The Andreanum of 1224: What Does “the Forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs” Mean?

In the list of privileges that the king grants in 1224 to the German colonists of southern Transylvania, the document known as the Andreanum, there is a sentence about a forest^[1]:

Praeter vero supra dicta silvam Blacorum et Bissenorum cum aquis usus communes exercendo cum praedictis scilicet Blacis et Bissenis eisdem contulimus…

In the Romanian translation in Documente privind istoria României, the king gives the colonists the forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs, together with the waters, for shared use with the Vlachs and Pechenegs, without any obligation to perform service for it^[2]. What, in fact, is silva Blacorum et Bissenorum: a territory of the Vlachs, a border, the beginning of a state, or something else?

To answer, we have to set it beside an expression two years older, terra Blacorum, the “land of the Vlachs”, from a charter of 1222. The two charters should be read together, but not conflated.

A text preserved through copies

The Andreanum has not survived in its original of 1224. The text reached us through a later documentary tradition, including its insertion in a confirmation of 1317. The online edition of the Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen gives the Latin text together with the critical apparatus concerning the copies and confirmations^[1]. We are therefore reading a text transmitted through confirmations, not the parchment of 1224.

What the king gives the colonists

The charter sets out the rights of the German colonists in an area that runs from Orăștie to Baraolt and includes the Szekler territories of Sebeș and the land of Daraus. The privileges are varied^[1][2]:

• the Saxons have a single seal, recognised by the king and the magnates;
• in certain cases they are exempt from foreign jurisdictions;
• they may use witnesses from within their own borders;
• they have trading rights and exemptions from customs duty;
• they receive freedoms concerning the use of the forest and the waters, including the fords.

The forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs belongs to this list. It is not the subject of the charter, but one of the resources that the king includes in the privilege. That is precisely why it says something about the Vlachs: we see them not through a description of themselves, but through the rights of others over a space that they too use.

The forest and the waters: whose are they?

The expression “the forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs” could be read as ownership: a forest that belongs to them. The text does not say that. The wording does not show that the forest was the exclusive private property of the Vlachs and Pechenegs. It shows, rather, a resource within the sphere of the royal grant: the king gives it to the colonists, and its use is regulated by common rights, shared with the Vlachs and Pechenegs.

Two further things are certain. The forest does not come alone, but cum aquis, “with the waters”: it is a complex of resources, not merely a place name. And the colonists owe no service for its use.

The third concerns the people. The Vlachs and Pechenegs appear in the charter as groups already present in that area, not as populations introduced by the charter of 1224. The right of use was exercised jointly with them.

Nor should the association with the Pechenegs be overlooked. The Vlachs do not appear alone: the forest is associated with the Vlachs and the Pechenegs. This shows a mixed social landscape and a frontier zone, not a region defined exclusively by ethnicity.

Two years earlier: terra Blacorum

The other expression comes from a charter that the regest in Documente privind istoria României dates before 7 May 1222^[2]. Andrew II confirms to the Teutonic Knights their possession of the Burzenland (Țara Bârsei) and grants them economic and military privileges. Among them: the right to use six ships on the Olt and six on the Mureș to transport salt, as well as enough salt mines for these ships. The Teutonic Knights are exempt from customs duty when they pass through the land of the Szeklers and through the terra Blacorum. The authenticity of the privilege attributed to the year 1222 has been contested in the historiography; here we read it as the DIR regest reports it, without taking a position in that debate.

From these lines a few things can be said:

• the terra Blacorum was well enough known to be used as a landmark in a royal privilege;
• there was a trade route linking the area of the Teutonic Knights to the Olt, the Mureș and the salt mines;
• passage through the land of the Vlachs could involve customs duty, and the exemption had a precise economic content.

The charter does not say, however, who ruled the terra Blacorum, nor whether the term designated an autonomous Vlach jurisdiction or a territory under royal authority but inhabited by Vlachs. The expression cannot be turned into proof that a Vlach state already existed. In medieval diplomatic Latin, terra could designate a district, a region, an inhabited space or a unit of jurisdiction, and these meanings are not equivalent.

Nor can the extent of the land of the Vlachs be fixed from the charter of 1222. The trade route and the relationship with the Burzenland, the Olt, the Mureș and the Szekler territories give landmarks, not a complete map.

Terra and silva are not synonyms

The two formulas say different things, in different contexts:

Formula	Context	What it attests with greater certainty
terra Blacorum	customs duty and trade passage, 1222	a district known as the “land of the Vlachs”
silva Blacorum et Bissenorum	forest, waters and shared use, 1224	a zone of resources associated with the Vlachs and Pechenegs

The first is a regionym (the name of a region) used as a political and geographical landmark. The second describes a complex of resources and rights of use.

What these charters say about the Vlachs

The charters of 1222 and 1224 do not describe the internal organisation of the Vlachs. Their importance is different: they place them in a legal and economic space used by the Hungarian royal authority, by the Teutonic Knights and by the German colonists of southern Transylvania.

Set beside the Byzantine sources of the twelfth century, such as Anna Komnene and John Kinnamos, the Transylvanian charters say less about the military mobility of the Vlachs, but more about:

• economic infrastructure and the salt roads;
• taxation and customs duty;
• forest resources and waters;
• the legal status of communities;
• the coexistence or neighbourhood of the Vlachs with the Pechenegs and with the German colonists;
• the way in which the Hungarian crown integrated frontier spaces into privileges and grants.

Compared with the Hospitaller diploma of 1247, the charters of 1222–1224 are earlier, but less explicit about local leaders. In 1222–1224 we have a space associated with the Vlachs; in 1247 there appear names of leaders and political formations south and east of the Carpathians. A geographical or political continuity between the two groups of documents must not be assumed without further arguments.

What remains open

The charters do not say who ruled the terra Blacorum or how large it was. They do not demonstrate that the “land of the Vlachs” of 1222 and the “forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs” of 1224 had the same extent. And they do not allow this space to be linked directly to the Vlach political formations named in 1247.

Conclusion

What, then, is the silva Blacorum et Bissenorum? A forest, together with its waters, associated with the Vlachs and Pechenegs, which the king gives to the German colonists for shared use with them. It is neither the exclusive property of the Vlachs nor the name of a state, but a space of resources regulated by royal grant and common rights.

Set beside the terra Blacorum of 1222, the formula shows that the Vlachs were a stable and recognised component of the Transylvanian political and economic landscape: in a royal charter, the “land of the Vlachs” serves as a territorial and fiscal reference point, not as an accidental ethnic label. The documents do not, however, permit a maximalist conclusion. They do not describe a Vlach administration, a Vlach voivodeship, an exact border or political independence.

The most solid formulation is this: in 1222–1224 there existed in southern Transylvania an area associated with the documented presence of the Vlachs, integrated into the royal network of roads, customs and resources, in a frontier landscape shared with Szeklers, Pechenegs, Teutonic Knights and German colonists.