THE HERITAGE OF DIMITRII KANTEMIR AND CONTEMPORANEITY Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), Moldavian ruler, Prince of the Russian and Habsburg Empires, world renowned thinker and scientist, the 335th anniversary of whom we celebrate, is one of the most eminent personalities of our past. Raised and educated in Constantinople – the capital of diverse world civilizations, the crossroads of many religions, languages and cultures – Cantemir had gained, from one hand, the wisdom and diversity of the East, and on the other hand had achieved the encyclopedic knowledge and rationalistic logic West. Particularly this symbiosis had formed Dimitrie Cantemir as the first integrationist European scientist. He was leading the way in writingnew fundamental studies in political, social and spiritual history of the Moldavian Principality and Ottoman Empire. His volumes were the handbooks of many generations of the European scientist. These works had determined for decades the methods and content for the scientific researches of the European schools of Eastern studies. Dimitrie Cantemir is an exceptional phenomenon for his period. In the era of military opposition between the Christian West and Muslim East, he had taken upon himself the role of a liaison between the two huge cultures, enriching each of them with new knowledge, and at the same time awakening the interest and the need for studying and reciprocal understanding of each other’s particularities.