Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii: structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII)
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | Romanian |
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Bucureşti
cIMeC
2009
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| Online Access: | Inhaltsverzeichnis Abstract |
| Physical Description: | 322 S. Ill. |
| ISBN: | 9789737930279 |
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Record in the Search Index
| _version_ | 1804141085101916160 |
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| adam_text | CUPRINS
Introducere
...............................................................................................................3
Sate medievale dispărute. Stadiul cercetărilor în Europa
........................................5
I.
Geneza structurilor sociale ale ţărănimii. Structuri de rudenie
.............................8
I.
1.
Structuri
premedievale
şi medievale
.............................................................8
I.
La. Structuri clanale. Fratrii=Jumătăţi. Triburi
............................................9
I.
1.
b. Structuri teritoriale. Rudenia
................................................................17
I.
1.
с
Structura pe clase. Regimul de proprietate
...........................................24
I.
2.
Obştea sătească
-
verigă de legătură. Punct de plecare al istoriei medievale.
............................................................................................................................30
I.
2.
a. Obştea (triburi şi sate) în sud-estul Europei
.........................................38
I.
3.
Satele medievale româneşti. Constatări statistice şi consideraţii istorice
asupra satelor medievale dispărute
.....................................................................43
I.
3.
a. Satele ţării româneşti în lumina izvoarelor scrise. Date statistice
generale
...........................................................................................................50
I.
3.
b. Toponimia rurală medievală
................................................................53
I.
3.
с
Satele dispărute. Comparaţii numerice între Ţările Române
...............56
I.
4.
Jumătăţi de sat
.............................................................................................58
L
4.
a. Liste nominative cu jumătăţi de sate menţionate în izvoare. Cine
estimative asupra secolelor XIII, XIV,
XV
.....................................................58
I.
4.
b. Nomenclatura jumătăţilor. Semnificaţii generale
................................64
II.
Apariţia cnezilor şi juzilor
.................................................................................72
1
IL
1.
Teorii
şi ipoteze privind apariţia cneazului şi judelui înainte de izvoarele
documentare
.......................................................................................................77
II.
2.
Cneaz şi jude în Transilvania şi Banat de la primele ştiri documentare până
în secolul XVIII
..................................................................................................79
II.
3.
Cneaz şi jude în Ţara Românească şi Moldova, de la primele ştiri
documentare până în secolul XVIII
...................................................................92
II.
4.
Migratorii şi rolul lor în evoluţia structurilor sociale româneşti. Raporturi
şi legături clientelare între migratori şi autohtoni. Coloniştii
............................98
III. Regimul juridic apusean şi cel răsăritean referitor la starea ţărănimii
..........108
III.
1.
Ţărănimea în Apusul Europei
................................................................109
Ш.
2.
Ţărănimea în Răsăritul Europei. Bizanţul
..............................................124
III.
3.
Ţărănimea în Ţările Române
..................................................................133
IV.
Dreptul românesc. Evoluţia instituţiilor juridice medievale româneşti
.........162
V.
Constituirea marelui domeniu feudal şi boieresc. Rolul statului
....................178
V.
1.
Ţara Românească şi Moldova
.................................................................181
V.2. Transilvania
..............................................................................................199
V.
3.
Bizanţul
...................................................................................................204
V.
4.
Occidentul
...............................................................................................207
Concluzii
.............................................................................................................217
Anexa
1.
Codul
С
zakonik
-ui) ţarului sârb Ştefan
Dušan
...................................222
Summary.............................................................................................................
245
Abrevieri
..............................................................................................................268
Bibliografie
..........................................................................................................269
Indice general
......................................................................................................288
Ilustraţii
...............................................................................................................303
SUMMARY
THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES OF THE PEASANTRY KINSHIP
STRUCTURE. (10th
-
18th CENTURIES)
INTRODUCTION
The following work represents a comparative history study on the social
structures of European peasantry between 10th
-
18th centuries, focusing on
property and kinship systems. After
1989,
no such comparative study whas
conducted, namely one attempting to achieve a synthesis, a general perspective on
the social conditions of peasantry.
First I tackled the issue of property that over the
historiographie
study
underwent several phases, some of them rather controversial. I have tried to clear
out and point the unbreakable link between peasantry and property.
Second, it was important to look into the origins and evolution of the
princely institution whose existence has long pertained to the free life of village
communities and their unions, to the fight of village communities to maintain the
free nature of land property. Upon analyzing this issue one may contribute to a
possible comparative study of the institutions and social structures of Medieval
Europe.
Last but not least, I tackled the kinship systems, blood relations being the
most important of all kinship forms. Blood relations become essential elements
structuring human groups and property, while determining solidarity within the
group and indicating both the rights and obligations of each member. The farther
we go back to the past, the more societies seem to take into account blood
relations, the latter playing a central role in the social thought of past ages.
As society modernizes, kinship is no longer a blood relation, but a social
fact, becoming an administrative kinship, an alliance system
(
acceding to the
status of brother , godfather , court son-in-law etc.) likely to meet the new
necessities (defense, subsistence etc.). The period of time covered is that when
historical information
-
drawn from the past records
-
intertwine with direct
observation. The similarities between the groups of various origin are numerous;
the differences are not few either.
It is sure that for some aspects the present work has not fund definitive
solutions; the unequal knowledge of Balkan regions has prevented me from
conducting a satisfactory comparative presentation in all regards.
245
Therefore, the subject matter is far from getting exhaustive. I have left
aside the aspects requiring deeper studies, regarding the organization of villages
or of other large coordinates of village life, especially the habitat or religion.
But as Ami
Boue
wrote, it is impossible for us to have been deceived
sometimes or not to have misunderstood some of the information we received: but
if we pretended to publish only perfect things, life would be most often too short
and many useful observations would remains unknown because of those that we
did not know how to deepen enough. Other travelers will correct or will confirm
our stories; progress of knowledge requires that .
STAGE OF RESEARCHERS IN EUROPE. VANISHED MEDIAEVAL
VILLAGES.
The phenomenon of ravaging the mediaeval villages proved to be a topic
preferred in contemporary historiography. To better understand the issue of
village disappearance in the Romanian Countries, it is necessary to integrate it
into a general process found in mediaeval Europe (especially the 14th
-
15th
centuries).
In France, the phenomenon of ravaging the villages can be studied on the
basis of numerous sources, the main one being
L état de feux
(1328) -
tackled by
Ferdinand Lot.
In England, a review tackling a vast list of villages vanished until the 12th
century, is that by Professor Maurice W. Beresford, entitled The Lost Villages of
England . A similar situation can be found in Germany. In Spain, the main source of
information is the 16th century.
As for Italy, in
Campagna Romana,
Tuscany, Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily,
over
1000
villages vanished during the 14th
-
15th centuries. The 16th century
represents, for the Greek territory, the culminating point of the ravaging process:
460
settlements.
On Bulgaria we lack the news on the vanished villages, and in the former
Yugoslavia,
164
abandoned villages are mentioned.
In Hungary the villages that disappeared after
1400
account for about one
hundred.
m
the Check Republic and Slovakia: completely vanished villages until the
16th century
-
over eight hundred.
As for the Russian villages, in northwest Russia we have a total of
427
settlements. The numerical decrease was triggered by biological, geographical,
political phenomena, and by the new transformations in the economic and social
structure of the society.
246
I. GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES OF THE PEASANTRY
KINSHIP STRUCTURES.
1.1.
PREMEDIAEVAL AND MEDIAEVAL STRUCTURES
The issue of our old social organization and its evolution has often been
tackled by Romanian historiography. However, the results are far from being
definitive; seemingly, there are two main causes hindering the researches. On the
one hand, we have less historical information at our disposal than other countries
both quantitatively and qualitatively. On the other hand, the ethnographic
information available has not been used well enough.
The historical evolution must have followed two paths: the process of social
organization under the form of tribe unions went hand in hand with a reverse
social process, namely the breaking up of the tribe down to forms of ever more
simple families. We begin with the clan, tribe, kindred, reaching the
fratria
and
halves, as main forms of social structures.
I.I.a. CLANNISH STRUCTURES. FRATRIAE
=
HALVES. TRIBES.
Regarding the genesis of the clan there is the question of the relationship
between the large, extended family and the clan. The large family offers a model
of pyramidal structure, a model encountered both with the clan and the kindred,
where we have kinship relations; in a clan with a common ancestor, the internal
cohesion of a group is very important and is apparent in the specific common
ceremony aspects and a military organization. The clan operates as an
organizational unity of society.
Next to the clan issue, the issue of the tribe is a complex one. The tribe has
the role of a tactical and military unity, of an economic administrative
organization; with a culture of its own and a religious identity of its own.
The tribes are divided into curias and kindreds {curia
=
fratria
=
half).
The tribes are divided into two fratriae
=
halves, subdivided in their turn into
several clans. Between the clan and the tribe,
fratria or
half is another form of
social organization.
The half structure is wider than the clan because it appears in the
societies without a kinship system.
The subdivisions of the Romanian village, the halves have the nature of a
structural unity (the mediaeval settlements of
Coconi, Bucov-Ploieşti, Garvăn-
Dinogetia,
Păcuiul lui Soare,
etc.).
247
LI.b.
TERRITORIAL STRUCTURES. KINSHIP
The kinship system is a system for setting a society into an order and
hierarchy, by using kinship as a criterion, from the father s side, the mother s side
or both. Kinship, a cultural fact, rests upon a biological factor. In traditional
societies, the kinship relationships are developed into a kinship system.
Kinship
-
hereditary transmission
-
means bloodline that may be followed
from two sides: the father s and the mother s line ( we are of the same stock , a
type of diffuse kin). The degree of kinship is important because: the taboo of
incest, the rales of marriage and inheritance. The kinship system has two
functions: inheriting (hence, belonging to a community) and getting married.
Radu
Rosetti used to lay at the foundation of the community the family, not the
territory.
The community of the village is made up of a single group of related local
families and evolved to a community made up of several groups of relatives, in
their turn, considered to be related. The groups recognize a common old man ,
that is the biological and legal author of the whole group.
The related groups involve several phenomena: a) a biological
phenomenon: consanguinity; b) a social phenomenon; c) a phenomenon of social
conscience; d) a legal phenomenon. Except for the mother
-
offspring relationship,
the rest of the family relations are social , by no means biological . Kinship is a
much more abstract link than cohabitation. Marc Bloch used to analyze the
similarity of legal solidarity terms (mobilization for wars, holding common
property rights).
I.I.e. STRUCTURE BY CLASSES. PROPERTY STATE
The social stratification based on kinship does not exhaust all the
possibilities of structuring the society. There used to be also another type of
subdivision of the community: the social classes.
The concept of social class encompasses a wide area: any division of
society that is not based on the kinship system, but starts from objective criteria, is
a division by classes. According to the classes, the integration is performed on the
basis of several objective criteria: age, gender, fortune. A special role, when it
comes to the issue of the social classes, is played by the society by ranks.
1.2.
VILLAGE COMMUNITY
-
A LINK. STARTING POINT OF MEDIAEVAL
HISTORY.
Undoubtedly, the grounds on which we should rest our analysis of the
structure of peasantry can be found in that form of social organization once
248
represented by the village community. The village community made possible the
connection on an upper level between the tribal organization and the early forms
of state organization: duchies, principalities and voivodeships, documented in the
mediaeval sources between the
10
and the
13*
centuries. They used to be
founded on territorial communities.
Nicolae lorga called these unions of communities popular
romanii .
From
these popular
romanii
we pass to the state formations . The popular
romanii
are
considered to be village communities of the Roman-Byzantine type.
In the Romanian sources we encounter a special term
-
the joint village
-,
by which we define the community as such, as it used to be called by the Germans
-
marca,
or with the Slavs
-
verv,
mir.
The similarity of the Romanian community
with the rural Byzantine commune allows us to name the organization existing on
our territory
-
Romanian community of the Byzantine type.
The peasant life in the
Romanii
meant free villages led by a gathering of
villagers formed by old men. Both in Moldavia and in Wallachia, the members of
the village community called themselves
vecini
-
neighbours, after the Latin term
of vicinus. In Moldavia also the term
sused
was common.
Besides these two terms there is also another one of Slav origin
megiaş.
Instead of community, they used to say group, stock, people, etc. each of them
with different meanings. In Wallachia, the most common term defining the free
peasants organized in communities is that of
moşneni,
in Moldavia is that of
răzeş.
1.2.a.
COMMUNITY (TRIBES AND VILLAGES) IN SOUTHEASTERN
EUROPE
In the Balkan Peninsula, until the early 20th century, the last European
tribal region was preserved: populations of Albanian, Slav and Romanesque
languages. The Albanians name their smallest social unit, the homestead, by
house
-
shtëpi
or shpi. As regards the structures of the Slavs in the south, then-
homestead is known under the name of
zadruga.
Next to
zadruga
we find
-
družina, kupcina, kuca zadružna, velika
киса,
skupcina.
1.3.
ROMANIAN MEDIAEVAL VILLAGES. STATISTICAL FINDINGS AND
HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE VANISHED MEDIAEVAL
VILLAGES
If we wish to have the certainty that in the
history of world cultures we can bring
something valuable, we have no other choice
but to accept the idea that our stock exists
249
culturally above all due to the reality of the
village Henri H.
Stahl
The theme of the mediaeval village, as an object of study, is not new in
historical science in this country, many aspects of rural life in the Middle Ages
have been tackled in various works. The term of village derives from the Latin
satus
-
or the Albanian
ßat, in
its turn, derived from the Latin fossatum? The
linguist Vasile Bogrea considers that fossatum -fosse, is the key to the historical
interpretation.
1.3.a. WALLACHIAN
VILLAGES IN THE LIGHT OF WRITTEN SOURCES.
GENERAL STATISTICAL DATA
The Romanian villages, steeply rising on a
slope, going deep down into a precipice or
spreading on a valley like sheep, seemingly
emerged out of the capricious inspiration of
nature in the middle of which they lie
Lucian
Blaga
In the early Romanian Middle Ages the village and free peasantry
prevailed. Romanian mediaeval village used to be a community of inhabitants
descending from the same old man , being of the same blood with them. The
leadership of this community used to lie in the hands of its representatives, the
chieftains of the families forming it, good old men .
The genesis and evolution of the Romanian village has been a constant
concern of Romanian historiography. Statistics on the villages and towns in
Wallachia, for a period up to
1500,
was carried out by the historian Ion
Donat.
The documents after
1500
run as follows:
A. Villages existing to this day preserving the old name:
Total
= 342 (52.5%)
B. Villages and names of vanished villages (likely locations):
Total
= 211(47.5%)
To these identified settlements we have to add up the group of settlements
which in the mediaeval documents are presented as village lands:
Village lands:
13
С
Villages and unidentified village lands. Total
= 87.
Overall
= 553+13+87=653.
These figures cannot have an absolute value, but an orientating one.
250
I,3.b. MEDIAEVAL RURAL TOPONYMY
The toponymy can be considered to be the unwritten history of a people. In
many cases the places were given the name of a founder, village owner or of
another character who played a role in the history of the village. As regards the
emergence of the Romanian toponymy we can find several groups:
1.
name describing the position, aspect, another peculiarity of the place;
2.
name originating in various facts from social life;
3.
name suggesting a certain attitude or spiritual feature.
There are four categories of toponymy: topographic, social, historical and
psychological.
I.3.C. VANISHED VILLAGES. NUMERICAL COMPARISONS BETWEEN
THE ROMANIAN COUNTRIES.
Between
1301
and
1350
there are
1484
mentions of villages,
482
(32.5%0
of which are vanished villages: between
1351
and
1400,
the mentions reach
1288,
662 (51.5%)
of which represent the vanished villages. Of the total of
3900
settlements documented up to
1400,
over
1500 (40%)
are rural settlements that
disappear gradually in Transylvania. At least
800
villages were also in Moldavia;
25%
of these villages disappear. The numerical decrease in mediaeval villages
was caused by the three conditions of the Middle Ages: famine, epidemics, and
wars.
1.4.
VILLAGE HALVES.
U.a.
NOMINATIVE LISTS WITH THE VILLAGE HALVES MENTIONED IN
SOURCES; ESTIMATIVE FIGURES ON THE 13th, 14th AND 15th
CENTURIES.
I. Wallachia.
56
halves.
П.
Moldavia.
76
halves
III. Transylvania.
5
halves
Therefore,
137
halves in the Romanian Countries. However, it should be
mentioned that these are estimative figures. There are many documents for
Transylvania and for Moldavia that have not yet been published.
I.4.b. NOMENCLATURE OF THE HALVES. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE
Following the list with the village halves, we may draw interpretations linking
their names to their economic, social, political, legal, and historical importance.
251
They seem to be a definite territorial division of the villages, and less a
social function. The village halves often bear the name of upper part and lower
part , west part and east part . Usually the halves do not refer only to the
village part, but also to the field one.
II. EMERGENCE OF PRINCES AND JUDGES
The institutions of the princes and the judges have raised many questions over
the centuries. The most frequent ones relate especially to their social and political
and legal status. We do not witness a military competition with the West, but
something else, coming from earlier times, probably the 4th
-
5th centuries.
The term of cnez (prince), with its equivalences of
cneaz
and
chinez,
can
be found denominating old organizations in Wallachia, Moldavia, Serbia, Poland
and Hungary. Everywhere, in these countries, we find names of places deriving
from the term of cnez. The elite of Romanian society, after the 9th century, is
mentioned under various names: dukes, voievodes, judges, cnezi (princes),
jupani,
maiores
terrae,
potentes.
The most frequent name is that of juzi (judges) coming
from the Latin iudices or cnez, kenezii, an old German name. Taken over through
a Slav connection, the Latin term
jude
was contaminated by the contacts with the
Slavs.
In Wallachia and Transylvania the term of
jude
must have been preserved,
but it designates a mayor of the village, a member of a court of justice, a
prominent figure of the nobility. In Transylvania, some of the princes built
Orthodox places of worship, calling themselves
jupani,
and their wives jupanite
(votive pictures from the 14th
-
15th centuries). In
Pannonia
as early as in
1055
a
kenez is mentioned, of Romanian stock, as resulted from the existence in
1093
of
a magna
villa keneza . Topical mentions of
chinezi
and chinezate can be found
also in the lands of the
Banat
-
in
Caraş-Severin
Janos
-
kenez
-falva
(1389).
In
the
Maramureş
beyond the Tisza river, we can find as a topical name among other
Romanian topical denominations a kenez-havaza in
1373.
In the Balkan Peninsula or in the territories contiguous to Kiev we find a
series of other such mentions. The anonymous secretary of King
Bela
mentions
chineji and chinezate in the fights waged by the Hungarians against Duke Glad. In
Podolia, as early as in
1150,
the Country of the Bolochoveni is mentioned, and
in
1231 - 1235,
knazi bolohoveni , tributary to the Haliciu , give help to King
Bela. In
Serbia we find by th end of the 12th century, Romanian princely
organizations. Rogerius in his Carmen
Miserabile
points to the princes the
population obeys as the heads of the Romanian population in
Bihor.
In the chinezat organization, kenezatus , we can also find the Romanian
olati in Little Wallachia
(Oltenia)
in the diploma from 2nd of June
1247
of King
Bela
IV,
a document conceding the territory of
Severin
and the territory of
Cumana to the Order of the Hospitable Knights in Jerusalem. A sentence in the
252
1247
diploma,
referring to Litovoi s principality and Seneslau s Country, point to
their emergence before the Hungarian rale in the hands of the Romanians: terra
(kenezatus).
.
.quam olatis relinquimus prout hactenus tenuerant . The principality-
country emerges during the first years of the 13th century in the Hungarian
kingdom and that of the sons of Prince
Bela .
The diploma of John s Knights mentions an extremely complex political
reality in Little Wallachia:
Severin
Country made up of two principalities and a
voivodate. Făgăraş
Country is Terra Blachoram in
1222.
The term of cnez, during
the 15th century, evens the
Făgăraş
boyars,
judges of some villages or judges of
Făgăraş
Country and the princes of the Romanian villages on the nobles domains.
Haţeg
Country is full of principalities.
The sizes of these principalities should be understood in terms of estates
-
possessions.
Haţeg
Country comprises many principalities:
Râu de Mori, Densuş,
Râul Alb, Streisângeorgiu,
Cerna etc.
One of the most important and frequently
documented from the
1
1th century is
Maramureş
Country.
The
Maramureş
princes received a series of diplomas with princely rights.
Even one of the teachers at
Sigismund
s
court had been
a Maramureş
Romanian,
Stephen of Bilke, the nephew of Romanian prince
Crăciun
(Karachon Valahus),
whose sons King Louis the Great of Hungary are strengthened in
1350
in their
hereditary right of cheneziat (kenezyatus).
П.1.
THEORIES AND HYPOTHESES REGARDING THE EMERGENCE OF
THE PRINCE AND JUDGE BEFORE THE DOCUMENTARY SOURCES
Following the evolution of the institution of the princes in Wallachia, it is
considered that it is closely related to the community. The main theory regarding
the leadership of the village communities with the Romanians belongs to
Radu
Rosetu
who, in short, sets forth: free villages, communities, they had chosen
leaders, called princes or judges.
Rosetti makes the difference between princes and judges: both of them are
шгаі
magistrates, but the princes used to rule from father to son due to an old right
of inheritance, while the judges were simple chosen rural magistrates.
П.2.
PRINCE AND JUDGE IN TRANSYLVANIA AND
BANAT,
FROM THE
FIRST DOCUMENTARY DATA UNTIL THE 18th CENTURY.
The Romanian word cnez with the variant
cneaz
has been preserved in the
popular language, in
Banat,
under the form of
chinez,
where it meant village
mayor; in the past the term had two special forms: village judge and free peasant.
As regards the evolution of the princely institution, it seems that the Slav word
overlapped the Romanian word.
253
During the 13th century, the principality, however, developed in the
Romanian Countries in different conditions, the same as the western similar
institutions, especially in Hungary.
In the
Făgăraş
area, extended to the southeast of Transylvania up to Barsa
Country,
a voivodate
called Terra Blachorum was established, mentioned after its
foundation, during the 13th century and attested archaeologically by the
excavations at
Breaza
and later at Comana, both fortresses having the destination
of Romanian princely fortifications. The principalities and voivodates in
Transylvania have been preserved until late in the Middle Ages, and ruled
according to the old Romanian right, Jus valachicum.
During the reign of Charles Robert of
Anjou,
in
1326,
the king gives to
Stanislaus, kenezius
(chinez)
from
Maramureş,
for his services, terram Zurduky
iure perpetue ac
hereditary possidentam , freed from any jurisdiction and any
taxes. The possessions he had until then under nomine keneziatus and
administered nomine
regio , are
now his
perpetuo et irrevocabiliter .
The
ennobling of the Romanian princes continues also under Louis I, and
Sigismund.
During the 13th century, we encounter Romanians nobles, different from
the class of noble chineji who, like them, used to form the rural nobility (see the
Dragoşeşti).
During the 15th century, valachi nobiles are numerous in
Banat
and
Hunedoara.
By turning noble, some of them convert to Catholicism and become
Hungarians, in order to keep their estates:
Dragfï,
from Drag,
Banfi
from Ban,
Kendeffi from
Cândea,
holding high positions in the rulers of the kingdom.
II.3. PRINCE AND JUDGE IN MOLDAVIA AND WALLACHIA, FROM THE
FIRST DOCUMENTARY DATA UNTIL THE 18th CENTURY.
In the Romanian Principalities the situation was different. The princely
institution as such is mentioned as late as in the 15th century documents. loan
Bogdan
considered that in Moldavia and Wallachia the princes are only village
judges, for the following reasons: the name
jude
in Moldavia,
judec
in Wallachia.
In Wallachia, the leaders of the communities appear by the name of
judges. During the 17th century the two names appear frequently: cnezi (princes)
and
judeci
(judges) with the mention of free peasants. In Wallachia, the cnezi and
judeci
began to be replaced by
pârcălabi
as early as in the first half of the 16th
century. From the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century, the words
cneaz, judec,
can be found in Wallachian documents, meaning free peasant or
peasant with estate, opposed to non-free peasant. In the Slavonic and Romanian
documents they are called cnezi,
judeci, megieşi sau moşneni.
Therefore,
cneaz
is the free peasant with his own land,
vecin
is the
submitted peasant, without his own land. The diploma of John s knights confirms,
within certain social and political formations, found in a local feudal development
254
process, the presence of the cnezi called lords of the lands . When the
boyars
become land owners, the process of rumanization starts; by the end of the 16th
century, the documents mention free villages that are sold to the strong
boyars,
turning Rumanian .
These villages receive the name of princely villages . In Moldavia, the
situation is new, due to the links to the Slav voivodates in the north, but especially
to the Tatar rale. Moldavia is conquered again by the
Maramureş
armies, first
employed by the Hungarian state, later rebel and autonomous. Here we have
special forms of internal organization, the so-called republics: Vrancea,
Câmpulung, Tigheci.
II.
4.
MIGRANTS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE EVOLUTION OF ROMANIAN
SOCIAL STRUCTURES. RELATIONS AND CLIENTAGE AMONG
MIGRANTS AND LOCALS. COLONISTS.
The renowned historian Nicolae Iorga admitted the existence of a
symbiosis among the nomads and the locals. Over our
Romanis
Iorga wrote
-
they could overlap an organization of an imperial nature . The Kumans,
Petchenegs, and the Tatars gave to the locals something of their political system.
Upon the coming of the nomads, the cnez (prince) works with the leaders from
their ranks, meaning that among the locals and the newcomers emerges a modus
vivendi,
resulting in the locals paying compulsory tribute.
Upon the initiative of the Hungarian crown (the Arpadians) in
Transylvania the Szecklers were brought, later the German population was
colonized (peasants and tradesmen). In Transylvania the Szecklers are deployed at
the customs and form a small community if they meet two conditions: converting
to Catholicism and learn Hungarian.
The settling of the Saxons in Transylvania is part of a process of German
colonization in the east that took place during the 10th and 14th centuries.
Chronologically, the Germans were the first important ethnic group that settled in
Transylvania during the Middle Ages. The earliest information on the presence of
the colonists dates to
1103.
III. WESTERN AND EASTERN LEGAL STATUS REGARDING THE
STATE OF PEASANTRY
The research into the legal status of the peasantry and its evolution in the
Romanian Countries gives the opportunity to give a thorough account of an issue
of a more general nature. We bear in mind to tackle, as a whole, the legal status of
peasantry in Eastern and Western Europe, the Byzantine archetype and the French
classic. The notions of feudal and feudality, in our case, bear a more
255
encompassing meaning than apparent from the property regime in the Byzantine
East or the western feudality.
III.
1.
PEASANTRY IN WESTERN EUROPE
The term of Middle Ages
(5^ -
13th centuries), as defining the age and its
dérivâtes:
mediaeval relations, mediaeval structures, etc., is nothing else but an
invention of the cultural trend of humanism, that in its turn, is a Renaissance
manifestation. During the Western Middle Ages there is the distinction of three
essential categories: oratores, bellatores and
imbelle
vulgus.
Therefore, three
social functions, each with its peculiar form of property: the clergy, the knights
and land cultivators.
During the 10th century,
inbelle
vulgus
is replaced by the category of
laboratories. As regards the denomination of the period we have two trends:
-
Marxist historians used for that period the denomination of feudal system,
starting from the denomination of the seigniorial domain feud;
-
L école des Annales
historians proposed the denomination of seigniorial
system considering that the feud represents only a component of the
seigniorial domain, and feudality, as a legal term, designates only a more
restricted organization within which the lord heads a fief that he receives
as a vassal from the lord found on an upper hierarchical rank.
Etymologically, the terms of vassal and vassalage entered the historical
language deriving from the Celtic gwas or gwasaul , meaning servant. In Latin
it became vassus or
vassalus ,
designating a free man in the service of a
dominus, or lord, in exchange for a benefit. This benefit is called also feud, a term
originating in old German,
fehü
meaning animal, and
fehü-od ,
reward in
animals.
The feudal system lies on a means of exploiting and integrating people in what
the French call
seigneurie rurale,
the English manorial system, and the Germans
landsherrschaft. Structurally, the feudal domain used to be divided into seigniorial
reserve and homesteads owned by the peasants.
П.2.
PEASANTRY IN EASTERN EUROPE. THE BYZANTIUM.
The tribes of the Slavs that settled south of the
Sava
river
-
the southern
Slavs
-
were forced into deforesting the areas necessary for practicing agriculture,
as such works cannot be performed only by small families, but, on the contrary,
by large patriarchal families, zadraga. In Serbia, zadraga has been preserved for
longer than in any other Balkan area occupied by the Slavs. In Serbia, by
1220
three social categories emerge:
vlasteli,
big feudal owners; voiniti, small land
owners; uboghie, the poor.
256
The zakonik
of tsar Stephen
Dušan
reads that the poor in villages have to
be sustained by the servants of the tsar, namely they were obliged to make sure
that all the poor have their own plot of land and pay their taxes, otherwise the state
loses. The western Slavs used to populate a vast territory between the Elbe, Oder
and Vistula. The first unifying prince was assisted in his mission by troops called
drajine, led by a military aristocracy forming the army.
The eastern Slavs used to populate especially the territory between the lake
limen,
the Oka river and the middle course of the Nipre river. These tribes
underwent a process of social stratification generated by the emergence of some
tribe chieftains, jupani/cnezi, relying on small personal armies, drajine, and, this
way, imposing their authority and laying the foundation of hereditary leaderships.
The Kiev state emerged from the intertwining of the process of social
stratification and the Scandinavian intervention.
The Kiev Russia had a political history comprising three phases, by the
end of which the supreme power brought about in the new state belonged to the
great kneaz (prince) of Kiev, who relied on drajina, divided into the big drujina
-
the
boyars
and the small drujina
-
the prince s guard.
As for the Byzantium, at the origin of the constitutional organization of this
empire, we find, indeed, an ancient tradition. The three factors underlying the
Roman government were the Senate, the people
-
SPQR, to which the epochs of
military anarchy added the army.
In villages, the prevailing free peasantry lives in communities that no longer
depend on the town administration, having their own structure approved by the
agrarian Law, based on communitarian organizational forms. In the border
provinces, along the frontiers, the communities of free peasants, limitanei, and
later stratiotai, benefit from using the soil and from some immunities, in exchange
of the border military service ensuring it. Above the ordinary people in villages
and towns is the clerk and military aristocracy.
The town elite, curialii, have a series of administrative and fiscal functions
providing them with privileges and advantages. The central bureaucracy and its
agents in the territory form a distinct stratum,
optimates,
ordered in a complex
hierarchy by means of honorary ranks, enjoying privileges. Finally, the army
benefiting only from tax exemptions, instead being obliged to fulfill tasks of
defending and fortifying the border, where continue to function the units of
comitatenses, made up largely of mercenaries.
In the Byzantine Empire there was also a social category of poor people,
πενηες
or
πτιχο.
The novellas of the Byzantine emperors from the
10
century
defended the poor, as they made up the main fiscal basis and military force of the
empire. The novella of Emperor
Constantine
VII
mentions that
vlasteli
(rich)
-
dinatoi
-
penetrate the community of the poor and exploit the earth in gift or
inheritance, tyrannize the miserable poor, banish them from their own lands, chase
them out of the land that belongs to them .
257
The novella of Emperor Vasile II from
996
mirrors the process of social
differentiation of the community. Following the same policy of preventing some
from getting rich to the detriment of others, the sovereigns took care to protect the
soldierly goods, as a matter of fact to protect the small owners in general against
their being taken over by the rich and strong.
Pronoiari and stratioti represent two different social strata. While the stratiotii
of the old type belong to the free peasantry class, the pronoiari belong to the
feudal aristocracy class. They are noble large owners for whom the dependent
peasants work and cultivate their land. They are the strong ones dunatoi,
(δυνατοί)
aspire to economic and political hegemony.
HaristiUa
(Χαρίστίκία)
offers us a social and historical category similar to
pronoia,
but fulfilling public functions that used to characterize
pronoia
and the
military goods.
II.3. PEASANTRY IN THE ROMANIAN COUNTRIES.
The Romanian community, as it results from the documents was a social
and economic, political and military organization of free people. The village
community, playing a precise role in ruling over the land where the collective
form mingles with the individual one, represents an economic unit. Both in
Moldavia and Wallachia, the members of the community called themselves
vecini ,
after a word of Latin origin. Besides, also the terms
sused
(in
Moldavia) and
megiaş
(in Wallachia) were used, words of Slav origin.
In Moldavia, for the category of small owners living together on a frontier
the term
răzeş
is used, from the Hungarian
részes,
co-owner, sharer of a frontier.
As regards the origin of
moşneni,
it is considered that they identify with that of
megieş,
coming from the Slav word
mej
da, designating the frontier separating two
possessions, those owning two contiguous lands, respectively.
By examining the documents in the Romanian Countries, we come across
different terms for the denomination of the part of estate: session in
Transylvania,
deniţă
in Wallachia, jirebie in Moldavia. Two important legal
links were the right of protimisis and solidarity. In written Romanian sources in
Slavonic they use a few terms designating the social category bearing the
denomination of poor: sirac and
siromah
in Wallachia and uboghie in Moldavia.
The poor designated by the term of sirac and meaning social category
occupies the last stage of the social scale; after the
boyars
and cnezi (princes). The
poor in Transylvania are defined as paupers in the Latin sources and siromahi
in the Slavonic ones. The agrarian reform of
Constantine
Mavrodordat replaced
serfdom by another form of dependency
-
the
corvée,
resulting in the
disappearance of serfdom and the term of serf (peasant bound to his master s
land), (serfdom
-
the legal condition of the serf; serf
-
enslaved with the name of
258
serf). The new socman would bear the name of lacquerer, but Greek jurists and
historians, even after
1476,
would still use
ρονμοΰνος
instead of lacquerer.
The process of liquidating collective property in Transylvania led to the
decline of the free peasantry to serfdom. Serfdom in Transylvania was one of the
gravest serfdoms known, more so as the Romanian serf was a tolerated in
Transylvanian society; the latter are submitted to the state of serfdom, without
enjoying political civil rights. Horea s uprising had a strong European echo. In
1437
the famous
Unio
Trium Nationem emerges, between Nobiles, Saxones and
Siculi.
The three divide the country into three: the counties of Hungarian nobility,
the Szecklers Country and the Kingly Land of the Saxons.
In
1438,
the nobles and Szecklers in
Cluj
call the Saxons for help in
overcoming the unlawful peasants . Werboczy s Tripartite from
1517,
by
legalizing the regime of the three nations and the four receiver religions,
emphasized the mass serfdom state of the Romanian peasants.
IV. ROMANIAN LAW. EVOLUTION OF ROMANIAN MEDIAEVAL LEGAL
INSTITUTIONS.
That peasant institution, with village life,
with the community ruling the land, with the
judgment by good old people, with the fight
under the order of the voivodes, with the
unwritten law, the same from one end of
Wallachia to the other...form another
unavoidable element of Romanian unity .
Nicolae Iorga
Legal institutions that governed Romanian society profoundly marked the
life of the Romanian people. The custom of the land , simply called law
designates the moral norms that regulated from old times the legal relations on our
territory. It was considered to originate in various legal norms: Byzantine, Roman,
Slav, Thracian, etc. the custom of the land constitutes a legal synthesis of
unwritten norms that circulated in the Carpathian
-
Danube space. In the
mediaeval chancellor papers we find the following names for the customary right:
zakon
-
legal norm, recognized law;
pravo
-
legal norm regulating the life and
activity of a lower social category, custom
-
denotes an unclear legal situation that
cannot be recognized as a legal norm.
The judgments used to begin in the villages, with the free or enslaved
Peasant communities, where good old men were called to mitigate disagreements
Ìn a
traditional way. The judgment of good old men constituted the basic
jurisdictional form of community law, and the communitarian legal procedure
served to judge the cases that did not have a criminal nature. The custom that
259
regulated the social relations during the 15th century was Romanian law
-
jus
valachicum . The custom of the land precedes the laws and any legal norms
brought from abroad, as it continued to be observed
de
facto for a long time.
The end of the 16th century starts with the establishment or Michael the
Brave s link . Ipsilanti s Code wrote on the imperial laws , and Calimachi s
Code reinforced the idea of the supremacy of custom. The reception of the
Roman-Byzantine law took place by adapting to the local realities. Written law is
indicated in the documents from the 16th
-
17th centuries by the term of
pravila
(law). An institution characteristic of mediaeval society, relating to the most
varied forms of solidarity in society, communities, the stock, family,
neighbourhood, is the right to protimisis
-
a real legal right. The right to
promises would be regulated in writing in
1775
by Alexander Ipsilanti, by
Pravilniceasca
Condică.
Direct borrowings from the Byzantine regulation occur with the use of
Hexabiblului of
Armenopol,
în
1744.
The right to protimisis would function until
1818
when it is taken out of use by
Legiuirea
lui
Caragea (Caragea s Law).
The Byzantine norms are translated into Romanian from the second half of
the 16th century; during the 17th century, many used nomocanons mingled
canonic, lay, civil and penal law.
Pravila mică
from
Govora,
printed in
1640,
was
a collection of religious canons, a south-Danubian compilation printed under the
reign and on the order of
Matei
Basarab.
In
1652,
upon the initiative of
Metropolitan Stephen also the large
pravila
was issued
-
îndreptarea legii
-
an
encyclopedic work, a great legal work, lay to a laege extent.
To accomplish it the following were used:
Sintagma lui Matei
Viastares,
Nomocanonul
lui
Malaxos Manoil and Nomocanonul
lui Aristeu
Alexis.
Prince
Constantine Racoviţă
asks the Greek jurist Fotino
Mihail,
in order to compile a
new collection of laws; it was issued in
1765
and
1766.
In
1780,
Alexander
Ipsilanti elaborates the first code of laws entitled Provilniceasca
Condică.
Also
Legiuirea
lui
Caragea (Caragea s Law) was important, from
1818,
that comprised
a series of canons, Byzantine laws, unwritten customs.
The Organic Regulation turned the former estate master into landowner,
and the villagers became socmen or tenants. The most important law for the
regulation of the agrarian relations and the property remains the
1864
one, issued
by Alexander John Cuza. However, in
1889,
Mihail
Kogălniceanu
pointed to the
fact that Cuza s law resolved the situation much in favour of the landowners
rather than the peasants . A Romanian mediaeval legal institution, less studied in
comparison with others, was the assembly (or community) of the cnezi, although
it is reflected a lot in documents for the period of the 14th
-
15th centuries, in
Transylvania,
Banat, Crişana
and
Maramureş.
The Romanian assemblies, constituted into judgment seats
-
sedes
iudiciarie
-
continue their activity in many ways according to the old custom.
Romanian local mediaeval legal institutions existed all over Transylvania,
Banat,
Crişana,
and
Maramureş.
The Byzantine principle of individualizing punishments
260
can be found in the
Zakonik
of the Serbian tsar Stephen
Dušan,
who was
mentioned in Sbornicul from the Oltenian
Bistriţa
(1449 - 1454),
a document
found today in the Barsov collections of the History Museum in Moscow. A larger
part of the Code refers to penal law (sagrenije
-
sin, trespassing). In Wallachia,
the oldest
pravila
manuscript dates from
1415 -
Zaconicul, and in Moldavia, from
1472 -
Syntagma. During the 16th century the
Pravila
of the Apostle Saints was
printed in the annexes of the Molitvenic.
The 17th century is important due to the printing of the great Romanian
pravilas, lay to a large extent:
Pravila
from
Govora
(1640);
The Romanian
Learning Book (Imperial Laws)
(1646 -
Moldavia); The
Pravila
Straightening the
Law or the Great
Pravila
(1652 -
Wallachia). In the last two pravilas from the 17th
century, the institution of shrewdness is well treated; both are inspired as regards
penal law from the Greek summary of the great Italian criminal law specialist
Prosper Farinacius. Straightening the Law is followed by Nomocanonul
lui
Malaxos (present in Moldavia by the
Pravila
chosen in
1632).
The second part in
the Romanian Learning Book, entitled Imperial Laws, tackles crimes against an
official and the shrewdness concerning the prince. For Transylvania, the sources
of law were the custom and the law. A peak in the evolution of written law was
the elaboration of the Tripartite by Stephen Werboczi, printed in Vienna in
1517.
V. EMERGENCE OF THE GREAT FEUDAL AND
BOYAR
DOMAIN. ROLE
OF THE STATE
In our history, the period of the voivodes was followed by
a
boyars
period
or an aristocratic one, extending to the 19th century. The class of the
boyars
constituted and would go on constituting a subject for study for a long time. Mark
Bloch characterizes the vassalage relation and points to its importance, by giving
coherence to a society that might be called instead of feudal, pseudo-familial.
Unlike aristocratic societies, where the delimitation is precise, in open societies
the access is free and the subdivisions admit a free passing according to objective
criteria that do not require a certain appurtenance and can be changed; usually, in
open societies no access conditions are put forth, hi open societies, the condition
of appurtenance to a class is property: its size and quality, a generally valid
criterion, but not a fundamental one.
From the perspective of this type of society based on classes of property
we can regard also Romanian mediaeval society. The Romanian social structure
appears as a type of the Byzantine one; the domain organization of the seigniorial
type is overlapped by a political class, the
boyars
who owe the right and faithful
service to the lord .
There is no pyramid of the feudal
-
vassalage relations like in the West, as
all the lay and religious landowners, be they big or small, are in the service of the
261
prince. The
boyars
owe their positions in society to their double role of
landowners and officials.
The political power of the
boyars
had an economic foundation, the
property over the land, the seizure of large domains, cultivated by the peasants,
over whom they had a personal authority in the case of the dependent peasants, or
an economic one in the case of the free ones. The great
boyars
would constitute a
restricted strong group strengthened by kinship.
V.
1.
WALLACHIA AND MOLDAVIA
During the Middle Ages, in the 10th
-
ІЗ111
centuries, social differentiation
deepened, as inside the village communities emerged
boyar
structural elements.
From the cnezi two groups emerge: the
boyars
and the free villagers.
The transformation of the
cneaz
to
boyar
or free villager springs from
social upheavals. The cnezi turn into
boyars
as the state emerges, when there is
need for clerks, officials ensuring the good operation in the state.
On our territory the
boyars
emerge rather late as compared with the West.
As the state strengthens, it needs people likely to secure its development, and in
exchange for a job, it would strengthen their domains and give them possessions,
which would entail the emergence of the large
boyar
domain.
The old peasant community is overlapped by a community of masters, the
boyars.
The
boyars
become hereditary owners of villages.
During the second half of the 17th century, we witness a quick expansion
of the
boyar
domain to the detriment of the free peasant property. The state itself
becomes a large landowner constantly increasing its lands.
The large domain constituted an important factor for the Romanian
economy, because it slowed down the process of breaking land into small pieces.
The landowner class comprises during the full mediaeval age: the prince of the
country, the princely family and the
boyars.
V.2. TRANSYLVANIA
In Transylvania, the means of acquiring property were diverse. The land in
Transylvania was usurped by the king and his collaborators, the Hungarian
aristocrats and the Catholic clergy, who helps him to conquer the country and
storm the village communities. By direct plunder or by royal gifts from the
plundered land, all these seize numerous estates. The clear expression of the
usurping policy of the Hungarian kingdom can be found in the document issued
by
Bela
IV in favour of John s Knights, in
1247.
As regards the nobility in Transylvania, the Tripartite, although legalizing
the view that the entire property was donating, it did not mean that the local
262
boyars
did not exist. During the migrations and the extension of the Hungarian
state in Transylvania, the usurpers seized the large domains, the
boyars
sprung
from the local stock remaining at the level of the small nobility.
The Golden Charter
(1222)
is the first charter consecrating the land
ownership of the small free owners of royal land with hereditary title (evolution
towards nobility state). The most spectacular ascension from the Romanian
princely families was achieved by the huniazi.
Almas
and
Făgăraş
would intermittently be ruled by the princes of the
Romanian Countries, as their status would be that of fiefs conditionally granted by
the kings of Hungary. The possession of the Romanian princes over
Almas
and
Făgăraş
represents, in fact, their relations with the Hungarian king. The title of
duke was not understood by the princes in the classical feudal sense presupposing
vassalage, and recognition as dominus
naturális
of the kings of Hungary meant
nothing but alliance, good relations.
As
Amiaş
passed under the rule of the Romanian countries, the defence of
the status of noble
-
privileged owners
-
would become the essential goal of the
Făgăraş
political class.
In
Maramureş
as in the other Romanian terrae there were seizures and
plunders of
Maramureş
villages by the foreign nobility, but also property conflicts
with the
Maramureş
feudal lords. The valley
cnezat
in
Maramureş
is a political
heritage institution that evolved from elective
magistrature
to hereditary family
ownership.
The Romanian origin nobility, from the
Banat
of
Lugoj
and
Caransebeş
have their origin in the category of the Romanian cnezi from the age of the
Banat
í
of
Severin
(the 13th
-
16th centuries) where the cnezi grew with certain obligations
towards the state.
As the cnezi fight against the Turks, the central power supports the cnezi
by giving them villages with princely and noble right as a reward for taking part in
the battle; that way the material state of the families of princely origin
consolidates.
The Romanian noblea and cnezi in
Banat
were exempted, like the rest of
the noblemen in the kingdom, from the pay of any royal tax or of any kind, a
noble privilege granted by Ladislau in
1457
and attested also by the Approved
Constitutions of Transylvania
(1653).
V.3. THE BYZANTIUM
After the 4th century, the large property in the Byzantium is constantly
growing. The first and most important element of the large Byzantine property
were the domains of the state, some being personal assets of the emperors, and
others its own administration called
Χονρατωρϊα,
crown property, hence state
263
property. The second element of the large Byzantine property was the large
property of the church held by the high prelates.
The nobleman, rich and high official, is
a
δυνατός,
a strong man,
belonging either to the military aristocracy or to the state bureaucracy. George
Ostrogorsky says about the Byzantine aristocracy that it is the class of noblemen
by birth born of good stock , owners of large rural domains, whose high ranks
derived from a definition of the self that the class was able to impose by its own
force.
The Byzantine aristocracy distinguished itself due to its religious
orthodoxy and due to the deep participation in the Greek culture. Leading wars
and the affairs of state were the class mission of the Byzantine aristocracy, but
what characterized the most this aristocracy was the contradiction between its
impetus as status or class and the dependency upon
basileus.
In Byzantium, the emperor never took in its own hands the entire political
authority, as he used to govern the state through agents closely linked to his
person by a more or less honorary palatine position, by a noble title conferring a
rank in the hierarchy.
The Byzantium did not have a position corresponding to that of prime
minister. The administrative leadership was assigned through the will of the
sovereign. Numerous functions were transformed into honorary dignities granted
as rewards.
VA
THE WEST
Marc Bloch used to say that the structure of feudal society could be
studied from two different points of view: in what it has more special
-
namely the
setting among men of an overlapping and an intertwining of dependency links; in
what it has in common with any social organization
-
the classes and the
leadership. Bloch shows that the first feudal age did not know nobility in the
proper legal meaning of the word. The new aristocracy is no longer a sacred race,
its specific function is war. The second feudal age, with a more intense social life,
would be that in which the emergence of a distinct superior class conscience gave
rise to behaviour rales.
The noble code, carried out by the end of the
1
1th century, preserved the
best of mundane morality. The development of urban patricians brought about the
closing in of the noble class.
Marc Bloch distinguishes three types of states: France, England and
Germany. In France, the state is perfectly feudal, with a limited domain, that
rather gathers France than unifies it. Anglo-Norman monarchy, born out of
conquests, may bring about a strong unity more quickly. In Germany, on the
contrary, monarchy, much more faithful to the Carolingian model, overlaps the
dukes, as it is the one that unifies.
264
In other words, the fundamental nature of European feudal state is the man
to man link: submission by the subordinate to the superior, who has to protect
him. Vassalage is the form of this link with the warrior class. Undoubtedly, feudal
societies were not tailored according to the egalitarian principle. However, not any
ruling class is nobility. To deserve this name it has to meet at least two conditions:
to have a legal status of its own likely to confirm and materialize the superiority it
claims; secondly, it that status has to go on through blood links. Nobility in all the
countries and all times was related to land ownership.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper attempts to offer an encompassing outlook upon what the
peasant was (origins and his social, political and economic evolution) as regards
the relation to property. The evolution of property is in fact the social and political
evolution of the peasant. We call him this way by the widest, most encompassing
and long-lasting term, to this day, deriving from the Latin word terra, designating
the true man of the earth .
In the village community, each member used to have land, individually,
but especially collectively, together with other members. Together with all the
community members, the peasant had a common ancestor, an old man of the
earth. At first, in the Romanian first mediaeval age , a series of different notions
such as
cneaz, megieş, moşnean, răzeş
had common elements. Later, however,
emerge terms such as
vecin,
or
rumân
designating an obvious change in the
situation, especially the legal one.
The category of enslaved peasants emerges, who had lost their personal
freedom and the lands. The ground was divided into lots:
delniţe,
from the Slav
delo,
that is part ; jirebii, almost identical with zreabi in Serbia and equivalent
with stasis in the Byzantium.
Correspondingly, in France there was mansio, and in Germany
húfe, hube,
höbe.
Besides the division by
delmţe/jirebii
we have also the division by
ancestors, by old men, theoretically a division between groups with a common
genealogy coming from an ancestor who had established the village. An
outstanding role had the council of good old men.
An important domain linked to peasant property is Romanian law: the law
or custom of the country, the unwritten lawemerged in the village communities;
unwritten norms of canonic law (church pravilas) and the norms of the Byzantine
imperial law (imperial laws). The 15th 16th centuries brought events that triggered
the ruin of free peasant property and the emergence of enslaved peasantry.
The status of enslavement in the Romanian Countries can be found
designated by the terms
selo,
liudi, siromahi, zemleni, uboghie,
vecini
and
rumân.
The peasants dependency to the master had a social and economic side, as well as a
Personal one. The expression of the social and economic dependency is represented
265
by the numerous taxes and servitudes:
dijma
(desiatina from Slav, dime from
French) or the obligation to work freely on the master s land, corresponding to the
seigniorial reserve in the West (in Transylvania it was called gratuitus labor ).
The second side, the personal one, of the peasant s dependency upon his land
lord characterized the stutus of serfdom or bondage, as called in Transylvania.
Closely linked to the evolution of property is also the inheritance. Extremely useful
was the right to pre-emption, called din the Byzantium protimisis, a legal norm
rooted in the Roman-Byzantine law, trying to prevent strangers from entering the
community.
The large domain is made up of two parts: a part reserved to the land lord,
the seigniorial reserve or terra indominicata in the West; the rest was formed by the
homesteads and plots of land of the peasants, terra masionaria in the West.
To the opposite end of the West, the Byzantium is remarked by its social
relations between pronoiari ( the one taking care of the property ), stratioti
( military peasants ), demosiari (public peasants),
dinati
and pared, the category
of the poor. In a nutshell, the current peasants are no longer the peasants of one
hundred years ago or five hundred years ago. They are neither farmers, nor
peasants, but people from the countryside . Many of them are not yet landowners
because the property titles were not issued, they are only in possession of land.
The rehabilitation of property over the agricultural land is still an issue to resolve.
Mutatis mutandis, maybe it would be necessary under the current
conditions, in order to revitalize the mentalities of the people from the
countryside, to resume a permanent education program on which the whole
Scandinavia relied
-
the work of the Danish
Nikolaj
Frederik
Severin
Grundtvig
(1783-1872),
a complex personality, theologian, professor, historian, and, for a
while, even minister.
Grundtvig succeeded in bringing a fundamental contribution to the
political modernization of his nation by a salutary revelation: founding popular
schools with a status and program addressed especially to the Danish farmers of
all ages. To a large extent, starting from these ideas, in Denmark they opened the
first popular school (at Rodding, in
1844).
Grundtvig s visionary outlook made
Nicolae Iorga, in July
1908,
to open, at
Vălenii
de Munte,
the famous Summer
Popular University.
We believe that our endeavour, aiming at valorizing the documentary
sources, in an overall conception, offers a useful synthesis on the role and position
of the Romanian peasant in our history. At the same time, we hope that the present
paper will stimulate in the future the finding of new research methods.
We even expect several answers from the future archive researches and
archaeological finds, especially from studying the chancery documents not yet
entered into the historiographical circuit.
266
ANNEX 1.
The Code
( Zakonik ) of the Serbian tsar Stephen
Dušan
Radoman Stankovic,
from English
Dušan
s
Code
(184
articles) reflects a fully developed feudal system and a
clear distinction of the social classes. The code lays out the basic relations
between the social classes and determines the character of the governmental and
social structure, as it can be considered to be a true mediaeval constitution of
Serbia. The position of the leader to his noblemen, the position of the church and
of the lay feudal lords as to the rest of the population, the rights and duties, as well
as the forms of feudal property are a considerable part of the Code; the rights and
obligations of the noblemen and peasants are tackled broadly in the second part.
The Code has few regulations regarding civil law
-
lodging places,
obligations, marriage and inheritance. A large part of
Dušan s
Code refers to
criminal law, introducing a new term for guilt
-
sagrenije (sin, trespassing). The
original copies of
Dušan s
Code, presented at two legislative councils, in
1349,
1354,
respectively, were not preserved. However,
25
copies were discovered,
dating to a period between the 14th and 19th centuries, each with its elaboration
variant, with specific orthography and other characteristics.
Dušan s
Code is the most important monument of Serbian mediaeval
legislation.
267
|
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| spelling | Udrea, Florentina 1968- Verfasser (DE-588)140603239 aut Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) Florentina Udrea Bucureşti cIMeC 2009 322 S. Ill. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Sozialgeschichte gnd rswk-swf Sozialgeschichte 900-1800 gnd rswk-swf Landbevölkerung (DE-588)4034229-3 gnd rswk-swf Moldau Fürstentum (DE-588)4039965-5 gnd rswk-swf Rumänien (DE-588)4050939-4 gnd rswk-swf Rumänien (DE-588)4050939-4 g Landbevölkerung (DE-588)4034229-3 s Sozialgeschichte 900-1800 z DE-604 Moldau Fürstentum (DE-588)4039965-5 g Sozialgeschichte z Digitalisierung BSBMuenchen application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=018940501&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=018940501&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Abstract |
| spellingShingle | Udrea, Florentina 1968- Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) Landbevölkerung (DE-588)4034229-3 gnd |
| subject_GND | (DE-588)4034229-3 (DE-588)4039965-5 (DE-588)4050939-4 |
| title | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) |
| title_auth | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) |
| title_exact_search | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) |
| title_full | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) Florentina Udrea |
| title_fullStr | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) Florentina Udrea |
| title_full_unstemmed | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) Florentina Udrea |
| title_short | Structuri sociale ale ţărănimii |
| title_sort | structuri sociale ale taranimii structuri de rudenie secolele x xviii |
| title_sub | structuri de rudenie ; (secolele X - XVIII) |
| topic | Landbevölkerung (DE-588)4034229-3 gnd |
| topic_facet | Landbevölkerung Moldau Fürstentum Rumänien |
| url | http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=018940501&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=018940501&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA |
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