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

1987-10-01 / 4. szám

FRATERNITY

Page 7

Dacian- Romanian continuity historians, the Transylvanian Dacian-Romanians converted to Christianity, the urban populations in the 3rd century AD and the peasants in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, many places of worship should have been standing by the time of the Hungarian migration. The question then can be stated thus: Did the Hungarian conquerors of Transylvania find any houses of worship? If reliable evidence indicates that they did, this gives indisputable proof of the Dacian-Romanian continuity theory. But, on the other hand, if they did not, the theory's accuracy cannot only be brought into question, but denied in its entirety. As far as such evidence goes, however, we have neither written sources nor relics attesting to the existence of such places of worship, even though Romanian historians agree that after the withdrawal of the Romans in 271 AD Christianity could spread in the region free of any pressure or persecution from Roman pagan authorities up until the appearance of the first barbarian invaders.

As Christianity spread, smaller Christian communities built chapels for their liturgical and worship services. There are no records proving the existence of such chapels at the time of the Hungarian conquest, nor from the following period. This is not surprising, for historical sources make no mention of Romanized Dacian or Wallachian people in Transylvania until the second half of the 12th century AD. Whereas, on the Balkan peninsula, from the 10th century AD (976) on, numerous sources testify to the presence of Wallachian or Balkan Romanian settlers. Therefore, the ancient home of the Romanian (Wallachian) people is not Transylvania, but the Balkan peninsula, where even

to the present day descendents of these ancestors are dwelling: the a-rumuns, megleno-rumuns, and istro- rumuns. Because of the Dacian-Romanian continuity theory, the Romanian historians are silent about these facts.

The Hungarian conquerors, prior to their migration to the Carpathian basin, had already come into contact with Christianity. There is no evidence, Hungarian or foreign, that they destroyed Christian churches which they found. If the Hungarians had found places of worship in Transylvania, they would have found them with worshippers, the Wallachians.

In Transylvania, the oldest Roman Orthodox church is the one in Demsus. This was built in the 13th century AD, three centuries after the Hungarian conquest, on the site of a 4th century AD Christian church which had been destroyed. One group of historians attribute the construction of this earlier church to the Romans, others to the Goths. A third group consider it to be the tomb erected by the Romans as a memorial to Longinus, who poisoned himself after he was imprisoned by the Dacian King Decebal after the first Roman- Dacian war of 101-102 AD.

If the Romanians were the ancient settlers of Transylvania, would a single church have served their needs from 895 to the 13th century? Even after 3 centuries, was a tiny chapel dating from the 4th century AD with a capacity for only 5 or 6 worshippers suitable for the entire Romanian Wallachian population of Transylvania? If so, this population must have had meager spiritual and material resources. Since the second church was built on the ancient one's site only in the 13th century AD, there must have been no