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This article shows the close link between religious policy, especially that of the confessional option, and the politicization of space in the building processes of territorial states. The study focuses on the two Danube Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which implemented their state building owing to three decisive steps: i) the jurisdictional option in favour of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople; ii) the territorial and social implementation of the Byzantine-Orthodox faith by institutional infrastructure and monastic reform; iii) the Orthodox enculturation of the two Wallachian principalities. The main goal of this chapter is to show how cultural and historical phenomena transform the abstract geographical space into the political space of a state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 1475, Matthias Corvinus, Stephen the Great, and Basarab Laiotă established a coalition against the Ottomans. The coalition reached a major turning point in 1477 when Wallachia was lost for good to the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, little is known about the way in which the events of 1477 unfolded. This is due to the limited charters and narrative sources that have survived the period. However, by placing the few known historical accounts within the epoch's European political context, the baleful consequences that these events had on the 1475 coalition can be identified. Moreover, the importance they had for the people and “states” from both sides of the Carpathian arc can be illustrated in the same manner. The year 1477 set the premises for the geopolitical situation of Southeastern Europe and determined its political and military evolution for the upcoming decades. In the present paper, we thereby intend to present the historical context of the events from 1477 and their consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The establishment of the "Phanariot regime" in Moldavia (1711) and Wallachia (1716) had, among other things, negative consequences for the military organization of the two Romanian principalities. Phanariot princes, starting with the Mavrocordats, have greatly reduced the num- ber of armed forces of the two countries, although there was no specifc request from the Ottoman Empire in this regard. Phanariotes sought to transform domestic military groups into tax categories, relying in particular on the groups of foreign Balkan and Eastern mercenaries. The present study aims at an issue which was not insisted on during previous research, namely the wages and gifts that these Balkan and Turkey hirelings received from Phanariot princes for their jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ORGANIC REGULATIONS ARE THE FIRST CONSTITUTIONAL REGULATIONS IN THE PRINCIPALITIES. IT WAS FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT THE ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONING OF STATE INSTITUTIONS WERE GOVERNED BY LEGISLATIVE PROVISIONS ADOPTED BY THE TWO PRINCIPALITIES. ONE OF THE MOST SPECTACULAR CHANGES WAS THE INTRODUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SEPARATION OF POWERS IN THE STATE AS A PRINCIPLE OF ORGANIZATION OF STATE INSTITUTIONS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

About four centuries passed between the first appearance of pamphlets in which the medical uses of petroleum were discussed (for example, the Tegernsee (southern Bavaria, 1430), Geneva (Swiss Confederacy, 1480), Nurnberg (northern Bavaria, 1500), and the Antwerp (Duchy of Brabant, today Flanders, 1540-1550) pamphlets), and Michael Faraday's discovery in 1825 of the chemical composition of benzene derived from bituminous oil as a compound of carbon and hydrogen. During this long time span, studies of oil, carried out between alchemy and chemistry, benefited from rapid advances and brilliant insights, much as they had moments of stagnation, and disappointing regressions. In 1855 the chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr., of Yale University, proved that crude oil could be decomposed through a process of fractional distillation into a range of fuels and lubricants cheaper than the oils, greases and waxes rendered by animal fats and vegetal matter (Silliman 1855; Forbes 1948, 1958). In the course of the early 1860s, oil became the main source of illumination first in North America, then in Europe and Australia. This transformation of oil from a substance of limited use into a commodity of mass consumption radically changed the pattern of oil finding and production. Crude was no longer collected just from natural springs or draining seepages, but was pumped out of the ground from wells drilled by machines using steam power. This was the first step toward the modem oil industry, and a breakthrough in the history of energy : the beginning of an oil society. The first part of this article provides an introduction to the early uses and production of petroleum in Europe, and advances in understanding the nature, the physical properties, and the composition of hydrocarbons. It provides a brief analysis of the interaction between technology, society and the environmental context in northwestern Pennsylvania, where, between 1858 and 1859, a new successful pattern developed to produce oil in commercial quantity. From 1861. that innovative process put the United States in the position to gain increasing shares in the young European mineral oil markets and, subsequently, to jeopardize the position of local oil (vegetal, animal and mineral) producers. The second part, using a national case study approach, explores the history' of a British oil company operating in Romania since 1863, the Wallachian Oil Company. This venture by London stockholders--short, difficult, and abortive--is a mirror of the nature of the business implemented by emerging oil companies, not only from Europe, and therefore exemplifies the challenges of setting the modern oil sector in motion in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the manner in which two competing empires, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, acted through material culture and diplomacy to strengthen their influence in a territory lying at the periphery of Europe. To this end, the distribution, rhetoric and reception of the awarding of decorations is analysed, starting from the case of the great Romanian boyar Iordache Filipescu. Wallachia, an Ottoman province under Russian protectorate, in what is today south-eastern Romania, was at a moment of transition on the political level. Attracting loyalties and creating local action networks became diplomatic strategies, and one way in which pro-Ottoman and pro-Russian groupings may be traced in the Romanian space is through the intermediary of decorations. They transpose at the public level merits and services rendered to one of the two powers, but it is necessary to trace at the individual and family level the extent to which loyalty won in this way continued to exist. The message that the decorations transmitted remained a deceptive one: their possession was not equivalent to a transfer of power towards the holder in comparison with his compatriots, just as it did not guarantee complete adherence to the cause of the issuing power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being foreign in the Romanian lands in the eighteenth century is the subject of this investigation. The article starts from the particular case of the Linchou family, who, through their diplomatic activities in the Levant and the Romanian Lands, open up an entire dossier regarding the process of identification staged by a foreigner. With the help of diplomatic correspondence and commercial archives, we observe how François-Thomas Linchou engages in a series of social and political games aimed at attracting advantages and privileges to uphold the commercial activities he had developed in Wallachia and Moldavia. However Linchou's attempt to remain in the sphere of social representations, claiming privileges, without accepting the staus of re'aya was to lead to the failure of his integration into a social network and consequently his decapitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to bring to the attention of the specialists a number of twelve medieval coins issued by Wallachian and Moldavian princes. The coins are kept in the numismatics collection of the History Museum „Paul Păltănea" from Gala ţi. The silver coins are extremely important for the numismatic researches and for the study of monetary circulation. Two of the coins were found during the archeological researches undertaken during the years 1962-1963, the other ten coins being preserved from the old collection of the museum. Most probably the group of ten coins were found in the area of Gala ţi and Tulcea counties, being illustrative for the monetary circulation from the end of 14th century and the 15th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanian Journal for Baltic & Nordic Studies/Revista Romana de Studii Baltice si Nordice is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract:During the 1550s, humanists at the University of Wittenberg in Germany first suggested that Wallachians from present-day Romania had migrated to the Baltic Sea, settled in Livonia and became the ancestors of Estonians and Latvians. This colonization allegedly took place at some time in the 5th or 6th century AD. Although such a theory seems bizarre from a modern point of view, it was considered a perfectly reasonable hypothesis by contemporary scholars. For approximately 150 years, up to the early 18th century, the idea of a Wallachian colonization of Livonia retained its place in the historiography of the region, before it was refuted by the more sober-minded approach of enlightenment historians. The paper provides an overview of the scholarly theories on a kinship between Wallachians, Estonians and Latvians that were formulated between 1550 and 1700. Although these fanciful hypotheses are not supported by any discernible historical facts, they provide important insights on the position of Wallachia and Livonia in the symbolic geography and the mental maps of the early modern res publica litterarum. Rezumat:În anii 1550, umaniştii de la Universitatea din Wittenberg, Germania, au sugerat pentru prima dată că valahii din România de azi au migrat spre Marea Baltică, s-au stabilit în Livonia şi au devenit strămoşii estonienilor şi letonilor. Această colonizare se presupune că a avut loc la un moment dat, în secolul al V-lea sau al VI-lea d. Hr. Deşi o astfel de teorie pare bizară din punct de vedere modern, aceasta a fost considerată o ipoteză perfect rezonabilă de către cercetători contemporani. Pentru aproximativ 150 de ani, până la începutul secolului al XVIII-lea, ideea unei colonizări valahe a Livoniei a reţinut locul său în istoriografia regiunii, înainte de a fi respinsă de abordarea mai echilibrată a istoricilor iluminişti. Lucrarea oferă o imagine de ansamblu a teoriilor ştiinţifice privind o înrudire între valahi, estonieni şi letoni, care au fost formulate între anii 1550 şi 1700. Deşi aceste ipoteze fanteziste nu sunt sprijinite de fapte istorice perceptibile, ele oferă perspective importante cu privire la poziţiile Valahiei şi Livoniei în geografia simbolică şi în hărţile mentale de la începutul res publica litterarum moderne.

This paper aims to present the evolution of the meteorological terminology, from the 17th century Grigore Ureche's chronicle and bishop Amfilohie Hotiniul's manuscript on Physics (Moldavia, late 18th Century) to the mid 19th century writings of Teodor Stamati (Moldova) and Julius Barasch (Wallachia), also considering pop science literature, newspapers, such as "Albina Românească" and weather superstitions published in various calendars, and disputed by intelectuals like Mihail Kogălniceanu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wallachia represents an interesting environment, not just for the Eastern European history itself, but also defines various expressions in mural art. The leaders are represented most of the times on the walls of churches that they have built. These paintings have many particularities, and, besides the clothing, the „votive” paintings, as we call them, are revealing good knowledge of the art of composition. It is like a single genre: „the votive painting”, but no work of this type looks like any other. Matei Basarab (1635-1654), Şerban Cantacuzino (1678-1688), Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688-1714), Constantin Mavrocordat (six times prince of Wallachia), are only a few who have their portraits integrated into the fresco surfaces. The paintings are hiding problems to resolve in dealing with the space, the light and the chromatic element. There are various representations of the same character, some contemporary, some made years after. It is there a sense of mystery in structure or in the semiotic of forms and even, the semiotic of some decoration. The portraits in murals represent a mirroring of a noble personality on a humble and yet, monumental surface: the wall of a church located in a forest or in an old town. Not just the personalities have their place in history, but also their portraits should have the proper place in the history of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Golden Horde stopped the expansion of Hungary on the line of the Carpathians, creating thus an opportunity to develop for the small Romanian political organizations ruled by voivodes or cnezi, in the region east of Olt. After 1241, only Oltenia remained the single region where the Hungarian domination survived in certain forms until 1291, when a new Tatar offensive extended along the Danube, up to Serbia, the domination of the Isaccea emirate ruled by Nogai. In Oltenia, the voivode Litovoi tried in 1278 to liberate his small country from the Hungarian vassalage, and to extend it east of Olt. The Tatar hegemony provided stability and favored the establishment of the first Romanian state in northern Walachia. The legendary founder Negru Vodă came from the Făgăraş area with his military suite in 1290, when their properties were confiscated. If his identity with the father ofBasarab remains controversial, it is however certain that the voivodate of Curtea de Argeş, established by the middle of the 13th century, gained its freedom from the Hungarian pretentions through the protection of the Golden Horde. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Print was received with understanding and interest in the Romanian Countries. The craft came to us from the West and was organized by the Slavs. Beginning in Târgoviște, just seventeen years from the first printing with Slavic letters, the art of printing will play a decisive role in spreading and fixing of the supra-dialectal norms. Copies of the books printed in the sixteenth century, in Wallachia, have been found in some churches in Transylvania and Moldavia, but also in Bulgaria, Serbia and Mount Athos. The essence of speech tends to become, the essence of the written language tends to immutability, in conclusion the norms of spoken language are generated and fixated by the written language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beginnings of the Wallachian mediaeval state remain an unwritten page in mediaeval history. The absence of relevant documents apt to set a chronology, to confirm the moment that the first voivode, Basarab I, came into power, prompted the Romanian researchers to formulate viewpoints which could only be partially accepted in the scientific world. Our contribution is to try and arrange the facts logically so as to unravel the complicated file of the Romanian state genesis. In approaching the moment, two aspects of the research must be considered. The first refers to identifying, as accurately as possible, the first Wallachian voivode, which is necessary to formulate general considerations on the period during which he might have assumed power in the sub-Carpathian territories. The other aspect has to do with the entire external political context, with the moment of maximum expansion of the Golden Horde Khanate, under Nogai’s command, when the area was probably ruled by an intercessor of the fierce Tatar prince. The respite following Nogai’s assassination marked the beginning of the unification process south of the Carpathians, which we do not exactly know whether it was initiated under voivode Basarab or it was just completed by him. The dynastic crisis of Hungary, along with the Transylvanian attempts to break away from its trusteeship, also favoured the process of territorial unification south of the Carpathians. Therefore, even though Wallachia and its leader Basarab I were first mentioned in a 1324 diploma, we may assume that the first Romanian mediaeval state was already formed at the beginning of the third decade of the 14th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of the 19th century, the town of Valašské Meziříčí began fast development. This process was apparent particularly in cultural and social spheres. Many clubs and societies as well as schools were established, and, amongst others, also a museum. A lawyer, JUDr. Alois Mikyška, who moved to the region of Wallachia from Prague in 1863, often initiated establishment of these ventures. It was also he, who instigated establishment of the local Museum Society (18th January 1884). This society, headed by Mikyška, then organised the museum and its collections. Attention is therefore focused on the running of the institution, key leading figures and their conception of the museum activities. Out of this issues an effort to clarify the role of a museum in a small town, which Valašské Meziříčí undoubtedly was, at the turn of the 20th century. From the available documents it is possible to trace the political dimension of establishing the museum with regard to the personality of JuDr. Mikyška. The Museum and the Museum Society, however, represented mainly an educational and public enlightenment institution, into which researchers from the whole region, who fulfilled an accumulation and monumental roles, concentrated. From this point of view, it is necessary to emphasise the personality of Eduard Domluvil. Through its projects and activities, the Museum created and reinforced the identity of local region and its inhabitants. This was also projected into the name of the museum - Museum of Wallachia in Valašské Meziříčí. Conclusions of this article may, in the future, serve as a certain comparison to establish whether the same characteristics could be also ascribed to other museums established at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relations between Wallachia and Moldavia were re-evaluated in the last decades. The old paradigm which underlined the similar interests and the common fight against the Ottoman threat was replaced by a more complex picture which emphasizes the divergent political goals and actions of the two realms. The present paper focuses on several episodes from the reign of Stephen the Great of Moldavia, and his first successors (Bogdan III and Stephen the Younger). It seems that for all of the aforementioned princes the commercial centre of Brăila played an important role in the relations with Wallachia as the town suffered serious blows from the Moldavian army during the reigns of Stephen the Great and Bogdan III. In some other occasions Brăila was involved in the struggle for the Wallachian throne and at least two Wallachian pretenders looked for Brăila countrymen's support in their fight for the crown. Along with a political role, which deserves further research, the town was one of the most important economic centres of the Lower Danube, a function which became even more important after the conquest of Kilia and Moncastro by the Ottomans in 1484. However, the economic growth of the city and its hinterland was severely affected by a continuous political and military tension between Wallachia and Moldavia and eventually compelled the Porte to take the city under direct control putting an end to the Moldo-Wallachian competition for the control of the Lower Danube. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Udriște Năsturel was the second chancellor during all of Matei Basarab's ruling. The testimonial evidence reveals that Udriște was a man with extraordinary culture and due to him, the role of the second chancellor gets a new, more powerful meaning. He was Matei Basarab's intimate and most trusted adviser.. Udriște Năsturel had important contributions in both cultural and political activities of that epoch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the existence of some regulating documents, called capitulations, concerning the relations on various plans, between the Romanian Country, Moldavia and the Ottoman Empire was known, the first one of these diplomatic documents, that have been operational over time, was discovered only in 1974. It was an act that had been granted to Mihnea Turkished, in the year 1585. This important discovery has been completed, with others that had the same purpose. In fact, they were some diplomatic documents, with the role of Treaty, which has regulated quite explicitly, the status of the two Romanian principalities, in relations with the suzerain power. The most important fact of their contents was the recognition of the internal autonomy of principalities and a certain degree of freedom, in relations outside the borders. The price was that Romanian countries paid was ,however, to never become hostile to Ottoman interests, integrating in the Ottoman foreign policy and paying an annual tribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on geographical distribution of the emigration oriented to Walachia and Moldova in the South-Danubian region in 15-17th centuries, which was established based on vast prosopographic and anthroponymic research. It shows that contrary to the long-lasting historiographic prejudices, the waves of South Slavic emigration did not stopped flowing to the north of the Danube after the disappearance of the old Balkan nobility, particularly Serbian, which was overshadowed during the first half of the 16th century. The research also points out that immigration commonly called "Greek" came from relatively close South-Danubian regions; meaning that the area of origin of immigrants rarely exceeded Macedonia on the East and Thessaly on the South. The survey data reveal a high concentration of migrants from Epirus and its surroundings. The Levantine area (Aegean and Ionian Islands) and that of Constantinople are much less represented compared to the Greek mainland. The geographical distribution of migrants’ homeland areas perfectly matches the distribution of religious donations (princely and private) coming from Wallachia and Moldova for South-Danubian religious institutions in that period, which confirms the results of the survey. It also corresponds to the geography of the places in which the Christian population enjoyed administrative and judicial autonomy from the Ottomans, which must have given to the population (specially single men) a certain freedom of movement within the Ottoman Empire and beyond its limits, including dependent North-Danubian provinces of the Porte. Among those who enjoyed such privileges there were numerous communities governed by the old Wallachian customary law (jus valachicum), some of them attached to the Greek-speaking Orthodoxy and others to Slavonic language one. Henceforth, it is justified to assume that a large number of Ottoman dependants settled Wallachia and Moldavia were Vlachs (known, particularly, for expansion of their trade networks to major cities of the Empire Habsburg, in the 18th century). All mentioned geographical correlations lead to the conclusion that we are dealing with migrants from areas where multilingualism was the order of the day and consequently they had to have shared appurtenance to several collectivities (spatial and linguistic, or cultural, generally speaking). This finding opens new avenues for research and interpretation of social representations of collective cultural differences and behavioral identity of the individuals at the time much before the political principle of peoples’ sovereignty.

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The article takes at task the Romanian historiography of metrology for positing the notion of standard measures before demonstrating their existence and before discussing the process of standardization. Contrary to such an approach, a contextual reading of the available evidence shows that the first efforts to standardize measures were late and that several variants of the same measure -- I chose for exemplification the bushel -- persisted long after the decreeing of the standard. In the end it is suggested that the study of weights and measures from the perspective of state- and market-formation is more profitable than the search for metric equivalents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of the continuity of old Romanian translations, from Palia (1582) to the Bible of Bucharest, has not been cleared yet. Based on an integral comparison of the texts, studied through an adequate humanistic methodology, the author proves that the Bible from 1688 uses only sporadically Palia's experience with the translation, through the revisers of Nicolae Milescu's protograph; on the whole, it is a new translation, not inscribed in a certain tradition of religious prints. The peculiarities in content of the Palia, nonexistent in any of the other Orthodox religious texts, are due to the translation from a Protestant Hungarian Bible. Thus, in Palia one can find an abundance of calques, regional and archaic elements, hence it cannot be considered a textological or linguistic model for the readers in Wallachia, but it has offered solutions for translation which have been used, to some extent, by the 17th century translators. To conclude, as a result of the comparison of the Palia to the two Bible manuscripts, all the common lexical concordances represent unique solutions for translation, thus confirming Virgil Candrea's viewpoint [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper aims to investigate the pious endowment (vakif) established by Nikolas Mavrogenis, an Ottoman zimmi, who through appropriate patronage networks in Istanbul managed to be appointed dragoman of the Ottoman fleet and, later, voyvoda of Wallachia by the end of the eighteenth century. The paper focuses on the content of the endowment deed, which followed the principles of Islamic law, as well as on the confiscation of the endowed property as a result of the execution of Mavrogenis in 1790. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author present the rivalry of the mouths of Danube market and the south Russian hinterland. The Russo-Turkish treaty of Adrianople (1829) marked the beginnings of a new era in the history of the Romanians, opening significant perspectives of political, institutional or national development, although Russia's status as protector of Wallachia and Moldavia overshadowed these prospects. The Danube River was the most appropriate artery for connect the Romanian market with central Europe, Black Sea and the Mediterranean markets. The Sulina channel was still the only way of access of commercial ships to and from the Danubian ports. Two cities, Galati in Moldavia and Braila in Wallachia, personify the interests and hopes of the principalities regarding the Danube. These ports are the result of the Romanian and British economic policies of this era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Innovative, enlightened and influenced by the moderate yet elitist Liberalism of the early 19th century, the Organic Regulations of Wallachia and Moldavia (fundamental laws in vigour from 1834 to 1856) are still in need to be thoroughly understood. Despite representing one of the most important steps in Romania's Europeanisation process, by modernising State and society, their critics focused on the Russian influence and seem to have overlooked the political and diplomatic context that shaped the institutional and legislative outcome of the Regulations, ultimately meant to create stability and prosperity in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few cities meant so much to the history of Moldavia and Wallachia like the city of Lviv, now in present Ukraine. Often overlooked, it represented am important centre for the two Romanian Principalities, both commercially and politically. The article below details some of the most important episodes that shaped the history of the two -- and the still visible signs of Romanian presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from a November 13-15, 2014 conference in Oldenburg, Germany hosted by the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa historical society of Germans in Eastern Europe on the role of religious identity and memorial culture in fostering sectarian conflict in early modern Europe. Topics of presentations delivered included the history of the Reformation in Ruthenia, Czech Republic, Wallachia, Czech Republic, and Moldova in the 16th and 17th centuries, regional differences in the treatment of icons in Silesian and Hungarian churches, and the religious identities of Huguenot diaspora.

The Swedish historian Johann Erich Thunmarm (1746-1778), professor at the Halle University, was the first to manifest interest to the origins of the East European peoples. In his Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der östlichen europäischen Völker, he claimed a Cuman origin of the Bessaraba dynasty of Walachia as well as of the lords of Carbona (Southern Dobroudja), statements supported even nowadays by scholars like O. Pritsak and I. Vasary. This paper proves that Thunmann’s assertions are based on the Polish chronicles concerning the events of the mid-thirteenth century and on the Greek memoirs of John Kantakouzenos. Bessarabia, the country between the rivers Prut and Dniester and the Black Sea, was not the fatherland of the Bessaraba dynasty of Wallachia, but a province conquered by the Romanians on the Mongols in the last third of the 14th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Liber Chronicarum is a true encyclopaedia that includes history, philology, geography, hagiography and martyrology, ecumenical councils, religious sects and orders, biographies of those who distinguished themselves on the stage of history since the beginning of the world until the times when the book was completed. For most towns, lands, or characters-either biblical or historical-a limited number of templates was employed (645 woodcut blocks for 1809 images), consequently each block was reproduced several times. An instance of pattern employment was the repetition of the same image used to represent Hungary, Wallachia, Prussia and Saxony at a few pages distance in the text taken form pope Pius II's work, Aeneas Silvius in Europam, Memmingen, 1440. In the 23 rows of the text accompanying the picture called "Walachia" there are several pieces of information on the geographical position of the country and her neighbors, and it is stated that the language spoken by the "Vlachs" has Latin roots and it underwent changes. Updating the information, the text mentions that there are two rival parties in Wallachia, "Dăneştii" and "Drăculeştii", that their enmity has nefarious consequences within the context of the struggle against the Turks, as well as the part played by Iancu of Hunedoara in the victories gained in this struggle. The latter is also mentioned when Hungary is described, particularly in the part on Transylvania, which the text notes that was once inhabited by Dacians; Iancu of Hunedoara's Romanian origin, his valiance and his many battles against the Turks are mentioned here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study briefly presents the role played by the boyar Andrei Corcodel in Moldavia's and Wallachia's political life during the second half of the 16th century, as a result of his important positions within the princely council and of his landed estates gathered throughout his life, which represented his wealth and power. The study refers to his landed estates, the way they were acquired and their geographical distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Catholic communities in the 18th century Wallachia although belonging to the same denomination are diverse by language, ethnic origin and historical evolution. The oldest community was founded in Câmpulung in the second half of the 13th century by Transylvanian Saxons. At the beginning of the 17th century the Saxons lost their mother tongue and adopted the Romanian as colloquial language. Other communities were founded by Catholic Bulgarians who crossed the Danube in 1688, after the defeat of their rebellion by the Ottomans. The refugees came from four market-towns of north-western Bulgaria: Čiprovci, Kopilovci, Železna and Klisura. The Paulicians, a distinct group of Catholics from Bulgaria, settled north of the Danube during the 17th and 18th centuries. The homeland of this group was the Nikopolis region. Their ancestors, adherents of a medieval heresy, had been converted by Franciscans friars. Bucharest, the capital city of Wallachia, housed a composite Catholic community of distinct origins, which came into being during the last quarter of the 17th century. In this community the Catholic Armenians became predominant by the mid-18th century. The main object of our study is the history of the Catholic communities in a predominant Orthodox country under Ottoman rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]