>*****GK: It's also important to decide whether some
>areas are preferable to others as the primary locale
>for proto-Romanian settlements. I would attach more
>importance (for starters) to those parts of
>mountainous Old Serbia which are full of Romanian
>toponyms.
But this reflects a situation that was already a...
late one -- already a Romanian, no longer proto-
Romanian situation. The issue is their recent
ancestors' Christianization. But when this Christianization
occurred, them Protos still dwelled all over the Balcanic
Peninsula as the top-notch population. The situation
changed after the Avar-Slavic invasion, and no wonder
that nobody knows for sure up to 9th-10th about the
whereabouts of the Romance population that in the
meantime got the opposite of top-notch. And in the
scarce reports of the epoch no one dealt with such
hoi-polloi, except for the cases when some of those
anonymous cut the throat of some dignitary.
2-3 centuries without ties to the disciplined, in
the sense of institutionalized, religion made them
almost pagan from the viewpoint of dogma and
institution; but they don't seem to have become
heathens: where are the traces for it? Neither in
Romanian traditions, folklore, nor in the accounts
of the reporters in the neighborhood (incl. the
annals of the Slavic hierarchy which extended its
jurisdiction over this "flock" as well).
>This would make us focus at first on Moesia
>Superior (incl. the later Dacias esp.
>Mediterranea)rather than Scythia Minor.******
Why? Between the 1st half of the 4th c. and the 1st
half of the 10th c. a time span of six centuries. Whole
lotta time for unbelievable geo-ethno-linguistic re-
configuations between the Adriatic Sea and the Black
Sea. On top of that, I'd say we should make some
distinction between Proto-Romanian (or rather late
Vulgo-Latin) names and genuine Romanian ones. And
last but not least a restricted area for such weak
traces would be some kind of evidence only if we
knew for sure (if we had evidences at the same time)
that in other areas (e.g. today's Bulgaria) there had
never been a Romance population assimilated within
the Slavic-Turkic (and Iranic ;-). Quite the contrary,
since the emerging of the 2nd Bulg. state was also
based on the so-called Vlakh population. (BTW: after
the presence of Romanians in the regions Transylvania,
Wallachia and Moldavia, the South-Danubian Wallachias
weren't depleted, they continued to exist independently,
all over the Bulgarian, Greek, Albanian and Yugo
territories up to modern times; the thorough assimilation,
i.e. disappearance as separate, Romanian dialects
speaking populaces happened in recent times, in the
18th-19th c.
The South-East European "Romania" didn't have the chance
to gradually Romanize the invaders, because, unlike in
Western Europe, it was thoroughly distroyed, i.e. the
grass roots lost every links to something we'd call middle
class today, and to the upper crust (incl. "the brain" of
the society, i.e. incl the Church). So, it was the other
way around: the Romance population massively became
Croat, Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek. (From those Romanians
who maintained themselves some further centuries as such,
esp. in the Eastern part of the vast Hungarian Kingdom,
i.e. in Banat and Transylvania, quite many migrated -
in the 14th-16th c. to South Poland, Slovakia and Moravia,
becoming Poles (incl. members of the Szlachta), Slovaks
and Czechs (cf. today's touristic PR relics around "ValaSke"
areas.)
Given the weak propensity of Romanians to build strong
statal structures, it is a real miracle that they survived
as a Romance group in Eastern Europe, and haven't been
Slavicized for good. In the neighboring case, that of
Hungarians, I'd see a... lesser miracle, since Hungarians
soon had such a European state and the status of the
ruling nation that other ethnic groups let themselves
assimilated quite easily.
>******GK: All true, but perhaps more relevant to the
>Romance-speaking "contact area" of the PR.*****
Yes, but where was that PR area? Of course not restricted
to a couple of valleys of the Yugoslav Alps.
>*****GK: OK but somewhat vague. The "general presence"
>of Christians can be taken for granted.******
If it can be taken for granted, then let's not make of
a Romance population rest in the "dark" centuries between
circa 600 and 900 a non-Christian population only because
its vocabulary is full of terminology *of the institutionalized
church in the Slavic variant.*
Since this is a linguistics list, cf. with our situation today,
in computerese: take a hard disk and do some partitioning.
I don't know how it is in most of European languages, but
it is significant to me that a Germanophone says "ich
partitioniere die Festplatte," although s/he has whole lotta
German terms for "partitionieren," even the older Romanism
"parzellieren." A Romanian will say "partiTionez discul,"
although for him/her the (English) word is even more
transparent and thus replaceable by a Romanian one, based
on the basic "parte" (Engl. part). Without any pressure from
the Empire of the English Language!
Now let's put into this situation someone who has no 12+6 years
of general school + college/university education, with no
institutions to everyday teach him/her *cultural background*
-- as via Muzak ;-) --, and we can better imagine how such
people could have or couldn't have preserve rests of what
earlier had been the ancient cultural-linguistic background
of Romania (Imperium Romanum).
Why do linguistic minorities struggle for certain rights
in the modern society, inter alia for schools and worshipping
in their own language? For the same reason. Which is
expressed by the fear that otherwise they'll disappear,
assimilated by the majority. I don't give any European
example -- we all know them all, and many cases are
open wounds, latent sources of belligerance within the
frame of the bold project called the EU...
>the Bessi [these could be our PR mountaineers?].******
Of course. But be a bit more generous: do not stick
to the (about 200 years old) idea that Romanians
originated in a tiny collectivity of a few "catuns"
(pastoral-subvillages) somewhere in some Iugoslav
valley. ;-)
>*****GK: More interesting would be the situation close
>to the Serbian mountains*****
More interesting would this be if the Hungarian-
Polish historian Imre Boba's theory of the "Moravian"
Slavs reflected the reality: namely that that ephemerous
Slavic state had its inception and kernel not in the
Czek Moravia, but in the Serbian Moravia (look at the
three rivers called Morava!), two of the polit-power
centers being in Banat, a region adjacent to Serbia
and where there were whole lotta Romanians from
the beginning of the reports by the contemporary
"press," as soon as they did play some role [in the
conjunctures of those times, that always meant a
military role]: in the localities Cuvin and in Morisena,
the latter being then called Csanád [c^Ona:d] after
a Hungarian princeling Csanád (or S^unad) who
defeated the a local (Bulgar or Khazar) chieftain.
So, those polities, prior to the arrival of the
new bully of the region, the Hungarians, were more
or less of the Bulgar+Slavic kind. Why wouldn't be
their underlings, the so-called Vlakhs, be able to
move around in those polities at their desire, without
Schengen visa/permits? ;)
>The Byzantine reconquista of
>Hellas did not involve Christianization but
>enslavement (literally). Huge numbers of pagan Slavs
>were sold on the markets at Thessaloniki and Corinth.
>This is the context within which the word "Slave" (in
>various sp) entered the vocabulary of many Western
>nations.******
Yes but what happened to those slaves and then to
their children? Does any source say one didn't
Christianized them at the double? (Given the Christian
toughness and fundamentalism that characterized the
entire history of the Church esp. betw. the 4th and
the 18th c., i.e. until the Enlightenment.)
George