Jefuitori cu arme - tâlharii și haiducii în Țările Române
The Robbers with weapons - bandits and outlaws in the Roumanian countries

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on a controversial topic of Romanian historiography, outlawry and / or robbery, a topic not sufficiently treated by Romanian historians and which was tributary to political interference, generally for propaganda or legitimation purposes. A strict delimitation between the two terms cannot be made judiciously, the idealized models were created by the popular mentality, the one that forgot the ordinary robbers, but made its heroes immortal. I used, to illustrate the phenomenon, testimonies of foreign travelers, official documents of royal chancelleries, chronicles, collections of folklore, historical, anthropological or mythological works. The robberies appear in the writings of foreign travelers, often frightened, the robbers being local, Romanian or Roma ("Gypsies"), or foreigners, who crossed the borders of Romanian countries in larger or smaller groups and are recorded from the first writings and until the second half of the nineteenth century. We mention the Tartars, the Turks, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Szeklers, the Cossacks, the Russians, also mentioned by the chroniclers, or by the inscriptions on the churches and documents of the royal chancellery. For the authorities of the time, the term outlaw did not have the connotation that it had for the people, for the representatives of the authorities; all those who used weapons for robbery were robbers. Popular literature was used to understand the sources behind the creation of the image of some judicial heroes present in numerous works of the creator from the Romanian village. Cult literature from the mid-nineteenth century shows many bandits of the time or along with those mentioned in folklore. Romantic writers found among them archetypal models for their works and we mention Bălcescu, Alecsandri or Russo. The ”Sămănătorism” - literary movement, through Mihail Sadoveanu has had a close friend of the people who idealized the deeds of some brave men who represented the symbol of resistance. The one who was just a witness to these deeds expressed his gratitude in this manner. They have been called outlaws, a term with many meanings throughout the history of the Balkan people. We followed several types of outlaws and several famous figures of popular heroes, fighters for social justice or for national emancipation, part of a phenomenon that we cannot avoid or treat with superficiality or bias.

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