Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 2. szám)
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250 Marius Diaconescu political and military strategy, the king... secretly considered Wallachia as a vassal country[sic!]. In the same anniversary year (1986), loan A. Pop delimitates himself from the usual historical speech that characterizes the historical studies concerning the reign of Mircea. Although in an earlier study, he acknowledged only the Hungarian suzerainty as being "reduced to minor obligations"2*, in another study he utterly considers the existence of the vassality relationship (without details)23 24 25. This was a first tentative step in order to restore historical truth, to rid it of the harmful political influence. In his recent survey of Romanian history, Şerbanns Papacostea mentioned these relations with unduly haste. He referred first to an initial stage characterized by confrontations and then to a later one in which, under the Ottoman pressure, Mircea concluded an alliance with Hungary "in which the Romanian Voivode's rule on Ami aş and Făgăraş was recognized in his title of feudal lord,... and in the Banat of Severin"26. As we can see from this brief presentation, Romanian historians have had a twofold outlook on the matter, either denying the pledge of fidelity or attributing a character of partnership and collaboration to the relations between Wallachia and Hungary, between the two rulers respectively. The rare exceptions - P. P. Panaitescu and I. A. Pop, especially - diminished the importance of the homage even though both authors acknowledged it as a norm of the medieval society. Throughout the years Romanian historiographers have approached the relationship between Sigismund and Mircea from very different perspectives, tributary not only to their more general historiographical outlook, but also to the authors' own "patriotic" view which often mirrored their bias against the Hungarians. As a rule we can say that the evolution of a certain feeling of enmity between the two peoples has influenced the interpretation of Hungarian - Romanian relations in the past two centuries As far as Hungarian historiography is concerned, historians have made only tangential remarks in works dealing either partially or generally with the Turk-Hungarian warfare. Because the Turks have been considered to attack mainly along the Serbian front, the attention given to the role played by the Romanians in the anti-Ottoman campaigns has been significantly diminished as compared to that professed in the neighbouring country. Therefore, when they referred to the nature of the relations between Mircea the Old and Sigismund, Hungarian historians claimed the existence of the homage, 23 N. Constantinescu, Mircea cel Bătrân, Bucureşti. 1981. pp. 89-90. 24 I. A. Pop, Stăpânirile lui Mircea în Transilvania (hereafter referred to as: Stăpânirile lui Mircea), în RI. tom 39, 1986, no. 7, pp. 685 et passim. 25 Idem, Autoritatea domnească şi întinderea teritorială a Ţării Româneşti în timpul lui Mircea cel Bătrîn (1386-1418) (hereafter referred to as: Autoritatea domnească), in Studia Universitatis "Babeş- Bolyai", Historia, 2, 1986, p. 3. 26 M. Bärbulescu. D. Deletant. K. Hitchins, Ş. Papacostea, P. Teodor, Istoria României, Bucureşti. 1998, pp. 184-185.
