Hungarian-Romanian transcultural relations during the Middle Ages and the reformation

Abstract

It was in the Latin-language historical literature of medieval and Renaissance Hungary that the noble ideology was first formulated which has determined the discourse on Hungarian national and literary consciousness up to the present day. These chronicles, however, contain a great deal of information not only about the Hungarians, but also about the peoples who lived alongside them. Thus, Romanians are also important figures in this Latin-language historical literature. In the first part of this study we will discuss the depiction of the Romanians in Anonymus' and Simon Kézai's Chronicles, the Illustrated Chronicle and Antonio Bonfini's monumental work. In the second part of the study I will describe the influence of the Hungarian Reformation literature of the 16th and 17th centuries on Romanian literature. From a Hungarian perspective, the Romanian Reformation is worth studying because it is a clear demonstration of Hungarian “cultural imperialism” in the 16th to 18th centuries, so much so that Hungarian culture has been unable to repeat cultural export on such a scale ever since. This means that between 1540 and 1750 there was no other language into which so many Hungarian-language ecclesiastical works (catechisms, psalms, hymns, postulates, agendas, piety works) were translated as Romanian. In other words, no other culture has been so powerfully influenced by a Hungarian impact as was Romanian culture during these two centuries.