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- Title
Testimonies on the Ethno-Confessional Structure of Medieval Transylvania and Hungary (9th-14th centuries).
- Authors
POP, IOAN-AUREL
- Abstract
During its whole medieval existence, Hungary preserved its heterogeneous structure, in spite of the homogenizing policy promoted especially by the Angevins. In recent papers it is estimated that around A.D. 1500 Hungary had 4 million inhabitants, which we deem slightly exaggerated. But let us nevertheless admit that the number is real. At the time of their invasion Pannonia, the Hungarians must have amounted to about 100,000-120,000 people. If at the end of the Middle Ages the kingdom had 4 million inhabitants, of which more than 3 million were Magyars, as claimed of late, it means that the Magyar population grew about 30 times in about half a millennium, something happened nowhere in Europe at that time. It follows that both the demographic data (scarce as they are) and the ethno-confessional ones lead us to the conclusion that, without the possibility of specifying the exact number of inhabitants in absolute figures, the proportion of non-Magyars and non-Catholics in medieval Hungary constantly remained more important than that of Magyars and Catholics. Whole provinces, such as Slovakia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Sirmium, Voivodina, Transylvania, Banat, Crişana, Maramureş, the area inhabitded by the Cumans etc., are constantly presented in different sources such as Slavic, Romanian, "schismatic," or "heretical." The towns were, as we have seen, mostly German. It follows that the ethnic and confessional image of medieval Hungary, although modified by the Reformation and then by the Counter reformation, does not differ essentially from the one outlined before the First World War, when the "minorities" officially accounted for more than a half of the entire population. In other words, these "minorities" have always represented a majority, whence the lack of viability of the kingdom that inherited the tradition of the "holy crown" of Saint Stephen.
- Subjects
HUNGARY; TRANSYLVANIA (Romania); ROMANIA; HUNGARIANS; MAGYARS; ETHNIC groups; CATHOLICS; MINORITIES
- Publication
Transylvanian Review, 2010, Vol 19, Issue S1, p9
- ISSN
1221-1249
- Publication type
Article