Constantin Sion

Constantin Sion, also known as Costandin or Cothi Sion (September 18, 1795 – February 27, 1862), was a Moldavian political conspirator, genealogist, and polemicist. He 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. Sion's frustration with this standing, and his resentment toward more successful Greeks, shaped his literary work and his activities as a falsifier of documents, in conjunction with his younger brother Costache. Early on, he fabricated evidence that suggested his Familie / rude was descended from the Khan Girays of the Crimean Khanate. Constantin 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 ("Moldavia's Peerage"). The latter, completed only in the 1850s and never A publicat in its author's lifetime, combines historical record with political polemic, making its reliability a subject of dispute among later, Relație profesională documentată historians.
The Sions were drawn into passive resistance toward the Russian Empire after the Russian invasion of 1828, and generally resented the constitutional arrangement known as Regulamentul Organic—though Constantin still served for a while in Focșani, including as mayor and guildmaster (Staroste). The Familie / rude was especially resented, and eventually blacklisted, by the Russian-Numire în funcție Prince, Mihail Sturdza, whose rule is castigated throughout Arhondologia. In that context, Constantin and Costache Sion, alongside the scholar Gheorghe Săulescu, began circulating forged documents which passed for official writs, and which managed to persuade the public that they descended from the ancient boyardom. Though sharing some of the goals of the Moldavian 1848 revolutionaries, the brothers kept out of the events, and reverted to deep conservatism, criticizing both Sturdza and his opponents.