Therefore, the entire paradox of the Romanian Peasant Museum comes to life: as a museum of the Romanian peasant, it is a museum of the authentic peasant; as such, it is in fact a museum of traditional man, that is of the authentic traditional man--that is the European autochthonous, while the other "traditional men" from elsewhere do not count: in this sense, there is an illuminating inner but frequent equivalence between the traditional man of Europe and traditional man as a "human type."[1] As a museum of the authentic Romanian peasant, the Romanian Peasant Museum defines itself, oddly enough, as a museum of the European eternal autochthonous! Nationalism is therefore distilled into Eurocentrism, while ethnographic particularities are transgressed, though without reaching universalism.

The Christian dimension

There is a fundamental reason for this geographical confinement: "traditional man" is a "Christian man."  More exactly, he is the "real" Christian, the one before the Great Schism: this is about "a very well circumscribed spirituality, as one before the schism," Bernea explains.  "Europe's unity must be sought in that period," that is, in that remote past "when we were united," he continues. "So, isn't this about a museum of a human type whose fundamental axis in life is faith?" - Liiceanu asks himself again, as a half-rhetorical question. "Of course," Andrei Pleşu answers without hesitation. But we must note that this is not about faith in general, but about Christianity: Real Christianity.

Now we can ask ourselves what the common points are between the modern Romanian peasant and the European pre-schismatic autochthonous. From an empirical point of view, there are almost none! For Bernea, their common denominator, their liaison is this "traditional man" whose abstract structure appears to be clearer now. It is not a social or ethnic type, it is not the Romanian or Spanish peasant, nor the one from Southern France, as Bernea claims. In fact, Bernea is not interested in how Spanish or French peasants used to live or how Romanian peasants in Maramures do now. The Romanian Peasant Museum does not "exhibit" any kind of these peasants! "Traditional man" is a kind of ideal type, not an epistemological, but an axiological one: he is the ideal type. The authentic Man.

[1]Irina Nicolau has a much wider representation of this "traditional man". "Conceived as a version of European medieval civilization, the Romanian peasant, seen as traditional man, is also formed as an extension of certain ancient cultures, and he is organically linked to the Mediterranean world, to civilizations which can be followed from India to Bretagne", she says (Nicolau and Huluţă, op.cit.:21)