Lajos Kazar: Facts against fiction

CATHOLIC

The Rumanians are a Latin people, as their language indicates. Christianity first came to Rumania in its Latin form. By the 3rd century Christianity had penetrated the region near the Black Sea (modern Dobruja), which later formed the ecclesiastical province of Scythia, with Tomi (now Constanta) as its metropolis. Its history is known until the 6th century".

N.B. It is wrong to state that during the Middle Ages the area of present-day Rumania was ,,for the most part under Bulgarian rule", as Bulgaria only came into being in 681, the Avar Empire was not destroyed until approx. 800, and by 895, when the Magyars/Hungarians took possession of the Carpathian Basin, including Transylvania, all areas north of the Lower Danube were held either by the Hungarians (within the Carpathian Basin), or the Pechenegs, later by the Cumans, Mongols and again by the Hungarians. Another error is to state that Hungary took possession of Transylvania in 1003. In that year (Saint) Stephen I wrested the area in question named Erdel, from his own uncle; the term Transylvania did not appear prior to the 12th century. Yet another error is to declare that in the 14th century ,,Wallachia and Moldavia arose as independent principalities", when in fact they arose and remained until approx. 1600 in vassalage to the Kingdom of Hungary. Were the writers of the article in question inclined to please Rumanian propagandists?

,,To the west, on the right side of the Danube, there existed the Diocese of Remesiana (near modern Palanka)), whose bishop, St. Nicetas, a renowned Latin Christian writer, is venerated as the apostle of the Rumanians. Christianity nearly disappeared from this region, however, during the barbarian invasions and migrations of peoples, which lasted for several centuries".

N.B. It may well be that St. Nicetas is venerated as the apostle of the Rumanians, but strangely enough neither in Rome, nor in Byzantium can records be found about the places where the ancestors of the Rumanians had been converted to Christianity. If Remesiana had been such a place, Rumanian propagandists would have made it known in many encyclopedias a long time ago. The first records referring to the (Wallachian) ancestors of the Rumanians date from the 10th century and they place them in the south of the Balkan Peninsula. -- This encyclopedia allots long chapters to the various forms of Christianity in the area of present-day Rumania, of which Transylvania makes up approx. 44%; over the area of present-day Rumania many bishoprics and lesser Christian ecclesiastical foundations were brought into being by Hungarian authorities; even in Wallachia and Moldavia they originally bore Hungarian names.

Yet the New Catholic Encyclopedia never once gives the Hungarian names of those church establishments, but only the Rumanian ones which are often anachronistic. E.g.: ,,For ... Latin Catholics the Diocese of Transylvania was erected in 1103 with its seat in Alba Iulia,,. Now in 1103 there were, according to Hungarian ecclesiastical records, no Wallachians/Rumanians in Hungary, so the Wallachian/Rumanian name, which came into being centuries later, is quite wrongly applied to the Bishopric of Gyulafehérvár. Is this unbiased scholarship? Besides, this encyclopedia allotted no article to Transylvania which area played quite a role in the conversion of the Cumans, not to speak of the fact that it was in Transylvania that a large number of the Orthodox Wallachians/Rumanians became Uniates, i.e. adherents of Rome as Greek Catholics. Also, for the first time in Europe, free choice and practice of religion was legislated on in Hungarian Transylvania in 1568. And why keep silent about several hundred thousand Roman Catholic Csángó-Hungarians in Old Rumanian Moldavia who settled there from approx. 1227 onward and who today are not allowed even to pray and sing in their Hungarian mother tongue in their own churches? Bias in favour of Rumania to the detriment of the Hungarians in Rumania?

Lajos Kazar: Facts against fiction