After the conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity (864) the Slovenian language was introduced into their Church, and afterwards also into the Church of the already politically dependent Rumanian provinces.[1] This finally severed the Daco-Rumanians from the Latin world.  The former remained for a long time under Slav influence, the extent of which is shown by the large number of words of Slav origin contained in the Rumanian language, especially in geographical and agricultural terminology.

[Footnote 1:  The Rumanians north and south of the Danube embraced the Christian faith after its introduction into the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great (325), with Latin as religious language and their church organization under the rule of Rome.  A Christian basilica, dating from that period, has been discovered by the Rumanian; archaeologist, Tocilescu, at Adam Klissi (Dobrogea).]

The coming of the Hungarians (a people of Mongolian race) about the end of the ninth century put an end to the Bulgarian domination in Dacia.  While a few of the existing Rumanian duchies were subdued by Stephen the Saint, the first King of Hungary (995-1038), the ‘land of the Vlakhs’ (Terra Blacorum), in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, enjoyed under the Hungarian kings a certain degree of national autonomy.  The Hungarian chronicles speak of the Vlakhs as ‘former colonists of the Romans’.  The ethnological influence of the Hungarians upon the Rumanian population has been practically nil.  They found the Rumanian nation firmly established, race and language, and the latter remained pure of Magyarisms, even in Transylvania.  Indeed, it is easy to prove—­and it is only what might be expected, seeing that the Rumanians had attained a higher state of civilization than the Hungarian invaders—­that the Hungarians were largely influenced by the Daco-Romans.  They adopted Latin as their official language, they copied many of the institutions and customs of the Rumanians, and recruited a large number of their nobles from among the Rumanian nobility, which was already established on a feudal basis when the Hungarians arrived.

A great number of the Rumanian nobles and freemen were, however, inimical to the new masters, and migrated to the regions across the mountains.  This the Hungarians used as a pretext for bringing parts of Rumania under their domination, and they were only prevented from further extending it by the coming of the Tartars (1241), the last people of Mongolian origin to harry these regions.  The Hungarians maintained themselves, however, in the parts which they had already occupied, until the latter were united into the principality of the ‘Rumanian land’.

To sum up:  ’The Rumanians are living to-day where fifteen centuries ago their ancestors were living.  The possession of the regions on the Lower Danube passed from one nation to another, but none endangered the Rumanian nation as a national entity.  “The water passes, the stones remain”; the hordes of the migration period, detached from their native soil, disappeared as mist before the sun.  But the Roman element bent their heads while the storm passed over them, clinging to the old places until the advent of happier days, when they were able to stand up and stretch their limbs.’[1]