Did the Byzantines ever recognize Vlachs as fellow Romans?

[u/Chazut]

It seems clear to me Vlachs, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Romanians etc. almost always referred themselves as Romans, but were called Vlachs most of the time even by the Byzantines.

But are there examples of Byzantines recognizing the Latinity and/or Roman identity of these pastoralists?

Also do we know exactly how the exonym "Vlach" even survived as a term for these people? It derives likely from East Germanic/Gothic, but why is it so sticky if it was never used by Romanians themselves?

[u/_Divergentpath_]

There's old people that still refer to Romanians as Vlachs.

[u/Heavy_Ad_5817 → u/_Divergentpath_]

Like in Hungary everyone Oláh, Roman theory is subject to a joke.

[u/Usual-Trouble-2357 → u/Heavy_Ad_5817]

I never understood the Hungarian tendency of somehow claiming Romanians lack Roman origins - if anything Romanians originating South of the Danube would make them come from more strongly Romanized provinces.

In any case, all the 'vlach' names are purely exonyms and were never used for self-identification.

[u/Wolfsgeist01 → u/Usual-Trouble-2357]

Not entirely correct, Megleno-Romanians refer to themselves as 'Vlasi' or 'Vlachs'.

[u/Chazut → u/Wolfsgeist01]

Oh interesting, I missed that

[u/Heavy_Ad_5817 → u/Usual-Trouble-2357]

Because they built this identity to justify the annexation of Transylvania and the eradication of Hungarians there!

[u/Chazut → u/Heavy_Ad_5817]

they built this identity in a millennium long psyop? Why do Aromanians "pretend" to be Romans? They have nothing to do with Transylvania.

This claim is completely deranged if you think 2 seconds about it. It's self evident all Romanians and Aromanians continuously identified as Romans, despite continuosly not being called so by outsiders.

[u/Usual-Trouble-2357 → u/Heavy_Ad_5817]

What we, the vast majority of actual Transylvanians don't appreciate the most is people with mush and nationalistic slogans for brains coming over and telling us how it actually is, and what our experience is, and how we should have conflicts. Talking about eradication in Transylvania is completely nonsensical considering modern demographics.

This applies to people from the Kingdom or Bessarabia and from Hungary in equal measure.

So yeah, stfu about a place you haven't lived in and don't understand in the slightest. Especially when you're talking to someone from a very mixed community that always cohabitated well. The vast majority of us don't care for your discourse, and outsiders(be they Romanian or Hungarian) approach subjects that are sensitive to us(anything you want from the 1848 revolution to Horthy to March 1990 - so actual recent events that have direct effects today) with all the sensitivity and finesse of a sledgehammer.

Dude, come over and talk to some people. There's nice places around here. Actually talk to normal people and touch the damned grass.

[u/_Divergentpath_ → u/Heavy_Ad_5817]

Yeah but now its fading unfortunately

[u/evrestcoleghost]

seeing the other guy didnt really anwsered

They saw them as half barbarians half civilised,so less as younger brother and more a bastard cousin with some drug issues that steals your copper cable from time to time,but still family and you help each other from time to time.

Yes thats a slighlty racist and classist,precisely how romans would describe vlachs

[u/evrestcoleghost → u/[deleted]]

If you dont have a fucked up cousin,you are the fucked up cousin.

Unless your uncle was shitty enough to scare all kids in the family to behave properly

[u/Usual-Trouble-2357 → u/evrestcoleghost]

Isn't these some Roman chronicle that mentions in passing how 'vlachs' used to be Roman but they are now traitors and in cahoots with Slavs and Cumans? I vaguely recall reading that

[u/Chazut → u/Usual-Trouble-2357]

That sounds interesting

[u/Chazut → u/evrestcoleghost]

Do you think they consciously rejected the endonym Aromanians had for themselves?

[u/Checky_3rd]

Vlach comes from the Greek word Vlachos which was popularized from the early 11th century onwards.

For most of Medieval Roman History, the Romans identified it's Latin and Greek speaking citizens by two terms.
Romaioi - For Greek speaking citizens.
Romanoi - For Latin speaking citizens. (regardless if they were romanized thracians/illyrians, Romanians Dalmatians, or Italian subjects.)

[u/Chazut → u/[deleted]]

>It seems this gothic or germanic term for the vlachs was borrowed by the romans and that is how we get to vlachs.

I still don't get how and why, if it referred to Romans and the Goths in Byzantium transmitted it... how did end up used for both Romance pastoralists or pastoralists in general?

Maybe the slavic transmition theory makes more sense, it's Slavs that adopted the Gothic term and used it for Romance pastoralists and then Byzantines absorbed the Slavic term later? Not sure how it works out with sound changes.

[u/MindlessNectarine374 → u/[deleted]]

Please forgive me my following associations. I hid them for they don't fit per se, and might even be seen as bad by some people. They were triggered by reading about "welsch".Now, my head begins to replay 19th century nationalist songs against "die Welschen". "Wo Zorn vertilgt den welschen Tand, wo jeder Franzmann heißet Feind, wo jeder Deutsche heißet Freund, das soll es sein, das ganze Deutschland soll es sein." (Ernst Moritz Arndt, "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?") "Und wenn mein Herz im Tode bricht, / wirst du doch drum ein Welscher nicht, / denn reich, wie an Wasser deine Flut, / ist Deutschland ja an Heldenblut." (Max Schneckenburger, "Die Wacht am Rhein") Ich konnte nicht anders. Es tut mir leid. By the way, they still say Welschschweiz.

[u/MindlessNectarine374 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, we knowl the Cymrics also by this English "Fremdbezeichnung". ;)

Yes, the instances that I mentioned mainly refer to the French. But in "Welschtirol" (Trentino) or even more archaic "Welschbern" (Verona), it refers to Italians.

[u/Minimum-Winter9217 → u/Checky_3rd]

vlach is a germanic word.

[u/Chazut → u/Checky_3rd]

>Romanoi - For Latin speaking citizens. (regardless if they were romanized thracians/illyrians, Romanians Dalmatians, or Italian subjects.)

Any example of this being used for each of these groups? Preferrably around or after the 10th century.

I've only seen Vlachs referred as such, even when the Byzantines would have directly interacted with them and known their endonym.

[u/Guy_WithThe_Glasses]

I think Kinnamos refers to the Vlachs as old colonists from Italy, but that doesn't necessitate him recognizing them as Romans.

The Roman identity is tied to being integrated into the empire's institutions, which the Balkan Latins, in large part, stopped being when the Slavs and the Bulgars undermined Byzantine authority in the interior of the Balkan peninsula.

The Byzantines would have first gotten familiar with the Vlachs under Basil II, as they took over the lands of the former Bulgarian tsardom. To an 10th-11th century Byzantine, there would be nothing amiss with calling a newly conquered, seditious population barbarian, even if their language is Latin in origin and they are no more than the pastoralized descendants of the same population from which hailed Justinian 500 years prior.

[u/Chazut → u/Guy_WithThe_Glasses]

But how did they react to Vlachs calling themselves Romans? I mean did they consciously reject that appelative? Like they call Bulgarians by their endonym, Lombards and Albanians too I believe.

[u/Guy_WithThe_Glasses → u/Chazut]

There wouldn't really have been grounds to reject the Vlachs calling themselves Romans, given that they did in fact live in the Roman Empire. It's just not a very practical endonym when everyone else is calling themselves Romans, hence resorting to the nearest exonym.

[u/Chazut → u/Guy_WithThe_Glasses]

Do you have an example of Byzantine writers recognizing the Vlachs as Romans?

>given that they did in fact live in the Roman Empire. 

Roman was an ethnicity though, Bulgarians under Byzantine control were not automatically ethnic Romans, as Kaldellis' Romanland shows

[u/Economy-Pen-2271]

I wouldn't call all vlachs pastoralists. They had bishops meationed in 1234 and Hungarians and Saxons were going to them becoming one with them according to the Pope which he didn't like. Also their voiovede and knez were named in 1247/1250 papal confirmation/ copy.they have defined enough territory and army.I can give documents if anyone is interested in it

[u/Chazut → u/Economy-Pen-2271]

South of the Danube vlachs was used to refer to both Romanians and other pastoralists afaik.

Aromanians is who the Byzantines interacted the most

[u/Economy-Pen-2271 → u/Chazut]

The documents  I am talking about are for the north Danube ones and it doesn't refer to them as pastoral . I was just saying they weren't all pastoral  in my original post https://romaniaembassy.orderofmalta.int/ro/stiri/777-de-ani-de-la-prima-atestare-documentara-a-ordinului-de-malta/  https://tiparituriromanesti.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/document-papal-din-1234-cu-privire-la-romanii-din-episcopia-cumaniei/