S & L wrote:
> Personally, I would take with high precaution everything that is
> available at Corvinus Library due the fact that you are dealing
> mainly with folk tales of nationalistic histories having
> propagandistic purposes
>
> S o r i n
> non-expert
> half Hungarian/mother & half Romanian/father
> living in Banat
>
for me personally it is just very intriguing that the appearance of
Vlahs in the written sources, coincide with the establish of the
Hungarians in Panonia. It looks like they have been forced to move from
their places and they have head to migrate in every part of the world,
in this way crossing too the border of Byzantine Empire. And as soon as
they entered the Byzantine Empire, as "big group" they got immediately
the attention of the chroniclers ; from that time , we have testimonies
about them.Against this idea are the two episodes to mention:
1) the Simocata's testimony with " torna torna fratre.."
2) the testimony of Kastamonitu in the VII centuries regarding the
Blakorekynos.
Very important is that they do not appear in the writings of Constantine
Prophyrogenitus. As far I know, Prophyrogenitus wrote about everything
within Empire in his work, about folks and stuff. The Vlahs seems to be
unknown to him. He speak about the "Romans" when he speak about the
Dalmatian population but that is all.More probably the Vlahs have been
not within Empire, otherwise the silence about them is not to explain.
There cannot be said that Prophyrogenitus seen the Vlahs as the usual
citizens of the Empire. In that time, the difference between "Romaioi"
and "others" was very clear and I very doubt the Greeks should have seen
the "Vlahs" as "Romaioi".
The only left possibility is that the folk of Vlahs lived outside of the
Byzantine Empire and because of the last invasion of the Hungarian
tribes, they have been forced to leave the region.
In so far, it is explained why the Slavs north of Danube became
assimilated. The population should have been pretty strong in compared
with the population South of Danube. From all we know, beginning with
Goths, Huns, Gepidae, Slavs, Avars, etc, they all used the North shore
of Danube as "Preparing Station" and attacked the Empire . Because of
these attacks over centuries, one will not wonder the population on the
South shore of the river was relative thin, fact which permitted to the
Slavs to find a dwelling place there and later to organise their states.
In my opinion, it is not acceptable to think the Slavs which have been
so strong became assimilated north of Danube from a scattered folk,
living in the mountains and once, as in a dream, this folk dropped down
off their mountains and assimilated the Slavs. In so far, I guess Nestor
did no confusion when he spooked about the "Valahs" who got the land in
Panonia from the Slavs. It is to assume the Vlahs became more numerous
and they migrated west since East was the Sea, South was the Empire and
north & North -East was the direction where from came the Asiatic
fighters, thus a dangerous cardinal point . The only one "clean" area
seemed at that time to be in the west and they migrated in Panonia,
overrunning the Slavs remained there since Avar time. The coming
Hungarians drive them out of Panonia and because the Hungarian came from
North, the only way to escape was back "home" (actually Romania) and
South of Danube.
About a romanised population South of Danube we have no testimonies.
Just the "honourable feeling" that there must have been a romanised
population since there has been The Roman Empire.This "honourable
feeling" let us sleeping since in VI centuries there are still the
thracians, and exactly in the VI century Justinian made the first steps
in not forcing the people speak Latin since they did not understood
anymore this language ( anymore, or they never understood this
language?). Heraklion made all official and in the VII century the
official language of the Eastern Roman Empire was Greek language.
If one assume that in the 400 years the Thracian population became
romanised, why not in 1000 years the same population did not became
grecised, specially when the Greek language was the official language
and even the Romans learned Greek ( you know, because of the "culture")?
The same should be said about North of Danube where in almost 1000 years
of Hungarian official language, the Romanians kept their language. There
is no sense to make any speculation I guess. As long as a folk lives, it
does not give up their language. It changes, undergoes phonological
changes but it is not given up. Just the assimilation in an another folk
or the completely destruction of a folk can make that the language
disappear.
Of course, these are just my personal thoughts and I do not pretend this
is the absolutely true, just my "honorable feeling":-) On another side,
a big scholar as N. Iorga, missing arguments for keeping this socalled
"latin_language" said: "the romanians could not forget the name of Rome,
this is why they kept the language". Is this an argument? I doubt.
Alex