Foundation of Wallachia - Earliest voivodates in Medieval Documents

Earliest voivodates in Medieval Documents

After the Mongol invasion, a great many (if not most) of the Cuman population left the Wallachian Plain, but the Vlach (Romanian) population remained there under the leadership of their local chiefs, called knezes and voivodes. In 1247, King Béla IV tried to bring the Knights Hospitallers to the region and granted to them a number of territories in the “land of Severin”. The knights’ mission, however, proved to be a total failure (there is even no report whether they occupied their posts), but the royal charter for the knights, dated June 2, 1247, lists four autonomous territorial-administrative units (kenezates) in Oltenia and western Muntenia.

Two of them, the kenezates of Johannes and Farcaş were given to the Knights Hospitallers. But the kenezates under Litovoi and Seneslau were exempted from the grant, and the royal charter expressly stipulated that they were to be left “to the Vlachs as they had owned it until now”. On the other hand, the royal charter also describes that Voivode Litovoi's rule had extended on the northern side of the Transylvanian Alps into the Hunedoara region, but the king removed this territory from Litovoi’s authority in 1247; thenceforward Litovoi’s kenezate was restricted to the Oltenian part of the Jiu valley. Voivode Seneslau held the territories of central and southern Muntenia on the banks of the rivers Argeş and Dâmboviţa.

After the failure and disappearance of the Hospitallers, the history of the region is shrouded in obscurity for decades. But the trend toward the unification of the Romanian polities seems to begin with Voivode Litovoi. He (or his namesake son) was at war with the Hungarians and killed in battle sometime between 1270 and 1280. In the battle, his brother, Bărbat was captured. Bărbat was forced not only to pay ransom but also to recognize Hungarian rule.