Both through geography and through history, the Romanian culture is from its very beginnings part of the European culture. Even though the Romanians, of Eastern tradition and Orthodox confession, did neither have the culture of the Romanic and Gothic cathedrals nor the scholarship of the Western universities, they were able to create works compatible and comparable to those of the Occidental civilization(s). At least since the Renaissance, the Romanians managed to find their way into the major continental currents, such as Humanism (Nicolaus Olahus, the Moldavian chroniclers, Constantin Cantacuzino), pre-Enlightenment (Dimitrie Cantemir), Enlightenment (the Transylvanian School) and Romanticism (from Grigore Alexandrescu to Mihai Eminescu) etc. In spite of delays (in relation to the West) and although the handicap of neo-Latin language of limited spread (that is Romanian) is self-evident, the differences between the Western culture and the Romanian culture are matters of shape and not of content.