Acte domnești din secolul al XV-lea în dublă versiune (latină și slavonă)
FIFTEENTH-CENTURY WALLACHIAN AND MOLDAVIAN PRINCELY ACTS IN TWO VERSIONS (LATIN AND SLAVONIC)

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on a relatively rare group of documents pertaining to Wallachian and Moldavian diplomatics: princely acts issued simultaneously in Latin and Slavonic originals. They are exclusively external acts, such as political agreements, commercial privileges and land charters with foreign beneficiaries. By comparing the contents, structure and stylistic features of each pair of documents, cases of independently composed versions as well as translated ones can be highlighted. The translated variants exhibit varying degrees of fidelity to the initial ones, and some can be considered adaptations rather than rigorous translations. The comparative analysis of the Latin and Slavonic vocabulary reveals the scribes' effort to culturally transpose foreign social and political realities into familiar ones. Besides practical reasons, originals were sometimes doubled as a means for the issuer’s chancery to become actively involved in the act’s creation, preferring to make its own Slavonic version in addition to sealing the Latin one brought by the beneficiary. Still, the scarcity of evidence makes it difficult to determine the extent to which issuing external acts in both Latin and Slavonic was a common practice in the Wallachian and Moldavian chanceries during the 15th century.

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