosted his recollections of life at the princely court of Iași; it drew much praise from Samson Bodnărescu, who claimed that Papadopol-Calimah had ushered in a "new era", in which historical notices merged with the "aesthetic pleasure" of well-structured narratives.

[83] In February, he was included on a commission tasked with erecting a statue of Miron Costin in Iași (ultimately done by Wladimir Hegel); the other members were Kogălniceanu, Maiorescu, Bishop Melchisedec, Hasdeu, Nicolae Ionescu, Alexandru Odobescu, Leon C. Negruzzi, C. I. Stăncescu, and Dimitrie Sturdza.

[86] Journalist Dumitru Karnabatt used Papadopol-Calimah's finds to argue that Kiselyov had been a "civilized and progressive spirit", whose contribution had contained the "bad habits that had engulfed our country.

According to critical historian Florin Constantiniu, the work was unconvincing, a "makeshift construction" rehashing theories borrowed from Kogălniceanu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Alexandru G. Golescu, and Vasile Boerescu.

[88] The historian spent much of the period with Alecsandri, at the latter's manor in Mircești;[65] the aging writer was trying to obtain from Papadopol-Calimah confirmation for his spurious claim of descent from Venetian nobility.

[105] In a 1976 overview of Romanian historical writing, Lucian Boia argued that Papadopol-Calimah was illustrative for the Junimist school in its second, non-polemical, phase; his "well-sourced, primarily medievalist, studies" were also "generally minor, without any overarching vision of their own.

"[106] According to archeologist Aurora Pețan, who reissued Scrieri pierdute in a 2007 edition, only George Călinescu had so much as mentioned him as a researcher of Dacian history, his contribution generally "ignored, forgotten, almost lost.