Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 1. szám)
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8 Marius Diaconescu granted to the knights and took away the cities and the lands, including those situated beyond the mountains20. Recent studies concluded that the purpose of allowing the Teutons to settle in the land of Bârsa was to support the Latin Empire of Constantinople, as part of the crusade and the unification of the two Churches21. Thus, the interests of the Hungarian kingship in establishing a defence base against the Cumans, direct documentary facts themselves, appear to be of secondary importance22. The territorial expansion of the Teutons outside the Carpathians arch was not any longer guaranteed by the Hungarian king, because of the dispossession of the occupied region directly protected by the papacy. The documents do not provide an exact location of the circumscribed territory, being rather terse in offering information. Consequently, the thesis according to which, by means of their expansion, the Teutons put an end to the black Cumania and extended their territory to extreme limits23 proves exaggerated. A part of the Cumans was christianised within the immediately following years. They presumed that, once protected by the Hungarian Catholic king, the pressure of the Tartars, who crushed them at Kalka, would decrease. The Catholic Church was successful among the Cumans and a special bishopric was founded especially for them24. The spreading of the Catholicism, supported by the Hungarian monarchy indicates a penetration of the Hungarian power south of the mountains25. The territorial expansion of the Teutons beyond the territories initially meant for them, followed, because of different reasons, by their driving away from the region, as well as the christianising of some of the Cumans, living in the proximity of the zone conquered by the Teutons. That made up the pre-requisites of the extended authority of the Hungarian king south of the Carpathians. The territory corresponding to this stage of the expansion is circumscribed to the one lying from the curvature of the Carpathian Mountains to the Danube. It is not possible to specify the form and the period of the Hungarian domination (most likely only a formal suzerainty) exerted over this territory. It is merely a matter of assumptions and probabilities26. Around the same period, the Hungarian royalty attempted, and partially succeeded in rooting itself in the other side, the Western one, of the territory south of the Carpathians. Around the year 1233, in the context of the conflicts between 20 The examination of the documents and of the entire problem concerning the history of the Teutonic knights in the land of Bârsa as well as their territorial expansion in Maria Hóiban, op. cit., pp. 9-48. 21 Ş. Papacostea, Românii în secolul al XlII-lea, pp. 32-33 and the note 75. 22 Ibidem, p. 32. 23 Ibidem, p. 34-35. 24 DRH. D., I, pp. 14-18. On this question: I. Ferenţ, Episcopia cumanilor, Bucureşti, 1931 (in Hungarian language: A kunok és püspökségük, Budapest, 1981); L. Makkai, A milkoi (kun) püspökség és népei, Debrecen, 1936. 25 Maria Hóiban, op. cit., pp. 51-53. 26 Ibidem, p. 47, presumes that the Teutons had exerted "a sort of domination with the center in their citadel, Crucpurg” overt the territorial formations (principalities?) in the region.
