Medieval sources on the Vlachs of the Balkans and the Carpathians, 10th–14th centuries, read critically.
In 1224 the German colonists of southern Transylvania received the right to use “the forest of the Vlachs and Pechenegs” together with the Vlachs and Pechenegs. What is this silva Blacorum et Bissenorum? Not a state and not a border, but a forest with its waters, over which the crown regulated the shared rights of use.
In 1066, Vlachs, Bulgarians and people from Larisa and Trikala rose against new tax burdens. Kekaumenos’s account is the fullest eleventh-century description of communities explicitly called Vlachs. What kind of communities does it describe? Not herders without settlements on the margins of the empire, but people with leaders, notables with property and urban ties, and organised transhumance, integrated into the Byzantine Empire.
In 1247 the king of Hungary granted the Knights Hospitaller land and revenues south of the Carpathians. The charter names Vlach voivodes and knezates, but it does not draw “five political formations”. What does the text actually say?