From Roman Politics To Romanian Politics
Entry posted by Kosmo
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Between the imperial instititution of Rome and romanian political institution of "domnie" of Middle Ages and Modern Era it's continuity of content.
The romans were never able to maintain dinastic continuity and usurpers used what was the fragility of imperial rule and the reduce loyalty of the army to start new dinasties that faced the same problems.
The empire was divided in three large areas were succesor states ruled. The West adopted the political forms of the victorious germans based on election of the kings, dinastic succesion or division of the state.
The areas under muslim rule used islamic theories.
Only the East directly continued the roman imperial tradition. This presented problems that played a great role in the gradual decline of the byzantine state. The inability to secure the legitimacy of any dinasty it's an explanation for the contniuous intrigue and distrust copled with frecvent rebellions and civil wars that plagued the byzantine empire until his fall.
Romanian "domnie" was an original institution specific to the two romanian states of Moldova and Valachia (also named Muntenia or Tara Romaneasca)
The name it's from the latin "dominus" (eng. master) transformed in romanian "domn" and in itself (togather with "jude" from latin "judex" eng.judge) it's a curios statement of continuos political continuity throut the millenia of migrator rule.
Slavic political teminology it's proven by the use by domn of the title of great voivod in parallel and for the title of "cneaz" of the ruler of small teritories.
Byzantine political tradition reached the emerging romanian states thru two ways. The first was thru the bulgarian emperors that adopted along with orthodoxy byzantine institutions (and spreaded thru out Eastern Europe after changing it) and thru the direct inflence of byzantine church and byzantine legal codes.
So, in the romanian states any member of the ruling dinasty could claim the right to rule and later this was expaned to any aristocrat (boyar).
The internal conflicts that this type of goverment made possible had many effects and not all negative.
The first was that only able rulers could hold the title as the weak ones were overthrown or did not get to it. Another one was the use of foreign support in internal conflicts. This led to formation of aristocrat parties that had outside alliances. A positive aspect was the fact that foreign powers did not need to conquer the country to controll it, but just to place an everpresent contender on the throne.
This made possible indirect rule and tribute gathering so the ottomans kept this tradition in place first by supporting claims and later by naming the rulers.
The romanian countries enjoied during ottoman rule a large degree of authomomy and the title of "domn" was only affected by the constitutional reforms of the second half of the 19 century. Romanian states kept their rulers thru out the 4 centuries of ottoman rule and were never turned in ottoman adminstrative units (pasalic, sangiac, raia etc) colonized, or even had turkish land owners or mosques.
Many features of "domnie' are direct continuations of roman imperial tradition. Unlike other european rulers the "domn" had almost absolute power and owned the entire land of the country (at least in theory). They had also control over the church.
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