In chapter 7 of his „History of the Romanian Land“ (1716), Constantin Cantacuzino writes:

...because we see and hear today the Greeks answering this way, when you ask him: What are you ? he says Romaios, that is Roman and there is still a big difference between Greek and Roman. As they were being eventually subjects of the Romans, Romans do they want to be called as well: being that the Empire has been moved from Rome to Byzance, they too began to call themselves Romans, becoming than member and part of the Empire; yet are these (people) Greeks not Romans, but Hellens, especially those of Greekland...

This rather accurate description is not necessarily representative of the image of medieval Romanians over the Byzantines, since it dates approximately two centuries after the late Middle Ages.

It is however reasonable to think that medieval Romanians could differentiate between the antiques Romans from Rome and the conteporary Romans from Constatinople.

Medieval Romanians were aware that they speak some kind of “Roman” language, that is, the language of the ancient Romans from Rome. As early as the XVI century, travellers report that Romanians speak some kind of corrupt Latin which they call Roman and so they call themselves.

Medieval Romanians also cultivated the Roman origin myth, considering themselves descendants of Roman colonists and legions. Thus, in the Middle Ages Romanians had a conscience of the Romanity of both their language and origins, which they knew to originate from that remote ancient city of Rome.

This conscience was however not political, Romanians didn’t consider themselves as continuators of the Roman Empire, of the Roman civilization or institutions. Actually, the first impressions of the Italian Renaissance travellers are pretty significant in this sense: they note that “beside their (corrupt) Latin idiom, these Romanians have nothing Roman left”

On the other side, medieval Romanians had strong ties to „Eastern Rome“ - Constantinople. From the very beginning of their feudal states, Romanians reproduced „Byzantine“ structures in the Church, administration, social structure, army, institutions, actually everywhere.

What I call Eastern Romanity (Byzantine civilization), is a very complex institutional structure, political system, religious formation and civilization type encompassing the intellectual hellenistic heritage, the Roman Law and the Orthodox Church.

The Byzantine imprint of the Romanian Principalities was enormous, so that after the Fall of Constantinople, they considered temselves legitimate continuators of the Eastern Roman civilization. A significant term in the international historical research (coined by the Romanian historian N. Iorga) is “Byzance after Byzance”, which seizes this civilizational continuity and irradiation of the Eastern Roman Empire, even after its fall.

Other nations in the Orthodox world reclaimed as well being kind of Byzance after Byzance. Actually, as in the case of the (Western) Roman Empire, there was quite a crowdy competition for the symbolical succesion of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Romanians and Byzantines both calling themselves Romans is just a series of parallel facts. Romanians called themselves Romans not because they borrowed this name from the Byzantines, but just because they were Latinophones. Their self-denomination had but linguistical and origins-related reasons. On the other hand, Byzantines called themselves Rhomaioi just to point out an institutional and political continuity with the Roman Empire, of which they deemed themselves the only and legitimate heirs. While there is no political project behind medieval Romanians calling themselves Romans, Byzantines calling themselves Romans is all but politics and simbolic.

If Eastern Rome was idealy important for the Romanians, there was no reciprocity: the Eastern Empire totally ignored those peasants living in a forested godforsaken area across the Danube. The only Latinophones they took notice were the Aromanians, as the Empire recovered the lost territories up to the Danube and the Aromanians came into conflict with the imperial authorities.