Fraternity-Testvériség, 1987 (65. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1987-10-01 / 4. szám

Page 6

TESTVÉRISÉG

Dr. K. Bonis Arpad:

REFUTATION OF THE DACIAN-ROMANIAN CONTINUITY DOCTRINE ON THE BASIS OF TRANSYLVANIAN CHRISTIAN WORSHIP SITES

(Excerpt from the author’s longer study)

The territorial origins and development of the Romanian people is a controversial question in contemporary Romanian political debate as well as in the scholarly literature pertaining to the doctrine of Dacian-Romanian continuity.

The question concerns not only Hungarian and Romanian but also international public opinion. The present Romanian Communist leadership, under Ceausescu, is desperately clinging to Transylvania, which from circa 895 until June 4, 1920 — for over one thousand years — was a vital part of Hungary, until the Trianon Peace Treaty awarded it to Romania. The doctrine of Dacian-Romanian continuity was, to a not insignificant degree, the basis for the Trianon verdict.

According to the Dacian-Romanian continuity theory, the Romanian people evolved in Dacia, a part of Transylvania that the Roman Emperor Traianus conquered in 106 AD and annexed as a province of the Roman Empire. Some of the Dacians were annihilated, the rest fled, and the Romans settled the depopulated area. Later, according to the theory, some of the Dacians returned, made peace with the Roman Empire, and even intermarried with the new settlers. In time they acquired the Roman language, lifestyle and customs.

In the wake of waves of nomadic invasions, Emperor Aurelianus, in 271 AD, was forced to withdraw from Dacia (Transylvania). According to Dacian-Romanian continuity historians, only officials and richer settlers accompanied the Roman soldiers in their withdrawal south of the Danube, to a region called Dacia Aureliana (Koszia). The peasant people remained in Dacia (Dacia Traiana), or Transylvania. Between 106 and 271 AD, the mingling of the Dacians and Romans had produced a new people as well as a new language: Romanian.

Thus, according to the theory, the Romanians (the name Romanian has only been used since 1859 when the 2 districts of Havasfold and Moldva were merged) are of Roman, or rather Romanized Dacian, origin. Since the time of Emperor Traianus, the Romanians have formed a single integrated unity, a unity which is now threatened by the greed for power of her neighbors. Transylvania, this theory claims, is ancient

Romanian land which the Hungarians conquered in 895, stripping the natives of their rights.

This theory has long been totally discredited on scholarly grounds, independently of all political interests and aims. Present and future research can at most alter details. One such detail is whether there were Wallachian Romanian Christian sites in Transylvania (chapels, altars, churches, cloisters, monasteries, and cemeteries) during the period beginning with the Hungarian conquest of 895 until the Tartar invasion of Hungary and Transylvania in 1241 and then from the Tartar invasion to the time of preparations for defence against the Turkish threat.

Such archeological sites are indisputable evidence of a people's presence in a particular region at a particular time. In many cases, these provide more reliable documentation than written sources, certificates, commentaries, and oral history. They mirror a true picture of a nation's history, ideals, values, and its culture's material and intellectual strengths. They represent historical evidence of certain periods about which we lack other sources of information. They provide undeniable foundations for historical facts, truths, conclusions, on which — if necessary — speculative theories can be built. The existence or nonexistence of these archeological sites must certainly be taken into account by any historical theory. Leaving them out would surely lead to an untruthful rendering of the past. Such practices may serve political interests, even across centuries, but they cannot serve the interests of historical accuracy. One example of such a historical practice is the Dacian-Romanian continuity theory. Here we will focus only on the most certain kind of evidence, which forms the basis for our refutation of the theory: the non-existence of Wallachian (Romanian) Christian sites in Transylvania until the 13th century AD. For the sake of completeness we will also demonstrate the non-existence of such sites from 1241, the date of the Tartar invasion, until the period of preparations for defence against the Turks.

From the Roman conquest in 106 AD until the arrival of the Hungarians in 895 AD was a time span 10 years shy of 8 centuries. Considering that, according to