From cremation to inhumation: the (re)Christianization of the Transylvanian area (centuries 7 – 10 A.D.)
The chronological limits (7th – 10th centuries) that were defined are covering the entire “Slavization” and its subsequent Christianization process within the Transylvanian space. Both phases have influenced the shaping of a cultural Transylvanian distinctiveness. Cultural and religious features belonging to the autochthonous population were caught up by those belonging to local ethnic groups. The archaeological research between the 1960’s and 1980’s was interested in finding the necessary tools that were able to force the archaeological object to reveal information about the ethnicity of its “maker” or “master”. This assumed archaeological objects’ ethnic load theory became a postulate of the Romanian history. Therefore, the romans and later on the Daco-Romans are archaeological traceable by means of their holding on to a certain funerary rite “conservatism”. The ancient society was characterized by its bi-ritualism. The latter was documented within the empire’s Danube provinces starting with the 1st century B.C. The bi-ritualism was given up starting with the 3rd century A.D. during the rise of barbarian kingdoms within the former Roman provinces: Moesia Inferior, Dacia and Pannonia. The re-birth of this funerary rite was acknowledged during the rise of the Avars’ authority within the Pannonia plain and the emergence of Slavic populations within central and south-eastern Europe. The proportion of inhumation and cremation burial grounds in Transylvania favors the first ones (the cremation burial grounds). The proportion expresses a different point of view in Moldavia or Wallachia where the number of inhumation burial grounds is higher than the number of cremation ones. Therefore, one can conclude that the political influence of the Byzantine Empire was always of high importance in the Lower Danube region and was emphasized by the religious influence after the 8th century. This century marks the rise of the eastern Christian communities.
Keywords: Transylvania, early Middle Ages, Christianity, cremation and inhumation necropolis.
1. vezi K. Horedt, Siebenbürgen in Fruhmittlelater Bonn, 1988; Ioan Marian Ţiplic, Necropole de tip Mediaş din Transilvania, în: Acta Musei Napocensis, 39-40.II, 2002-2003, p. 9-23; George Tomegea, Accesorii vestimentare şi podoabe în necropolele birituale din Transilvania (sec. VII-IX), în: Analele Banatului, XIX, 2011, 209-220.
2. Aurel Dragotă, Aspecte de multiculturalitate spirituală. Rit şi ritual funerar în Transilvania şi în Europa centrală şi de sud-est (secolele IX-XI p. Ch), Editura Altip, Alba Iulia, 2006.
3. Zeno Karl Pinter, Nikolaus G.O. Boroffka, Neue mittelalterliche Gräber der Ciumbrudgruppe aus Broos/Orăştie, Fundstelle Böhmerberg/Dealul Pemilor X8, in Transsilvanica, Archäologische Untersuchungen zur ältesten Geschichte des Südöstlichen Mitteleuropa, Gedenkschrift K.Horedt, Rhaden, 1999.
4. Alexandru Madgearu, The Romanians in the Anonymous Gesta Hungarorum: Truth and Fiction, Center for Transylvanian Studies, Romanian Cultural Institute, Cluj-Napoca, 2005.
5. vezi Florin Curta (ed.), Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, (Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 12). Turnhout: Brepols, 2005; Florin Curta, Some remarks on ethnicity in medieval archaeology, in: Florin Curta, Text, Context, History, and Archaeology. Studies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Victor Spinei ed., Bucureşti-Brăila, 2009, pp.293-319.
6. B. Wailes, Amy L. Zoll, Civilization, Barbarism and Nationalism in European Archaeology, în: Philip Kohl, Clara Fawcett, Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archeology, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 21.
7. Margarita Diaz-Andreu, Timothy Champion, Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe, UCL Press. London., 1996, p. 6.
8. Bruce G. Trigger, Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist, în: MAN, 19, 1984, p. 360.
9. Marie Louise Stig Sorensen, The Fall of a Nation, the Birth of a Subject: the National use of Archaelogy in Nineteenth-Century Denmark, în: Margarita Diaz-Andreu, Timothy Champion, Nationalism and archaeology, p. 24 sqq.
10. G. Helmig, Barbara Scholkmann, M. Untermann eds., Centre. Region. Periphery – Medieval Europe Basel 2002, II, Hertingen, 2002, p. 287-432.
11. Stelian Brezeanu, Identităţi şi solidarităţi medievale. Controverse istorice, Bucureşti, 2002.
12. Mircea Păcurariu, Istoria Bisericii Ortodoxe Române. Manual pentru Seminariile teologice, Sibiu, 1978; Antonie Plămădeală, Romanitate, continuitate, unitate, Sibiu, 1988.
13. Asupra subiectului vezi Nelu Zugravu, Geneza creştinismului popular al românilor, Bucureşti, 1997; Nicolae Gudea, Ioan Ghiurco, Din istoria creştinismului la români. Mărturii arheologice, Cluj-Napoca, 2002.
14. Dumitru Protase, Problema continuităţii în Dacia, în lumina arheologiei şi numismaticii, Cluj, 1968; Nicolae Gudea, Ioan Ghiurco, Din istoria creştinismului, passim.
15. Alexandru Madgearu, Misiunea episcopului Hierotheus. Contribuţii la istoria Transilvaniei şi Ungariei în secolul al X-lea, in Revista Istorică, SN, 194, V, 1-2, 1994, p. 147-154; vezi asupra subiectului şi Alexandru Madgearu, Romanizare şi creştinare la nordul Dunării, în: Anuarul Institutului de Istorie „A. D. Xenopol”, Iaşi, 31, 1994, p. 479-502.
