A passage in an 11th-century Byzantine document describing the events of the rebellion of 1066-1067 in the hinterland of Larissa (in Greece) may be the first account of the Vlachs, a generic term describing Romance populations, in Southeastern Europe.[6] Its author states that these Vlachs descended from the Dacians, and he implies a southward migration of these Vlachs. The document suggests that these Vlachs’ “homeland” used to lie south of the Danube, and it also mentions the Bessi (an ancient Thracian tribe living south of the Danube) among their ancestors.[7]
They /the Vlachs/ were conquered by Emperor Trajan who had defeated and annihilated them. Their king, named Decebal, was killed (...). They are, in fact, the so-called Dacians and Bessi who used to live near the Danube and Sava rivers, where now the Serbs live, in inaccessible and inhospitable places (...)
And they left the region: some of them spread to Epirus and Macedonia, although the majority of them settled in Hellas.
—Kekaumenos (11th century): Strategikon[8]
A 12th-century Byzantine chronicler, when describing the events of a Byzantine attack on Hungary, incidentally mentions that the Vlach recruits[6] is said to have descended from Italian settlers.[4]
(...) Vlachs who are said to have descended from the one-time Italian settlers.
—John Kinnamos (the second half of the 12th century): The Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus[4]
A 13th-century Flemish Franciscan missionary, in accordance with his conception concerning the origins of the Danube Bulgars from the Volga Bulgars, derives the Vlachs from a certain people (Illac / Ulac) living near the Bashkirs.[9]
Neighboring the Pascatur are the Ulac (this is the same word as Blac, but the Tatars cannot pronounce ‘B’), and among them originated those who live in Assan’s territory: both the former and the latter are like known as the Ulac.
—William of Rubruck (c. 1220-c. 1293): His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253-1255[10]
A chronicle written in Hungary in the 1280s is the first source identifying the Vlachs with the “Romans’ shepherds” who were described as the inhabitants of Pannonia by earlier documents.[11]
The citizens of Pannonia, Pamphylia, Macedonia, Dalmatia, and Phrygia, who had been exhausted by repeated raids and sieges from the Huns, having received permission from Attila quit their native soil and crossed the Adriatic Sea to Apulia; the Vlachs, however, who had been their shepherds and husbandmen, elected to remain behind in Pannonia.
These Székely are in fact remnants of the Huns, and when they found out that the Magyars were returning to Pannonia, they came to meet them on the borders of Ruthenia (...). (...) this was not in the plains of Pannonia but in the mountains, which they shared with the Vlachs, mingling with them, it is said, and adopting their alphabet.
—Simon of Kéza (13th century): The Deeds of the Hungarians[12]
The Florentine humanist, Poggio Bracciolini (1380 - 1459) thought that the descendants of Emperor Trajan's settlers lived in the western part of Eastern Europe.[5] Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405 - 1464) supposed that the Romanians were the descendants of the Roman soldiers who had been sent to fight against the Dacians, and they had been named after their military leader, a certain Pomponius Flaccus.[5] Antonio Bonfini (1427/1434-1502), who lived in Hungary from 1486, wrote that the Romanians had descended from Trajan’s legionnaires.[5]
Because the Romanians are descendants of the Romans, a fact that even today is attested by their language, a language that, even though they are surrounded by diverse barbarian peoples, could not be destroyed (...) even if all kinds of barbarian attacks flooded over the province of Dacia and the Roman people, we can see that the Roman colonies and legions that had been established there could not be annihilated.
Re: Viking Normandy
Originally Posted by Erebus26
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