THE GYPSIES IN THE ROMANIAN PRINCIPALTIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES

THE SLAVERY

3. The date and origin of Slavery in the Romanian Principalties.

Slavery would be a form of social organization in Wallachia and Moldavia. There would be Gypsy slaves in some regions of Transylvania as well. On the coming of the first Gypsies to the Romanian principalties, in the second half of the fourteenth century, slavery had already been practiced there for some time. During the clashes between Romanians and Tatars, the captured Tatars, or in the opinion of others, the captured Tatars' slaves, were taken over into slavery by Romanians. The sedentary Romanian population saw in these foreigners their enemies and treated them exactly in the same way as they had treated the Tatars. Since in fourteenth-fifteenth centuries these Gypsies settled there in relatively great numbers, slavery became a sizable phenomenon. In the fifteenth century the only slaves left would be the Gypsies. The far less numerous Tatars would eventually melt into this mass of Gypsy slaves; and the term of ţigan would become the equivalent of slave.

4. The Categories of Slaves.

According their master and owner, the Gypsy slaves in the Romanian principalties fell into three categories: the slaves owned by the Prince or the State (domneşti), by the monasteries (mănăstireşti), and by the boyards (boiereşti). For a long time, the Prince's slaves (Gypsies) would be the most numerous by far. The Prince seems to have been at least initially the sole owner of slaves. The slaves of the monasteries come from donations to the monasteries by the Prince and boyards. In various way the monasteries would come to own a very large number of slaves(actually, thousands of them). The boyards' slaves in their turn come from donations by the Prince, direct purchase, inheritance, dowry and loot.

5. Ways of Life. Nomadism and Sedentarization. Marginality.

Their normal style of life was what distinguished the gypsies from the majority of the population. In the first centuries after their arrival in the Romanian principalties Gypsies were for their greater part nomads. Most of the Gypsy slaves were allowed to ramble about and make a living each by his "trade". In exchange for this liberty they had to pay their masters a certain amount of money. But nomad life in the case of the Gypsies should not be taken in its strict sense, since the nomad Gypsies used to winter in one place, on the estate of a feudal lord. Their traveling about in summer always had a well established route. It so appears that nomad life in their case was limited and controlled by the authorities, rather then destructive and dangerous to society.

Undoubtedly the evolution of the Gypsy habitat took a sedentary course, and the household chores and farming activities eventually tied the Gypsies to a certain place.

The stark contrast between the two societies, the rural Romanian one and of the Gypsies, subsisted for a long time. Despite the established economic relations between the peasants and the Gypsies, the two communities remained apart, each governed by its own set of rules. Time would somehow fill this gap, with the increased bondage of the peasants and the slow settling down of the Gypsies. This later process would cause part of the Gypsy population to lose some of its ethnic characteristics. The social changes in the condition of the peasants and in the habitat of some of the privately owned Gypsies favored the contacts between the two populations, and even led to marriages between the Gypsies and the Romanians. A Romanian marrying a Gypsy would automatically become a slave. During their long centuries of slavery, the Gypsies hardly had any chance to involve themselves with the Romanians. It is only after their emancipation in the nineteenth century that part of the Gypsies became integrated into the Romanian communities.