section_path: History/Period of the Principalities and the Phanariot Era
section_name: Period of the Principalities and the Phanariot Era
paragraph_text: Period of the Principalities and the Phanariot Era
  
  In the first millennium, waves of nomads swept across the territory of Romania: the Goths during the 3rd–4th centuries, the Huns in the 4th century, the Gepids in the 5th century, the Avars in the 6th century, the Slavs in the 7th century, the Magyars in the 9th century, the Pechenegs, the Cumans, the Uzes and the Alans during the 10th–12th centuries, and the Tatars in the 13th century. In 1054, a series of ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes between the Greek East and Latin West caused the Great Schism, eventually resulting in Romania adopting Orthodoxy.
  
  In the 13th century, the first bearers of the Slavic noble title Knyaz south of the Carpathian Mountains are attested. Later, in the context of the crystallisation of feudal relations, as a result of the creation of favourable internal and external conditions (the weakening of Hungarian pressure and the diminishing of Tatars domination), autonomous feudal states emerged south and east of the Carpathians – Wallachia in 1310, under Basarab I, and Moldova in 1359, under Bogdan I. Among the Romanian rulers who played a more important role can be mentioned: Alexander the Good, Stephen the Great, Petru Rareș, and Dimitrie Cantemir in Moldova; Mircea the Elder, Vlad the Impaler, Michael the Brave, and Constantin Brâncoveanu in Wallachia; and John Hunyadi in Transylvania.
  
  Beginning in the late 15th century, the two principalities gradually came under the influence of the Ottoman Empire. Transylvania, which throughout the Middle Ages was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, governed by voivodes, became a self-governing principality and a vassal of the Ottoman Empire from 1526. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, Michael the Brave for a very brief period ruled over a large part of the territory of present-day Romania.