A child prodigy, polymath and polyglot, Iorga produced an unusually large body of scholarly works, establishing his international reputation as a medievalist, Byzantinist, Latinist, Slavist, art historian and philosopher of history.

Iorga later became a leadership figure at Sămănătorul, the influential literary magazine with populist leanings, and militated within the League for the Cultural Unity of All Romanians [ro], founding vocally conservative publications such as Neamul Românesc, Drum Drept, Cuget Clar and Floarea Darurilor.

[38] The ensuing controversy led him to apply for a University of Leipzig PhD: his text, once reviewed by a commission grouping three prominent German scholars (Adolf Birch-Hirschfeld, Karl Gotthard Lamprecht, Charles Wachsmuth), earned him the needed diploma in August.

[42] Living in poor conditions (as reported by visiting scholar Teohari Antonescu),[43] the four-year engagement of his scholarship still applicable, Nicolae Iorga decided to spend his remaining time abroad, researching more city archives in Germany (Munich), Austria (Innsbruck) and Italy (Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice etc.

[46] He applied for the Medieval History Chair at the University of Bucharest, submitting a dissertation in front of an examination commission comprising historians and philosophers (Caragiani, Odobescu, Xenopol, alongside Aron Densușianu, Constantin Leonardescu and Petre Râșcanu), but totaled a 7 average which only entitled him to a substitute professor's position.

Concentrating his efforts on the city archives of Bistrița, Brașov and Sibiu, he made a major breakthrough by establishing that Stolnic Cantacuzino, a 17th-century man of letters and political intriguer, was the real author of an unsigned Wallachian chronicle that had for long been used as a historical source.

While there, the historian set up tight contacts with Romanian intellectuals who originated from Transylvania and who, in the wake of the Transylvanian Memorandum affair, supported ethnic nationalism while objecting to the intermediary Cisleithanian (Hungarian Crown) rule and the threat of Magyarization.

[63] During the 300th commemoration of Prince Michael's death, which ethnic Romanian students transformed into a rally against Austro-Hungarian educational restrictions, Iorga addressed the crowds and was openly greeted by the protest's leaders, poet Octavian Goga and Orthodox priest Ioan Lupaș.

[87] The newer magazine, illustrated with idealized portraits of the Romanian peasant,[88] was widely popular with Romania's rural intelligentsia (among which it was freely distributed), promoting antisemitic theories and raising opprobrium from the authorities and the urban-oriented press.

[45] After renewed but failed attempts to become an Iași University professor,[92] he decided, in 1908, to set his base away from the urban centers, at a villa in Vălenii de Munte town (nestled in the remote hilly area of Prahova County).

[113] He made his first contribution to Romanian drama with the play centered on, and named after, Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), one of around twenty new titles for that year—alongside his collected aphorisms (Cugetări, "Musings") and a memoir of his life in culture (Oameni cari au fost, "People Who Are Gone").

[113] Iorga managed to publish roughly as many new titles in 1914, the year when he received a Romanian Bene Merenti distinction,[120] and inaugurated the international Institute of South-East European Studies or ISSEE (founded through his efforts), with a lecture on Albanian history.

[140] The heightened sense of crisis prompted Iorga to issue appeals against defeatism and reissue Neamul Românesc from Iași, explaining: "I realized at once what moral use could come out of this for the thousands of discouraged and disillusioned people and against the traitors who were creeping up all over the place.

[184] Also then, Iorga was appointed Aggregate Professor by the University of Paris, received the honor of having foreign scholars lecturing at the Vălenii de Munte school, and published a number of scientific works and essays, such as: Brève histoire des croissades ("A Short History of the Crusades"), Cărți reprezentative din viața omenirii ("Books Significant for Mankind's Existence"), România pitorească ("Picturesque Romania") and a volume of addresses to the Romanian American community.

[204] At the same time, his new education law enhancing university autonomy, for which Iorga had been campaigning since the 1920s, was openly challenged as unrealistic by fellow scholar Florian Ștefănescu-Goangă, who noted that it only encouraged political agitators to place themselves outside the state.

Iorga attended the Cultural League congress in Iași, where he openly demanded for the Iron Guard to be outlawed on the grounds that it served Nazi interests, and discussed the threat of war in his speeches at Vălenii de Munte and his Radio conferences.

[260] Iorga was troubled by the outbreak of World War II and saddened by the fall of France, events which formed the basis of his essay Amintiri din locurile tragediilor actuale ("Recollections from the Current Scenes of a Tragedy").

"[260] Perceived as Codreanu's murderer, he received renewed threats from the Iron Guard, including hate mail, attacks in the movement's press (Buna Vestire and Porunca Vremii)[263] and tirades from the Guardist section in Vălenii.

[280] Borrowing Maiorescu's theory about how Westernization had come to Romania as "forms without concept" (meaning that some modern customs had been forced on top of local traditions), Iorga likewise aimed it against the liberal establishment, but gave it a more radical expression.

[306] In 1901, when he blocked Jewish linguist Lazăr Șăineanu from obtaining an academic position, Iorga wrote that Jews had a "passion for high praise and multiple earnings";[307] three years later, in Sămănătorul, he argued that Iași was polluted by the "dirty business" of a "heathen and hostile" community.

[69] His mentor and rival Xenopol was among the first voices to discuss his genius, his 1911 Academy speech in honor of Nicolae Iorga making special note of his "absolutely extraordinary memory" and his creative energy, and concluding: "one asks himself in wonder how a brain was able to conceive of so many things and a hand was able to record them".

[359] Reflecting back on the transition, Iorga himself stated: "The love for the past, for great figures of energy and sincerity, ... the exact contrary of tendencies I had found existed among my contemporaries, had gripped me and, added to my political preoccupations, such awakenings served me, when it came to criticizing things present, more than any argument that is abstract, logical in nature.

[360] According to literary historian Victor Iova: "[Iorga's] overall activity ... did not just seek the communication of knowledge, but also expressly sought to define the social finality of his time, its ethical sense and his own patriotic ideal.

"[401] Similarly, Maria Todorova notes that, although it minimized the Ottoman contribution and displayed "emotional or evaluative overtones", such a perspective ran against the divisive interpretations of the Balkans, offering a working paradigm for a global history of the region: "Although Iorga's theory may be today [ca.

"[69] His ambition was to contribute an alternative to Junimist literary history,[119][191][405] and, according to comparatist John Neubauer, for the first time integrate "the various Romanian texts and writers into a grand narrative of an organic and spontaneous growth of native creativity, based on local tradition and folklore.

[83] In reply, Russian Marxist journalist Leon Trotsky accused him of wishing to bury all left-wing contributions to culture,[165][411] and local socialist Henric Sanielevici wrote that Iorga's literary doctrine did not live up to its moral goals.

[415] During the 1930s, as the cultural and political climate changed, Iorga's main accusation against Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga, Mircea Eliade, Liviu Rebreanu, George Mihail Zamfirescu and other Romanian modernists was their supposed practice of literary "pornography".

In the early 1930s, the avant-garde youth put out the licentious art magazine Alge sent him a copy for review; prosecuted on Iorga's orders, they all later became noted as left-wing authors and artists: Aurel Baranga, Gherasim Luca, Paul Păun, Jules Perahim.

[436] A decade later, George Călinescu described in detail the historian's public speaking routine: the "zmeu"-like introductory outbursts, the episodes of "idle grace", the apparent worries, the occasional anger and the intimate, calm, addresses to his bewildered audience.

[445] Many of the volumes were quickly written as Iorga's attempt to rehabilitate himself after a failed premiership;[119] Orizonturile comprises messages on the power and justness of his cause: "And so I stand at age sixty-two, confident and strong, proud, upright in front of my conscience and the judgment of time.