The Eighth Tribe, 1980 (7. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1980-04-01 / 4. szám
which those at Nagyenyed, Gyulafehérvár, Kolozsvár, Nagyvárad, Brassó, Zilah, Arad and Marosvásárhely have functioned uninterruptedly through history until the present take-over of the Rumanian communist government. The VLACHS, forefathers of the Rumanians, were mentioned for the first time in 976 A.D., when Greek historians described a people of migrating herdsmen located between Kastoria and Prespa, near today’s Albanian border. In 1907, Emperor Alexios Komnenos of Byzanthium ordered the relocation of these Vlachs to Pelopponesos, while in 1166 A.D. Emperor Manuel Komnenos assembled a large number of Vlachs south of the Danube river, (in today’s Bulgaria) in order to launch an attack against the Hungarian fortifications along the left bank of the river, and to take the rich Hungarian settlement of Hosszumező, meaning “Long Field.” (Which was later translated by the Vlachs into “Campulung”, and can be found as such on the map of present day Rumania.) Though the invading forces were defeated, and the land between the Danube river and the Southern Carpathians (known also as the Transylvanian Alps) remained officially the territory of the Hungarian Kingdom, migrating Vlach herdsmen received permission to cross the Danube in search of pasturelands. They settled first the Southern and Eastern slopes of the Carpathians under their own tribal rulers, thus establishing their claim to the lands which were later called “Vlachia” or “Wallachia”, and “Moldova or Moldovia”. During the centuries these lands were occupied by the Cumans and the Turks, to unite finally in 1878 under the new name of RUMANIA, with a Hohenzollern on the throne of the new kingdom. Officially the first Vlachs (Rumanians) entered Transylvania in 1234 A.D., when Pope Gregory IX sent a letter to Béla, Prince of Transylvania, and later king of Hungary, asking him “to grant asylum in the name of God to those poor Vlach refugees who wish to escape the harsh rule of the Cumans”. The asylum was granted, and the first three groups of Mach immigrants entered Transylvania from the South, and were settled, under their own chieftains, on specially designated mountain-pastures called in the royal documents “Silva Vlachorurn”, Forest of the Vlachs. These Vlach immigrants, and others who followed later, became the ancestors of the Transylvanian Rumanians. Officially they were called Vlachs, from which the Hungarian name “Oláh” and the German name “Wallach" derived, in contra-distinction to the Kumelians, later called Rumanians, who did not enter the Western culture-circle but stayed East and South of the Carpathians under Byzantine and later Slavic influence, finally evolving at the end of the 19th century into Rumania. The first German settlers came from the Moselle region, and were brought in by King Géza in order to fortify some “empty lands” in the South-East of Transylvania. They established themselves near the royal fort of Brassó in 1168. Later, in 1220, King András II invited several other groups of German settlers into Transylvania. The very first book in the Hungarian language was printed in 1471 in Transylvania, furnishing ample proof that by that time Transylvania had become one of the main centers of Hungarian culture. The Vatican census of 1505 estimated the total population of Hungary about four million souls, of which 78% were Magyars, and the rest Germans, Croatians, Slovaks, Serbians and Vlachs. At the same time the total population of England was also four million, while that of France was eight million, and of the Austrian Empire, including Bohemia and Silezia, five million. The first Protestant - Calvinist - congregation was established in 1516, in Nagyenyed, Transylvania, an ancient Hungarian city re-named today by the Rumanians as “Aiud”. In 1545, Gáspár Heltai published the complete Hungarian translation of the Bible in Kolozsvár, the administrative and cultural capital of Transylvania. (Called today by the Rumanians “Cluj” or “Napoca”.) Eleven years later, in 1556, the Congress of Torda (today called “Turda”) DECLARED THE FREEDOM OF RELIGION, stating in the new law that “everyone may follow the religion of his choice, and no one may interfere with persons professing any other faith.” It was the first such law in the world. In 1561 the Gospels of the New Testament were translated into the Vlach tongue, and published at the expense of the Hungarian landowner Miklós Forró of Brassó, thereby marking the birth of the Vlach (Rumanian) literature. A few years later, another Hungarian nobleman, Ferenc Geszthy, financed the translation and publication of the Old Testament in the Vlach language, while the Transylvanian duke Kristóf Báthory established in Gyulafehérvár (today “Alba Julia”) the first Mach printing shop in order that “culture may spread among those primitive mountain-dwellers”. IV THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY
