Datarea a patru documente din timpul lui Sigismund de Luxemburg şi al lui Vlad Dracul

This article examines the dating of documents issued between 1428 and 1442. The first one, a charter preserved in a later copy, is dated during the reign of King Sigismund and was issued at Pojon (Pressburg/Bratislava) on 28th October 1429 for the monks of the Tismana Monastery in Wallachia. The editors of the Documenta Romaniae Historica (DRH) series have revised this date and reassigned the charter to the year [1428]. The royal itinerary indicates that 1429 is the correct year. The second document, an original letter without a year, was also issued at Pojon and dated therein “five days after the birth of the Lord our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” The DRH editors assigned it the date 29th December [1437]. This year is unfounded, as Emperor Sigismund is described in the text as “cheerful and benevolent”, although he had already died weeks before, on 9th December 1437. Based on the itinerary and the content of the letter, the correct year should be identified as [1434]. The dating 29th December [1434] was already proposed in studies of the 1920s, in “Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen” (Ub Siebenbürgen, volume IV, 1937) as well. The third document, an original letter written by two boyars of Prince Vlad Dracul to the citizens of Kronstadt, is dated “on the Monday before St George’s Day”, again without indicating the year. In 1905 historian Ioan Bogdan dated the letter to 23rd April [1442], assuming that St George’s Day in Hungary fell on 24th April. Unlike the Magyars and other populations of medieval Hungary, Wallachians and Transylvanian Saxons celebrate St George’s Day on 23rd April. This practice must therefore also be presumed in the present case. During the reign of Vlad Dracul, the letter can be dated to the Monday preceding 23rd April in the years [1438-1440]. The final letter, dated in the original as “die visitationis dive marie anno 1531”, has been published by several editors (N. Iorga, Ub Siebenbürgen, DRH) as a document from 1431. However, the year 1531 is clearly legible in the original manuscript (see Annex). Internal diplomatic analysis unequivocally confirms the issuer (Ladislaus Apor), the recipient (Lukas Hirscher, judex regius / mayor of Kronstadt), and the year 1531.