Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 1. szám)
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40 Marius Diaconescu vassality principles. The duke, in this case the Romanian voivode, could manifest his complete authority, that of a senior, towards his subjects. The duke of Făgăraş is included in a category superior to that of the usual nobility from the Hungarian kingdom. He was the vassal of the king, but a senior for his subjects. According to his rights as a senior, he could dispose of the seniorial rights as he wished. Promoting a part of the Romanian population elite from Făgăraş to the "boyar" rank (term which corresponds to the quality of nobleman in the Romanian countries) is to be explained by the Romanian voivode's necessity to create a new social basis for his government. The boyar title possessed by the Romanian noblemen from Făgăraş and kept until later, after definitively regaining the region from the Romanian voivodes, is a proof that they had been promoted to this social rank during the period when the Romanian rulers owned this territory as dukes of Făgăraş. The Romanian voivodes' (and Făgăraş dukes) competence to ennoble and make donations must be correlated with the attributes implied by the duke title. Obviously, it did not mean the same with what it had been during the 11th - 12th centuries217 218, but the meaning of partial sovereignty was still preserved. The question of the Romanian voivodes' governments in Transylvania will have to be resumed from this perspective too, that is the significance of the duke title and its attributions. In the historiography, beginning with D. Onciul, it has been considered that the Romanian voivodes' vassality to the Hungarian king concerned only the context of their governments in Transylvania and Banate2TM. The role of these possessions was to strengthen the vassality relationship, going on in the context in which the Hungarian king pretended to be the heir of the Arpadian Crown and, implicitly, of the territories under the Hungarian suzerainty in the 13th century. The ruling in Transylvania appears as a compensation for the fidelity and the homage. Their donation took place in the context of Vladislav Vlaicu's new reign, begun through the disputation of the king as a suzerain and owing to his place in Louis I's strategy in the Balkans. 5. Conclusions The pre-requisites of the suzerainty claims of the Hungarian kings over Wallachia are to be found in the beginning of the 13th century, when the Hungarian domination was exerted, in various forms, over some territories south of the Carpathians. The territorial expansion of the Teutons, after 1211, outside the territories initially distributed, followed, because of different reasons, by their driving away from the region, as well as the christianisation of a part of the Cumans, situated close the zone conquered by the Teutons, constituted the premises of the Hungarian king's authority south of the Carpathians. The territory 217 Gy. Kristó, A XI. századi hercegség története Magyarországon, Budapest, 1974, passim; idem, A feudális széttagolódás Magyarországon. Budapest, 1979, pp. 26-83. 218 D. Onciul, Originea principatelor române, p. 652.
