Romania TRANSYLVANIA, WALACHIA, AND MOLDAVIA FROM THE ELEVENTH CENTURY TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Clock tower in Sighisoara, birthplace of Vlad Tepes and one of the
most picturesque Romanian towns
Courtesy Scott Edelman
St. Michael's Church and statue of Mátyás Corvinus, Cluj-Napoca.
Courtesy Scott Edelman
No written or architectural evidence bears witness to
the
presence of "proto-Romanians" the lands north of the
Danube during
the millennium after Rome's withdrawal from Dacia. This
fact has
fueled a centuries-long feud between Romanian and
Hungarian
historians over Transylvania. The Romanians assert that
they are
the descendants of Latin-speaking Dacian peasants who
remained in
Transylvania after the Roman exodus, and of Slavs who
lived in
Transylvania's secluded valleys, forests, and mountains,
and
survived there during the tumult of the Dark Ages.
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.
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, 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.
Data as of July 1989
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