Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/52

 and penetrated the free Roumanian valleys, then under the rule of Cuman, Touranian chiefs from the Steppe. These latter however failed in their expected allegiance to the Crown, and the Teutons were accordingly forced to abandon their quest, to continue it half a century later in Prussia. A remnant of this conquest was the bishopric of Milcov in Southern Moldavia, which was later destroyed by the Tartars. Another episcopal seat was founded by the Hungarian Crown at Severin, where the ruins of the old Trajanic bridge were still visible. It was the most convenient point for gaining not only the districts of western Wallachia, but also the neighbouring districts of Bulgaria across the water. Watching here, the Hungarian soldiers of Rome could check any attempts at crossing by the Bulgarian Assenides on the left bank of the Danube.

The Holy See prepared, after the invasion of the Tartars, for the foundation of a new catholic province on the river as a bulwark against pagans and heterodoxy alike. The Joannites, a Latin order of chivalry, and who could understand in some degree the Roumanian language, were to receive by royal decree not only the castle of Severin, of glorious memory, but all the Roumanian lands around with their fields, mills, fisheries and sufficient tilled land, which the King considered (perhaps without sufficient reason), as far as the River Olt, to be his fief: he even went so far as to include in the gift such countries beyond the river as had never been within his realm. The desired province of pontifical creation, which would have preserved the more ancient rights of the king, was an impossibility however. As the Teutons had established themselves in Prussia, the Joannites found a home in the beautiful but desert island of Rhodes and thence betook themselves.