Hungarian-Romanian transcultural relations
during the Middle Ages and the reformation
Levente Nagy
p
Faculty of Arts, Department of Romanian Philology, ELTE University, Budapest, Hungary
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Received: September 7, 2022
Accepted: September 27, 2022
Published online: January 13, 2023
© 2022 The Author(s)
ABSTRACT
It was in the Latin-language historical literature of medieval and Renaissance Hungary that the noble ideology
was first formulated which has determined the discourse on Hungarian national and literary consciousness up
to the present day. These chronicles, however, contain a great deal of information not only about the
Hungarians, but also about the peoples who lived alongside them. Thus, Romanians are also important
figures in this Latin-language historical literature. In the first part of this study we will discuss the depiction of
the Romanians in Anonymus and Simon Kézais Chronicles, the Illustrated Chronicle and Antonio Bonnis
monumental work. In the second part of the study I will describe the inuence of the Hungarian Reformation
literature of the 16th and 17th centuries on Romanian literature. From a Hungarian perspective, the
Romanian Reformation is worth studying because it is a clear demonstration of Hungarian cultural
imperialism in the 16th to 18th centuries, so much so that Hungarian culture has been unable to repeat
cultural export on such a scale ever since. This means that between 1540 and 1750 there was no other
language into which so many Hungarian-language ecclesiastical works (catechisms, psalms, hymns, postu-
lates, agendas, piety works) were translated as Romanian. In other words, no other culture has been so
powerfully inuenced by a Hungarian impact as was Romanian culture during these two centuries.
KEYWORDS
historical literature, Latin language, Romanians, Reformation, translation, transculturality, Renaissance
Historical literature in medieval Hungar y was written exclusively in Latin until the mid-16th
century. The situation was similar in the two Romanian principalities of Moldavia and
p
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Hungarian Studies 36 (2022) 12, 2835
DOI: 10.1556/044.2022.00211
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Wallachia, except that the language of the chronicles in these regions was not Latin but Old
Church Slavonic. However, the difference betwee n Hungarian and Romanian literature is
significant in that while Ro manian literary historians (e.g. Nicolae Manolescu, Ion Negoi
țescu)
do not mention the Slavonic period of Romanian literature, the historical literature in Latin is an
essential chapter in the history of Hungarian literature.
1. THE IMAGE OF ROMANIANS IN THE HUNGARIAN CHRONICLE
LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
Romanians are an important feature in this Latin-language historical literature. They are already
mentioned in a chronicle written around 1200 by the anonymous notary (Anonymus, P. dictus
magister) of King Béla III (reigned between 1172 and 1196). Hungarian and Romanian
historians have long been at odds over the interpretation of the passages concerning these
chronicles. The majority of Romanian historians (e.g. Alexandru Madgeru, Ioan-Aurel Pop)
believe that everything that Anonymus says about the Hungarian conquest (and especially the
conquest of Transylvania by the Hungarians ) is authentic. A minority (e.g. Lucian Boia), on the
other hand, are more inclined to agree with Hungarian historians who believe that the events
narrated by Anonymus reect the conditions of the writers own time. For example, he claims
that the Hungarians occupied Pannonia along with the Kuns, although in fact the Kuns did not
appear in the Carpathian Basin until almost 200 years after the conquest (end of the 9th cen-
tury). Many important characters in the chronicle are ctional or were not alive at the time of
the conquest. Their names were generally based on place names in use around 1200. The reeve
of Ung Castle, Laborc, for example, was named after the River Laborc which joins the River Ung
and ows into the River Latorca. The names of the three chieftains of Transylvanian and Bihar
often referred to in the chronicle are also ctitious personal names formed from place names:
Ménmarót (Menumorut), Galád (Glad in the Romanian version) and Gyalu (Gelou in the
Romanian version). The name Ménmarót is derived from the Moravian folk name Marót
(the prex mén is of Turkish origin, meaning big), the name Galád is derived from the name of
the village Gilád (Ghilad in Romanian) in Temes [today: Timis, Romania] County, while the
name Gyalu is derived from the name of the town Gyalu (Gil
au in Romanian) in present-day
Cluj County. The only relevant information that can be deduced from the text refers to the time
of Anonymus, i.e. the second half of the 12th century and the rst half of the 13th century. The
documentary sources, as well as the data on the history of place names, conrm that the rst
Romanians did indeed arrive in Transylvania at this time. The chronicle therefore provides
authentic data on the conquest of Transylvania by the Romanians and not the Hungarians.
In his chronicle compiled around 1284, Simon Kézai did not write about the Transylvanian
conquest at all, but he did mention the Romanians in a prominent place in the history of
Hungarian-Szekler history by claiming that the Szeklers did not have an independent alphabet
but borrowed the letters of the Romanians instead.
1
Kézai may have obtained information about
the Romanians (Cyrillic) and the Szeklers (runic) writing from a Cistercian monk at the
1
Simon KÉZAI: A magyarok cselekedetei [The Acts of the Hungarians], translated by János BOLLÓK, Osiris Kiadó, Budapest,
1999, 102.
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monastery at Kerc [today: Cârța, Romania]. Indeed, he may have seen Old Slavonic inscriptions
in Cyrillic script in the wooden church es of the Romanians living around Kerc from the early
13th century, as well as runic inscriptions in the Szekler churches of the area. It was not un-
common for an outsid er to confuse the two scripts, as some of the Cyrillic letters do indeed bear
a resemblance to the Szekler runic characters.
In the history of Hungarian literature, Anonymus is the first not only to talk about the
Romanians, but also to create the first negative images of them: the area [Transylvania] is
inhabited by the weakest people of the whole world, the Vlachs and Slavs, for their whole
armament consists of bows and arrows. Their lord, Gyalu, is not brave and lacks good warriors
to stand up to the reckless Hungarians.
2
Such negative opinions proliferate throughout the
Illustrated Chronicle. This richly illustrated tome, dating from around 1358, gives the most
damning verdict on the Romanians in the context of the 1330 campaign of Char les Robert
(reigned between 1308 and 1342) against voivode Basarab in Wallachia. The author of the
chronicle does not keep silent about the fact that the Hungarian king unjustly attacked his
vassal, who always faithfully paid the taxes levied on him to his royal majesty. Nevertheless,
the Transylvanian voivode Thomas persuaded the king to attack Basarab. The campaign ended
in a disastrous failure: Basarabs soldiers massacred the Hungarian army in a narrow strait and
Charles Robert himself only managed to escape thanks to his disguise. Nevertheless, the
chronicler summed up the events as follows: Everywhere around the army, Vlach dogs were
dropping like ies; they lost the blessing of the last anointing, as they mercilessly slaughtered
Christian people and the anoin ted priests of Christ. The number of Vlachs killed there by the
Hungarians was counted only by that most acurate scrivener of hell.
3
Thus the Romanians were
labelled as apostate secessionists, even though in fact they had not provoked the attack in any
way, since Basarab had pledged allegiance to his overlord and offered gifts to him at the
beginning of the campaign.
The actions of Antonio Bonfini (1427/34-1502) brought about a radical change in the
perception of the Romanians. Bonfini was the reader of King Matthias (reigned between 1458
and 1490) Italian wife, Queen Beatrix, at the court of Buda from 1486. In 1488, Matthias
commissioned him to com pile a modern treatment of Hungarian history (Decades rerum
Ungaricarum), on which Bonni worked until 1497. According to Bonni, historical processes
follow the natural law of birth development fullment decay death rebirth. From time
to time, the peoples, institutions, cities, and families of antiquity re-emerge from obscurity.
Thus, the ancient Romans live on in the Romanians, just as the ancient Roman Corvinus clan
was revived in the Huny adi family. Bonni rewrites and reinterprets the topos of the medieval
Hungarian chronicles concerning the Romanians. On the one hand, he clearly states that the
Vlachs were descended from the legions and colonies that Trajan and other Roman emperors
had settled in Dacia.
4
On the other hand, while Anonymus scorned the Romanians for being
light-armed archers, Bonni even traces the vernacular name Vlac h back to the Greek name
2
ANONYMUS, A magyarok cselekedetei [The Acts of the Hungarians], translated by VESZPRÉMY László, Osiris Kiadó, Buda-
pest, 1999, 27.
3
Képes Krónika [Illustrated Chronicle], ed. Gyula KRISTÓ, Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1986, 264.
4
Antonio BONFINI: A magyar történelem tizedei [Decades of Hungarian History], translated by Péter KULCSÁR, Balassi,
Budapest, 1995, 385.
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for the arrowhead, precisely because the Romanians were excellent archers. While the Vlachs,
according to Anonymus and Kézai, were the servants of Attila the Hun and mingled with the
barbarians, the Romanians of Bon ni, after having mingled with the barbarians, did not become
corrupted, but preserved the Latin language, treasuring it as much as their lives. He describes the
battle of Basarab and Charles Robert almost verbatim from the Illustrated Chronicle but omits
the outburst against the Romanians.
Bonfini needed to take this stance because by the 15th century the Romanian issue was
already in existence at the court of Buda. King Matthiass opponents had been spreading ru-
mours about the Hunyadi familys lowly origin and foreign, Romanian character: He [King
Matthias] knew well that his opponents despised his lowly origin; it is widely rumoured that he
was born of the Vlach race; some called him a mongrel, born of parents with different names;
the lords of Hungary, especially those in the West, said that the Vlach king should not be
tolerated.
5
Bonni traced the genealogy of Matthias back to the Corvinus family in Rome
precisely in order to repel these slanders, vehemently protesting against the tale of the Raven and
the Ring according to which King John Hunyadi was the love child of King Sigismund Hunyadi
(reigned between 1411 and 1437) and a Romanian boyar girl.
Although in his writings Bonfini ennobled the Romanians as Romans, the way in which
Hungarian humanists perceived Romanians remained a strange mixture of personal frus-
tration and ethnic prejudice. Thus, for example, Miklós Oláh (14931568), who was origi-
nally from Wallachia but went on to have a distinguished career in Hungary (rising to
become Archbishop of Esztergom) and became a rst-rate European humanist, became the
subject of a smear campaign on account of his Romanian origin by András Dudith (1533
1589), Ferenc Forgách (15351577) and Farkas Kovacsóczy (15401594), who were also rst-
rate humanists a nd had attended European universities. It is no wonder that your nature is
so harsh and even cruel, since you are a Vlach (Olahus), that is to say, you come from the
tribe of the people whom, because of their sturdy forest life, others call the Valach (Valachos),
who live in the mountains of Transylvania as far as Wallachia in caves a nd caverns like
savages, spend their days amongst sheep and all types of plague, have no connection with the
society of other merchant peoples, and have no rm idea of God, Forgách wrote about
Miklós Oláh.
6
Based on their anti -Romanian outbursts, Forgách and Kovacsóczy may be considered the
prototypes of the ideologically minded modern intellectual. The Romanian ecclesiastical or
secular intellectual who wished to enter the circle of Latinist humanists in Hungary and
Transylvania could expect double frustration. On the one hand, they were not on an equal
footing, not only with their Hungarian counterparts, but even with their other ethnic coun-
terparts (mainly Saxons, Slovaks, or Croats); on the other hand, they constantly had to face the
fact that the Romanians, the only heirs to the glorious ancient Latinity in Central and Eastern
Europe, were in a more deplorable position than any other nation in terms of Latin literacy. The
5
Ibid., 713.
6
Humanista történetírók [Humanist Historians], ed. Péter KULCSÁR, Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1977, 1034.
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Romanians Latin origins and their exclusion from society in the medieval and early modern
period were thus a source of confusi on for Hungarys humanist elite.
7
2. THE LITERATURE OF THE HUNGARIAN REFORMATION AND THE
ROMANIANS
The native language of the first Reformers in Hungary was German, and therefore the Lutheran
Church was the first to be established in Hungary. The Saxons of Transylvania adopted
Lutheran religious doctrines in 1545. The Calvinist Reformed Church was established in the
1560s. In the Kingdom of Hungary, the Diet of 1608 granted Calvinists freedom of worship. In
Transylvania, the Diet of Torda held in 1568 declared that no one could be persecuted for their
religious beliefs. It was within this framework that the system of the four established religions
(recepta religio) was established in Transylvania by the mid-1590s and was enacte d into law in
1653. The four established churches/denominations of the principality were Catholic, Evan-
gelical, Calvinist/Reformed and Unitarian.
However, the religion of the Orthodox Romanians, who followed the Greek rite, was not
declared accepted but merely tolerated (tolerata).
8
The main reason for this was that by the end
of the 16th century, only the religions practised b y members of the previously privileged reli-
gious orders (Hungarians, Szeklers, Saxons) had acquired the status of accepted religions. There
is some debate as to why the Romanians could not become a privileged and noble nation (natio)
in the same way as the other peoples of Transylvania during the Middle Ages. Some argue that it
was because the Romanians, a mixed population of Roman settlers and indigenous Dacians, had
been continuously pre sent in Transylvania since the time of the Emperor Trajan and had already
lived in proto-state structures when the Hungarians arrived, but these structures were
destroyed by the new conquerors and the Romanians were reduced to serfdom. Others claim
that this was not the case because the Romanians did not arrive in Transylvania in large
numbers until later, after the Hungarians, the Saxons and even some Szeklers had settled, a t a
time when the process of establishing medieval national autonomies had already come to an
end. Thus, they were unable to develop into a unied social stratum and were forced to t into
the given framework, i.e. to merge either into the nobility or the serf class. As a result, the
Romanian commoners, who initially enjoyed the same freedom as the Szeklers and Saxons, lost
their personal liberty and became serfs but, at least initially, not to Hungarian landlords, but the
Roman knezes and voivodes who had gained nobility. In order to rise in society, the new noble
Romanian knezes renounced their orthodox religion, a hindrance in mobility, without hesita-
tion. In many cases, however, they retained their language, so we know of a signicant number
of Romanian Catholic nobles, especially in southern Transylvania and the Banat . Nevertheless,
7
Gábor ALMÁSI: Constructing the Wallach other in the late Renaissance, in: Balázs, Trencsényi; Márton, Zászkaliczky
(eds.) Whose Love of Which Country: Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East
Central Europe, Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, 2010, 91130.
8
Mihály BALÁZS: A hit hallásból lészön. Megjegyzések a négy bevett vallás intézményesüléséhez a 16. századi Erdélyben
[Faith is by Hearing. Notes on the Institutionalization of the Four Established Religions in 16th Century Transyl-
vania] in Tanulmányok Szakály Ferenc emlékére [Studies in the Memory of Ferenc Szakály], ed. Pál F
ODOR, Géza PÁLFFY,
István György T
ÓTH, MTA TKI Gazdaság- és Társadalomtörténeti Kutatócsoport, Budapest, 2002, 5175.
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the emergence of the new nation based upon social strata was territorial. Thus, the peoples who
became nations were those which, while maintaining their own customs, lived in a unied and
coherent territory (Terra Siculorum, Terra Saxonum, Terra Hungarorum). In 13th century
documents, Terra Blachorum is still mentioned, but the region did not become a compact area
inhabited by Romanians, and so the Romanians did not become Natio Valachica. This is mainly
because they did not live in a homogeneous area like the Szeklers and Saxons, as they were
constantly migrating, due to their pastoral lifestyle.
Despite the fact that Eastern Orthodoxy was not an established religion, it was not perse-
cuted either, as was sometimes the case with the Catholic, Unitarian or Sabbatarian churches.
The Romanians religion and church was never banned in Transylvania, nor were Romanian s
forced to convert to any other established religion, while the possibility of doing so was not
excluded. In fact, from a religious point of view, being tolerated (tolerata) outside the structures
of the society resulted not only in disadvantages, but also in certain advantages for the
Romanians. Like the Ruthenians, Romanian serfs were not obliged to pay tenth to the Catholic
Church precisely because of their being schismatic. However, as soon as they became Catholics,
they also became obligated to pay tenth.
9
This is probably the simplest explanation for the fact
that during the Middle Ages very few Romanian serfs converted to Catholicism.
From the literary point of view, the Hungarian Reformation influenced Romanian literature
mainly in the field of catechism literature, Bible translat ions, and church hymnody. The first
Romanian book to be printed entirely in Romanian, and which has survived to the present day,
is the Catechism (Întrebarea cre
ș
tineasc
a The Christian Question) printed by Deacon Coresi in
Brassó [today: Bra
șov, Romania] in 1560. It has not yet been possible to determine the exact
source of the publication, but it is certain that the translator had converted a Hungarian text into
Romanian. This is evidenced by the Hungarian-style structures of the Romanian text: halottak
feltámadása 5 sculatul mor
ț
ilor (resurrection of the dead 5 getting up of the dead), instead of
the Romanian înviere (coming back to life); kiadni 5 a da afar
a (publish 5 give out) instead of a
edita, a publica (to edit, publish) etc. The Cazanie, also published in 1568 in Coresis w orkshop,
with the nancial support of Miklós Forró Háportoni, a Hungarian nobleman from Fogaras
[today: F
ag
ara
ș, Romania], is entirely Calvinistic in spirit. From a theological point of view, this
is one of the most important publications of the Romanian Reformation. This is conrmed
by the mere fact that it contains a literal translation of a sermon by Péter Juhász Melius
(15321572). Melius had studied at the University of Wittenberg and later became a preacher in
Debrecen. In the midst of constant religious disputes, he founded and organised the Reformed
diocese of Transtisza, of which he became bishop in 1562. In addition to works of religious
disputation, he wrote sermons, translated the New Testament and excerpts from the Old Tes-
tament, as well as Calvins Catechism into Hungarian. Not only does the inclusion of Meliuss
sermon prove that the translator/compiler of Cazanie was a Romanian preacher who had
certainly converted to the Reformation, but also shows him to have been a strong critic of society
and the clergy, typical of the Reformers, who had taken up the ght against the cult of fasting
and death, demon worship, quackery and superstition, which were particularly strong in
Romanian popular religion.
9
Géza HEGYI: Terrae Christianorum. A keresztény földre telepedett románok dézsmáltatásának kezdetei, Erdélyi Mú-
zeum [The Beginnings of Taxing of the Romanian Settlers in Christian Lands] 79 (2017/1), 6175.
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The second part of the Cazanie is a book of rituals entitled Molitvenic. The Romanian text is
based on the 1559 Agenda by Gásp ár Heltai (Agenda, az az szentegyházi cselekedetek Agenda,
or the Acts of the Holy Church, published in Kolozsvár [today: Cluj Napoca, Romania]). Gáspár
Heltai (15101574) was a printe r, writer and preacher of Saxon origin. Notwithstanding the fact
that he had not begun to learn Hungarian until 1536, he became one of the most inuen tial
initiators of Hungarian language culture, popular education and literature. In 1543 he enrolled
at the University of Wittenberg, where he came into contact with Luther. After his return home,
he launched the Refor mation in Kolozsvár. He is best known for his printing activities: more
than 80 publications are known to have been printed in his workshop, most of them in Hun-
garian, and addressed to a wide audience. For the sake of the simple-minded, he used types
and sizes of letters that were easy to read and divided texts into numerous paragraphs. One of
the most important publications of 16th century Romanian Reformation, Palia de la Or
as
¸
tie
(The Old Testament of Or
as
¸
tie), published in 1582, also has as its source the Old Testament as
published by Gáspár Heltai in 1551 in Kolozsvár. Palia contained the Romanian translations of
Genesis and Exodus.
The years 15691580 saw the publication of the rst Romanian text printe d in Latin script
with a Hungarian spelling. The surviving fragment of this publication (Fragmentul Todorescu
The Todorescu Fragment) contains translations of ten Hungarian Calvinist hymns. The 17th
century was the heyday of Calvinist Romanian hymnbooks. Four such collections are known:
the work of Sándor Gergely Agyagfalvi (1642), an anonymous collection (around 1660), and the
works of János Viski (1697) and István Istvánházi (1703). The hymnbooks were intended for use
not by laypeople, but by the preachers who ministered in the church, and they contained the
most frequently used texts of the Reformed church services. A total of 102 Hungarian Calvinist
hymns were translated into Romanian over the 16th and 17th centuries. The most important
source for the translators were the psalter translations in verse published by Albert Molnár
Szenci (15741634) and the accompanying hymns. Szenci came from a middle-class family in
Upper Hungary and studied at the universities of Strasbourg and Heidelberg. He travelled
through the main German cultural centres, living in Frankfurt-am-Main, Altdorf, Oppenheim,
Heidelberg and Hanau. He kept a diary during his stay abroad. He was friends with the
astronomer Johannes Kepler (15711630) and that great gure of German Baroque literature,
Martin Opitz, who taught briey at the College of Gyulafehervár [today: Alba Iulia, Romania] in
1622 and wrote about the Romanians of Transylvania in his poem Zlatna. Szencis Psalterium
Ungaricum in verse was published in Herbor in 1607. The publication of the book had a
practical purpose: to adapt the psalms to a form that could be sung. The author drew mainly on
French models such as Clement Marot (14961544), Théodore de Bèze (15191605) and
German examples such as Ambrosius Lobwasser (15151585). He rendered the 150 psalms to
130 melodies, thus becoming the poet who wrote the largest quantity of verse in Old Hungarian
literature. The Romanian translations fully respected the rhythm used by Szenci, so that the
Romanian psalms can be sung to the melodies used by Szenci.
These hymnbooks were all written in Latin script and used Hungarian spelling. Romanian
writing using Latin script and Hungarian spelling, which developed in the Hátszeg-Fogaras
region and in the Banat region (around Lugos-Karánsebes [today: Lugoj and Caransebe
ș,
Romania]) was not only a curiosity, but a living tradition that was to survive for 250 years
(between about 1570 and 1820). It was used not only by Calvinists but also by Catholic
Romanians. Romanian Calvinist texts were of course also written in Cyrillic script in the
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17th century. The most important examples are the New Testament of Gyulafehérvár [today:
Alba Iulia, Romania] (1648) and Psalter (1651). The translation was based on a Greek-Latin
bilingual edition of the Bible; but the rst complete Hungarian translation of the Bible published
by Gáspár Károli (15291592) in 1590 (Vizsolyi Biblia the Bible of Vizsoly) was also used to
check the translation of both works. The translation, begun by Silvestru, the igumen of the
monastery of Govora, was nalised by a certain János, dean of Marosillye [today: Ilia, Romania] ,
and György Csulai (d. 1660), Calvinist bishop of Transylvania.
György Csulai, from a Romanian noble family in Hátszeg [today: Ha
țeg, Romania], studied
at the College of Debrece n and later at the universities of Heidelberg and Altdorf. After his
return home he rst became a pastor at the royal court, and from 1649 onwards went on to act
as bishop of Transylvania. Csulai knew some Romanian. He wrote extensive prefaces to some
books of the New Testament. The prefaces summarise the most important information about
the New Testament book in question: who the author was, when it was written and what its
contents were. These lengthy prefaces (55 pages out of 330 pages of printed text) display the
most distinct Protestant features.
The Reformation was the first intellectual, theological, and cultural movement originating
in Western Europe that made a serious impact on Romanians who followed the Greek rite.
The Reformation also saw the rst publications in Romanian and the rst steps towards the
emergence of a clear and accessible literary language, free of complicated Byzantine idioms. It
was also thanks to the Reformation that Western European verse forms rst appeared in
Romanian poetry.
Open Access. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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