Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 1. szám)
Relaţii internaţionale
The Political Relations between Wallachia and Hungary 37 taxes, fines, etc. - belonged to the official. The king remained the owner de iure of the estate203. The character of the way the Romanian rulers from Transylvania governed is disputable from the following point of view: were they identical with the other positions and pro honore estates from the rest of Hungary or did they have the statute of definitively donated estates? The banus of Severin dignity was a pro honore position, together with the other similar ones in the Hungarian kingdom, which depended on the king's benevolence and the beneficiary's fidelity. This dignity had previously existed in the Hungarian kingdom. It is interesting that Louis I granted the Romanian voivode the title of banus of Severin precisely when that territory functioned as a connecting bridge between the inner territory of the kingdom and the new Banate of Bulgaria at Vidin, created after the Bulgarian Czar had been banished and administered by the Hungarian noblemen204. At that moment, the Vidin Banate was not considered only a vassal province, but an integrate part of the kingdom. In such circumstances do not seem plausible that the king would have taken away a part of the country, with a special strategically importance, and donated with full rights, even to a vassal, as the Romanian voivode was. Vladislav Vlaicu was nothing else than an official of the king in his quality of banus of Severin. At last, from the point of view of the royalty, which did not hesitate during the crisis and conflictual period to take the Banate back and give it to a Hungarian nobleman205. There was a difference between the conceptions of the two sides. The Romanian voivode considered himself the ultimate master of the Severin Banate, because in short time, in 1370, he created the second metropolitan seat in the country "of Severin", with the support of the Constantinople Patriarchate206. On the other hand, after 1382, Voivode Dan I attacked and probably conquered the Severin region, taking advantage of the internal crisis context from Hungary. It is especially important to observe that the Romanian voivode encountered the Romanian knezes' opposition, destroying their houses and documents207. This event which was recorded in the document may suggest the orientation of the Romanian feudal power in the Severin Banate. The temporary character as well as the dependence of the investment on the king's benevolence and on the beneficiary's fidelity, the main traits of a pro honore position, are accounted for by the further evolution, by the alternation of the Romanian voivodes and Hungarian noblemen who bore the title of banus of Severin. 203 P. Engel, A Honor (A magyarországi feudális birtokformák kérdéséhez), in Történelmi Szemle, 81, 1981, no 1, pp. 11-19. Cf. idem, Honor, vár, ispánság. Tanulmányok az Anjou-királyság kormányzati rendszeréről, in Századok, 116, 1982, no. 5, pp. 880-920. 204 Szakály F., Phases of Turco-Hungarian Watfare Before the Battle of Mohács (1365-1526), in Acta Orientálta Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Budapest, XXXIII, fase. I, 1979, p. 69. 205 The most specific case in 1375-1376, after the campaign against the Romanian voivode. 206 V. Achim, Ecclesiastic Structures and Political Structures in 14lh Century Wallachia, in Church and Society in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by M. Crăciun and O. Ghitta, Cluj-Napoca, 1998, pp. 123-135. TM DRH, D„ I, pp. 122-123.
