Vlach law

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The Vlach law (Latin: ius valachicum, Romanian: legea românească, "Romanian law", or obiceiul pământului, "customs of the land", Hungarian: vlach jog) refers to the traditional Romanian common law as well as to various special laws and privileges enjoyed or enforced upon particularly pastoralist communities (cf. obști) of Romanian stock or origin in European states of the Late Middle Ages and Early modern period, including in the two Romanian polities of Moldavia and Wallachia, as well as in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Serbia, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, etc. The first documents associated with settlement with the Vlach law began to appear in the 14th century. The main characteristics of the Vlach law, regardless of location: The right to travel and carry weapons (sometimes right to hunt). Not mandatory labour service towards the land owner, taxes were paid by live or in money. Military service obligation towards the country (forms depending on the country). The term "Vlachs" originally denoted Romance-speaking populations; the term became synonymous in some contexts with "shepherds", but even in these cases an ethnical aspect was implicit. The establishment around them of a large number of "Slavs" starting from the 6th century led to the linguistic Slavization of a significant number of these communities, so that in the 8th century, the word "Vlach" came, in Slavic languages, to designate any Orthodox shepherd, whether he remained Romanophone (as in the Kingdom of Eastern Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania) or became Slavophone (as in a large part of the Balkan Peninsula). According to André Du Nay and Kosztin Árpád the concept originates in the laws enforced on Vlachs in the medieval Balkans. In medieval Serbian charters, the pastoral community, primarily made up of Vlachs, were held under special laws due to their nomadic lifestyle. In...