Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1999 (3. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)

Etnie şi confesiune

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loan Aurel Pop

astăzi). Evident, timpurile medievale şi renascentiste nu au fost epoci ideale pentru etnicitate, care, cum s-a văzut, nici nu era în prim planul vieţii cotidiene. A fost şi atunci o lume a privilegiului, cu popoare şi populaţii dominante şi cu altele supuse, dispreţuite, marginalizate, discriminate. Această lume trebuie studiată şi înţeleasă ca atare, aşa cum a fost ea, dar atragem atenţia că ea a făurit o civilizaţie a cărei experienţă poate servi şi celor preocupaţi de cartografia etnică actuală.

Ethnicity and Cartography in East-Central Europe in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times

(Abstract)

The author takes as a main example of advanced cartography the work (atlas) of the Dutch specialist Abraham Ortelius, entitled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the 1595 edition. The maps of different countries and provinces situated between four seas — Baltic, North, Adriatic and Black - drawn by different cartographers, including Ortelius, and gathered in the mentioned atlas do not dealing with ethnicity and are not properly ethnic maps.

But, despite that situation, despite some mistakes and inadvertencies, the authors of the mentioned maps - Ortelius, Sambuceus, Lazius, Gastaldo and others - left the world a heritage that must not be overlooked and which is not always paid the proper attention. They often sensed and marked the discrepancies between the changing political structures and the lasting ethnic realities; they gave plurilingual (ethnic) names of certain toponymies. For them, Bohemia was a Slavic country incorporated in the Roman-German Empire; Transylvania wax a country inhabited by Hungarians, Germans, Romanians, and Szeklers; Getae and Dacians — ancient names given to the 16th century Romanians — were in fact the ancestors of Romanians; Moldavia was a Romanian country, just like Wallachia; besides the poles, in Poland were also Lithuanians, Russians (Ruthenians), Germans, Estonians, Latvians etc.

The origin and languages of the various peoples are, undoubtedly, the main components of ethnicity, and Ortelius constantly makes — in his texts and maps - such references, most of which are correct, according to the world scientific level in the 16th century.