John,
also Joan
or Ioan,
was a ''
cneaz
A ''knez'' or ''kenez'' ( ro, cnez or ; hu, kenéz; la, kenezius) was the hereditary leader of the Vlach (Romanian) communities, primarily in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary.
Terminology
Official documents, written in Latin, applied multiple ...
'' (local chieftain or ruler)
mentioned in the
Diploma of the Joannites
The Diploma of the Joannites, or Diploma of the Knights of St. John, was a grant issued in 1247 by King Béla IV of Hungary, to Master Rembald of the Knights Hospitaller. It allowed the Knights to settle in Severin, in what is today Romania, where ...
issued by King
Béla IV of Hungary (1235–1270) on 2 July 1247; the diploma granted territories to the
Knights Hospitaller
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headq ...
in the
Banate of Severin and ''
Cumania''.
John held a ''
kenazate'' which was given to the knights by the king.
His ''kenazate'' lay in southern
Oltenia
Oltenia (, also called Lesser Wallachia in antiquated versions, with the alternative Latin names ''Wallachia Minor'', ''Wallachia Alutana'', ''Wallachia Caesarea'' between 1718 and 1739) is a historical province and geographical region of Romania ...
.
The diploma of Béla IV also refers to the ''kenazate''s of
Farcaş and ''voivode''
Litovoi and to ''voivode''
Seneslau.
Seneslau and Litovoi are expressly said to be Vlachs ''(Olati)'' in the king's diploma.
The Romanian historian Ioan-Aurel Pop suggests that the ''kenazate'' of John was one of the incipient Romanian states south of the
Carpathian Mountains.
In the diploma, his name is given in its
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
form ''(Johannes)'', and so contains no hint of the nationality of its bearer.
See also
*
Foundation of Wallachia
*
List of rulers of Wallachia
References
Sources
*Pop, Ioan Aurel: ''Romanians and Romania: A Brief History''; Columbia University Press, 1999, New York;
*Rady, Martyn: ''Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary''; Palgrave (in association with School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London), 2000, New York;
*Spinei, Victor: ''The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-Thirteenth Century''; Brill, 2009, Leiden and Boston;
*Treptow, Kurt W. - Popa, Marcel: ''Historical Dictionary of Romania'' (part ''‘Historical Chronology’''); Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996, Lanham and Folkestone;
*Vásáry, István: ''Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185-1365''; Cambridge University Press, 2005, Cambridge; {{ISBN, 0-521-83756-1
Medieval Romanian nobility
13th-century Romanian people
13th-century Hungarian people