Vlach law

See also: Vlachs
Vlach shepherd on the mountain (Auguste Raffet, 1837)

The Vlach law (Latin: ius valachicum, Romanian: legea românească, "Romanian law", or obiceiul pământului, "customs of the land", Hungarian: vlach jog) refers to the traditional Romanian common law as well as to various special laws and privileges enjoyed or enforced upon particularly pastoralist communities (cf. obști) of Romanian stock or origin in European states of the Late Middle Ages and Early modern period, including in the two Romanian polities of Moldavia and Wallachia, as well as in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Serbia, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, etc.

The first documents associated with settlement with the Vlach law began to appear in the 14th century. The main characteristics of the Vlach law, regardless of location:[1]

  • The right to travel and carry weapons (sometimes right to hunt).
  • Not mandatory labour service towards the land owner, taxes were paid by live or in money.
  • Military service obligation towards the country (forms depending on the country).

The term "Vlachs" originally denoted Romance-speaking populations; the term became synonymous in some contexts with "shepherds", but even in these cases an ethnical aspect was implicit. The establishment around them of a large number of "slaves" starting from the 6th century led to the linguistic Slavization of a significant number of these communities, so that in the 8th century, the word "Vlach" came, in Slavic languages, to designate any Orthodox shepherd, whether he remained Romanophone (as in the Kingdom of Eastern Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania) or became Slavophone (as in a large part of the Balkan Peninsula).[2] The concept originates in the laws enforced on Vlachs in the medieval Balkans.[3] In medieval Serbian charters, the pastoral community, primarily made up of Vlachs, were held under special laws due to their nomadic lifestyle.[4] In late medieval Croatian documents Vlachs were held by special law in which "those in villages" pay tax and "those without villages" (nomads) serve as cavalry.[5] Until the 16th century term Vlachs was used not only to describe a representative of the Vlach law or pastoral profession, it also had an ethnic meaning which was lost in the 17th century, although was still used for people (sheepherder) regardless of their origin.[6]

  1. ^ Czamańska, Ilona (2015). "The Vlachs – Several Research Problems". Balcanica Posnaniensia Acta et Studia. 22 (1). Poznań – Bucharest: 7. doi:10.14746/bp.2015.22.1.
  2. ^ Murvar, Vatro (1956). The Balkan Vlachs: a typological study. University of Wisconsin--Madison. p. 20.
  3. ^ Du Nay, Alain; Du Nay, André; Kosztin, Árpád (1997). Transylvania and the Rumanians. Matthias Corvinus. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-882785-09-4.
  4. ^ Filipović, Gordana (1989). Kosovo--past and present. Review of International Affairs. p. 25.
  5. ^ Cebotarev, Andrej (June 1996). "Review of Stećaks (Standing Tombstones) and Migrations of the Vlasi (Autochthonous Population) in Dalmatia and Southwestern Bosnia in the 14th and 15th Centuries". Povijesni prilozi [Historical Contributions] (in Croatian). 14 (14). Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History: 323.
  6. ^ Gawron, Jan (2020). "Locators of the settlements under Wallachian law in the Sambor starosty in XVth and XVIth c. Territorial, ethnic and social origins". Balcanica Posnaniensia. Acta et Studia. 26: 274–275. doi:10.14746/bp.2019.26.15. S2CID 213877208.