The Early Middle Ages in Romania started with the withdrawal of the Roman troops and administration from Dacia province in the 270s. In the next millennium a series of peoples, most of whom only controlled two or three of the nearly ten historical regions that now form Romania, arrived. During this period, society and culture underwent fundamental changes. Town life came to an end in Dacia with the Roman withdrawal, and in Scythia Minorthe other Roman province in the territory of present-day Romania400 years later. Fine vessels made on fast potter's wheels disappeared and hand-made pottery became dominant from the 450s. Burial rites changed more than once from cremation to inhumation and vice versa until inhumation became dominant by the end of the 10th century.
The East Germanic Goths and Gepids, who lived in sedentary communities, were the first new arrivals. The Goths dominated Moldavia and Wallachia from the 290s, and parts of Transylvania from the 330s. Their power collapsed under attacks by the nomadic Huns in 376. The Huns controlled Eastern and Central Europe from around 400, but their empire disintegrated in 454. Thereafter the regions west of the Carpathian MountainsBanat, Crișana, and Transylvaniaand Oltenia were dominated by the Gepids. Within a century, the lands east of the mountains became important centers of the Antes and Sclavenes. Hydronyms and place names of Slavic origin also prove the one-time presence of Early Slavs in the regions west of the Carpathians.
The nomadic Avars subjugated the Gepids in 568 and dominated the Carpathian Basin up until around 800. The Bulgars also established a powerful empire in the 670s which included Dobruja and other territories along the Lower Danube. Bulgaria officially adopted the Eastern Orthodox variant of Christianity in 864. An armed conflict between Bulgaria and the nomadic Hungarians forced the latter to depart from the Pontic steppes and began the conquest of the Carpathian Basin around 895. Their invasion gave rise to the earliest reference, recorded some centuries later in the Gesta Hungarorum, to a polity ruled by a Romanian duke named Gelou. The same source also makes mention of the presence of the Székelys in Crișana around 895. The first contemporaneous references to Romanianswho used to be known as Vlachsin the regions now forming Romania were recorded in the 12th and 13th centuries. References to Vlachs inhabiting the lands to the south of the Lower Danube abound in the same period.
Banat, Crișana, and Transylvania were integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary in the 11th century. These regions were subject to plundering raids by the nomadic Pechenegs and Cumans, who dominated the lowlands east of the mountains. Hungarian monarchs promoted the immigration of Western European settlers to Transylvania from the 1150s. The settlers' descendants, who were known as Transylvanian Saxons from the early 13th century, received collective privileges in 1224. Because of the settlement of the Saxons in their former territories, the Székelys were moved to the easternmost zones of the kingdom. The emergence of the Mongol Empire in the Eurasian Steppes in the first decades of the 13th century had lasting effects on the history of the region. The Mongols subjugated the Cumans in the 1230s and destroyed many settlements throughout the Kingdom of Hungary in 1241 and 1242, bringing the Early Middle Ages to an end.
Background Roman provinces and native tribes
Contacts between the Roman Empirewhich developed into the largest empire in the history of Europeand the natives of the regions now forming Romania commenced in the 2nd century BC. These regions were inhabited by Dacians, Bastarnae and other peoples whose incursions posed a threat to the empire. The Romans initially attempted to secure their frontiers by various means, including the creation of buffer zones. Finally, they decided that the annexation of the lands of these fierce "barbarians" was the best measure. The territory of the Getae between the river Danube and the Black Sea (modern Dobruja) was the first region to be incorporated into the empire. It was attached to the Roman province of Moesia in 46 AD.
The Lower Danube marked the boundary between the empire and "Barbaricum" until Emperor Trajan decided to expand the frontiers over territories controlled by the Dacian Kingdom. He achieved his goal through two military campaigns, the second of which ended with the annihilation of the Dacian state and the establishment of the province of Dacia in 106. It included Oltenia and large portions of Banat, Transylvania, and Wallachia. Many settlers "from all over the Roman world"Eutropius: Breviarium (8.6.), p. 50. arrived and settled in the new province in the following decades.
Dacia was situated over the empire's natural borders. Dacia was surrounded by native tribes inhabiting the regions of Crișana, Maramureș, and Moldavia, which are now part of Romania. Dacia province was plundered by neighboring tribes, including the Carpians and Sarmatians from the 230s, and by the Goths from the 250s. As the frontiers were to be shortened for defensive purposes, the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Dacia began in the 260s. The province officially ceased to exist under Emperor Aurelian (270–275) who "withdrew the Romans from the cities and countryside of Dacia".Eutropius: Breviarium (9.15.), p. 59. Garrisons stationed in Drobeta and Sucidava remained on the northern bank of the river.
Origin of the Romanians
Romanians speak a language originating from the dialects of the Roman provinces north of the "Jireček Line". This line divided, in Roman times, the predominantly Greek-speaking southern provinces from those where Latin was the principal language of communication. The emergence of Proto-Romanian from Vulgar Latin is first demonstrated by the words "torna, torna, frater" ("turn around, turn around, brother") recorded in connection with an Eastern Roman military action in 587 or 588. The soldier shouting them "in his native tongue"The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (258.10-21.), p. 381. spoke an Eastern Romance dialect of the Balkan Mountains.
Grigore Nandris writes that the Romanian vocabulary suggests that the Romanians' ancestors were "reduced to a pastoral life in the mountains and to agricultural pursuits in the foothills of their pasture lands" following the collapse of the Roman rule. A great number of Romanian words of uncertain origin are related to animal husbandry: baci ("chief shepherd"), balegă ("dung"), and brânză ("cheese"), for instance, belong to this group. Many words related to a more settled form of animal husbandry were borrowed from Slavic, including coteţ ("poultry house"), grajd ("stable"), and stână ("fenced pasture"). Romanian has preserved Latin terms for agriculture and the Latin names of certain crops, but a significant part of its agricultural lexis originates from a Slavic-speaking population. The first group includes a ara ("to plough"), a semăna ("to sow"), a culege ("to harvest"), a secera ("to reap"), grâu ("wheat"), in ("flax"), and furcă ("pitchfork"), while a croi ("to cut out"), a plivi ("to weed"), brazdă ("furrow"), cobilă ("plow line"), coasă ("scythe"), lopată ("shovel") and many others are Slavic loanwords.
The Romanian religious vocabulary is also divided, with a small number of basic terms preserved from Latin and a significant number of borrowings from Old Church Slavonic. Romanian did not preserve Latin words connected to urbanized society.
The Romanians' ethnogenesis cannot be understood based exclusively on written sources, because the earliest records on their ancestors were made by 11th-century Byzantine historians. When referring to the Romance-speaking population of Southeastern Europe, early medieval sources used the Vlach exonym or its cognates, which all derived from the Common Slavic term for speakers of the Latin language. The earliest sources write of the Vlachs of the central territories of the Balkan Peninsula.
Late Roman Age Scythia Minor and the limes on the Lower Danube (c. 270–c. 700)
The territory between the Lower Danube and the Black Sea remained a fully integrated part of the Roman Empire, even after the abandonment of Trajan's Dacia. It was transformed into a separate province under the name of Scythia Minor around 293. Before 300, the Romans erected small forts at Dierna and in other places on the northern bank of the Danube in modern-day Banat. In their wider region, Roman coins from the periodmostly of bronzehave been found.
The existence of Christian communities in Scythia Minor became evident under Emperor Diocletian (284–305). He and his co-emperors ordered the persecution of Christians throughout the empire, causing the death of many between 303 and 313. Under Emperor Constantine the Great (306–337), a bridge across the Danube was constructed at Sucidava, a new fort (Constantiana Daphne) was built, and ancient roads were repaired in Oltenia. The Lower Danube again became the empire's northern boundary in 369 at the latest, when Emperor Valens met Athanaricthe head of the Gothsin a boat in the middle of the river because the latter had taken an oath "never to set foot on Roman soil".Ammianus Marcellinus: The Later Roman Empire (27.5.), p. 337.
The Huns destroyed Drobeta and Sucidava in the 440s, but the forts were restored under Emperor Justinian I (527–565). Eastern Roman coins from the first half of the 6th century suggest a significant military presence in Olteniaa region also characterized by the predominance of pottery with shapes of Roman tradition. Although Eastern Roman emperors made annual payments to the neighboring peoples in an attempt to keep the peace in the Balkans, the Avars regularly invaded Scythia Minor from the 580s. The Romans abandoned Sucidava in 596 or 597, but Tomis, which was the last town in Scythia Minor to resist the invaders, only fell in 704.
North of the limes (c. 270 – c. 330) Transylvania and northern Banat, which had belonged to Dacia province, had no direct contact with the Roman Empire from the 270s. There is no evidence that they were invaded in the following decades. Towns, including Apulum and Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, and the surrounding areas continued to be inhabited but the urban areas diminished. The existence of local Christian communities can be assumed in Porolissum, Potaissa and other settlements. On the other hand, evidencemainly pottery with "Chi-rho" (Χ-Ρ) signs and other Christian symbolsis "shadowy and poorly understood", according to archaeologists Haynes and Hanson.
Urns found in late 3rd-century cemeteries at Bezid, Mediaş, and in other Transylvanian settlements had clear analogies in sites east of the Carpathians, suggesting that the Carpians were the first new arrivals in the former province from the neighboring regions. Other Carpian groups, pressured by the Goths, also departed from their homeland and sought refuge in the Roman Empire around 300. Nevertheless, "Carpo-Dacians" were listed among the peoples "mixed with the Huns" as late as 379. The Sarmatians of the Banat were allies of the empire, demonstrated by a Roman invasion in 332 against the Goths, their enemies. Sarmatians were admitted into the empire in 379, but other Sarmatian groups remained in the Tisa plains up until the 460s.
Gutthiuda: land of the Goths (c. 290 – c. 455)
The Goths started penetrating into territories west of the river Dniester from the 230s. Two distinct groups separated by the river, the Thervingi and the Greuthungi, quickly emerged among them. The one-time province of Dacia was held by "the Taifali, Victohali, and Thervingi"Eutropius: Breviarium (8.2.), p. 48. around 350.