Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

RÃZVAN PÂRÂIANUDecebal as having “sensual lips.” The rest of the description was ignoredin favor of this detail. It is worth saying that the figures of Decebal andTraianus, the Roman emperor who conquered Dacia, became symbols ofthe Romanian ethno-genesis in the last decades of the communist period.They symbolized the noble origins of the Romanian people. They alsorepresented the myth of the common origins, as Anthony D. Smith wouldsay, but a myth highly personalized.C. A few pages later, another “infamy:” the authors questioned theveracity of Menumorut, Gelu and Glad. They were three rulers from thetenth century, supposedly Romanians, who were eventually defeated bythe Hungarians. The story was told in the thirteenth century by the anonymouschronicler of the Hungarian king, Béla III. The importance of thesethree figures is due to two crucial points around which Romanian historiographyhas developed. One is that the Romanians were autochthonousin Transylvania, the other is that when the Hungarians came to Transylvania,Romanians had already developed some political entities, i.e., the territorywas neither ethnically nor politically empty. And yet, the iconoclastauthors dare to claim:The first information about the political entities from Transylvania,which might have existed here in the tenth century when the Hungarianscame, were put forward by an anonymous chronicler, the notary of theHungarian king in the thirteenth century. Some researchers believe thatthe Romanian rulers mentioned by him (Menumorut, Glad and Gelu)did not truly exist. This is possible because the historians of that timeused to mix the truth with fiction. Other sources, from the beginning ofthe thirteenth century, this time much more reliable, are mentioningother political establishments under Romanian control; they are “thecnezat of cneaz Bela’s sons” or Maramureº. 7Once again, the textbook was not properly read by its vehement critics.Theoretically, Romanian-speakers were there, and were defeated byHungarians, during their conquest of Transylvania. The embarrassingproblem is not the information given by the textbook, but the fact thatit reveals the weakness of the construction. Of course, the perspectiveof the Hungarian counterpart is a permanent reference. The questionis, why to choose such an iconoclastic approach while the neighbors,Hungarians or Bulgarians, with the same aspirations to European integration,do not agree to bring into derision their heroic history. 8D. The next issue is that the heroic medieval history of Romaniansis given scant attention in the textbook. The names of great voivods arescarce and with insufficient commentaries. The most outrageous cases are96