Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1998 (2. évfolyam, 2. szám)
Relaţii internaţionale
The Relations of Vassalage 255 request of certain sultan's enemies from Anatolia51 - took place in parallel with a similar campaign led by the Hungarian king52. As a consequence, the Bulgarian tzar from Târnovo pledged fidelity to the Hungarian king. The Christian military campaign made the sultan delay his plans for Anatolia and focus his attention on strategic aims in the Balkans. In 1393 he conquered and dissolved the Bulgarian tzarate of Târnovo and seized the fortresses situated south of the Danube. The most important episode in the history of the Romanian-Turkish relations during this period is Sultan Bâyezîd I's military campaign in Wallachia and the battle called "of Rovine". The importance of the event is directly proportional to the historiographical controversies on the exact place and date of the event. Currently, the sultan's campaign is dated either in October 1394 or in May 139553. The historians who reject the October 1394 version seem to ignore completely the Latin documents!!! According to the Hungarian Chronicle, after having been banished by Vlad (the chronicler mistook Vlad for Dan) with the help 51 Historians dated Mirpea's incursion to the south of the Danube in 1391, 1392 or 1393. T. Gemil, Raporturile romăno-otomane (see note 48), pp. 340-343, places it in 1392. A. Decei, Expediţia lui Mircea cel Bătrân împotriva acingiilor de la Karinovasi (1393), in idem, Relaţii romăno-orientale, culegere de studii, Bucureşti, 1978, pp. 140-155, places it in 1393. A recent interpretation of the sources and a new date, 1391, belongs to N. Pienaru, Relaţiile lui Mircea cel Bătrân cu emiratul pontic Cdndar-ogullari, in R.Ist., tom 7,1996, no. 7-8, pp. 483-510. 52 The correlation of the two events was suggested by T. Gemil, Raporturile romăno-otomane (see note 48), pp. 242-243; idem. Românii şi otomanii (see note 47), pp. 75-76; idem, Mircea I'Ancien face â la politique imperiale de Bayezid /", in RRH, 1986, no. 1-2, pp. 9-10. 53 The date of sultan's Bâyezîd I campaign has been subject to intense historiographical debate. On the b of the so-called Serbian early chronicles (the third group), written around the year 1460 and grounded on earlier information, the campaign is dated in the autumn of 1394, and the battle of Rovine on October 10th. Therre are very many historians who situate the campaign in 1395 and the battle on May 17lh. The argument evoked is a document written by the monks of Petra monastery in Constantinople; they engaged to celebrate divine services for memory eternal of Constantine, Empress Helena’s father (Fr. Miklosich, I. Muller, Acta Palriarchatus Constantinopolitani, 1, Vindobonae, 1862, pp. 260-262), identified with the sultan's Serbian vassal who had died at Rovine. There is still a tipikon from Hilandar (Roman's, they call it) in which there is a later note on Constantin Dragas’s death - May 17th 1395 (the year was proposed by F. Miklosich, the document’s first editor). Some attained an artificial compromise, claiming that there had been two campaigns, one in the autumn of 1394, and in May 1395, respectively. A different opinion was formulated by T. Gemil who claimed the campaign took place in late summer or early autumn 1395. There follow some other references on the subject: C. Litzica, Din domnia lui Mircea Vodă, in Convorbiri literare, XXXV, 1901, p. 366; P. P. Panaitescu, Mircea cel Bătrân (see note 15), pp. 241-244 and the notes; A. Diţă. op. cit. (see note 22), pp. 254-299; T. Gemil. Românii şi otomanii (see note 47), pp. 77-78; etc. The date of 1395 attributed to Bâyezîd I's campaign entered universal historiography: G. S. RadojiCic, La Chronologie de la bataille de Rovine, in RHSEE, V, 1928, pp. 136-139; G. Ostrogorski, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates. München 1940, p. 395; M. Al. Purkovic, Knez i despot Stefan Lazarevic, Beograd, 1978, pp. 35, 38. H. Inalcik, op. eit. (see note 33), p. 16. Recently, N. Constantinescu, Puncte de vedere asupra datării bătăliei de la Rovine („17 mai 1395") (hereafter referred to as: Puncte de vedere), in R.Ist., tom 1, 1990, no. 7-8, pp. 792-795 has demonstrated the inadvertency of the date of 1395 on the basis of the very same sources. According to his opinion, when the note was written down on the document issued at Petra monastery, the exact date of the dead person was not known and there was only a blank space left for it; according to the same historian, Roman's tipikon cannot be considered a valid source for the datation of the battle of Rovine.
