History of Maramureş - Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

Different tribes, such as the Gepids, Vandals, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Lombards and Slavs moved through the region of Maramureş. Of these, only the Slavs have left a deeper trace, due to their higher number. At the end of the 7th century, the whole region was under the Avar khanate. Today, the population of Maramureş is linguistically and ethnically Vlach, mostly Vlach shepherds. Before the coming of the Hungarians in 896, little is known regarding political control over the area.

The first groups of Slavs arrived nearby at the end of the 6th century, but they were not numerous. In the 8th century, however, a larger Slavic population followed. While some of the Slavs-Croatians soon migrated to the Balkan peninsula, those that remained populated the Pannonian territories immediately to the west of Maramureş. In the 9th century, the region bordered Velika Horvatia to the west and a small Slav dukedom, separating it from the much larger and stronger kingdom of Great Moravia. To the south, the region bordered the territory of (probably Bulgarian) Gelu, which was defeated in 904 by Hungarians. During this period, Slavs gradually converted to Christianity. In the 880s, disciples of Cyril and Methodius, expelled from Great Moravia, settled in the region immediately to the west of Maramureş and founded monasteries in inaccessible and beautiful mountain places.

In 896, the Hungarians arrived under their leader Álmos through the Verecke Pass (the valley of the river Latoritsa). In 903, under Arpad, they conquered the fortresses of Ungvár. In the 11th century, the Kingdom of Hungary extended its borders into Transylvania up to the crests of the Carpathian mountains. As with most border areas of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages, this territory was purposefully left mostly unsettled as a deterrent to invaders: the territory is mentioned in chronicles of the time as part of the res nullis (no-man's land) or terra indagines (uninhabited defensive border land).

The social organization of Maramureş during the Middle Ages was also very specific. The people in many mountain villages, where each family had a considerable domain, were called free peasants. In Romanian-speaking areas, these were called nămeşi or free peasants. The Romanian term indicates belonging to a small clan, from the Romanian neam (bigger old family). This term has been preserved to this day, both in the areas that remained Romanian and in those which later gradually became Slavic. Hungarian and German terms also existed for similar circumstances in Hungarian and German-settled areas.

In the 12th century, King Géza II of Hungary invited Saxons (Germans) from the Rhine regions to settle there.

Between the 12th and 15th centuries, Maramureş and surrounding areas were the source of an emigration. The mountain areas of present-day Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic have been partly colonized by migrating groups of Vlach (Romanian) shepherds from further south, continuing the great Vlach migration from Wallachia into Transylvania. They were gradually assimilated into the Slavic populations, but sometimes strongly influenced the local culture. In the southeastern corner of modern Poland, where "lex vallachorum" was in force as late as the 16th century, or eastern Moravia, where their autonomy was devastated by Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War.

In March 1241, the Tatar-Mongols under the Khan Batu overwhelmed the mountain defenses and entered through the Verecke Pass (separating the county of Bereg from Galicia) to plunder Transylvania and the Kingdom of Hungary. They destroyed many towns and monasteries, killing up to half the population. Hungarian villages, being mostly in the valleys, bore the greatest brunt of the slaughter, and this helped start the decline in Hungarian population that influenced the modern political disposition of the territory. The Mongols destroyed the towns of Teceu (Técső then) and Ocna Slatina (Aknaszlatina then) as well as the surrounding villages. In 1242, they hastily retreated, after learning that the Great Khan had died, in order to back their leader Batu to become the new Great Khan.