Bogdan I, commonly known as Bogdan the Founder (), was the first independent ruler, or voivode, of Moldavia in the 1360s. He had initially been the voivode, or head, of the Vlachs in the Voivodeship of Maramureș in the Kingdom of Hungary. However, when the first certain record was made of him in 1343, he was mentioned as a former voivode who had become disloyal to Louis I of Hungary. He invaded the domains of a Vlach landowner who remained loyal to the king in 1349. Four years later, he was again mentioned as voivode in a charter, which was the last record of his presence in Maramureș.
Bogdan and his retainers left Maramureș for Moldavia between 1359 and 1365. Moldavia had been under the rule of Sas of Moldavia, a vassal of Louis I of Hungary, but the local Vlachs were opposed to the Hungarian suzerainty. Bogdan expelled Sas's son, Balc, by force and seized the throne. In retaliation, Louis I confiscated Bogdan's estates in Maramureș in 1365. Bogdan reigned as the first voivode of Moldavia. He did not accept the overlordship of Louis I of Hungary, transforming Moldavia into the second independent Romanian principality.
Origins
Bogdan's early life is subject to scholarly debate According to a theory, Bogdan was descended from a Vlach family, native to Maramureș. His ancestral estates formed a "valley knezate" with its center in Cuhea. According to a concurrent theory, Bogdan was identical with one Voivode Bogdan, son of Mikola. A royal charter, dated to 6 October 1335, narrated that Charles I of Hungary had sent Ladislaus Jánki, Archbishop of Kalocsa, to Clisura Dunării three times in 1334 and 1335 to make preparations for the movement of Bogdan, son of Mikola, from "his country" to the Kingdom of Hungary. Historian Pál Engel says that Voivode Bogdan led a large group of Vlachs from Serbia to Hungary on this occasion. The royal charter neither referred to Bogdan's ethnicity, nor mentioned large groups of Vlachs. Historian Victor Spinei emphasizes that the "similitude of the names is insufficient to identify" Bogdan, son of Mikola, with Bogdan, the future voivode of Moldavia.
At Cuhea, the ruins of a church and a manor house were unearthed. The church was dedicated to King St Stephen. Besides its dedication, the presence of a sacristy to the north of the altar shows that it was a Roman Catholic church, suggesting that either Bogdan's family converted to Catholicism or an originally Catholic church building was transformed to serve an Orthodox family. The oldest parts of the manor house were built in the late , but it was enlarged in the middle of the next century.
Bogdan's domain in Maramureș was described in a royal charter, issued on 2 February 1365. It listed Ieud, Bachkow, two Vișeus (now Vișeu de Jos and Vișeu de Sus), Moisei, Borșa and Keethzeleste among Bogdan's villages. The list shows that Bogdan's domain was situated along the upper courses of the rivers Iza and Vișeu.
Conflicts in Maramureș
When Charles I's son, Louis I of Hungary, ascended the throne in July 1342, Bogdan had already been the voivode of the Voivodeship of Maramureș. At that time, the Vlach knezes, or chiefs, of Maramureș elected their voivodes from among their number. Louis I's charter, dated to 21 October 1343, referred to Bogdan as "former voivode of Maramureș, disloyal to us", showing that Bogdan had come into conflict with the king or the king's representatives and lost his office. The document referred to a debate between Bogdan and János Kölcsei, the royal castellan of Visk (now Vyshkovo in Ukraine), but the causes and exact circumstances of the debate are unknown. According to historians Radu Carciumaru and Victor Spinei, Louis I's attempts to limit the voivodes' privileges caused the conflict. Spinei writes that the king exploited the conflicts between the leading Vlach families to depose Bogdan with the assistance of local knezes, thus hindering him from rising up in open rebellion. On the other hand, Ioan-Aurel Pop says that Bogdan staged a rebellion against the sovereign which lasted for years.