Papers by Marius Diaconescu
Ciceu in 1499: from the Interference of the Voivode of Transylvania in the Romanian-Hungarian Rel... more Ciceu in 1499: from the Interference of the Voivode of Transylvania in the Romanian-Hungarian Relations to the “Hotbed of Outlaws” in the Historians’ Imagination (Abstract) Prompted by the assertion that the estate of the castle of Ciceu was considered in the letter exchanges between the king of Hungary and the voivode of Transylvania as a hotbed of criminality for the whole of Transylvania and a real nest of villains, the author analyzed the document in question and did not find any element to confirm the respective statements. The document is a letter from King Vladislas II of Hungary to the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, in which the monarch replies punctually to previous letters in which the voivode had raised various questions. Thus the king fails to fulfill the voivode’s request for the transcripts of the letters of agreement with the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, and explains instead what these contained. He informs that he had awarded the estates confiscated from Benedict Dedácsi to the voivode’s familiares. He warns the voivode that he had to respect the autonomy of the Saxon courts and was not to judge the suit between the inhabitants of Sibiu and a certain Jew from Poland, also explaining the trial procedures specific to the cases involving the Saxons. He asks the voivode to allow the export of oat toward Baia Mare, as this was necessary for the exploitation of the royal mines. The Saxons of Ortie were to bring before the royal court their suit against the owner of the estate of Hunedoara for the disputed mountains. The voivode had to clarify with the nobles from the counties of Dbâca and Inner Solnoc the issue of the fugitive serfs from the noble’s lands to those of the Treasury, to the effect that those serfs who had already settled on other estates should remain there, while future migrations should be prohibited. The voivode had to pay attention to not disturb the nobles when he was to eradicate the villains on the estates of Ciceu, Almau, and Ungura. A final word concerns his salary, of which he was to receive details from the royal treasurer. The analysis of other sources suggests that the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, who was appointed to this position sometime before October 1, 1498 became interested in the Transylvanian estates of the Romanian rulers. Thus he requested from the king the transcripts of the agreements concluded with them. These letters were in fact the acts of homage of the rulers of the Romanian Lands to the king of Hungary. Encouraged by the attitude of the voivode, some nobles from Transylvania raised claims to parts of the estate of Ciceu in 1499–1500. Concerning the villains that had to be eradicated, the author emphasizes that this was not just about those on the estate of Ciceu, which belonged to Stephen the Great, but also about those on the estate of Almau, in the possession of Mathias Pongrác, and that of Ungura, in possession of the bishop of Oradea. The preserved documents indicate that certain conflicts arose between the inhabitants of the said estates and the neighboring nobles. At any rate, one cannot state that Ciceu, a castle under the authority of Stephen the Great, hosted a nest of outlaws nor that it was a hotbed of criminality for the entire Transylvania. These are only metaphors in the imagination of historians that do not reflect the historical reality. The document is edited in the appendix, both in its Latin original, as well as in Romanian translation. Keywords: Ciceu, Stephen the Great, voivode of Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, villains, Saxons, Jew, trial.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Balcanica Posnaniensia, Nov 19, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Historica, 2012
Only two records kept in the court register of the town Baia Mare in 1574 inform us about the Rec... more Only two records kept in the court register of the town Baia Mare in 1574 inform us about the Rector of the school in Alba Iulia: Thomas Kapliani. He was the brother of Peter Deak Szentgyorgy, the richest citizen in the town, and he claimed he is his heir. The school in Alba Iulia could be just one Unitarian.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Balcanica Posnaniensia Acta et studia, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The draft of an undated document by which Stephen Rozgonyi sold to Ladislaus Kubinyi litteratus t... more The draft of an undated document by which Stephen Rozgonyi sold to Ladislaus Kubinyi litteratus the estate of Mácsa together with a deserted piece of land for a sum of money, which the former needed “especially for the campaign of his host or army levied and sent in the previous summer at the command of the king on the account of his possessions together with the armies of other lords in support and protection of the voivode of Moldavia”, prompted the present research. The analysis established that the document refers to the 1497 campaign in Moldavia, when an army from Hungary was sent to aid Stephen the Great, the prince of Moldavia, offering him support against the invading Polish king, John Albert. Bartholomew Dragfi, the Transylvanian voivode, led an army of 12,000 men in Moldavia from September 12 to about October 25, 1497. On that occasion there were levied not only soldiers from Transylvania – noblemen with their subject, as well as Szeklers and Saxons, but also noble army corps from the rest of Hungary. Bartholomew Dragfi led the Hungarian army in Moldavia to aid Stephen the Great on the commission of King Vladislaus II. The mobilization of the noble army of the realm shows the true scale of the military support granted by the King of Hungary to Stephen the Great. While the official purpose of the army’s mobilization was the fight against the Turks, the real cause was to give protection to Moldavia and its ruler, Stephen the Great, against the Polish King, John Albert. The Hungarian army became a pressure instrument in favor of Stephen the Great. Bartholomew Dragfi played a major role in negotiating the truce between the voivode of Moldavia and the King of Poland, together with the envoy of King Vladislaus II, Waclaw Čič, the marshal of the court of the kingdom of Bohemia.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Ciceu in 1499: from the Interference of the Voivode of Transylvania in the Romanian-Hungarian Rel... more Ciceu in 1499: from the Interference of the Voivode of Transylvania in the Romanian-Hungarian Relations to the “Hotbed of Outlaws” in the Historians’ Imagination
(Abstract)
Prompted by the assertion that the estate of the castle of Ciceu was considered in the letter exchanges between the king of Hungary and the voivode of Transylvania as a hotbed of criminality for the whole of Transylvania and a real nest of villains, the author analyzed the document in question and did not find any element to confirm the respective statements.
The document is a letter from King Vladislas II of Hungary to the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, in which the monarch replies punctually to previous letters in which the voivode had raised various questions. Thus the king fails to fulfill the voivode’s request for the transcripts of the letters of agreement with the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, and explains instead what these contained. He informs that he had awarded the estates confiscated from Benedict Dedácsi to the voivode’s familiares. He warns the voivode that he had to respect the autonomy of the Saxon courts and was not to judge the suit between the inhabitants of Sibiu and a certain Jew from Poland, also explaining the trial procedures specific to the cases involving the Saxons. He asks the voivode to allow the export of oat toward Baia Mare, as this was necessary for the exploitation of the royal mines. The Saxons of Ortie were to bring before the royal court their suit against the owner of the estate of Hunedoara for the disputed mountains. The voivode had to clarify with the nobles from the counties of Dbâca and Inner Solnoc the issue of the fugitive serfs from the noble’s lands to those of the Treasury, to the effect that those serfs who had already settled on other estates should remain there, while future migrations should be prohibited. The voivode had to pay attention to not disturb the nobles when he was to eradicate the villains on the estates of Ciceu, Almau, and Ungura. A final word concerns his salary, of which he was to receive details from the royal treasurer.
The analysis of other sources suggests that the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, who was appointed to this position sometime before October 1, 1498 became interested in the Transylvanian estates of the Romanian rulers. Thus he requested from the king the transcripts of the agreements concluded with them.
These letters were in fact the acts of homage of the rulers of the Romanian Lands to the king of Hungary. Encouraged by the attitude of the voivode, some nobles from Transylvania raised claims to parts of the estate of Ciceu in 1499–1500. Concerning the villains that had to be eradicated, the author emphasizes that this was not just about those on the estate of Ciceu, which belonged to Stephen the Great, but also about those on the estate of Almau, in the possession of Mathias Pongrác, and that of Ungura, in possession of the bishop of Oradea. The preserved documents indicate that certain conflicts arose between the inhabitants of the said estates and the neighboring nobles. At any rate, one cannot state that Ciceu, a castle under the authority of Stephen the Great, hosted a nest of outlaws nor that it was a hotbed of criminality for the entire Transylvania. These are only metaphors in the imagination of historians that do not reflect the historical reality.
The document is edited in the appendix, both in its Latin original, as well as in Romanian translation.
Keywords: Ciceu, Stephen the Great, voivode of Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, villains, Saxons, Jew, trial.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The analysis of the Metropolitan Isidore’s encyclical shows that it was addressed to the Ruthenia... more The analysis of the Metropolitan Isidore’s encyclical shows that it was addressed to the Ruthenians, Serbs and Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary, and not to the Christians from the territories subjected to the jurisdiction of his legation. Furthermore, Isidore has negotiated with the Hungarian dignitaries on the effects of the Florentine Union in favour of the Orthodox.
The encyclical of Isidore in Buda in March 1440 had success, at least at the Romanian noblemen and Romanian clergy from the north of Hungary, in Maramures County because in Maramures County there was a Romanian nobility who protected their monastery, which was stavropegial of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Keywords: Union of Florence, Metropolitan Isidore, Romanian noblemen, Orthodox Churches in Hungary, Romanian monastery in Maramureş county, Florentine Union in Hungary.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Vlachs in mid-16 th century Upper Hungary had different obligations than all other subjects o... more The Vlachs in mid-16 th century Upper Hungary had different obligations than all other subjects of the feudal estate. The sum of all fiscal obligations of the Vlachs is summarized in the census of the Muráň castle estate, which always designates it under the name " census Valachorum " , a phrase that includes the delivery of sheep, lambs, quarks, or pieces of harness for horses. Their main obligation consisted in a number of sheep, lambs, and goats according to the size of their flock, which they delivered around the Pentecost. Another obligation typical of the Vlachs was the bellows cheese. For every flock was due a harness (cinctorium), named at times after its Hungarian equivalent, heveder. If this harness is common to a number of the feudal estates, on the Muráň castle estate it was supplemented by a wool fabric , called in Hungarian nemez, and in Latin subsellium, probably because it was used as felt padding for the horseback, under the saddle. Following the battle of Mohács in 1526, the northern parts of the medieval kingdom of Hungary came under Habsburg rule, by virtue of their title as kings of Hungary. Because of this administration's preoccupation with the fiscal incomes due to the royal treasury, the archives have preserved certain fiscal records from the middle of the 16 th century concerning the counties of Upper Hungary. The censuses, land records, and all other fiscal registers give the present-day scholar the occasion to investigate the rural and urban medieval society, as the various social, economic, political, and cultural realities are recorded in greater detail by these sources than they are in other types of documents. These fiscal registers convey a lot of information about the Vlachs in northern Hungary, in a territory that forms modern-day Slovakia, with details that encompass those of the charters in the earlier centuries. Our attention was drawn above all by those information regarding the fiscal obligations of the Vlachs, in particular the so-called Vlachs' tax (Census Valachorum). Sometimes this is also called census Ruthenorum for the same settlements where other documents register the census Valachorum, and at times the Ruthenorum is revised in Valachorum by writing it over. We don't envisage a debate on the ethnicity of those people who paid this tax, as this would involve a separate research effort, able to sum all opinions and arguments given in the histo
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Only two records kept in the court register of the town Baia Mare in 1574 inform us about the Rec... more Only two records kept in the court register of the town Baia Mare in 1574 inform us about the Rector of the school in Alba Iulia: Thomas Kapliani. He was the brother of Peter Deak Szentgyorgy, the richest citizen in the town, and he claimed he is his heir. The school in Alba Iulia could be just one Unitarian.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
When Peter Deák Szentgyörgyi, a bureaucrat from the mining region of Baia Mare, was accused of co... more When Peter Deák Szentgyörgyi, a bureaucrat from the mining region of Baia Mare, was accused of corruption by the Habsburg authorities in 1553, an inventory of his mobile property and real estate was drawn up. This register and a number of subsequent lists catch our attention because of the rarity of such information; they itemise jewellery, luxurious items of clothing and bedding, stone houses in the town centre, mines, smelters, mills, etc. Nor is it just the glitter of Peter Deák’s wealth that makes his an interesting case worthy of deeper study, but particularly his very close relationship with one of the leaders of the Transylvanian Reformation, Gáspár Heltai.
The extant sources, though brief, have allowed us to investigate this interesting character in mid-sixteenth century history. We have only grasped fragments of his career, his fortune, and his lifestyle. We note in the first instance his entrepreneurship, in the mining and processing industries as in farming and milling for the urban market. We have seen how Peter Deák’s free spirit manifested itself in his support for the Reformation, not just in the destruction of a Catholic monastery, which must have been a “normal” way of acting in the heat of religious disputes, but in particular through his patronage for the printing of Gáspár Heltai’s catechism. We cannot deny his political opportunism or the use of public administrative positions as levers for social ascension. It is of interest in this context that, after his death, a burgher from Baia Mare complained to the town magistrate that when Peter Deák married, he had lent him 50 florins for the expenditures of that event, and that the money was never returned. Although he seems not to have had enough money for the wedding ceremony, Peter Deák managed to amass a fortune in a matter of years.
All of the above elements indicate Peter Deák’s close connection to the emergent social category of capitalists in Europe of the day. To be sure, one might speculate widely about what exactly a capitalist is. We have not undertaken here to establish exactly how far Max Weber’s criteria, or those of other scholars, are applicable in the present case. It is highly significant though that the royal commissioners, who loathed Deák, could not help but notice his entrepreneurial ability in 1553. All the more, I believe, it is our responsibility as historians to rescue such figures from the oblivion of documents and restore an image as close to reality as possible of the society of earlier times.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Historians have suggested the dating of the donation of Ciceu and Cetatea de Baltă castles in Tra... more Historians have suggested the dating of the donation of Ciceu and Cetatea de Baltă castles in Transylvania to 1475, 1484, 1486, or 1489. The year 1489, which gathered the most followers, was chosen because of the estimate dating of the return of the ruler of Moldavia, Stephen the Great, to vassalage towards the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus.
A document from 26 July 1489 regarding the clarification of the status of a village neighbouring the castle of Ciceu, which we edit in the appendix, allows us to date the donation of the Ciceu estate in the summer of 1489. The stake of this donation was the oath Stephen the Great took to support the succession to the throne of Hungary of Matthias’ illegitimate son, John Corvinus. The intercessor of the oath and of the donation was, most probably, Bartholomew Drágfi, whose daughter was married to Alexander, the Moldavian ruler’s son.
Cetatea de Baltă has been awarded in the summer of 1482, when the king of Hungary, very concessively, manifested his availability to give Stephen the Great a castle in exchange for the latter’s allegiance, of which he expected to receive practical proof. Cetatea de Baltă was to play the role of a refuge place when necessity would arise.
Also in 1489 King Matthias awarded Stephen the Great with all the royal revenues from the two estates. According to some fiscal records of the royal treasury from 1494–1495, these royal revenues amounted to about 1700 florins, of which approximately 1500 florins represented the one florin tax, while the rest were collected from the so-called lucrum camerae tax paid by the Hungarian serfs and from the quinquagesima of the Romanian serfs.
In 1492 King Vladislaus II confirmed the possession of the ruler of Moldavia through a new donation, meant to keep Stephen the Great as his vassal.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
On the basis of the inhabitants' names of the two towns, Sătmar and Mintiu, from tax records in15... more On the basis of the inhabitants' names of the two towns, Sătmar and Mintiu, from tax records in1566-1569, were identified the crafts practiced in the era. The graphs and tables show us the share of the crafts in the economy of those two towns, Sătmar (Satmár) and Mintiu (Németi).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Books by Marius Diaconescu
Editura Mega, 2013
During the Angevin Age the membership to the social category of the nobility was at last establis... more During the Angevin Age the membership to the social category of the nobility was at last established in Transylvania: all those who possessed an estate with noble right, that is free of any duty, and without any objection being raised, were considered to be nobles by the noble community, as was stated by the participants to a noble assembly in 1408. Although not consistent with the royal desiderates, this definition of the nobleman mirrors the reality in the voivodeship of Transylvania.
In order to study the nobility in Transylvania in the Angevin Age (1301-1382) we have foremost made use of an inductive approach. The basis for this research consists in the case studies of the noble families, which we have identified, where this was possible, in the medieval meaning of clans, which shared a common ancestor and jointly possessed the feudal estate, at least at the beginning of the Angevin Age.
The history of these noble families includes information about their descent and the moment of their arrival in Transylvania, the formation of their estate and its evolution over time, comprising the severance of joint tenancy, the marriage alliances, the duties held inside the community and the career path of their outstanding members. To be sure, these details could not be cumulated for all the families, because of the inherent scarcity of the sources.
The quality and quantity of the information allowed us to chart the genealogy only for some of the families. In the case of those family trees with a limited number of generations or branches we have opted to insert them directly into the text, while those for which more abundant data survives are provided in the volume’s appendix.
Because we do not have for Transylvania written records of the feudal estates, as there are, for example, for the county of Ung at the end of the 14th century, we have retraced the land properties of a family through the various references about donations, sales, purchases, pawnings or conflicts of property. This reconstruction of the estate is only indicative, as the numbers we have arrived at do not have a definitive character, but still allow for an estimate of the estate’s extension in order to assess the position of the family inside the hierarchical structure of the nobility. And this is especially noteworthy since in that era, for the same settlement, the scribe used both the word estate (possessio), as well as village (villa), although there are many instances when, after decades, we come to find out that an estate comprised in fact of more villages.
These histories of the noble families are to be found in the second part of the present book. Upon them, employing the inductive approach, we have analysed the origin of the nobility in Transylvania and its structure in the Angevin Age, chapters that are to be found in the first part of this book.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Editura Mega, 2012
In 1569 the Habsburg authorities gathered all the villages and towns possessed on behalf of the T... more In 1569 the Habsburg authorities gathered all the villages and towns possessed on behalf of the Treasury, that is of the king himself, in one single estate, for it to be easier to manage, subordinated to the Sătmar castle. The commander of the imperial army, Lazarus Schwendi, fortified Sătmar and established his operational centre here. The Sătmar castle’s estate was organized on this structure designed by Schwendi, which comprised 186 settlements from the counties of Sătmar, Middle Solnoc, Crasna, and Bihor. They included both fully possessed settlements, as well as those that were only in part under the Treasury’s administration. From a geographical perspective, the estate was scattered in the four counties situated north-west of the Principality of Transylvania. The Treasury’s villages were located among the noble possessions, which gave the Sătmar estate a heterogeneous and dispersed character in 1569.
The domain consisted of the villages and towns that had once belonged to the then extinct Dragfi family, and escheated. To these have been added the former free market towns, such as Sătmar, Mintiu, Baia Mare, Baia Sprie, etc., as well as the estates confiscated from the aristocrats deemed rebellious for supporting the camp of Ioan Sigismund.
The census of the Sătmar castle’s estate was accomplished in the summer of 1569. The title page carries the date of 10 August 1569, which may represent the starting day of a counting that took a few weeks to complete, given the domain’s extent and its heterogeneous nature.
The census lists 186 settlements, together with the names of 6540 subjects: serfs (colonus), cotters (inquilinus), freemen (liber), and noblemen, along with the houses or the deserted house lots. In the Hungarian possessions and in a few Romanian ones the subjects are usually distinguished according to the size of the plot of land that they have in use: a full or a half session. Otherwise, the subjects are listed regardless of the dimensions of the plot of land they have in use. There are then listed the empty houses and the deserted house lots after the name of the last serfs that inhabited them.
For every settlement there are registered the census tax, the tithe, the ninth, and all other duties of the serfs and cotters. There are mentioned the vineyards, the mills, the gardens, the grasslands, the fish ponds, the tolls and duties, along with the rate of fiscal revenues. There also appear herein the incomes from fines and trials for criminal or civil offenses: theft, fights, fornication, false allegations, etc. On many occasions the scribe indicates the data of a previously registered village, preferring the method of comparing, rather than repeating.
On 26 April 1570, when the second document that we edit here was drawn, a register comprising the names of towns and villages that depended on Sătmar fortress, with the name and ethnicity of the subjects, 197 settlements were under the administration of the castle. This source is extremely relevant, for it indicates the ethnicity of the majority of the inhabitants in a given locality: Hungarians (Hungari) or Romanians (Valachi).
We have not published here other purely economical registers from 1570, because the purpose of this volume is to study historical anthroponymy and demography. We have selected just the two documents that can be circumscribed to the aforementioned end: the census of 1569 due to the large number of subjects registered by name, to which the register of 1570 appears as a complement, by indicating the ethnic realities in the region.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Ars Historica, 2018
The unification of the Romanian people in 1918 is the most important event in the history of Roma... more The unification of the Romanian people in 1918 is the most important event in the history of Romania. The Union of Bessarabia on April 9, of Bukovina on November 28 and of Transylvania with all the eastern Hungarian districts inhabited by the Romanians on December 1, 1918 are the result of a sustained effort by the Romanian intellectual elite, which assumed the role of building and fulfilling the ideal of unification of all Romanians in one state.
The press is an essential source for the study of the history of the Great Union, because it reflects the views of the Romanian society about the national ideal. Newspapers, magazines and other periodicals have been the main driver of public opinion. The media was the main source of information at the time, and it is because of this reason that the intellectual elites, who assumed the role of opinion vectors, concentrated their efforts and creativity to promote the national ideal of Unification to all Romanians through opinion articles, news and poetry with a strong patriotic message: at the end of the war, all Romanians must be united in a single country, in a Great Romania.
Historians that have studied the Great Union have focused in particular on the use of official documents, diaries and memoirs, and more rarely on the press, usually reduced to just a few newspapers. The subjectivism of memoirs and diaries is indisputable, especially in the case of those politicians who were more interested in their image and on how they will be remembered by posterity. And official documents, whether they are programmatic documents or political or administrative decisions, are just the result of preliminary activities, which they rarely mention, and even then, in vague terms.
The press has the advantage of being able to capture the thoughts and emotions that were the foundation for society's national sentiment. The opinion articles, reports, or news, often commented upon, had the role of shaping public opinion. The role of the press in the realization of the Great Union should not be reduced to a single journalist, newspaper, or a few articles. The press should be viewed as a whole, because every article that was debating the national cause reached a certain number of readers. Step by step, through a more or less conscious press campaign, sometimes even by conjuncture or political opportunism, this idea of a Greater Romania was supported, explained and assumed. Without the press that prepared the groundwork, the political decisions in Chișinău, Cernăuți and Alba Iulia in 1918 would not have been taken.
For a historian who wants to understand how the ideal of the Union of all Romanians was built and realized in 1918, the press is an indispensable historical source. Many of the articles were not always penned by professional journalists. Many of them were intellectuals with various occupations who in those historic moments decided to dedicate themselves to the national cause and write in a way that will convincingly mobilize politicians and sway public opinion towards the fulfillment of the national ideal of unification of all Romanians.
The present collection, "Romanian Newspapers on the Union of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania", proposes to the interested public an edition of articles that were selected from all the publications that were accessible to the research team, which made reference to the Great Union. The collection will contain several volumes of articles from the years 1917-1920.
Volume I: Promoting the ideal of the Union of Bessarabia, Transylvania and Bukovina: 21 March - 15 December 1917
The first volume of the collection includes the articles selected from March 21 to December 15, 1917. As we have shown above, we started with an article published in the Cuvânt Moldovenesc newspaper from Chișinău, edited by Pantelimon Halippa, where readers were informed about the establishment of the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg and expressed hope for the awakening of the Moldavians from the state in which they were brought by the Tsarist regime: "Let the sun, which rises over the empire, give us a saving ray of light and liberty to us Moldavians, who have been innocent slaves for over a hundred years!". The volume closes on December 15, 1917 (December 2, according to the old calendar) that is, the day when the Council of the Country took the decision to proclaim the Moldavian Democratic Republic, a decision that materialized in a few days, on December 19 (December 6 on old style). The press's reaction to this official act, which is particularly important in the process of separating Bessarabia from Russia and then for the Union with Romania, will be published in the next volume. So, the chronological limit to this volume is an invitation to see the continuation in the next one.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Marius Diaconescu
(Abstract)
Prompted by the assertion that the estate of the castle of Ciceu was considered in the letter exchanges between the king of Hungary and the voivode of Transylvania as a hotbed of criminality for the whole of Transylvania and a real nest of villains, the author analyzed the document in question and did not find any element to confirm the respective statements.
The document is a letter from King Vladislas II of Hungary to the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, in which the monarch replies punctually to previous letters in which the voivode had raised various questions. Thus the king fails to fulfill the voivode’s request for the transcripts of the letters of agreement with the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, and explains instead what these contained. He informs that he had awarded the estates confiscated from Benedict Dedácsi to the voivode’s familiares. He warns the voivode that he had to respect the autonomy of the Saxon courts and was not to judge the suit between the inhabitants of Sibiu and a certain Jew from Poland, also explaining the trial procedures specific to the cases involving the Saxons. He asks the voivode to allow the export of oat toward Baia Mare, as this was necessary for the exploitation of the royal mines. The Saxons of Ortie were to bring before the royal court their suit against the owner of the estate of Hunedoara for the disputed mountains. The voivode had to clarify with the nobles from the counties of Dbâca and Inner Solnoc the issue of the fugitive serfs from the noble’s lands to those of the Treasury, to the effect that those serfs who had already settled on other estates should remain there, while future migrations should be prohibited. The voivode had to pay attention to not disturb the nobles when he was to eradicate the villains on the estates of Ciceu, Almau, and Ungura. A final word concerns his salary, of which he was to receive details from the royal treasurer.
The analysis of other sources suggests that the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, who was appointed to this position sometime before October 1, 1498 became interested in the Transylvanian estates of the Romanian rulers. Thus he requested from the king the transcripts of the agreements concluded with them.
These letters were in fact the acts of homage of the rulers of the Romanian Lands to the king of Hungary. Encouraged by the attitude of the voivode, some nobles from Transylvania raised claims to parts of the estate of Ciceu in 1499–1500. Concerning the villains that had to be eradicated, the author emphasizes that this was not just about those on the estate of Ciceu, which belonged to Stephen the Great, but also about those on the estate of Almau, in the possession of Mathias Pongrác, and that of Ungura, in possession of the bishop of Oradea. The preserved documents indicate that certain conflicts arose between the inhabitants of the said estates and the neighboring nobles. At any rate, one cannot state that Ciceu, a castle under the authority of Stephen the Great, hosted a nest of outlaws nor that it was a hotbed of criminality for the entire Transylvania. These are only metaphors in the imagination of historians that do not reflect the historical reality.
The document is edited in the appendix, both in its Latin original, as well as in Romanian translation.
Keywords: Ciceu, Stephen the Great, voivode of Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, villains, Saxons, Jew, trial.
The encyclical of Isidore in Buda in March 1440 had success, at least at the Romanian noblemen and Romanian clergy from the north of Hungary, in Maramures County because in Maramures County there was a Romanian nobility who protected their monastery, which was stavropegial of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Keywords: Union of Florence, Metropolitan Isidore, Romanian noblemen, Orthodox Churches in Hungary, Romanian monastery in Maramureş county, Florentine Union in Hungary.
The extant sources, though brief, have allowed us to investigate this interesting character in mid-sixteenth century history. We have only grasped fragments of his career, his fortune, and his lifestyle. We note in the first instance his entrepreneurship, in the mining and processing industries as in farming and milling for the urban market. We have seen how Peter Deák’s free spirit manifested itself in his support for the Reformation, not just in the destruction of a Catholic monastery, which must have been a “normal” way of acting in the heat of religious disputes, but in particular through his patronage for the printing of Gáspár Heltai’s catechism. We cannot deny his political opportunism or the use of public administrative positions as levers for social ascension. It is of interest in this context that, after his death, a burgher from Baia Mare complained to the town magistrate that when Peter Deák married, he had lent him 50 florins for the expenditures of that event, and that the money was never returned. Although he seems not to have had enough money for the wedding ceremony, Peter Deák managed to amass a fortune in a matter of years.
All of the above elements indicate Peter Deák’s close connection to the emergent social category of capitalists in Europe of the day. To be sure, one might speculate widely about what exactly a capitalist is. We have not undertaken here to establish exactly how far Max Weber’s criteria, or those of other scholars, are applicable in the present case. It is highly significant though that the royal commissioners, who loathed Deák, could not help but notice his entrepreneurial ability in 1553. All the more, I believe, it is our responsibility as historians to rescue such figures from the oblivion of documents and restore an image as close to reality as possible of the society of earlier times.
A document from 26 July 1489 regarding the clarification of the status of a village neighbouring the castle of Ciceu, which we edit in the appendix, allows us to date the donation of the Ciceu estate in the summer of 1489. The stake of this donation was the oath Stephen the Great took to support the succession to the throne of Hungary of Matthias’ illegitimate son, John Corvinus. The intercessor of the oath and of the donation was, most probably, Bartholomew Drágfi, whose daughter was married to Alexander, the Moldavian ruler’s son.
Cetatea de Baltă has been awarded in the summer of 1482, when the king of Hungary, very concessively, manifested his availability to give Stephen the Great a castle in exchange for the latter’s allegiance, of which he expected to receive practical proof. Cetatea de Baltă was to play the role of a refuge place when necessity would arise.
Also in 1489 King Matthias awarded Stephen the Great with all the royal revenues from the two estates. According to some fiscal records of the royal treasury from 1494–1495, these royal revenues amounted to about 1700 florins, of which approximately 1500 florins represented the one florin tax, while the rest were collected from the so-called lucrum camerae tax paid by the Hungarian serfs and from the quinquagesima of the Romanian serfs.
In 1492 King Vladislaus II confirmed the possession of the ruler of Moldavia through a new donation, meant to keep Stephen the Great as his vassal.
Books by Marius Diaconescu
In order to study the nobility in Transylvania in the Angevin Age (1301-1382) we have foremost made use of an inductive approach. The basis for this research consists in the case studies of the noble families, which we have identified, where this was possible, in the medieval meaning of clans, which shared a common ancestor and jointly possessed the feudal estate, at least at the beginning of the Angevin Age.
The history of these noble families includes information about their descent and the moment of their arrival in Transylvania, the formation of their estate and its evolution over time, comprising the severance of joint tenancy, the marriage alliances, the duties held inside the community and the career path of their outstanding members. To be sure, these details could not be cumulated for all the families, because of the inherent scarcity of the sources.
The quality and quantity of the information allowed us to chart the genealogy only for some of the families. In the case of those family trees with a limited number of generations or branches we have opted to insert them directly into the text, while those for which more abundant data survives are provided in the volume’s appendix.
Because we do not have for Transylvania written records of the feudal estates, as there are, for example, for the county of Ung at the end of the 14th century, we have retraced the land properties of a family through the various references about donations, sales, purchases, pawnings or conflicts of property. This reconstruction of the estate is only indicative, as the numbers we have arrived at do not have a definitive character, but still allow for an estimate of the estate’s extension in order to assess the position of the family inside the hierarchical structure of the nobility. And this is especially noteworthy since in that era, for the same settlement, the scribe used both the word estate (possessio), as well as village (villa), although there are many instances when, after decades, we come to find out that an estate comprised in fact of more villages.
These histories of the noble families are to be found in the second part of the present book. Upon them, employing the inductive approach, we have analysed the origin of the nobility in Transylvania and its structure in the Angevin Age, chapters that are to be found in the first part of this book.
The domain consisted of the villages and towns that had once belonged to the then extinct Dragfi family, and escheated. To these have been added the former free market towns, such as Sătmar, Mintiu, Baia Mare, Baia Sprie, etc., as well as the estates confiscated from the aristocrats deemed rebellious for supporting the camp of Ioan Sigismund.
The census of the Sătmar castle’s estate was accomplished in the summer of 1569. The title page carries the date of 10 August 1569, which may represent the starting day of a counting that took a few weeks to complete, given the domain’s extent and its heterogeneous nature.
The census lists 186 settlements, together with the names of 6540 subjects: serfs (colonus), cotters (inquilinus), freemen (liber), and noblemen, along with the houses or the deserted house lots. In the Hungarian possessions and in a few Romanian ones the subjects are usually distinguished according to the size of the plot of land that they have in use: a full or a half session. Otherwise, the subjects are listed regardless of the dimensions of the plot of land they have in use. There are then listed the empty houses and the deserted house lots after the name of the last serfs that inhabited them.
For every settlement there are registered the census tax, the tithe, the ninth, and all other duties of the serfs and cotters. There are mentioned the vineyards, the mills, the gardens, the grasslands, the fish ponds, the tolls and duties, along with the rate of fiscal revenues. There also appear herein the incomes from fines and trials for criminal or civil offenses: theft, fights, fornication, false allegations, etc. On many occasions the scribe indicates the data of a previously registered village, preferring the method of comparing, rather than repeating.
On 26 April 1570, when the second document that we edit here was drawn, a register comprising the names of towns and villages that depended on Sătmar fortress, with the name and ethnicity of the subjects, 197 settlements were under the administration of the castle. This source is extremely relevant, for it indicates the ethnicity of the majority of the inhabitants in a given locality: Hungarians (Hungari) or Romanians (Valachi).
We have not published here other purely economical registers from 1570, because the purpose of this volume is to study historical anthroponymy and demography. We have selected just the two documents that can be circumscribed to the aforementioned end: the census of 1569 due to the large number of subjects registered by name, to which the register of 1570 appears as a complement, by indicating the ethnic realities in the region.
The press is an essential source for the study of the history of the Great Union, because it reflects the views of the Romanian society about the national ideal. Newspapers, magazines and other periodicals have been the main driver of public opinion. The media was the main source of information at the time, and it is because of this reason that the intellectual elites, who assumed the role of opinion vectors, concentrated their efforts and creativity to promote the national ideal of Unification to all Romanians through opinion articles, news and poetry with a strong patriotic message: at the end of the war, all Romanians must be united in a single country, in a Great Romania.
Historians that have studied the Great Union have focused in particular on the use of official documents, diaries and memoirs, and more rarely on the press, usually reduced to just a few newspapers. The subjectivism of memoirs and diaries is indisputable, especially in the case of those politicians who were more interested in their image and on how they will be remembered by posterity. And official documents, whether they are programmatic documents or political or administrative decisions, are just the result of preliminary activities, which they rarely mention, and even then, in vague terms.
The press has the advantage of being able to capture the thoughts and emotions that were the foundation for society's national sentiment. The opinion articles, reports, or news, often commented upon, had the role of shaping public opinion. The role of the press in the realization of the Great Union should not be reduced to a single journalist, newspaper, or a few articles. The press should be viewed as a whole, because every article that was debating the national cause reached a certain number of readers. Step by step, through a more or less conscious press campaign, sometimes even by conjuncture or political opportunism, this idea of a Greater Romania was supported, explained and assumed. Without the press that prepared the groundwork, the political decisions in Chișinău, Cernăuți and Alba Iulia in 1918 would not have been taken.
For a historian who wants to understand how the ideal of the Union of all Romanians was built and realized in 1918, the press is an indispensable historical source. Many of the articles were not always penned by professional journalists. Many of them were intellectuals with various occupations who in those historic moments decided to dedicate themselves to the national cause and write in a way that will convincingly mobilize politicians and sway public opinion towards the fulfillment of the national ideal of unification of all Romanians.
The present collection, "Romanian Newspapers on the Union of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania", proposes to the interested public an edition of articles that were selected from all the publications that were accessible to the research team, which made reference to the Great Union. The collection will contain several volumes of articles from the years 1917-1920.
Volume I: Promoting the ideal of the Union of Bessarabia, Transylvania and Bukovina: 21 March - 15 December 1917
The first volume of the collection includes the articles selected from March 21 to December 15, 1917. As we have shown above, we started with an article published in the Cuvânt Moldovenesc newspaper from Chișinău, edited by Pantelimon Halippa, where readers were informed about the establishment of the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg and expressed hope for the awakening of the Moldavians from the state in which they were brought by the Tsarist regime: "Let the sun, which rises over the empire, give us a saving ray of light and liberty to us Moldavians, who have been innocent slaves for over a hundred years!". The volume closes on December 15, 1917 (December 2, according to the old calendar) that is, the day when the Council of the Country took the decision to proclaim the Moldavian Democratic Republic, a decision that materialized in a few days, on December 19 (December 6 on old style). The press's reaction to this official act, which is particularly important in the process of separating Bessarabia from Russia and then for the Union with Romania, will be published in the next volume. So, the chronological limit to this volume is an invitation to see the continuation in the next one.
(Abstract)
Prompted by the assertion that the estate of the castle of Ciceu was considered in the letter exchanges between the king of Hungary and the voivode of Transylvania as a hotbed of criminality for the whole of Transylvania and a real nest of villains, the author analyzed the document in question and did not find any element to confirm the respective statements.
The document is a letter from King Vladislas II of Hungary to the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, in which the monarch replies punctually to previous letters in which the voivode had raised various questions. Thus the king fails to fulfill the voivode’s request for the transcripts of the letters of agreement with the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, and explains instead what these contained. He informs that he had awarded the estates confiscated from Benedict Dedácsi to the voivode’s familiares. He warns the voivode that he had to respect the autonomy of the Saxon courts and was not to judge the suit between the inhabitants of Sibiu and a certain Jew from Poland, also explaining the trial procedures specific to the cases involving the Saxons. He asks the voivode to allow the export of oat toward Baia Mare, as this was necessary for the exploitation of the royal mines. The Saxons of Ortie were to bring before the royal court their suit against the owner of the estate of Hunedoara for the disputed mountains. The voivode had to clarify with the nobles from the counties of Dbâca and Inner Solnoc the issue of the fugitive serfs from the noble’s lands to those of the Treasury, to the effect that those serfs who had already settled on other estates should remain there, while future migrations should be prohibited. The voivode had to pay attention to not disturb the nobles when he was to eradicate the villains on the estates of Ciceu, Almau, and Ungura. A final word concerns his salary, of which he was to receive details from the royal treasurer.
The analysis of other sources suggests that the voivode of Transylvania, Peter Szentgyörgy, who was appointed to this position sometime before October 1, 1498 became interested in the Transylvanian estates of the Romanian rulers. Thus he requested from the king the transcripts of the agreements concluded with them.
These letters were in fact the acts of homage of the rulers of the Romanian Lands to the king of Hungary. Encouraged by the attitude of the voivode, some nobles from Transylvania raised claims to parts of the estate of Ciceu in 1499–1500. Concerning the villains that had to be eradicated, the author emphasizes that this was not just about those on the estate of Ciceu, which belonged to Stephen the Great, but also about those on the estate of Almau, in the possession of Mathias Pongrác, and that of Ungura, in possession of the bishop of Oradea. The preserved documents indicate that certain conflicts arose between the inhabitants of the said estates and the neighboring nobles. At any rate, one cannot state that Ciceu, a castle under the authority of Stephen the Great, hosted a nest of outlaws nor that it was a hotbed of criminality for the entire Transylvania. These are only metaphors in the imagination of historians that do not reflect the historical reality.
The document is edited in the appendix, both in its Latin original, as well as in Romanian translation.
Keywords: Ciceu, Stephen the Great, voivode of Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, villains, Saxons, Jew, trial.
The encyclical of Isidore in Buda in March 1440 had success, at least at the Romanian noblemen and Romanian clergy from the north of Hungary, in Maramures County because in Maramures County there was a Romanian nobility who protected their monastery, which was stavropegial of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Keywords: Union of Florence, Metropolitan Isidore, Romanian noblemen, Orthodox Churches in Hungary, Romanian monastery in Maramureş county, Florentine Union in Hungary.
The extant sources, though brief, have allowed us to investigate this interesting character in mid-sixteenth century history. We have only grasped fragments of his career, his fortune, and his lifestyle. We note in the first instance his entrepreneurship, in the mining and processing industries as in farming and milling for the urban market. We have seen how Peter Deák’s free spirit manifested itself in his support for the Reformation, not just in the destruction of a Catholic monastery, which must have been a “normal” way of acting in the heat of religious disputes, but in particular through his patronage for the printing of Gáspár Heltai’s catechism. We cannot deny his political opportunism or the use of public administrative positions as levers for social ascension. It is of interest in this context that, after his death, a burgher from Baia Mare complained to the town magistrate that when Peter Deák married, he had lent him 50 florins for the expenditures of that event, and that the money was never returned. Although he seems not to have had enough money for the wedding ceremony, Peter Deák managed to amass a fortune in a matter of years.
All of the above elements indicate Peter Deák’s close connection to the emergent social category of capitalists in Europe of the day. To be sure, one might speculate widely about what exactly a capitalist is. We have not undertaken here to establish exactly how far Max Weber’s criteria, or those of other scholars, are applicable in the present case. It is highly significant though that the royal commissioners, who loathed Deák, could not help but notice his entrepreneurial ability in 1553. All the more, I believe, it is our responsibility as historians to rescue such figures from the oblivion of documents and restore an image as close to reality as possible of the society of earlier times.
A document from 26 July 1489 regarding the clarification of the status of a village neighbouring the castle of Ciceu, which we edit in the appendix, allows us to date the donation of the Ciceu estate in the summer of 1489. The stake of this donation was the oath Stephen the Great took to support the succession to the throne of Hungary of Matthias’ illegitimate son, John Corvinus. The intercessor of the oath and of the donation was, most probably, Bartholomew Drágfi, whose daughter was married to Alexander, the Moldavian ruler’s son.
Cetatea de Baltă has been awarded in the summer of 1482, when the king of Hungary, very concessively, manifested his availability to give Stephen the Great a castle in exchange for the latter’s allegiance, of which he expected to receive practical proof. Cetatea de Baltă was to play the role of a refuge place when necessity would arise.
Also in 1489 King Matthias awarded Stephen the Great with all the royal revenues from the two estates. According to some fiscal records of the royal treasury from 1494–1495, these royal revenues amounted to about 1700 florins, of which approximately 1500 florins represented the one florin tax, while the rest were collected from the so-called lucrum camerae tax paid by the Hungarian serfs and from the quinquagesima of the Romanian serfs.
In 1492 King Vladislaus II confirmed the possession of the ruler of Moldavia through a new donation, meant to keep Stephen the Great as his vassal.
In order to study the nobility in Transylvania in the Angevin Age (1301-1382) we have foremost made use of an inductive approach. The basis for this research consists in the case studies of the noble families, which we have identified, where this was possible, in the medieval meaning of clans, which shared a common ancestor and jointly possessed the feudal estate, at least at the beginning of the Angevin Age.
The history of these noble families includes information about their descent and the moment of their arrival in Transylvania, the formation of their estate and its evolution over time, comprising the severance of joint tenancy, the marriage alliances, the duties held inside the community and the career path of their outstanding members. To be sure, these details could not be cumulated for all the families, because of the inherent scarcity of the sources.
The quality and quantity of the information allowed us to chart the genealogy only for some of the families. In the case of those family trees with a limited number of generations or branches we have opted to insert them directly into the text, while those for which more abundant data survives are provided in the volume’s appendix.
Because we do not have for Transylvania written records of the feudal estates, as there are, for example, for the county of Ung at the end of the 14th century, we have retraced the land properties of a family through the various references about donations, sales, purchases, pawnings or conflicts of property. This reconstruction of the estate is only indicative, as the numbers we have arrived at do not have a definitive character, but still allow for an estimate of the estate’s extension in order to assess the position of the family inside the hierarchical structure of the nobility. And this is especially noteworthy since in that era, for the same settlement, the scribe used both the word estate (possessio), as well as village (villa), although there are many instances when, after decades, we come to find out that an estate comprised in fact of more villages.
These histories of the noble families are to be found in the second part of the present book. Upon them, employing the inductive approach, we have analysed the origin of the nobility in Transylvania and its structure in the Angevin Age, chapters that are to be found in the first part of this book.
The domain consisted of the villages and towns that had once belonged to the then extinct Dragfi family, and escheated. To these have been added the former free market towns, such as Sătmar, Mintiu, Baia Mare, Baia Sprie, etc., as well as the estates confiscated from the aristocrats deemed rebellious for supporting the camp of Ioan Sigismund.
The census of the Sătmar castle’s estate was accomplished in the summer of 1569. The title page carries the date of 10 August 1569, which may represent the starting day of a counting that took a few weeks to complete, given the domain’s extent and its heterogeneous nature.
The census lists 186 settlements, together with the names of 6540 subjects: serfs (colonus), cotters (inquilinus), freemen (liber), and noblemen, along with the houses or the deserted house lots. In the Hungarian possessions and in a few Romanian ones the subjects are usually distinguished according to the size of the plot of land that they have in use: a full or a half session. Otherwise, the subjects are listed regardless of the dimensions of the plot of land they have in use. There are then listed the empty houses and the deserted house lots after the name of the last serfs that inhabited them.
For every settlement there are registered the census tax, the tithe, the ninth, and all other duties of the serfs and cotters. There are mentioned the vineyards, the mills, the gardens, the grasslands, the fish ponds, the tolls and duties, along with the rate of fiscal revenues. There also appear herein the incomes from fines and trials for criminal or civil offenses: theft, fights, fornication, false allegations, etc. On many occasions the scribe indicates the data of a previously registered village, preferring the method of comparing, rather than repeating.
On 26 April 1570, when the second document that we edit here was drawn, a register comprising the names of towns and villages that depended on Sătmar fortress, with the name and ethnicity of the subjects, 197 settlements were under the administration of the castle. This source is extremely relevant, for it indicates the ethnicity of the majority of the inhabitants in a given locality: Hungarians (Hungari) or Romanians (Valachi).
We have not published here other purely economical registers from 1570, because the purpose of this volume is to study historical anthroponymy and demography. We have selected just the two documents that can be circumscribed to the aforementioned end: the census of 1569 due to the large number of subjects registered by name, to which the register of 1570 appears as a complement, by indicating the ethnic realities in the region.
The press is an essential source for the study of the history of the Great Union, because it reflects the views of the Romanian society about the national ideal. Newspapers, magazines and other periodicals have been the main driver of public opinion. The media was the main source of information at the time, and it is because of this reason that the intellectual elites, who assumed the role of opinion vectors, concentrated their efforts and creativity to promote the national ideal of Unification to all Romanians through opinion articles, news and poetry with a strong patriotic message: at the end of the war, all Romanians must be united in a single country, in a Great Romania.
Historians that have studied the Great Union have focused in particular on the use of official documents, diaries and memoirs, and more rarely on the press, usually reduced to just a few newspapers. The subjectivism of memoirs and diaries is indisputable, especially in the case of those politicians who were more interested in their image and on how they will be remembered by posterity. And official documents, whether they are programmatic documents or political or administrative decisions, are just the result of preliminary activities, which they rarely mention, and even then, in vague terms.
The press has the advantage of being able to capture the thoughts and emotions that were the foundation for society's national sentiment. The opinion articles, reports, or news, often commented upon, had the role of shaping public opinion. The role of the press in the realization of the Great Union should not be reduced to a single journalist, newspaper, or a few articles. The press should be viewed as a whole, because every article that was debating the national cause reached a certain number of readers. Step by step, through a more or less conscious press campaign, sometimes even by conjuncture or political opportunism, this idea of a Greater Romania was supported, explained and assumed. Without the press that prepared the groundwork, the political decisions in Chișinău, Cernăuți and Alba Iulia in 1918 would not have been taken.
For a historian who wants to understand how the ideal of the Union of all Romanians was built and realized in 1918, the press is an indispensable historical source. Many of the articles were not always penned by professional journalists. Many of them were intellectuals with various occupations who in those historic moments decided to dedicate themselves to the national cause and write in a way that will convincingly mobilize politicians and sway public opinion towards the fulfillment of the national ideal of unification of all Romanians.
The present collection, "Romanian Newspapers on the Union of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania", proposes to the interested public an edition of articles that were selected from all the publications that were accessible to the research team, which made reference to the Great Union. The collection will contain several volumes of articles from the years 1917-1920.
Volume I: Promoting the ideal of the Union of Bessarabia, Transylvania and Bukovina: 21 March - 15 December 1917
The first volume of the collection includes the articles selected from March 21 to December 15, 1917. As we have shown above, we started with an article published in the Cuvânt Moldovenesc newspaper from Chișinău, edited by Pantelimon Halippa, where readers were informed about the establishment of the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg and expressed hope for the awakening of the Moldavians from the state in which they were brought by the Tsarist regime: "Let the sun, which rises over the empire, give us a saving ray of light and liberty to us Moldavians, who have been innocent slaves for over a hundred years!". The volume closes on December 15, 1917 (December 2, according to the old calendar) that is, the day when the Council of the Country took the decision to proclaim the Moldavian Democratic Republic, a decision that materialized in a few days, on December 19 (December 6 on old style). The press's reaction to this official act, which is particularly important in the process of separating Bessarabia from Russia and then for the Union with Romania, will be published in the next volume. So, the chronological limit to this volume is an invitation to see the continuation in the next one.