Several Remarks Regarding “Io” and Invocatio Verbalis from the Wallachian Documents before 1500

Abstract

The Wallachian princes’ names were preceded in most of their charters by a short word (“Io”). Although many historians tried to find its origin in the proper noun “Ioan–Ioannes”, Marin Tadin suggested that “Io” might come from the short form of the invocatio verbalis (“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”), the first letters of the Slavonic words “name” and “father” being united in the particle “Io”. This article tries to analyze whether the Wallachian documents before 1500 contain invocatio verbalis and if so, how many of these documents were issued by Wallachian princes whose names were preceded by “Io”.