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Banat in the Middle Ages


The Middle Ages in the Banat (a historical region in Central Europe which is now divided among Romania, Serbia and Hungary) started around 900. Around that time, Duke Glad ruled Banat, according to the Gesta Hungarorum (a chronicle of debated reliability). Archaeological finds and 10th-century sources evidence that Magyars (or Hungarians) settled in the lowlands in the early 10th century, but the survival of Avar, Slav and Bulgar communities can also be documented. A local chieftain, Ajtony, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy around 1000, but his attempts to control the delivery of salt on the Mureș River brought him into conflict with Stephen I of Hungary. Ajtony died fighting against the royal army in the first decades of the 11th century. His realm was transformed into a county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Counties (which were established around royal fortresses) were the most prominent units of royal administration.

Featuring items of the "Bijelo Brdo culture" (the dominant archaeological culture of the Carpathian Basin between around 950 and 1090) can be detected in the lowlands from around 975. Artefacts from the Byzantine Empire or imitating Byzantine objects were found along the Danube, and in the Banat Mountains. Pagan burial rites disappeared by the end of the 11th century, evidencing the local inhabitants' conversion to Christianity. Gerard, the first Bishop of Csanád (now Cenad in Romania), played a preeminent role in the process, according to hagiographic works written centuries later. More than a dozen monasteries (including at least three Orthodox monasteries) were established in the region before the mid-13th-century.


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