Origin of the Romanians

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The Romanians (also sometimes referred to along with related Latin peoples as Vlachs) are a people speaking Romanian, a Romance language, and living in Central and Eastern Europe.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Historical background 3 Historiography (written sources) 3.1 4th-10th centuries sources 3.2 11th century sources 3.3 12th-13th centuries sources 3.4 14th-16th centuries sources 3.5 18th-20th centuries sources 4 History research 5 Theories supporting Daco-Roman continuity 5.1 Arguments for 5.1.1 Historical 5.1.2 Linguistic 5.1.3 Ethnic 5.1.4 Archaeological 5.2 Arguments against 5.2.1 The circumstances of the Roman conquest 5.2.2 Archaeological evidence following the Roman conquest 5.2.3 The short period of the Roman conquest 5.2.4 Archaeological evidence following the Roman withdrawal 5.2.5 Toponyms 5.2.6 Linguistics 6 Theories supporting a migration of Vlachs from the south 6.1 Arguments for 6.1.1 Toponyms 6.1.2 Written sources 6.1.3 Linguistics 6.2 Arguments against 7 See also 8 Footnotes 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Overview

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The origin of the Romanians has been a hotly debated issue, often with nationalistic and political motivations, that has resulted in several prominent theories. The most important of these are the theories of Daco-Roman Continuity, and that of migration from the South. The Daco-Roman Continuity Theory asserts that Romanians are descended of Romanized Dacians (or Daco-Romans) and the Roman colonists in the Roman province of Dacia; and that of Migration from the South Theory suggests that the Romanized population did not survive in Dacia, and the Romanians arrived on their present territory much later, often cited as taking place in the 13th century. Intermediate theories also exist, purporting admigration or a migration from the South but at an earlier date, such as the 7th century. The conflicting theories clashed predominantly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and where centered upon the issue of Transylvania, claimed by both Hungary and Romania.

Several recent publications by British and Italian authors state the view that during and after the Dacian wars of Trajan (101-102 and 105-106 AD), Dacia appears to have been ethnically cleansed ^[1] and completely depopulated^[2] of Dacians, and was heavily resettled by colonists from the Roman Empire.^[1][2]. Conversely, the other point of view is that only the ruling class of the old Dacian state was severely affected by the war/cleansing in an attempt to avoid possible future rebellions in the newly occupied territory and ease the romanisation of the elites. Dacian life as a whole was not stunted but it continued to live through the years of Roman occupation.^[3] The Romans did not occupy all territories inhabited by Dacians. Powerful Dacian tribes, like the Carpi and the Costoboci continued to battle Rome.^[4] Together with the attacks of other tribes in the region, this forced the Romans to increase their military presence in the area, hence intensifying the romanisation process of the occupied territory.^[5] In the years following the retreat of the Roman administration from Dacia (271-275 AD), besides the Romans and the romanised Dacians left behind, the number of Latin speakers was further increased by the captives brought there by barbarian tribes controlling the territory in and around the former Roman province, after successful incursions south of the Danube.^[6]

According to the US Federal Research Division's country study, when the Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin (9th century), they met local population and "there is little doubt that these included some Romanians who remained faithful to the Eastern Orthodox Church after the East-West Schism"^[7]. According to the same source, no written or architectural evidence bears witness to the presence of "proto-Romanians" in the lands north of the Danube during the millennium after Rome's withdrawal from Dacia.^[7]

The Library of Congress in its country study about Hungary simply points out that "Romanian and Hungarian historians disagree about the ethnicity of Transylvania's population before the Magyars' arrival".^[8] These facts have fueled a centuries-long feud between Romanian and Hungarian historians over Transylvania.^[7] The Romanians assert that they are the descendants of Latin-speaking Dacian peasants who remained in Transylvania after the exodus of the Roman administration, and survived there during the tumult of the Dark Ages.^[7] Romanian historians explain the absence of hard evidence for their claims by pointing out that the region lacked organized administration until the twelfth century and by positing that the Mongols destroyed any existing records when they plundered the area in 1241.^[7] Hungarians assert, among other things, that the Roman population quit Dacia completely in 271, that the Romans could not have made a lasting impression on Transylvania's aboriginal population in only two centuries,^[7] and that Transylvania's Romanians descended from Balkan nomads who crossed northward over the Danube in the thirteenth century and flowed into Transylvania in any significant numbers only after Hungary opened its borders to foreigners.^[7] The Hungarians maintain that Transylvania was inhabited not by the ancestors of the Romanians but by Slavs and point out that the first mention of the Romanians' ancestors in Hungarian records, which appeared in the thirteenth century, described them as drifting herders.^[8]

The origin of the Romanians has been a matter of scholarly disagreement for some time. There are several theories regarding the issue: The theories listed here, along with a host of other variations on these same schemes, are discussed in detail and with erudition by Lucian Boia in his "History and Myth in Romanian conciousness".^[9]

1. Daco-Romanian continuity in Dacia, Moesia and some adjacent regions (Daco-Roman continuity).
2. A completely non-Dacian, Roman/Romanized origination without any speculation as to where the survival of this Roman/Romanized population occurred until their reemergence in history as Vlachs. ^[1][2]
3. Migration of Romance people from the former Roman provinces south of the Danube in the Balkans (The Rösler Theory).
4. Thraco-Roman theory (Romanization of Daco-Thracian population north of the Jireček Line)

In this context, explanation of the term Vlach also plays a key role.

The above mentioned theories present various historical explanations about the origins of the Romanian people and language. In the 19th and 20th centuries some historians (e.g. Robert Rösler) launched the so-called migration theory, concluding that Roumanians (Transylvanian Vlachs) should not be regarded as "Dacian autochthones". This fact gave rise to various national mythologies and ethno-political ideologies starting in the late 19th century when Hungarian historians largely supported the migration theory, which maintained that Transylvania was not inhabited by Romanians at the time of the Magyar conquests in central Europe during the 9th and 10th century. Most of the Romanian historians have been supported the theory of Daco-Romanian continuity and maintained that Transylvania, and the rest of the modern territory of Romania, was continuously inhabited by the Romanized Dacians, the ancestors of Romanians. The debate was politically charged during the 19th-20th centuries, first because of the demand of equal rights by the Romanians of Transylvania, and thereafter due to territorial conflicts concerning Transylvania between Romania and Hungary. (See also Transylvania.)

More recently, as former axioms of ethnogenesis have shifted, the historian Walter Pohl noted that "centuries after the fall of the Balkan provinces, a pastoral Latin-Roman tradition served as the point of departure for a Valachian-Roman ethnogenesis. This kind of virtuality — ethnicity as hidden potential that comes to the fore under certain historical circumstances — is indicative of our new understanding of ethnic processes. In this light, the passionate discussion for or against Roman-Romanian continuity has been misled by a conception of ethnicity that is far too inflexible."^[10]

[edit] Historical background

[edit] Historiography (written sources)

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[edit] 4th-10th centuries sources

• In the 4th century, the Historia Augusta mentions that

On seeing that Illyricum was devastated and Moesia was in a ruinous state, he abandoned the province of Trans-Danubian Dacia, which had been formed by Trajan, and led away both soldiers and provincials, giving up hope that it could be retained. The people whom he moved out from it he established in Moesia, and gave to this district, which now divides the two provinces of Moesia, the name of Dacia.

—Historia Augusta^[11]

• The Roman-Gothic author Jordanes, who was raised in Moesia and was familiar with the ethnic character of the area,^[12] wrote in the 6th century that the Romans had only moved the legions from Dacia, and not the population.

the Emperor Aurelian, calling his legions from here (evocatis exinde legionibus), settled them in Moesia and there, on the other side, he founded Dacia Mediterranea and Dacia Ripensis

—Jordanes^[13]

• An anonymous author who pronounces an encomium in the honour of Caesar Constantine (emperor between 337-361) speaks of restored Dacia (Dacia restito) eulogizing him for the victory obtained against Goths and Taifals in 332^[14]

• The Byzantine chronicler Priscus of Panium mentions in the year 448, the presence of a Latin-speaking populace North of the Danube. The populace was called by him "Ausoni".^[15] It should be noted that this was at a time before Slavic migration, so the exonym “Vlach” was not applied to this populace.^[16]

For the subjects of the Huns, swept together from various lands, speak, besides their own barbarous tongues, either Hunnic or Gothic, or - as many as have commercial dealings with the western Romans - Ausoni^[17]

(...) a barbarian who sat beside me and knew Ausoni (...)

—Priscus of Panium^[18]

• In 545, Procopius of Caesarea mentions^{[not in citation given][19]} "The trick played by an Ant (a Slav or Alan from present-day Moldavia) who is supposed to have passed himself off as a Byzantine General by speaking a form of Latin which he had learned in these regions."

• At the Nicaean Synod in 787, the following person is signaled on the 73rd seat: “Ursus Avaritianensium ecclesiae episcopus.”^[20] The name of the episcope of the Avaritians (i.e. people ruled by the Avars), being Ursus, is of Romanic origin.^[21]

• An ancient letter from one Emmerich of Elwangen to Grimaldus, abbot of St. Gall, written about 860 mention Vlachs, under the name of Dacians, living north of Danube together with Germans, Sarmatians, and Alans. The letter reads:^[22]

• The chronicle Oguzname, the oldest Turkish chronicle in existence, mentioning a warlike expedition of the Cumans, affirms the existence of a “Country of the Vlachs” (Ulaqi) east of the Carpathians in 839^{[dubious – discuss]}, affirming that the region was well organized and with a powerful army.^[23]

• A ninth-century Armenian geography^{[clarification needed]} mentions the country "Balak".^[24]

[edit] 11th century sources

• In the 11th century, Abu Said Gardezi wrote about a Christian people from Rûm situated between the Slavs and Hungarians:^[25]

That is the Džaihūn which is on their /the Magyars’/ left side. Beside Saqlāb /Slavs/ are a people az Rūm / from the Byzantine Empire (Rûm)^[26] or of Rome^[27][28]/ who are all Christians and they are called N-n-d-r, and they are more numerous than the Magyars, but they are weaker.^[29]

N-n-d-r stands for Bulgarian in Hungarian, like Nándorfehérvár (Belgrad), the capital of Serbia.

• A rune stone from the Sjonhem cemetery in Gotland dating from the 11th century commemorates a merchant Rodfos who was traveling to Constantinople and was killed north of the Danube by the Blakumenn.

Rodvisl and Rodälv raised this stone for their three sons. This one after Rodfos. He /Rodfos/ was betrayed by the Blokumenn on his journey. God help the soul of Rodfod. God betray those who betrayed him /Rodfos/.^[30]

.

• An early 13th century biography of St. Olaf of Norway, now preserved in the 14th century manuscript Flateyjarbók also mentions Blokumenn as being Sviatopolk’s allies (in the early 11th century).^[31][32]

• The traditional^[33][34] interpretation of the ethnonim Blakumenn or Blokumenn in Old Norse is Wallachian (Romanian),^{[33][35][36][37]} though alternative^[34] explanation is that the term means 'black men'; some authors interpret it as Black Cuman.^[38]

• According to Strategikon of Kekaumenos (1066), the Vlachs of Epirus and Thessalia came from north^{[verification needed]} of the Danube and from along the Sava.^[25]

These /Vlachs/ are, in fact, the so-called Dacians, also called Bessians. Earlier they lived in the vicinity of the Danube and Saos, a river which we now call Sava, where the Serbians live today, and /later/ withdrew to their inaccessible fortifications. (...) And these left the region: some of them were dispersed to Epirus and Macedonia, and a large number established themselves in Hellas.

—Kekaumenos: Strategikon^[39]

.

• Kekaumenos writes in 1078 that the Vlachs were the instigators of a 1066-1067 rebelliong against the Byzantine Empire. He mentions that these Vlachs, anticipating military turbulence, sent their wives and children “to the mountains of Bulgaria”, suggesting the existence of permanent settlements in that region and transhumant pastoralism, contradicting the Hungarian point of view that the Vlachs were nomadic.^[25].

[edit] 12th-13th centuries sources

• Nestor's Chronicle, (1097-1110), relating events from 862 to 1110, mentions Wallachians attacking and subduing the Slavs north of Danube and settling among them.^[25]{{Quote|For many years the Slavs lived beside the Danube, where the Hungarian and Bulgarian lands now lie. From among these Slavs, parties scattered throughout the country and were known by appropriate names, according to the places where they settled. Thus some came and settled by the river Morava, and were named Moravians, while others were called Czechs. Among these same Slavs are included the White Croats, the Serbs, and the Khorutanians. For when the Vlakhs (Волхмъ) attacked the Danubian Slavs, settled among them, and did them violence, the latter came and made their homes by the Vistula, and were then called Liakhs. (...)^[40]
• Coming from the east, they /the Magyars/ marched in haste over the high mountains, which are called the mountains of the Magyars, and began to fight against the Volochi (Волохи) and the Slavs who inhabited these countries. The Slavs had originally lived there, and the Volochi (Волохове) had subdued the country of the Slavs. Later, however, the Magyars drove out the Volochi (Волъхи), subdued the Slavs, and settled in their country. Since then, that region has been called Hungary.|Primary Chronicle^[40]
• Around 1120, the Gesta Henrici written by the cleric Godefirdus von Viterbium mentioned the countries conquered by Rome including “Blachina” (Blach, being a synonym to Vlach, meant Romanian)^[25]
• The Nibelungenlied (“The Song of the Nibelungs”), written between 1140 and 1160, describes a passage mentioning Vlachs and their leader, Ramunc. The context of the whole song was the marriage of Attila, and many cultures, each speaking a different language. From these, we find the duke Ramunc, who, together with seven hundred of his best fighters, scare away the horses of the Huns.

Men saw ride before King Etzel on the road many bold knights of many tongues and many mighty troops of Christians and of paynims. When they met the lady, they rode along in lordly wise. Of the Russians and the Greeks there rode there many a man. The right good steeds of the Poles and Wallachians were seen to gallop swiftly, as they rode with might and main. Each did show the customs of his land. (...)^[41]

• Before Etzel, there rode a retinue, merry and noble, courtly and lusty, full four and twenty princes, mighty and of lofty birth. They would fain behold their lady and craved nought more. Duke Ramung of Wallachia, with seven hundred vassals, galloped up before her; like flying birds men saw them ride.

• Thomas Tuscus wrote, on the expedition of the emperor Conrad III against the Turks, in a Crusade during 1140 AD: “The troops from Provence, from France, Lotaringia and Germany went towards Constantinople through Hungary, Valahia and Pannonia” implying the existence of an organized Vlah state during the 12th century.^[25]
• The Byzantine writer Joannes Kinnamos writes of the Vlachs North of the Danube in 1167, saying:

Leon, also known as Vatatzes, brought many soldiers from other areas, even a large number of Vlachs, about whom it is said that they are the descendants of colonists from Italy.^[39]

• Niketas Choniates tells us that as Andronic Comnenos was heading towards the Principality of Galich in 1164, but was captured by Vlachs along the way. It’s important to note that at the time the Byzantine Empire controlled all the territory up to the Danube Delta (as the Empire of vlachs and Bugarians was only founded in 1185), including Dobruja, and the Principality of Galich controlled most of the Medieval state of Moldova. This leaves only Southern Moldova and Eastern Wallachia as the location of this kidnapping.
• The Gesta Hungarorum also mention the presence of Vlachs in Pannonia and them mixing with Slavs, but retaining their language and culture.^[42] The Gesta Hungarorum furthermore mentions that the Magyars conquered Transylvania from the Vlachs and Slavs

the inhabitants of that land were the basest of the whole world, because they were Vlachs [Blasii] and Slavs

—Gesta Hungarorum, Chapter 25^[43]

• Thomas of Spalato mentioned the same thing.^{[verification needed][44]}
• Weltchronik (World Chronicle) by Rudolf von Ems, written around 1250, mentions Vlachs living in Pannonia.^[45]

In vromdin sundir sprachin/Valwen und wilde Vlachin/jensit des sneberges hant/sint lant du si begant^[46]

• Jansen Enikel’s Weltchronik (The Chronicle of the World), written in Vienna in 1277, mentions Charlemagne going on a campaign in the east (around 8th century) and meeting with Wallachians.^[47]
• Around 1285, In the chronicle of Simon of Keza, the Vlachs of Pannonia are mentioned as a settled population after the collapse of the Hunnish Empire.^[48]
• The Descriptio Europæ Orientalis, which was written by a French monk in 1308, discovered in the Paris Library in 1913, mention ten Vlach kings that were defeated by the Hungarians of Arpad.^[49]

Therefore, Hungarians met the Vlachs in Panonia and drove them out in Transylvania. This explains the Romanian ethnogenesis.

[edit] 14th-16th centuries sources

• A papal census in 1332 found that of 3000 towns in Transylvania, only 900 had Catholic parishes. In Banat, around 95% of the population followed the Eastern Orthodox rite, and in Maramures, Orthodox Christians made up 90% of the population until Ruthenian refugees were settled in the region, dropping the percentage to 80%.^[25]

• In 1374, Pope Gregory IX wrote of Transylvania as having a "great populace which goes by the name of Valachian" ("Multitudo quorundam popolorum qui Valachones vocantur")^[25]

• The Chronicon Pictum says “This Gyula was a strong and great prince, who, while hunting in Transylvania, found a great city built by the Romans long ago.” Chronicon Posoniense then mentions the name of the town as “„ ...civitas Alba in Erdeuel”.

• In the 15th century, the Polish Chronicler Jan Długosz writes in his Historia Polonica that in a battle in 1070 between the cneaz of Polotsk and Kiev, the cneaz of Polotsk had in his army “Russians, Pecennegs, and Vlahs.”

• Antonio Bonfini wrote: “Because the Romanians are descendants of the Romans, a fact that even today is attested by their language, a language that, even though they are surrounded by diverse barbarian peoples, could not be destroyed.... even if all kinds of barbarian attacks flooded over the province of Dacia and the Roman people, we can see that the Roman colonies and legions that had been established there could not be annihilated”^[25]

• In 1532, Francesco della Valle (Secretary of Aloisio Gritti, a natural son to Doge Andrea Gritti)^[50] wrote: "the emperor Trajan, after conquering this country, divided it among his soldiers and made it into a Roman colony, so that these Romanians are descendants, as it is said, of these ancient colonists, and they preserve the name of the Romans"^[25]

• Despot Voda wrote in 1561: "we are a brave people of a warrior race, descendants of the illustrious Romans, who made the world tremor. And in this way we will make it known to the whole world that we are true Romans and their descendants, and our name will never die and we will make proud the memories of our parents"^[25]

• In the 16th century, Anton Verancsics wrote: “Transylvania is inhabited by three nations, the Szecklers, the Saxons, and the Hungarians; I would, nevertheless, add the Romanians, who, although they easily equal the number of all the others, do not have any liberties or a nobility, nor any rights of their own...”^[25]

[edit] 18th-20th centuries sources

• Emperor Joseph the Second of Austria (1765-1790) tells us about the Romanians: “incontestably, the oldest and most numerous denizens of Transylvania.”^[25]

• Count Teleki, President of the Transylvanian Chancellery informs us in a document from 1791: “the Vlachs are the oldest inhabitants of Transylvania.”^[25]

• Hungarian historian András Huszti affirms, in his posthumous work, also dated 1791: “No other nation has a language as similar to Latin as the Vlachs. This is a sure sign which cannot deceive us that they are the followers of the old Roman colonies in Transylvania.”^[25]

• German academic Fr. Altheim affirmed: “Dacia, although home to a populace similar to Thracians, had chosen Romanization as opposed to Hellenization after the Roman Empire annexed the province. In Dacia, there seemed to have been a consistent choice made by its inhabitants to become Romans, something attested by consistent historical facts.”^[25]

• Mihály Cserei writes in the 17th century: “From Transylvania, people flee en masse to Moldova. I’ve tried everything to stop them, but nothing has worked.”^[25]

• József Benkő writes in 1777: “What remains of the Roman colonists who mixed with others are the Romanians.”

• About the region of Fagaras, Antonio Possevino writes: “There are over 70 towns here, almost all of them completely populated by Romanians.”^[25]

• László Kőváry writes that before the 1848 revolution there were over a million Romanians in Transylvania and only 213,000 Hungarians, affirming that “you can travel for days and not hear a single person speaking Hungarian.”^[25]

• From András Huszti: "The offspring of the Dacians still live even today and live where their forefathers lived, and speak in a language similar to their forefathers."^[25]

• István Losontzy writes: “Transylvania, to the East of Hungary, was beforehand called Dacia... the Hungarian kings only ruled this land through Transylvanian voievods.”^[25]

• Szilagyi Sandor writes: “Transylvania and Hungary were never together, and were always two different countries... as Transylvania always looked to the Orient, due to the fact that the majority of the population was Orthodox Christian, while Hungary always looked Westward.”^[25]

• Gaspar Bojtinus, historian of Gabriel Bethlen, wrote of the union of Transylvania with the Romanian principalities in 1600 as “inevitabilis fatorum lex”, implying that they have always been the same soil with the same people.

• Iosif Bánki (1764) writes: “so great is the number of Romanians that they easily outnumber all the other nations of Transylvania combined.”^[25]

• Maria Tereza writes in 1748 of Transylvania as “Our Romanian principality.”^[25]

• French academic V. Duruy considers the colonization of Dacia: “By far the largest colonial effort in ancient history!”^[25]

• The English historian Gibbon writes in “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” in 1777 that after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Dacia, done by Aurelian, a significant part of the province’s population stayed behind, being more afraid of moving than of Gothic rule. Later, he adds “These people became a great nation” and then writes “The Vlachs preserve many elements from Latin, and they are proud of their Roman heritage. Even surrounded, they did not mix with the barbarians.”

• The German historian Johann Thunmann writes “The Vlahs North of the Danube are brothers of those in Macedonia, descended from Thracians, which, under the name of Getai or Dacians played a crucial role in history. Under Roman rule they received the language and culture of the Romans and under Roman Emperor Caracalla, the right to citizenship, and called themselves Romans. We cannot confirm that Emperor Aurelian moved the whole population south of the Danube, especially considering so many of them have remained in a nation so big and mountainous... When the Hungarians arrived in 896, they found them in Transylvania and Pannonia, as affirmed by Annonymous, the notary of King Bela IV. The Vlahs have lived since antiquity in Wallachia and Moldova.^[25]

• Pavol Jozef Šafárik sustains that the Romanians could not have come from South of the Danube from the simple reason that they existed on both sides of the river continuously, “Both Vlach nations, on both sides of the Danube, had the same origins, from the mixture of Thracians and Getic tribes with the Romans.”^[25]

• German historian Scholtzer affirms that the Volochs in the chronicles of Nestor are Vlachs “These volochi are the offsprings of the ancient Thracians, Dacians, and Getai”^[51]

• Hungarian Gábor Fábián writes in the ethnography of Arad in 1835: “The Romanians are the oldest people here, and if it is true that they are the colonists of Dacia after Trajan’s conquest, then they can be considered as the aboriginals of this comitat”

• Hungarian historian Theodor Lehoczky writes in 1890: “The regions from Northeastern Salaj were, without a doubt, inhabited by Romanians before the Magyar elements managed to penetrate into this region.”^[25]

• In the great memoirs presented by Hungary at the peace conference in 1920, the texts clearly attest: “The history of Transylvania from the death of Saint Stephen until the reign of Saint Ladislaus is shrowded in darkness.”^[52]

• The historian Mihály Horváth writes “Transylvania was populated by Romanians when the Hungarians first arrived in Pannonia. In Bihor was the dukedom of Menumorut, who had as his subjects Vlachs and Khazars, and in Banat Voievod Glad had an army composed entirely of Romanians. Erdely is led by Gelu at this time as well.”^[25]

• Hungarian historian G. Petrovay in 1911 writes “The Hungarian historical hypothesis in which the Romanians arrived in Transylvania in the 13th century does not logically patch there realities of Bereg and Maramures, because these regions had privileges which a people of pastoralists who immigrated slowly, as strangers and enemies, and were captured in battle; to send a captured enemy to guard your borders and land is complete nonsense.” (in " Szazadok, XLV -1911 , p. 607 -626 )^[25]

• German historian Leopold von Ranke: “Dacia was organized into a Roman province. The indigenous Romanians give the name, even today, of “The path of Trajan” to the road which leads into Transylvania, and call Turnu Rosu “The Roman gate”. They are what remains of Trajan’s colonists brought into Dacia.”^[53]

• Hungarian F. Eckhart writes in Magyaroszág története, Budapest, 1933, pg 21 “We cannot believe that the Hungarians populated the entire Hungarian kingdom. Their numbers... were too small for something like that. The territories which Hungarians occupied matched the territory of Hungary after Trianon”^[25]

• Pope Innocent III (in a letter dated 1203): “Therefore we, who have been appointed by the will of God and Father, unworthy as we are, as vicars and successors of the Apostolic Sea, to prove by the force of facts our fatherly love for the Church of the Bulgarians and Romanians(Vlachs), who are said to be the descendents of the ROMANS, by their flesh and blood”

[edit] History research

Research in this domain, particularly in the 19th and 20th century, has provided a breadth of evidence but differring interpretations prevents it from being conclusive..

[edit] Theories supporting Daco-Roman continuity

After the Romans conquered Dacia in 106, a process of romanization of the Dacians took place. The Roman administration retreated from Dacia around 271, and according to this theory, the romanized Dacians stayed on, and have continuously lived in Dacia throughout the Dark Ages. Romanians are their descendants.

[edit] Arguments for

[edit] Historical

• Intensive Roman colonization of Dacia. Dacia was the only Roman province to have a state-sponsored colonization program.^[54]

• There is significant archeological evidence to show that the Dacians and Getae were very receptive to foreign cultures. Inscriptions on pottery (Decebal per Scorilo) suggests that the Dacians may have already had significant cultural exchanges with the Romans before conquest and colonization. ^[25]

• Numerous archaeological sites prove the continuity of Latin settlements north of the Danube after the evacuation of 271 ^[25], including:
  • Daco-Roman ceramic artifacts from the 5th-6th centuries, found at: Bratei, Soporu de Câmpie, Verbiţa, Sǎrata Monteoru
  • Christian tombs and objects found at: Cluj-Napoca, Alba-Iulia, Biertan, Dej
  • Many inscriptions in the Latin language: inscriptions on silver ring from Micia, ceramic objects from Porolissum, brick found at Gornea, inscription on bronze object found at Biertan (reading "EGO ZENOVIUS VOTUM POSUI").
  • Walls erected in the 4th century at Sarmizegetusa. ^[25]

• Constantine the Great assumed the title Dacicus Maximus in 336 just like Trajan did in 106, suggesting the presence of Dacians in Dacia even after the Aurelian withdrawal of 270-275.^[55][56][57]

• The similarities between the exonyms Vlach/Voloch and Olah/Olasz, one used for Romanians and the other for Italians, implies the Hungarians and Slavs thought both were one and the same populace^[58]

• An early 13th century biography of St. Olaf of Norway, now preserved in the 14th century manuscript Flatejarbok, mentions Vlachs(Romanians) (Blokumenn) as being Sviatopolk’s allies (in the early XIth century).^[25]

• Latin documents, although rare, are still present after the withdrawal of the Roman administration. Their presence affirms the existence of a populace that could understand Latin, while the rarity reflects the trend of ruralization of the proto-Romanians, caused by the frequent Barbarian raids on the cities in the former colony of Dacia.^[25]

• The first ruler of Transylvania to be formally recognized by the Kingdom of Hungary was Leustachius, who had the title of “Voievod of Transylvania” as written in G. Wenczel’s Codex Diplomaticus (“Leustachius, waywoda Transilvaniae”). Transylvania was the only region under the Hungarian crown which kept this administrative system, rather than being re-organized into Comites as the other regions of Hungary were, by using the title of Voievod, some historians considered it evidence that the Hungarian crown was somehow necessitated to recognize an older political institution in Transylvania.^[25]

• In the earliest documents which affirm the existence of Romanians in Transylvania, all^{[dubious – discuss]} the documents refer to the Romanians living in dense forests. A "charta" given to the Saxons by the Hungarians, the region of Fagaras is called "silva Blacorum et Bissenorum (forest of Vlachs and Pechennegs). The geographical position of Romanians is not indicative of a colonization and evidences a populace fleeing from invaders.^{[dubious – discuss]} The archaeologist Andrei Popa has also confirmed the presence of numerous other "Vlah sylvae" within Transylvania before they were reorganized in Comites. This same symptom of Romanians living in dense forests is also found south of the Carpathians. Regions like Codrul Vlasiei derive from Vlasca, meaning "Land of Vlachs" in Slavic languages. Vlasi is the plural term for Vlach so we can conclude that this dense forest (codru) would have been the home to the Romanians South of the Carpathians as well, and is once again reflective of a populace trying to flee from horse-bound invaders. The particular use of the word "Vlasi" is an early term, and reflects on the fact that this name was given at a time when Romanians and Slavs had only mingled slightly.^[59]

• At the time of the Aurelian withdrawal Dacia is assumed to have had a populace of roughly 1 million inhabitants, most of them in rural communities.^[60] In order for the Romans to have evacuated all of the colonists from Dacia would have required significant logistical planning and manpower. However, no single logistical document referring to this withdrawal has ever been found, no census of how many colonists were withdrawn. There are no catalogues of who was moved and when. Furthermore, there is no archaeological evidence South of the Danube for a drastically increased population.^[25]

• Romanization could not have been possible South of the Jirecek Line, which runs through Bulgaria, Serbia, and the upper part of Albania, as that region was historically Hellenized, whereas only regions to the North of this line were Romanized (this due to the strong standing of Hellenic culture South of this line). Thus the traditional homeland of the Romanians according to Hungarian historians (being Albania)^{[dubious – discuss]} was not a conductive area for Romanization.^[25]

• There is no historical document which attests to some sort of migration of Romanians from the Balkans to the North.^{[61][dubious – discuss]} By 1400 it was estimated that Transylvania had a populace of 800,000 people and Wallachia and Moldavia had 600,000 each, all three of which had a majority-Romanian population (though some Hungarians challenge this assertion about Transylvania). It would be demographically impossible for such a large population to grow from a small number of pastoral migrants in such a short time.^[62]

• While the Romanians north of the Danube were not mentioned earlier than the Xth century, neither are the Romanche of Switzerland, nor the Albanians. It is impossible to believe however that the Albanians or Romanche did not inhabit their respective homelands until after this date.^[63]

• The documentation of colonization of Vlachs is exceedingly sparse for such a large populace.^{[dubious – discuss]} Of the 217 documents pertaining to Transylvania during the reign of Ladislaus IV, none of them mention this colonization. Comparatively, we have 19 documents referring to the 25 year long colonization in Transylvania of the Teutonic Knights, an event which happened 50 years before the “Vlach colonization.” In the 13th century there is only one mention of Vlachs being settled on the domains of nobles in Transylvania, but the source does not mention whether the Vlachs came from outside of Transylvania or if they were taken from the Transylvanian foothills.

• Many Romanian judicial terms are of Magyar origin, implying that the Romanians were present when these terms were first applied and used by the Hungarian state. If Romanians had not been present in Transylvania before the XII century, then such an absorption would not have been possible, and the terms would have been replaced by Slavic or Greek terms.^[25]

[edit] Linguistic

• The Roman colonists came in Dacia from different provinces of the Roman empire. They had no common language except for Vulgar Latin. In this multi-ethnic environment, Latin, being the only common language of communication, might have quickly become the dominant language. American history furnishes similar examples, with the overwhelming dominance of Standard English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese in different parts of the Americas, with insignificant dialectal differences.

• over 3000 of the inscriptions discovered in Dacia are written in Latin, compared to only about 40 in Greek and 7-8 in other languages, suggesting that Dacian provincial society was monoglot, with all of the colonists speaking Latin.^[64]

• Romanian is considered by some linguists^[65] the only Romance language to preserve a large number of features of Latin grammar.^[66].

• Almost all Romanian religious terms are inherited directly from Latin which means Romanians were Christianised in the Latin language^[67]

• Some morpho-syntactic, lexical and phonetical regional differences within Romanian indicate that in certain regions of Romania the language preserved more Latin substance than in the rest of the country.^[68] The boundaries of these linguistic areas coincide quite exactly with the borders of the ancient Roman province of Dacia, encompassing modern Transylvania, Banat and Oltenia.

• The hydronyms and toponyms in Romania and throughout Transylvania are predominantly^{[dubious – discuss]} carried over from antiquity. Names like Somes, Mures, Abrud, Dunare, Prut, Nistru, all are adaptations of the original Latin, Greek, or Dacian words. Slavic toponyms and hydronyms are present in Romania, but these are present in many parts of Eastern Europe as well. Many hydronyms and toponyms in mainland Greece are also Slavic, but this does not imply that Slavs were the sole people to populate Greece or Romania.

• Ancient Dacian toponyms were kept; examples are the names of some rivers (Samus - Someş, Marisia - Mureş, Porata - Prut), the names of some cities (Petrodava - Piatra Neamţ, Abruttum - Abrud) and most important in the name of Carpathian mountains, name which is directly derived from the Dacian tribe of Carpians or Carpodacians^[69][70]

• If the Romanians had been living alongside Albanians before the Xth century, they would have common language (as affirmed by the Bulgarian linguist Decev).^[why?] The phonological disunity between the shared words also evidences that these words are inherited from a common sub-stratum (Thraco-Illyrian) and not the result of having a shared geographical region of origin ^[71]

• The name Vlach is a name for Romanians used only by the Southern Slavs. The Eastern Slavs call Romanians Voloch which fits Eastern Slavic phonology. If the Eastern Slavs met the Romanians after the Southern Slavs (which would have happened had the Romanians originated South of the Danube) they would have called Romanians Vlach as well, borrowing the name from the Southern Slavs. The use of the word Voloch shows that the Eastern Slavs encountered the Romanians separately, before the Southern Slavs gave them the Vlach name, and thus, must have been north of the Danube before the Slavic migrations.^[25][72][73]

• The lack of Germanic elements in Romanian is due largely to the low level of interaction between the Goths and Romanians, as well as the low population of Goths living in the area. Similar absences are noted in the Basque language whom the Goths ruled for centuries. The Goths were also present South of the Danube in even greater numbers, and were even brought in by the Romans as refugees, so placing the Romanians South of the Danube does not provide an argument against a lack of Germanic words. It can be concluded from this that the adoption of Gothic elements in Romanian would have had more to do with the type of interaction between the Goths and proto-Romanians, and not with whether they lived in the same geographic region.^[25]

• The Slavic elements in Romanian are present only in particular words, and not in the grammatical structure or the phonology and structure of words in Romanian. This indicates linguistically that by the time the Slavs mingled with the Romanians, the Latin element in the Romanian language was already solidified, and only a super-stratum of Slavic words, many of which are synonyms for Latin words, could be added.^[25]

• The words “Erdő” and “Erdély” are not of Finno-Uguric family^{[citation needed]} and therefore not of Magyar origin, this means they are a corruption of another words. The Romanian word “Ardeal” was corrupted into “Erdel” and “Erdol” meaning “land of forested heights”.^{[citation needed]} From the word Erdely, Erdo was then extracted to describe a simple dense forest, this is confirmed by linguists who have studied Magyar phonology^{[citation needed]}. When a word from Romanian is corrupted into Hungarian,“a” usually becomes “e”, Andreas becomes “Endre”, the Latin “ager’ becomes “eger”,“sant” meaning “saint” in old Romanian becomes “sent”,“agris” becomes “egres” etc. This event also happens with the word Ardeal which at first becomes “Erdel” until 1390, where it is converted to “Erdély”. “Ard” as an Indo-European root-word means “hill, forested heights, mountain” and appears in hundreds of geographic locations, all sharing these topographic characteristics. Examples: Ardal (Iran), Arduba (Albania), Ardnin (Austria), Ardel (Italy), Ardelu (France) etc. Fact confirmed in Julius Caesar’s work “De Bello Gallico”, there we can find the phrase “Ardeunna Silva”^{[citation needed]}

• The word Olah does not derive from the Slavic word “Vlah” as replacing the “v” with an “o” has no etymological or phonological explanation. During the Middle Ages, the word “Olah” was used both when referring to Romanians as well as Italians, which shows that the Romanians were very similar to Italians in terms of language, and that the Magyar tribes had encountered both ethnic groups at roughly the same time, in the late 9th and early 10th century, when the Magyars raided Northern Italy. The word “Olasz” now used for all Latinate people except Romanians is a recent phenomenon.^[25]

• The Romanian word "batran", meaning “old”, is significant as it does not derive from the Latin equivalent “vetus” (in Italian, Vecchio, in French, Vieux etc.); instead it derives from the Latin word "veteranus", referring to a Roman Legionary after he is released from military duty. The reason for this is because of the procedures of Roman colonization. When a village was Romanized, the veterans of the Roman Legion had an important role; because military service was long (twenty-five years), a large part of these Roman legionaries were married, the wives and children having to live nearby the military camps, named canabae. Since many of the legions and auxiliary troops of Rome were to maintain their position permanently in Dacia, it is evident that many of the wives of the soldiers would be indigenous, Dacian. At their release from military service, the legionary was named veteranus, and he would obtain (if he did not have it before) the right to citizenship for himself and his entire family, as well as a piece of land to cultivate. The children of the veterans and the Dacian women were Roman citizens and spoke Latin, but the majority would have known Dacian, their maternal tongue. The children of these children, the grandchildren of the veterans, would be totally Romanized. In two, maximum three generations, the followers of these mixed marriages forgot their indigenous language. Thus the number of veterans in Dacia would have been considerably large, which is why an elder is referred to through exactly this word, batran, derived from veteranus, having been modified through Romanian phonetics. In essence, the system of veteranus would be critical in the Romanization of Dacia, as elderly veterans, who had now gained rights to property, would have no reason to leave what they had worked for over 25 years to attain. The case here is not about a single wave of veterans under Trajan, but for a continuous series of settlements of veterans which wanted to remain in Dacia.^[25]

• The river Tarnava is evidence of the co-existence between the Slavs and Romanians in Translvania described by the chronicler Nestor. Tarnava derives from Slavic trunu, or nail. Since the Hungarians used a different name for the river, “Kukulo”, it would have been impossible for Romanians to use the Slavic name for the river had they arrived after the Magyars (and according to Hungarian history, with a Magyar majority in Transylvania). In such a situation the Romanian name would have been derived from Hungarian, but the fact that it is of Slavic origin attests to Slavs and Romanians living together around the river before the Magyars.
  • Another important river is Bistrita. Another Slavic word, however influenced by Romanian. Bistrita in Slavic means “the fast one”, in Romanian, this translates into “repedele”. Today, however, the river is officially Bistrita, but known as Repedele by the locals. There are many other instances were the Slavic name replaces the original Romanian name, such as for Nucet, now known as Cozia (from Slavic koza, goat).
  • Barsa. According to the linguist Sextil Puscariu, this name would derive from the verb “labarta”, dissimilated into “rabartsa”. It is of Traco-Illyiric origin, so it would be impossible for the Romanians to have preserved it had they not originated from such a sub-stratum, and in the geographical region around Barsa. We can conclude that it was taken from the very ancestors of the Romanians. In Geto-Dacian names we also find the radical “bars”.
  • The river Cerna. Although “cerna” in Slavic means “black”, the river’s waters are clear. The Romanian form is surely influenced from the Latin name Tierna and influenced by Slavic phonetics.
  • The river Barzava. Another word of Geto-Dacian origin, from the radical bere or berez, meaning white, and its suffix bis, or vis. Possibly also named after a nearby Dacian city, Berzobis.
  • Turda. The origin of this word is Turri-Dava, from Latin. The name then would be formed from Turris – tower – and dava – citadel.
  • Abrud. The origin of this name comes from Latin Abruttum, a synonym for gold.^[25]

• The majority of Romanian words assumed to be of Dacian origin are not shared with Albanian. Therefore, it is impossible to assume they were adopted from the Albanians or that the Vlachs lived among the Albanians before the 10th century.^[25]

• Ernst Gamillschag has attested that the Romanians have preserved the Thracian word for the Danube, “Donaris/Donare” which means “The big river” even though the Albanians and Aromanians use the Turkish word “Duna.” He writes “The old name for the river would have disappeared from the Daco-Roman vocabulary had they only returned to their old homeland centuries after they left. The name “Donaris” was borrowed by the Romans who mixed with the Dacians, and this word has been well preserved.”^[25]

• Inherited Albanian words (Ex: Alb. motër 'sister' < Late IE ma:ter 'mother') shows the transformation Late IE /a:/ > Alb /o/, but all the Latin loans in Albanian having an /a:/ shows Latin a: > Alb a. This indicates that the transformation PAlb /a:/ > PAlb /o/ happened and ended before the Roman arrival in the Balkans.

• The name for a type of fuel, "pacura", is derived directly from the Latin "picula". This particular fuel can only arises naturally north of the Danube, particularly in Transylvania, where it was used by the Romans and Dacians. This word is not used in any other Romance languages, surviving only in Romanian.^[74]

[edit] Ethnic

• The similarity between the current Romanian traditional clothes and the Dacian clothes, as depicted on Trajan's Column. Examples of similarity include embroidery of clothing^[75] and the wearing of opinci sandals^[76] as portrayed on the Arch of Constantine.

• Genetic testing on Romanian HLA groups have confirmed a distinct genetic affinity of the Romanians to Italians, indicating Roman ancestry.^[77]

[edit] Archaeological

• The following locations show continuous Daco-Roman habitation from the 3rd to the 5th century^[78]
  • Mines: Baia de Cris, Tincova, Ruda, Alun, Hunedoara, Baita Cib, Fizes, Cabesti, Videim, Albac, Bistrita de Sus, Vidra, Cimpeni Lupsa, Salciua, Podeni, Potaissa, Baisoara, Valea Ierii.
  • Monetary thesauri: Bicasi, Pilu, Carei, Copalnic, Soimuseni, Doba Mica, Simieu Silvaniei, Porolissum, Babiu, Gurani, Sintna, Arad, Pecica, Cenad, Horia, Biled, Carani, Jimbova, Checea, Unip, Faget, Debra, Deva, Huedoara, Sepes, Ungureni, Apulum, Seica Mica, Seica Mare, Sura Mare, Sibiu, Ocna Sibiului Soars, Lasiea
  • Daco-Roman and Roman settlements: Taga, Soporu, Band, Lechinta, Ludus, Cipau, Brateiu, Seica Mica, Biertan, Sighisoara, Sinpaul, Morada, Ineu, Pilu, Biharia, Berca, Mediesu Aurit, Apa, Dej, Rascruci, Napoca, Baciu, Sebes, Hatg, Deva, Debra, Apulum, Gura Vaii, Cazanesti, Hateg, Faroia.
  • Major Cities and forts: Deva, Haţeg, Hunedoara, Sighişoara, Ulpia Traiana Sarmisegetuza, Bistriţa, Bicasi.
  • Bridges: Apulum

• The cultural elements and styles of archaeological artefacts discovered over the period of the 3rd-5th centuries show a clear material and stylistic continuity, indicating continuous habitation by the same people. The cultural character of the findings remains the same until the 6th century, with the arrival of the Slavs.^[79]

• Ceramic manufacturing traditions continue from the pre-Roman to the Roman era continue both in Roman Dacia and unoccupied Dacia, and these traditions continue well into the fourth and fifth centuries.^[80]

• Cemeteries in Roman Dacia show cremation consistently across every necropolis, a pre-Roman Dacian tradition. Materials buried with cremated people are comparable both in Roman and in Free Dacia suggesting the native population did not suffer materially due to Roman occupation.^[81]

• Though there is a change from cremation to inhumation in the post-Roman period inhumation was an increasingly popular concept in the 3rd century. The rich ceramic remains in these necropoli are identical in technology to pre-Roman and Roman era tombs, including the presence of Roman amphorae and wheel-made, gravel-tempered, or hand-made pots.^[82]

• A noteworthy aspect of third to fifth century graves is the widespread distribution (from Transylvania to the Ukrainian border) and substantial number of objects of Roman manufacture, in excellent condition, which must be indicative of an active system of exchange.^[83]

• Archaeological surveys of the Banat region record numerous settlements, storage pits, pottery kilns, glass furnaces, metallurgical production sites, and coins (both as hoards and found on sites)^[84] which indicate a continuation of both sedentary population and maintenance of Roman military and economic interests.^[85]

• Circulation of Roman coins grew both in Roman and Free Dacia in the 1st and 2nd centuries, declining in the third but then rising again since the 4th century^[86] The extent and increase in coin circulation even after the Roman withdrawal from Dacia and as far north as Transcarpathia is argued by some prominent archaeologists to have no other analogy in neighboring provinces, nor in any other barbarian territory^[87]

• Some cities show the absence of Dacian names completely from inscriptions but which show Dacian burial rituals, indicating that Dacians near urban centers were rapidly Romanized, adopting Roman names but maintaining their old traditions.^[88]

• Archaeological digs throughout Transylvania and Romania have discovered many clay pots dating from the IV, V, VI, and VII centuries. What makes these pots particularly interesting is that they were made using the potter's wheel, an invention which no migratory people had when the came through Romania. The only population which could have produced these pots is one which had sufficient contact with the Roman and Hellenic world to adopt this style of making pots. We know the Slavs did not adopt this style until much later because pots made without the use of the potter's wheel are also found throughout Romania during this time.^[25]

• The thousands of old Roman coins dating from the IV, V and VI centuries found on Romania are peculiar because they are a) made of bronze and b) show the portrait of contemporary emperors on them. The first part affirms that these coins were not valuable, meaning that they were common currency. There is no way such coins could have found their way into Romania through tribute or trade between the Romans and barbarians because the Goths, Avars, Huns, and others would only accept gold coins and items as tribute, as bronze coins had little value or use to them. The material indicates that these coins were used as a common bartering currency for low-value items (like food or iron) by a poor populace. Their number, and the diverse locations that they've been found in, indicates that this populace was large, and spread all over the country. The second aspect reflects the historical fact that there was significant communication between this proto-Romanian populace and the Roman Empire, enough to allow for the accurate re-minting of coins. Even if the coins were imported by the proto-Romanians from the Romans, it still is evidence of significant contact between the Romans and the Romanians North of the Danube.^[25]

• Vasile Parvan discovered two documents in Transylvania dating from the IV century which mentions a Goth "king" who referred to himself as "jude" over his populace, an administrative title preserved also by the Romanian principalities in the Middle Ages. This king chose the title because it must have had some significance to the people he presided over, otherwise there would have been no point in using it as opposed to some proto-Germanic word like "Herzog." Since this title was only relevant to Romanians, it is clear that this king must have presided over the proto-Romanians.^[25]

• At the supposed site of relocation of these colonists, that being Moesia, of which only a small upper part was renamed as Dacia. In this region, there is no recording of any drastic increase of population, something which would definitely have resulted from such an influx of refugees. When the Goths sought refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire to escape the Huns, their presence is clearly attestable in cesspits, cemeteries, and archaeological relics. The relocated Dacian colonists however, did not leave any impression at all. There is no sudden growth in cemeteries, nor in cremation urns discovered. There is no expansion of cities and towns in the 3rd century, and no new towns are created. This leads to one of two conclusions: Either the newly relocated colonists made sure to only cremate themselves and simply throw away their ashes into the wind, consume as little as possible, smash every pot they had, and be homeless for the rest of their existence; or, such a massive relocation never happened.^[25]

• A Daco-Roman necropolis was discovered in Sibiu belonging to the local population, which had, among the objects buried with the deceased, ceramic objects of Roman cultural origin, coins from the time of Antonius Pius (138-161) and Septimius Sever (193-211) and vases made in the Dacian style.^[25][89]

• During the 5th-7th centuries houses all over Romania are noted as having "vatra" ovens, being ovens made of clay and surrounded by stones. These ovens could not have belonged to the Slavs who had a different style of construction, and is noticeable in Dacian-occupied areas in Romania during the 1st-3rd century. Traditional Roman ovens were also discovered in the same area as these "vatra ovens."^[90]

[edit] Arguments against

[edit] The circumstances of the Roman conquest

• The native population of Dacia suffered considerable losses during the course of the long wars; in essence, Trajan had to repopulate the territory, because the area had become depopulated owing to the heavy losses suffered by the native population.^{[91][dubious – discuss]} Eutropius mentions that^[92]"Dacia lost all its men in the long war of Decebal." (Breviarium historiæ Romanæ)^[91]
• The fate of the native population of any newly conquered territory depended largely on how and after what preliminaries it came into the hands of Rome: Trajan annexed Dacia after two bitter and protracted wars; these struggles and the occasional Roman defeats made the Dacians a hated and much-despised enemy.^[91] Cassius Dio relates that when Trajan returned to Rome he gave spectacles in the course of which 10,000 gladiators fought; according to Criton, the number of prisoners from the Dacian wars was extremely high, Trajan, however, spared the lives of only some 40 men after his victory.^[91]
• The wars brought considerable losses to the Dacian men; part of the local population was deported or fled.^[93] The surviving Dacian men were drafted as auxiliary troops and were sent to Britannia and the east; their later fate is not known.^[91] Expressly Dacian names^[94] occur not in Dacia, but in other parts of the Roman Empire where Dacians were taken as slaves.^[91]
• The proper names which can be evaluated from the province total about 3,000 and the Thracian-Dacian names number about 60 (about 2%); thus, the share of Thracian or Dacian personal names is insignificant (e.g., names from the native population comprise about 24% of the total in Noricum), and some of them may even have belonged to colonists form the Balkans.^[91] This suggest that Dacian participation in the Romanization of Dacia was minimal.^[93]
• The incorporation of the native population into an administrative and territorial organization (civitas peregrine) convenient to Rome was an essential point in the establishing of any new province and the civitas system in part provided the institutional framework for Romanization.^{[91][dubious – discuss]} In contrast with other provinces, no traces of this system^[95] can be detected in Dacia.^[91]
• It was in the towns where Romanization first began, when the leaders of the conquered populations in Gallia, Hispania, and elsewhere adopted the Roman culture and the Latin language. Of all the provinces of the Roman Empire, Dacia Traiana had the lowest number of cities (11 or 12 cities are known to have existed).^[93] The new settlements in which the existence of Dacians is assumed were situated in rural areas far^{[96][dubious – discuss]} from the towns.^[93]
• Romans conquered less than 50% of the territories inhabited by Romanians;^[97] besides, many Dacians lived in remote mountainous areas, with little contact with the main Roman colonies.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Archaeological evidence following the Roman conquest

• The archaeological record definitely suggests that a few Dacian groups^[98] stayed behind in the province after the Roman conquest.^[91] However, after the conquest, the few Dacian groups were transferred from their villages to other territories within the province - only a few settlements (and no cemeteries) continued to exist after the conquest.^[93]
• The material culture of the surviving Dacian population is rather undifferentiated: aside from the burial finds, only the pottery vessels can be studied^[99] in this respect.^[91] Only a few vessel types^[100] continued to be manufactured in the provincial period from the diverse pottery industry of the former pre-conquest period.^[91] This type of earthenware is practically the only material attributed to Dacians living at these sites.^[93]
• In Dacia, hardly any interaction or exchange of ideas can be noted between the pottery of the native population and the pottery wares used by the new settlers.^[91]

[edit] The short period of the Roman conquest

• The province existed for a mere 165 years; assimilation and a complete change of language would have been impossible in such a short time.^[91] Moreover, as Eutropius recounts^[101] "On seeing that Illyricum was devastated and Moesia was in ruinous state, he abandoned the province of Dacia which had been founded by Trajan and led away both soldiers and provincials, giving up hope that it could be retained. The Romans who were evacuated from the towns and fields of Dacia he resettled in the centre of Moesia which he named Dacia." (Breviarium historiæ Romanæ)^[91]
• The surrender and the evacuation of Dacia is described rather uniformly in the sources.^[91] The evacuation of Dacia was an emergency measure, but it was an well organized action: the remaining garrison troops were withdrawn and the surviving population was resettled in Moesia where a new province called Dacia (later Dacia Ripensis and Dacia Mediterranea) was created.^[91]
• After the disintegration of the Roman administration and provincial organization and the collapse of military defense in the Middle Danubian provinces, Roman civilization in the region was sooner (e.g., in northeastern Pannonia) or later (e.g., in western and southern Pannonia, Raetia and certain parts of Noricum) swept away by the successive invading waves of the Migration period some 130-150 years later.^[91] Surviving population groups (who stayed behind the provinces) were either assimilated by the continuously changing newcomers or perished - they were not to become the ancestors of a population speaking a Romance language in spite of the fact that the situation and circumstances (a uniform population that had evolved over the course of 400 years of Romanization) were infinitely more favorable there than in Dacia.^[91]
• After the withdrawal of the Romans from Dacia Traiana, the historical and ethnic picture of the former Roman province was radically changed. These changes were caused primarily by invasions of the Huns that scattered the East Germanic tribes (the Goths and the Gepids) in Eastern Europe and destroyed all vestiges of Roman urban life north of the Danube.^[93] There are numerous written accounts about the history of Germanic tribes in the Migration period.^[93]

[edit] Archaeological evidence following the Roman withdrawal

• Archaeological evidence demonstrate that the Roman army, the soldiers’ families and all other civilians whose livelihood was strongly linked to the military were evacuated from the province.^[91]
• Life came to an abrupt end in the 48 Roman castella and the settlements that depended on and lived off these forts (the so-called vici auxiliary): those which were not resettled and built in during the Middle Ages^[102] to this day offer the same desolate spectacle with their earthen ramparts and deep ditches as the agri decimates of Baden-Württemberg (abandoned at roughly the same time), or the border forts of the Antonine Wall in Scotland.^[91]
• It is probable in the case of the four municipia that held out the longest, i.e., in Napoca,^[103] Potaissa,^[104] Apulum, and Ulpia Traiana, that the small and wretched population groups within or around their walls at first accepted Gothic overlordship, however the traces of these groups in the archaeological records (a few burials) do not extend beyond the close of the 3rd century.^[91] At the same time, the buildings within the stone walls decayed rapidly, and by the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries the military headquarters in Potaissa was being used as a burial ground by groups of eastern barbarians.^[91]
• The rural homes (villae) and the farmsteads of the advocates of Romanization had perished to such an extent that in the 4th century the Goths had already opened cemeteries on their sites (e.g., in Pălatca).^[91] Of the 58 rural settlements in which a Roman-Dacian symbiosis was assumed,^[105] only 4 (7%) continued to be inhabited after the Roman withdrawal (i.e., Archiud, Mugeni, Şura Mică and Obreja).^[93]
• There is only one way a “Romanized” population could possibly have survived: if they had resorted to active defense and had withdrawn into hastily erected hilltop forts and fortified sites (as indeed had the provincial population of the Balkans and of southwest Pannonia, the population of the Ardennes) – however, there are no traces of late Roman refugia or fortified places in Transylvania.^[91] In Sarmizegetusa, the amphitheater was blocked by gravel which is thought to indicate that it had been used for defense^[106] - but after the 4th century no archaeological findings are ascertainable for the two following centuries.^[93]
• Objects^[107] excavated in Soporu de Cîmpie do not exclude nor do they prove a continued use of its cemetery following the Roman withdrawal, because they were used from the 2nd to the 5th century in a vast territory of the Roman Empire as well as in the Barbaricum (territories outside the empire).^[93]
• The cemetery of Bratei reveals elements of the Migration Period and is an example of a continuity of settlement and is, at the same time, illustrative of ethnic discontinuity, since the excavations reveal elements characteristic of different peoples (Romans, Germanic tribes, Slavs, and Avars).^[93]
• Relics of the late Roman rites and costumes characteristic of the Tetrarchy (293-313 AD) and later do not occur on the left bank of the Danube. The so-called cruciform brooches may have reached the Barbaricum as booty (with sporadic finds of such fibulæ among the Germanic Quadi, the Sarmatians of the Great Hungarian Plain); therefore these “crossbow” brooches do not confirm the presence of a Roman population.^[91] The presence of Roman coins neither is evidence for the presence of Romanized persons - in fact, the Roman coin circulation of other regions of the Barbaricum shows little, if any, divergence from the circulation of post-271 Roman coins in Transylvania.^[91]
• The Visigothic wares reflect the cultural impact of the Roman provinces lying beyond the Lower Danube (especially of the handicrafts of the border towns); these influences and Roman imports (glass, amphorae and flagons) are more frequently documented in the lowland along the northern side of the Lower Danube than in the inland regions to the north.^[91] There is even less evidence of late impacts of the former Roman provincial handicrafts; moreover, the technological know-how of firing vessels to a bright red or yellow color disappeared entirely.^[91]
• The number of Christians among the Goths appears to have been considerable already around 347, therefore the few 4th to 6th century Christian oil lamps and the votive tablet (donarium) with the inscription ZENOVIUS and a pendant bearing the monogram of Christ cannot be cited as proof for some sort of “Roman” presence.^[91] The 4th century donarium from Biertan had been manufactured somewhere in Illyricum.^[91][93]
• The number of Latin inscriptions from the 4th century increased in Serdica^[108] the new capital of Dacia that lay in a Greek-speaking area; this phenomenon can certainly be linked to the Latin-speaking population evacuated from Dacia.^[91]

[edit] Toponyms

• The extensive disappearance of Roman names, much greater by far than in the other European provinces of the empire, also confirms the evacuation and surrender of the province, demonstrating that it does a complete and total change in population.^[91]
• Change in place-names and changes of population rarely take place at the same time - local populations rarely disappear without trace.^[91] In the parts of the empire where great masses of the Roman population stayed behind (in the later neo-Latin countries) an abundance of Roman toponyms and river names may be found which were affected only by regular patterned linguistic change.^[91] In other areas where the provincial population retained only part of their former homeland which was resettled by new peoples, place-names were changed to a certain extend; e.g., in Raetia, Noricum and Pannonia, the Roman population survived into the 5th century and afterwards they disappeared so that only a small percentage of their place-names have come down to us (however, in addition to water names, town names have also survived in these former provinces).^[91]
• In Dacia, only the names of a few rivers have been preserved: the Someş and the Mureş; however, as only a section of these rivers flowed through Dacia, the survival of their name cannot be entirely attributed to the Dacian population.^[91] The survival of the river names of the Olt and Cerna can be ascribed to the Romans and Byzantines who controlled the northern bank of the Danube and the narrow shoreline from counter forts.^[91] Moreover, the pre-Latin names of the large rivers were transmitted in Slavic form - the Slavic peoples occupied the Gepid-inhabited parts of Transylvania during the second half of the 5th century and the first wave of the Slavs reached the Danube toward the end of the 5th century.^[93]
• In addition to a few controversial water names, not a single place-name has survived in Dacia.^[91] The earliest stratum of place-names and river-names in the Transylvanian area of the Carpathian Basin is of Slavic origin.^[93] Although some geographical names are assumed to be inherited directly from the Latin, but their identification have been challenged; e.g., there is a proposed etymology of the name of Sîncel (documented as Zonchel for the first time in 1252) from the Latin (sanctus > santicellus > sînt(u)cel), but the latter qualifies “a far-fetched form”.^[93]

[edit] Linguistics

• The discovery of the ancient characteristics of Romanian and their relationship with several Balkan languages (e.g., the Albanian^[109], Bulgarian, and Greek) challenged the theory of continuity in the former Roman province of Dacia.^[93]
• Romanian contains, to the same degree as the other Romance languages, all the characteristics of Late Latin, i.e., the changes that appeared in Latin during the 3rd to 7th centuries; the absence of numerous lexical elements does not have much importance, since every Romance language shows the absence of several words that exist in the other Romance idioms.^[93] Dacia Traiana was under Roman rule for a much shorter time (about 165 years) than were the provinces south of the Danube (about 600 years); and during the period of Late Latin the area of Dacia Traiana was divided from the Latin-speaking population in the Roman Empire – this situation would have led to a Romance language substantially different from one that could develop on the Balkans during the period of the Late Latin.^[93]
• The first written texts in Northern Romanian shows that the dialect of Romanian spoken in Maramureş and in adjacent areas of Moldavia (i.e., in territories in which Roman settlements never existed) was much closer to Latin only a few centuries ago^[110] than any Romanian dialect today.^[93] The most conservative language of the Vlach idioms is Aromanian, which shows many archaic characteristics in all areas of language:^[111] phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexical elements.^[93]
• Substantial absence of Germanic and Turkic elements in modern Romanian that would have resulted from living under the domination of Visigoths, Huns, Gepids and Avars.^[112] There is nothing to support the idea that the Goths living north of the Danube would have had any influence on the speech of the ancestors of the Romanians, although from 271, the area to the north of the Lower Danube became the land of the Goths.^[91][93] The presence of a Germanic population in Transylvania (most probably Ostrogoths), can be attested from the 4th century and written sources of the 5th and 6th centuries refer only to Germanic peoples in that territory.^[93] The lexical elements assumed to derive from Gothic are mostly of Slavic origin,^[113] and the Romanian grammatical elements believed to be of Gothic origin^[114] are also found in Albanian, Bulgarian, and other Balkan languages.^[93]

[edit] Theories supporting a migration of Vlachs from the south

According to the 19th-century scholar Eduard Robert Rösler, a Romance population came from the south of the Danube in the Middle Ages and settled down in present-day Romania.

[edit] Arguments for

[edit] Toponyms

• Not a single geographical name (place, river, or mountain names) in Romania attests the Roman continuity from the Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.^[93] In the transcarpathian territories of Romania, the largest part of the ancient toponymy is of Slavic origin and the sound pattern of these names indicates that the borrowings occurred after the 11th or 12th century.^[93] Within the arch of the Carpathian Mountains, the majority of the ancient geographical names are of Hungarian origin with fewer names of Slavic origin. Moreover, a significant difference compared with the transcarpathian territories is that many geographical names of Slavic origin in Transylvania were transferred to Romanian via Hungarian and some even through German.^[93]
• Pre-Slavic, presumably also pre-Latin, names of the large rivers, such as Mureş (Maros), Someş (Szamos) and Olt, were transmitted in Slavic form.^[93] If Romanians had adopted and adapted the Roman names (Marissus, Samus and Alutus) then Romanian linguistic rules would have produced *Mareş, *Sameş, and *Alut (the Hungarian names of the first two are closer to the original Latin 'Maros' and 'Szamos') respectively; therefore they derived from the likely Slavic forms (*Moriš, *Somuš, and *Olt).^[115] The Romanian Abrud must have been borrowed from the Hungarian.^[116] The Romanian variant of the name of the Ampoi River is derived from the German *Ampoj.^[117]
• The 153 tributaries of the rivers Ampoi, Criş, Mureş, Olt, Someş and Timiş, that flow throw at least two or three villages in the Carpathian Basin on the territory of Romania, may be broken down according to the origin of the name, and of these 25,5% are Slavic;^[118] 47%, Hungarian;^[119] 0,7%, German; 0,7%, Romanian (a name created in a late period); and 26,8%, of unknown origin.^[93] Of the 41 (26,8%) river names of unknown origin, there are 9 cases in which the sound pattern of the Hungarian and Romanian names clearly indicate that the Romanian form originates from Hungarian^[120]; none of the names shows a sound pattern indicating a Latin or Romanian origin and some of the names^[121] may be of Turkic (e.g., Pecheneg) origin.^[93]
• The toponym substratum of Făgăraş county, the first Transylvanian bridgehead of the Romanians is Hungarian; they adopted these names and the formation of their own names appeared only in the second half of the 14th century.^[122] It should be noted however that this may only be reflection of a Romanian chancellery due to the lack of a Romanian unified state, which only came into being in 1330.^{[original research?]} There is no original Romanian name giving in the Ţara Bârsei prior to 1400 at all: Romanian names were formed from words adopted from German (and Hungarian).^[122] The same can be established in relation to the toponyms of the Saxon Seats, although some of its Romanian toponyms came from the Slavs who remained there until the settlement of Romanians.^[122] The heritage of independent Romanian name giving in Hunedoara county (the other chief territory of Transylvanian Romanians besides Făgăraş) also goes back only to the second half of the 14th century.^[122]
• In the northern, Romanized areas of the Balkans the Roman names of towns and rivers adopted by the Slavic population^[123] imply that at the time of the Slavic invasion only part of the Romanized town-dwelling population had fled to the south, while the rest stayed on and assimilated into the Slavic community only later.^[91] According to the evidence of medieval place-names, the inhabitants of the neighboring Romanian villages and pastoral communities maintained their language until their 14th-16th century migration to the north.^[91] This is proved by hundreds of Romanian place-names, or by place-names that refer to a Romanian population (e.g., Vlasi) in the enormous area stretching between Sarajevo and Sofia from west to east, and between Niš and Skopje form north to south, although the Romanians had left that region by the end of the Middle Ages, or had assimilated into the Serbian and Bulgarian environment.^[91]
• Several Romanian place names were preserved in the documents written by Serbian kings between about 1200 and 1450;^[124] all these clearly belong to the (Northern) Romanian language, and several of them currently exist, in more or less Slavicized form, in Serbia and Bulgaria.^[93]

[edit] Written sources

• There are references in Hungarian documents to Romanian immigration from the south after the establishment of Hungarian rule in Central Europe.^[125] The Romanians were first mentioned in historical records in Moldavia in 1164 and in Transylvania in 1210; moreover, there are data to prove that large numbers of people arrived from outside the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary.^[91][93] Starting from the second part of the 13th century, more and more data indicate the settling of Romanians.^[122] The Cantacuzinesc Chronicle preserved a popular tradition among the Romanians in the 16th century^{[original research?]} about a migration of their ancestors toward the North:^[126] "But at first of the Romanians which broke off from the Romans and went to the North. So crossing the Danube, they settled at Turnu Severin; others in the Hungarian Country, by the Olt river, and the Morash river, and the Tisa, arriving in Maramureş. (...) Then they chose their leaders Basarabi, to be their head, as in Great Ban, and they first settled their throne at Turnul Severin" (Cantacuzino Chronicle, Stoica Ludescu. Letopiseţul cantacuzinesc. Scriptorium. March 14, 2004. October 13, 2008.)^{[verification needed]}
• Niketas Choniates mentioned the beginning of the 1185 revolt of Vlachs, under the brothers Asen and Peter, against the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos.^[93] With Cuman help, the area broke away from Byzantium and the Second Bulgarian Empire (also called the Bulgarian-Vlach Empire) was founded; the Rumanian element ceased to play a role in this empire from the mid-13th century on.^[91]
• The Romanians belonged to the Archdiocese of Ohrid, and in the 11th century a separate diocese was established for them in Vranje in the Morava Valley.^{[91][dubious – discuss]}
• From the end of the 12th century, large Romanian communities had been moving to Serbia, only to disappear from there as well or to become assimilated into the local populations.^[91] While references to Romanians in Serbian royal charters became progressively rarer, the number of Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary grew steadily. By the 15th century, these people, who spoke the (northern) Romanian language, had largely abandoned their Balkan homeland to settle along the Danube's left bank.^[127]
• King Ladislaus IV of Hungary (1272-1290), and later other kings, allowed lay and clerical landowners to settle Romanians on their lands.^[91] E.g., King Ladislaus IV allowed the chapter of Alba Iulia to settle 60 Romanian households to the edges of its Aiud and Feneş properties (in Alba County; King Andrew III of Hungary (1290-1301) allowed Alexander de genere Ákos in 1292 to settle Romanians in the lands of Bretea Română, Gurasada and Ilia (in Hunedoara County).^[122] In 1293, King Andrew III ruled that Romanians who had been settled without royal permission should be returned, even forcibly, to the royal estate of Scekes.^[91] Considering the small territorial extension of Scekes demesne, it is likely that relatively few Romanians lived in Transylvania at this time, or the king took notice of only few of them because of their scattered settlements.^[122]
• In 1334, a certain Voivode Bogdan was granted land in Timiş county (in the Kingdom of Hungary), and he brought so many people with him to his new estates there that the move took nine months to complete.^[91] In 1359, six members of another distinguished Romanian family from Wallachia settled in Timiş county; six years later, they received 5 estates which formed a separate district, and by 1510 the district had 36 villages.^[91]

[edit] Linguistics

• The analysis of the Romanian language shows the close relationship of the Romanian language with several idioms spoken in the central parts of the Balkan Peninsula.^[93]
• The substratum of Romanian shows very close connections to present-day Albanian.^[93] Romanian-Albanian concordances are found in all areas of language: phonology^[128] and syntax,^[129] as well as lexicology and phraseology.^[93] The pre-Roman linguistic material, existing in all areas of language, is shared to a great extent by Albanian, which suggests that the pre-Roman substratum of Romanian was the language spoken by the ancestors of the Albanians or an idiom very closely related to their idiom.^[93]
• All Eastern Romance languages (Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian) contain a group of the same 70-odd words of Slavic origin, of a sound pattern characteristic of Slavic in the period before the 10th century;^[130] and changes of meaning also occurred^[131] when Slavic words were transferred to the Eastern Romance languages.^[93] These loans must originate from a special contact in a certain period and in a specific territory, indicating that the speakers of the languages belonged to a homogenous community of people - it is most unlikely that their territory comprised, in addition to the central parts of the Balkan peninsula, the plains north of the Lower Danube and the territory within and east of the Carpathian Mountains.^[93]

[edit] Arguments against

• The writings of the evacuation of Rome deal primarily with Roman citizens (cives Romani) and not all the colonists (copia hominum).^[132]
• The abandonment of Dacia can find analogues in the abandonment of other Roman provinces, like Noricum, Britannia, and Raetia. The Roman withdrawal from those provinces meant a withdrawal of the army, administration, and urban elite. The majority of population remained and retreated in the highlands, under the pressure of Barbarians.^[132]
• The existence between fourth and sixth centuries of some Roman fortresses on the right side of the river should not be underestimated. It would rather be a reply for the ancient Roman fortresses' names on the left side of the river: Transdierna, Transdrobeta and so on.^[133]
• No historical source whatsoever — not even Hungarian — before the 18th century claimed rights over Transylvania based on its presumed lack of population or even recent migrations which made up the then current population.^[134]
• The few Greek loanwords for religious terms in Romanian entered via Vulgar Latin, not directly from Greek (ex: Ro. biserică <Latin *basilica <Greek basilike). Important religious terms in Romanian came directly from Latin, which suggests the Daco-Romanians were converted to Christianity in the Latin language. Later on, during the Middle Ages, Romanians used Old Church Slavonic as their liturgical language, so the Eastern Orthodox church organization was probably brought by Bulgarian Slavs. This seems to imply the presence of a Slavic buffer zone between Greeks and Romanians.^[135][136]
• Dacian toponyms and hydronyms were kept; examples are the names of some rivers (Samus - Someş, Marisia - Mureş, Porata - Prut) and the names of some cities (Petrodava - Piatra Neamţ, Abruttum - Abrud). It should be noted, however, that the preservation of toponyms only indicates continuous settlement, and not necessarily continuous settlement by the same people. E.g. both Slavic and Hungarian languages kept the Latin name of Danubia (Dunaj and Duna), none of them being of Latin descent. On the other hand, the two waves of settlers need to coexist for a significant amount of time in the same areas for toponyms to survive, which is precisely what's being argued against by this theory.
• A 13th century Hungarian chronicle, Gesta Hungarorum, claims that when the Magyars arrived in Pannonia, the surrounding areas were inhabited by Vlachs (Romanians). The main arguments against their existence is the presence of provably wrong information in some other parts of the Gesta, and the fact that Gesta Hungarorum mentions Cumans among the peoples who lived in Transylvania at that time, whereas the Cumanians actually arrived there 150 years after the Magyars. There is opposing opinion which claims that the author of the Gesta actually confuses Cumans with Pechenegs, who spoke a similar language to that of the Cumans and lived in approximately the same territory.^[137]
• A chronicle by Venerable Nestor (1056 - 1136 AD) mentions Walachians (Romanians) fighting against Magyars north of the Danube in 898.^[138]
• Regional differences within the Romanian language indicate that in certain Romanian areas which coincide quite exactly with the ancient Roman province of Dacia, the language preserved more Latin substance than in the rest of the country.^[68] It would be extremely hard to explain why Romanians supposedly coming from remote territories south of the Danube speak a more Latin Romanian language exactly within the boundaries of what used to be a Roman province 6-7 centuries before their alleged arrival to these areas, while in the Romanian spoken outside the Carpathian Basin those Latin elements were lost or diluted.
• Morpho-syntactical, lexical and phonetical differences between Romanian and Aromanian are considerable, making mutual comprehension difficult. It is therefore extremely difficult to explain how two different Romance languages could appear and differentiate at the same time and in the same area, as implied by the immigration theory. It is also extremely difficult to explain, why only one of those two Romance-speaking populations, namely the Romanians, took the initiative of emigrating northwards across the Danube, while the Aromanians remained in their original area.
• If the hypothesis of a single proto-Romanian language is assumed, then the split of the proto-Romanian into Aromanian and Romanian should have taken place some centuries before the 10th century, since linguists agree that the build up process of both Romanian and Aromanian was completed up to the 10th century. Actually, researches have shown that the process of linguistic differentiation between Aromanian and Romanian “took place after the beginning of the Slavic influence and before the Magyar influence (between the 6th and the 9th centuries)”.^[139] Since a northwards Vlach migration could have been possible only before the linguistic split between Aromanian and Romanian (otherwise one could find traces of Aromanian on northern Danube, which have never been the case), a northwards Vlach migration could be probably hypothesised not later than the 7-8th century and not, as some immigrationists claim, as early as the 11th century.
• The name of the Danube in Romanian has a form which appears to be original (derived from a reconstructed *donaris) and not borrowed from other languages, which shows that the Romanians always lived somewhere near this river and not far south like some theories suggest.
• The lack of Gothic words in Romanian is not evidence that a Daco-Roman populace never co-inhabited the region with the Goths. Comparatively, literary Italian has no words of Longobard (Lombard - a Germanic tribe that invaded Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) origin, though the Lombards presided over Italy for centuries. However, the Lombaridan dialect of Italian contains Longobard words. There are also several words in Romanian of Germanic origin (lăutar etc.)
• Demographic impossibility: The frequent mentions of expulsions of Romanians from Transylvania makes it very unlikely that the Romanians became the majority population in the region later on, especially as persecution of the Orthodox faith intensified. There are frequent mentions of Romanians leaving Transylvania to go into Moldova and Wallachia.
• A papal bull from 1234 mentions how inhabitants of Transylvania flee to Cumania to live under the Orthodox rite. Their numbers are so great that they also attract Hungarians and Saxons.^[140]
• King Bela IV in a letter to Pope Grerogy IX tells him that “We will wage a universal war against the heretics and Christians who take the renegate the Christian and Ismaelian law and pervert it and drive them off our lands.”^[141]
• The Knights Hospitallers are settled in Oltenia in 1247. In their document of settlement they are told to not accept any settlers from Transylvania and to return them to the estates of their lords.^[142]
• In 1290 we see a document which says “the episcopacy of Nicholas and the nobles Iohan, Nicolaus, etc. and Roland, voievod of Transylvania will help fight against the Schismatics and heretics..."^[143]
• The foundation of Wallachia was done by refugees fleeing Transylvania. Basarab I fled from Transylvania into Wallachia around 1290.^[142] This has been preserved in several Muntenian chronicles, including the Anonymous Chronicle of Muntenia which states "Radu the Black, great herzog of Almas and Fagaras, rising up from there with his whole house and a great number of people, crossed the mountains..."^[144] It is again stated in the works of Italian traveller Luccari^[145]
• A similar event happened in 1345 where Dragos, the voievod of Maramures in Transylvania, became the ruler of Moldova and took with him his retinue of nobles and peasants. A retelling of this is given by Grigore Ureche, who says after much time when the sons of the lords of the Hungarian mountains [meaning the Eastern Carpathians] went hunting, they arrived upon the waters of Moldova, with open plains, and there they settled.^[146]
• A third event similar to this happened with the exodus of Bogdan I from Maramures to Moldavia. Bogdan's flight, as well as that of his many subjects, is retold by the Hungarian chronicler Thuroczy: Louis was angered by the Vlach Voievod Bogdan of Maramures, who led his Vlachs from his districts into the lands of Moldova... thus, there was a great growth of Vlachs inhabiting that land, while those in our kingdom were diluted.^[147]
• The Edict of Turda by Louis I of Hungary called for the extermination of the Romanians in 1366.^[148] In the same text it is stated that the Vlach cneazes were to have the same fate as the serfs (i.e. have their property revoked)^[149]
• A charter on 16 January, 1400 orders the extermination of the Slavs and Romanians from Banat.^[150]
• In 1435 we see that a large group of Romanian cneazes in Transylvania seek refuge in Moldova. The reason is once again the forced conversion of the Romanians and fear of confiscation of property^[151]
• In 1428 a royal decree states that Greek monks are no longer allowed on the cnezial properties in Severin and Hunedoara^[152]
• A document from 1484 by the Transylvanian nobility to King Corvinus shows the diminishing status of the Romanians in Transylvanian society. The Hungarian and Saxon nobility state of the Wallachians: they are neither called nor born for liberty.^[153]
• On September 15, 1600, the Transylvanian Diet convened. It had determined that the Vlachs, Serbs, Jews, and Greeks were dangerous due to the assistance they had given, particularly the Vlachs, to Mihai Viteazul. Therefore they thus decided: All the Vlachs, Serbs, Jews and Greeks, who are in favor of the voivode are to be killed by our men, and the voivode is to stay at Alba Iulia^[154]

[edit] See also

• History of Romania
• Origin of Albanians
• Bulgarians, Bulgars, Bulghars, Onogurs, Bolgars, Old Great Bulgaria
• Hungarians, Magyars, Huns, Avars, Alans
• Germans, Germanic peoples
• Illyrians
• Dacians
• Thracians
• Pannonians
• Sarmatians
• Jireček Line
• Etymology of Romania
• Protochronism
• Paleo-Balkan languages
• Bulgar language
• Bulgarian language
• Pannonian language
• Ethnogenesis

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• Frucht, Richard C.: Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture; ABC-CLIO; 2005; ISBN 9781576078006
• Illyés, Elemér: Ethnic Continuity in the Carpatho-Danubian Area; Struktura Press, 1992, Hamilton, ON; ISBN 0-88033-146-1.
• Köpeczi, Béla (General Editor); Barta, Gábor - Bóna, István - Makkai, László - Szász, Zoltán (Editors); Barta, Gábor - Bóna, István - Közpeczi, Béla - Makkai, László - Miskolczy, Ambrus - Mócsy, András - Péter, Katalin - Szász, Zoltán - Tóth, Endre - Trócsányi, Zsolt - R. Várkonyi, Ágnes - Vékony, Gábor (Authors): History of Transylvania; Akadémiai Kiadó, 1994, Budapest; ISBN 963 05 6703 2
• Kristó, Gyula: Early Transylvania (895-1324); Lucidus Kiadó, 2003, Budapest; ISBN 963 9465 12 7

[edit] External links

• Friesian.com: The Vlach Connection
• Historical myths in Communist Romania (also part 2)
• A polemical exchange between professors Curta and Vasary touching the problem of the Origin of Romanians
• Michigan State University Libraries - Geography and ethnic geography of the Balkans to 1500
• http://mek.oszk.hu/03400/03407/html/ - On-line English version of the ‘History of Transylvania’ (in three volumes)

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