Drăgan, Ioan (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 2003-2004 (7-8. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
Adrian Andrei Rusu: Românii din Regatul Ungariei şi cetăţile medievale. (Privire specială asupra secolelor XIII-XIV)
104 Adrian Andrei RUSU Romanians in the Hungarian Kingdom and Medieval Castles: A Special Overview of the 13th and the 14lh Centuries (Abstract) Castles built for ethnic purposes were not specific to the Middle Ages. This feature is always secondarily associated with others that mattered more, among which the most important were references to the political power and the social status of the owners. In spite of this, a significant number of the studies of medieval castles insist on the relationship of ethnicity with castles. There is no doubt that these works were stimulated by the intention to compensate for the presumed Hungarian character of these castles - even though they were more or less discreet. The new political geography of the 20th century encouraged this issue even more. This is the period when Romanian historiography surmounted former disadvantages and enriched its contribution to this issue. The relation of the Romanians with the castles was first raised at the end of the 18,h century. The whole set of arguments adopted by Hungarian historiography, however, was established only in the middle of the 19,h century. The Romanians were considered in general as colonists of the Hungarian kings, who intended to populate the more or less inhabited territories of their kingdom. This policy was then applied by nobles and the church, certainly on a more reduced level and with less connection to castles. This concept mingled the social status of colonists with ethnicity and conferred an inferior status on Romanians in regard to castles. This concept was not only adopted by Hungarian historiography, but also, with slight changes, by Romanian historians like George Bariţiu, Nicolae Densuşianu, loan Bogdan, Nicolae Iorga, loan Lupaş, and Ştefan Meteş. The revision of this concept only began with the study of Romanian local elites, known as ‘cnezi in the second half of the 20'h century. Maria Hóiban and later Radu Popa defined this category as landowners owing certain obligations to castles and royalty. The moment of the dissolution of this traditional category shows its double character, as was demonstrated by loan Drágán: the landowners were gradually assimilated among the other nobles, and the term 'cnezi’ remained for the judges of villages, being a iobagus in person. The presence of Romanian groups - light cavalry - in the army of the kingdom among the Szeklers and other nationalities became general at the end of the 12,h century. Groups with specific labels could not have been recruited from a non-structured and not-organized society, but had to come from well-established districts like the territorial units of the Szeklers. Otherwise the recruits would have been part of the units created by counties or chief officials. This means that Romanians were organized in individual
