What was ethnic breakdown of Transylvania in the 1400s and before? Were Romanians always majority?

[Universe]

title

[Seya]

it's difficult to say as most of the statistics made before late 18th century were only estimations.
this is however the first mention

[Aspirin]

Most probable minority, with some hotspots in Southern and North-Eastern Transylvania and Maramureș.

[ixulescu]

How about we use local German sources instead of Romanian or Hungarian? Saxon colonists were certainly interested in having a realistic picture before moving to such a far away and foreign land.

Here's how they described the ethnic distribution:






So yes, while keeping in mind that sources before 1700s and real censuses sucked, most still give Romanians as being about 50% of the population in Transylvania.

[Blondie]

Definitely not.

1. Let's start with roman times. We know latins conquered Transylvania and spent 150 years in this area. After 150 years these romans have left Transylvania, after that the local population has been assimilated into foreigners who migrated there. There was intensive migration from East Europe to the Carpathian Basin for example various germanic tribes, iranic tribes, turkics, slavs, bulgars, avars etc. But even the old roman colonists had no romanian indentity (only roman) they didn't identify themselves as different latin ethnic group or something, so we cannot talk about romanian ethnicity in this time.

2. The early medieval sources didn't mention latin speaker population in Transylvania:

Procopius wrote:

"The River Ister (Danube) flows down from the mountains in the country of the Celts, who are now called Gauls; and it passes through a great extent of country which for the most part is altogether barren, though in some places it is inhabited by barbarians who live a kind of brutish life and have no dealings with other men. When it gets close to Dacia, for the first time it clearly forms the boundary between the barbarians, who hold its left bank, and the territory of the Romans, which is on the right". - Peri Ktismaton (Buildings), Book IV, 9-10.

Jordanes wrote:

"I mean ancient Dacia, which the race of the Gepids now possess. This Gothia, which our ancestors called Dacia and now, as I have said, is called Gepidia, was then bounded on the east by the Roxolani, on the west by the Yazyg, on the north by the Sarmatians and Basternae and on the south by the river Danube. The Yazyg are separated from the Roxolani by the Aluta river only". - Getica, XII, 73-74.

According to romanian historians there were christian temples in Transylvania and it proves that latin speakers lived here. The problem with it, goths were also christians, just like partly huns too.

"The Gothic tribes converted to Christianity sometime between 376 and 390 AD, around the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Gothic Christianity is the earliest instance of the Christianization of a Germanic people, completed more than a century before the baptism of Frankish king Clovis I."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Christianity

" addition to these pagan beliefs, there are numerous attestations of Huns converting to Christianity and receiving Christian missionaries.[196][197] The missionary activities among the Huns of the Caucasas seem to have been particularly successful, resulting in the conversion of the Hunnish prince Alp Ilteber.[183] Attila appears to have tolerated both Nicene and Arian Christianity among his subjects.[198] However, a pastoral letter by Pope Leo the Great to the church of Aquileia indicates that Christian slaves taken from there by the Huns in 452 were forced to participate in Hunnic religious activities.[199]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huns#Religion

3. When the magyar elite conquered the Carpathian Basin, there was a transylvanian state called Gelou's duchy. Gelou name came from the old hungarian Gyalu/Gyula name:
"The name Gyula means Youthful, Downy and is of Hungarian origin. "
https://www.babynames.com/name/gyula

Gesta Hungarorum says:

"The Gesta Hungarorum states that Gelou's duchy was inhabited by Vlachs and Slavs; most toponyms recorded by the chronicler in connection with Gelou's duchy are of Magyar origin."

"The names of many rivers in Transylvania—for instance, Bistrița ("swift"), Cerna ("black"), Dobra ("good") and Târnava ("thorny")—are of Slavic origin, indicating the historical presence of a Slavic-speaking population. [11] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelou

According to romanian historians these transylvanian vlachs were latin speakers, but in the medieval sources the word "vlach" does not necessarily mean latin speakers:

"The term also became a synonym in the Balkans for the social category of shepherds,[4] and was also used for non-Romance-speaking peoples, in recent times in the western Balkans derogatively.[5] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs

The question is if these vlachs were really latin speakers why they used hungarian and slavic topography and hungarian given names? It makes no sense. Other posibble version is latin speaker sepherds lived here earlier when these non latin new vlachs and slavs adopted this sepherd life style and later they assimilated or they drove them from this area or maybe both happened. But Gelou's Dutchy was definitely not a latin state rather hungarian according to it's leader's name. The number of these transylvanian slavs and hungarians is unkown, but this is the ethnic map of Carpathian Basin in the 11. century:



4. The tatar-mongol destruction and the Black Death plague later (1346–1353) were the reasons that many transylvanian region became sparsely populated, this started the first great romanian migration wave from Wallachia and Moldova. Of course there were romanians here more early but not in big number. These newcomers were peasants that's why the medieval hungarian elite didn't accept them as political nation of Transylvania because they had no nobility and in the medieval age the "nation" means only the nobility not the peasant class. This is the ethnic map of Carpathian Basin in 15. century when the hungarian ethnicity was around 80% in the complete Carpathian Region:



5. The ottoman destruction affected mostly the central areas in the Kingdom of Hungary where hungarians lived. At this time the number of hungarians was around 35-50% so they were minority in their own country:



The feudal lords needed more peasant to work in the fields of Alföld. In this time there were a big internal and external migration: hungarians from Transylvania and Felvidék (Slovakia) moved to central areas, just like many slovak moved to Békés, romanians moved to East Alföld (Partium) in big number and in Transylvania too. Catholic germans migrated to South Alföld, serbs came from the ottoman lands to Vojvodina. Of course romanians were majority in Transylvania at this time, but before that definitely not.

[ixulescu]

Definitely not.

1. Let's start with roman times. We know latins conquered Transylvania and spent 150 years in this area. After 150 years these romans have left Transylvania, after that the local population has been assimilated into foreigners who migrated there. There was intensive migration from East Europe to the Carpathian Basin for example various germanic tribes, iranic tribes, turkics, slavs, bulgars, avars etc. But even the old roman colonists had no romanian indentity (only roman) they didn't identify themselves as different latin ethnic group or something, so we cannot talk about romanian ethnicity in this time.
...

I hope we're not back to copy pasta wars these are weak arguments based on obsolete secondary sources - we have already discussed all these points.

But tell me why would Saxons say Romanians were half of the population in Transylvania since 1300s unless this is how they saw it?

[Blondie]

But tell me why would Saxons say Romanians were half of the population in Transylvania since 1300s unless this is how they saw it?

This source came from saxons who lived in 13. century or saxons who lived in 19. century? If the last one then their opinion is also just estimate from 600-700 years later.

[ixulescu]

This source came from saxons who lived in 13. century or saxons who lived in 19. century? If the last one then their opinion is also just estimate from 600-700 years later.

It's a 19th century compilation of older Saxon sources. The numbers given for 1300s are from a 1300s source. In Romania Saxons are considered consummate bookkeepers.

[Blondie]

It's a 19th century compilation of older Saxon sources. The numbers given for 1300s are from a 1300s source. In Romania Saxons are considered consummate bookkeepers.

Where are these old sources exactly? Btw there was no population census in the medival age, these numbers are just estimate of 19. century peoples.
Plus info: in the 19. century saxons were not pro hungarian, saxons rebels have fought against the hungarian goverment in 1848 along with local romanians.

[ixulescu]

Where are these old sources exactly? Btw there was no population census in the medival age, these numbers are just estimate of 19. century peoples.

No, the numbers come from 14th century sources, but indeed they are not real census numbers.

No censuses have been done anywhere until states started taxation (sometime around 1700s in most places in Europe). before that peasants were taxed in labor on senior's land.