John,
also Joan
or Ioan,
was a ''
cneaz'' (local chieftain or ruler)
mentioned in the
Diploma of the Joannites issued by King
Béla IV of Hungary (1235–1270) on 2 July 1247; the diploma granted territories to the
Knights Hospitaller 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.
The diploma of Béla IV also refers to the ''kenazate''s of
Farcaş and ''voivode''
Litovoi
Litovoi, also Litvoy, was a Vlach/Romanian ''voivode'' in the 13th century whose territory comprised northern Oltenia in today's Romania.
He is mentioned for the first time in the Diploma of the Joannites issued by king Béla IV of Hungary (1235� ...
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 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 the power ...
form ''(Johannes)'', and so contains no hint of the nationality of its bearer.
See also
*
Foundation of Wallachia
The founding of Wallachia ( ro, descălecatul Țării Românești), that is the establishment of the first independent Romanians, Romanian principality, was achieved at the beginning of the 14th century, through the unification of smaller politic ...
*
List of rulers of Wallachia
This is a list of rulers of Wallachia, from the first mention of a medieval polity situated between the Southern Carpathians and the Danube until the union with Moldavia in 1859, which led to the creation of Romania.
Notes
Dynastic rule is hard t ...
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