Universitas Valachorum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Universitas Valachorum ( state of the Vlachs ) is the Latin name for an institution of self-government of the Romanians in medieval Transylvania .

The beginnings of this institution are unclear, but they should not be older than the Hungarian expansion of power to Transylvania in the 11th century .

Under Universitas Valachorum, the Transylvanian Romanians were led by their own nobles ( voivodes , Knezen ) and also enjoyed their own jurisdiction under their own law ( Jus Valachorum ).

When Transylvania faced external threats such as the Tatars , Cumans , Saracens and other pagans ( omnino Tartarorum vel Cumanum Saracenum vel Meugarium ), the Romanians' estate (Universitas Valachorum) was called along with the other Estates of Transylvania ( Universisque nobilibus Ungarorum, Saxonibus, Syculis et Volachis ) in defense of the Christian faith - according to Lodomerus, Archbishop of Esztergom , 1288 .

When the King of Hungary or the Voivode of Transylvania called the general assembly of the estates ( congregatio generalis ), the Universitas Valachorum appeared together with the other three estates of Transylvania: the nobility, the Saxons and the Szeklers ( Universis nobilibus, Saxonibus, Syculis et Olachis in partibus Transiluanis ) - according to King András III in 1291 , when the Estates of Transylvania were convened to Weißenburg / Alba Iulia .

The last known document about the convocation of the Universitas Valachorum to the general assembly of the Estates of Transylvania in Thorenburg / Turda dates from the year 1355 .

Gradually after 1366 the Romanians lost their status as a stand and were unloaded by the assemblies of the estates. In that year King Ludwig I of Hungary issued a law-and-order decree in the city of Turda / Torda / Thorenburg, which in part was directed against the Romanians ( presumptuosam astuciam diversorum malefactorum, specialiter Olachorum, in ipsa terra nostra existencium - the evil lists of various evildoers, especially Romanians who live in this our country; ad exterminandum seu delendum in ipsa terra malefactores quarumlibet nacionum, significant Olachorum - to expel or wipe out the evildoers of every nation from this country, emphatically Romanians).

By the same decree, membership of the nobility is conditioned on membership of the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, the Orthodox are excluded from the nobility.

The main reason for this policy was of a political and ecclesiastical nature: for the Anjou dynasty , which was oriented towards Catholic proselytizing , the existence of a "schismatic" orthodox aristocratic class seemed incompatible with the Catholic-apostolic self-image of the Hungarian crown.

By the decree of Turda, the nobility status was not only defined by property over land and serfs, but also required royal confirmation in the form of a deed of gift. Since the Romanian elite, which largely consisted of iudices and knezes , who ruled over their subjects according to traditional Romanian law ( ius valachicum ), for the most part failed to obtain the modern royal deed of donation, many Romanian nobles were deprived of their property and class .

Due to this double mechanism - the exclusion of the Orthodox from the nobility and the introduction of royal donation deeds - the Romanians were no longer able to maintain their status and take part in the class meetings.

In order not to lose their privileges and to survive politically, parts of the Romanian upper class submitted to the decree of 1366 and went over to Catholicism and then to the Hungarian nobility ("nobilis Ungaris"). The unconverted Romanian nobles could not defend their status and privileges in the long run and sank into the peasantry, if not into serfdom. The majority of the Orthodox Romanians remained without political leadership and thus without representation rights.

The final seal of the political and social exclusion of the Transylvanian Romanians came after the suppression of the peasant uprising of 1437 , when the Unio Trium Nationum ( Union of Three Nations ) was proclaimed, which was the alliance and the sole political authorization of the three estates of the nobles, the Saxons and the Szekler proclaimed. Thus, the Universitas Valachorum was also put to a constitutional end.

literature

  • Binder Pál: South-transylvanian antecedents and consequences of the formation of the Principality Muntenia. Századok, Budapest 1995/5
  • I. Dani, K. Gündish et al. (Eds.): Documenta Romaniae Historica, Series C, Transilvania 1366-1370. vol. XIII, Bucarest 1994, ISBN 973-27-0428-4 .
  • Béla Köpeczi , Gábor Barta, István Bóna, László Makkai, Zoltán Szász and others: Brief history of Transylvania. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1989, ISBN 963-05-5667-7 .
  • I.-A. Pop: Nations and Denominations in Transylvania (13th - 16th Century). In: Csaba Lévai et al. (Ed.): Tolerance and Intolerance in Historical Perspective. Edizioni PLUS, Università di Pisa, 2003, ISBN 88-8492-139-2 , pp. 111-125.