The Hospitaller Diploma of 1247: lands, knezates and Vlach voivodes south of the Carpathians

After the Mongol invasion, King Béla IV of Hungary concluded an agreement on 2 June 1247 with a religious military order, the Knights Hospitaller: he gave them territories and revenues south of the Carpathians, and they were to contribute to the defence and settlement of the land (in populanda terra nostra), build fortifications and fight alongside the king. To state what it gives and what it keeps, the charter also names those who already held power there: voivodes, knezates and “lands” of the Vlachs. The Romanian school formula sums them up as “five political formations”. What does the text actually say about the Vlachs south of the Carpathians?

A document preserved in a copy

In functional terms, the charter combines a grant of rights with precise obligations: defence, settlement, fortification, taking part in campaigns. It can therefore be read as a privilege with a contractual and frontier function; the label is ours, not the document’s.

The royal original has not survived. The text reached us because Pope Innocent IV confirmed the charter on 20 July 1250 and reproduced its wording in his confirmation, preserved in the papal register Reg. Vat. 22^[1]. The text is published in the DRH and DIR document collections^[2][3]. Diplomatically, this transmission is sound, but it calls for some caution with the exact word forms: we are reading the papal chancery’s copy of a royal charter, not the original parchment.

The Vlachs, by name

The chancery calls the Vlachs Olati and Olatorum. Three formulas are decisive^[2]:

• terra kenazatus Lytuoy woiavode, quam Olatis relinquimus, prout iidem hactenus tenuerunt: the land of the knezate of voivode Litovoi, which we leave to the Vlachs, as they have held it until now;
• Olatis terram Lytua habitantibus: to the Vlachs who inhabit the land of Litua;
• terra Szeneslai woiavode Olatorum: the land of Seneslau, voivode of the Vlachs.

A few things can be said with certainty from these lines. The Vlachs are a collective group, recognized as such by the royal chancery. Litovoi is a voivode, and his land is inhabited and held by Vlachs. Seneslau is called outright “voivode of the Vlachs”. And some of these lands existed before 1247 and do not pass wholly to the Hospitallers.

Olati here designates communities that the royal chancery calls Vlachs, that is, Romanians. The term does not, however, imply a unified political identity, let alone a national programme in the modern sense.

Four names, four different situations

The school formula of “five formations” is convenient in class, but too rigid. The text distinguishes between the Land of Severin, the knezates of Ioan and Farcaș, the land of voivode Litovoi and the land of Seneslau, and each one’s relationship with the king and the order is not the same.

Litovoi. The formula concerning him brings together three terms: terra (land), kenazatus (knezate) and the title of voivode. The phrase “as they have held it until now” confirms a local lordship older than the charter. The crown nevertheless reserves fiscal rights, and the Hospitallers receive part of the royal revenues owed by the Vlachs of Litua. The charter connects Litua with terra Harszoc, that is, Hațeg, but only through the way the fiscal exemptions are worded. This draws no border and does not show that Litovoi ruled the whole of Hațeg. Nor is it certain that this Litovoi is the same as the voivode Litovoi who later comes into conflict with the king; it is more prudent to speak of the continuity of a political centre or of a line of rulers.

Seneslau is the clearest case: woiavode Olatorum, voivode of the Vlachs. His land is placed in “Cumania”, east of the Olt. It too does not pass wholly to the order: the Hospitallers receive only part of the revenues and profits.

Ioan and Farcaș. Their knezates are included in the granted territory, described as reaching “as far as the river Olt” (cum kenazatibus Joannis et Farcasii usque ad fluvium Olth). The formula does not say that each of them reached the Olt. Unlike Litua and Seneslau’s land, the two knezates enter the grant to the Hospitallers more directly. And one more detail: next to their names, the text does not use the word “Vlachs”.

Land, knezate, voivode

The key word of the document is terra. In the context of this diploma, it designates more than an area of ground: the term is associated with inhabitants, revenues and local authorities. Kenazatus, the knezate, indicates a local lordship; the title of voivode, a distinct military and political leadership. The diploma is not a constitution, however, and does not justify projecting a rigid institutional hierarchy back in time.

A formulation closer to the text than “five states” would be this: the diploma attests a set of lands, knezates and voivodal authorities south of the Carpathians; some are integrated more directly into the project of the king and the Hospitallers, others are older local structures whose distinct arrangement the charter recognizes, with fiscal and military obligations.

A king who grants, local structures that remain

The charter speaks the language of an overlord: the king grants, reserves and shares out revenues. The exceptions show, however, that his rule was not the same everywhere. The Land of Severin and the knezates of Ioan and Farcaș enter the grant more directly. Litua and Seneslau’s land remain with the Vlachs, and what the order receives is a share of the royal revenues.

The picture is compatible with forms of local autonomy within an overlordship claimed by the Hungarian crown: the charter does not demonstrate full royal control, but neither does it describe independence in the modern sense.

Armed men, the greater men of the land, mills and salt

The Vlachs of Litua are to help the knights cum apparatu suo bellico, “with their war equipment”, and the Hospitallers in turn have an obligation towards them.

A separate clause concerns the territory granted to the order and the host of Severin (exercitus de Zeurino). For it, the charter sets precise proportions: one fifth of the armed men of the land (quinta pars armatorum terre iamdicte) for the defence of the kingdom and one third of all those fit for war (tertia pars omnium ad bella habilium) for campaigns towards Bulgaria, Greece and Cumania^[2]. These proportions are therefore not a specification of the obligation of the Vlachs of Litua. Rules like these presuppose a local capacity to raise men; they do not prove a centralized state army.

The charter also speaks of the maiores terrae, “the greater men of the land”, who may appeal to the king’s court in grave cases. The passage shows a local elite with legal standing. It does not, however, say maiores terrae Olatorum, and equating them directly with the later boyars should be avoided.

The economy visible in the charter is not only pastoral. It mentions revenues and services, mills, sown fields and buildings, hayfields and pastures, cattle and sheep, Danube fisheries, Transylvanian salt and coin. It is a productive space, linked to the routes towards Bulgaria, Greece and Cumania.

The Church: what the charter says and what it does not

The diploma belongs to the Latin Catholic world: a religious military order, a papal confirmation, protected churches and episcopal and archiepiscopal rights. In the military clauses, enemies may be called pagans or schismatics. Nowhere, however, does the document say that Litovoi, Seneslau or the Vlach communities were “schismatic”. That they mostly belonged to Eastern Christianity is plausible, and the regional context points that way: in 1234 Pope Gregory IX wrote that the Vlachs (Walati) of the Bishopric of Cumania received the sacraments from “pseudo-bishops” of the Greek rite (pseudoepiscopis Grecorum ritum tenentibus)^[4]. The letter, however, is a different document from a different moment, and it does not show that the 1247 diploma regards the people of Litovoi or Seneslau as Orthodox.

What remains open

The diploma does not answer every question we put to it. We do not know the exact borders of these lands, nor the political relationship between Litua and Hațeg. We do not know for certain whether the Litovoi of 1247 is the same man as the Litovoi of later documents. We do not know how much control the Hungarian crown actually had south of the Carpathians, nor how institutionalized these structures were compared with the Wallachian state of the fourteenth century.

Conclusion

What does the diploma of 1247 actually say about the Vlachs south of the Carpathians? It does not show a shapeless population, but organized communities. It does not show independence in the modern sense, but local structures with a distinct arrangement recognized by the king. And it does not show five symmetrical boxes on a map, but a network of lands, knezates and voivodates, caught between local lordship, royal overlordship and the Hospitallers’ frontier project.

Gregory IX’s letter of 14 November 1234, set beside the diploma, would allow a comparison between the religious organization of 1234 and the political, fiscal and military structures of 1247.