The Rumanian national movement in Transylvania, 1780-1849 9780674780354, 9780674498129

Citation preview

HARVARD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS - LXI

Published under the Direction of the Department

of History from the Income of the a Robert Louis Stroock Fund

BLANK PAGE

THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT | IN TRANSYLVANIA, 1780-1849

Keith Hutchins HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS - 1969

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS |

© Copyright 1969 by the President and Fellows | of Harvard College

All rights reserved _ — Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press — Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 69-12724

Printed in the United States of America |

To My F ather |

BLANKPAGE

PREFACE

The national movement of the Rumanians of Transylvania in the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century was the work of Rumanian intellectuals, the majority of whom were priests or the sons of priests. Although they never —

represented more than a small fraction of the total population, they were during this long period the only Rumanians fully conscious of their national identity and possessed of a well-

defined program of political action. There was no Rumanian bourgeoisie worth mentioning: the feudal regime entrenched in Transylvania effectively impeded its formation. And the peasantry, which constituted the overwhelming majority of

Vili PREFACE the population, was inert except for occasional eruptions of

violence. , The intellectuals, educated in seminaries and raised in the spirit of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment—the effects of which were felt in Transylvania well into the nineteenth century— imposed upon the national movement a spirit of moderation which

they abandoned only in 1848. Their principal weapons were treatises on history and language, the schools, and the church, for they were persuaded that genuine progress could be made only

by raising the intellectual and moral level of the whole nation. They displayed great sympathy toward the peasantry; as the sons of peasants themselves or as priests who often shared their hardships, they felt no great distinction of class. The emphasis they placed upon education explains in part their intense interest in the Rumanian language. It was, for one thing, the instrument through which the common people could acquire

useful knowledge, which in turn would assure their continued

progress. It was also the most obvious outward sign of their nationality and a proof of their Roman origins. The creation of a Rumanian ethos was, in fact, the very heart of their national proeram during the early part of this period.

Rumanian intellectuals were Western-oriented. The church union with Rome in 1700, the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the liberal Western economic and political theories of the first half of the nineteenth century, and the national and liberal revolutions of 1848 were major influences in their development. Their attachment to the Eastern Orthodox faith did not seriously interfere with their reception of Western ideas; Orthodoxy was

for them more an expression of the Rumanian spirit than a rigid set of dogmas separating them from Catholics and Protestants in the West. They were in fact eager to emphasize their

PREFACE ix

Slavs. | |

Western heritage in order to avoid being confused with the Their insistence, sometimes exaggerated, in works of history,

philology, and even folklore upon the Roman origins of the Rumanian people and the Latinity of their language was not conducive to cooperation with the othtr non-Magyar peoples— _ Serbs, Croats, and Slovaks—of Hungary, in spite of the fact that all were experiencing similar national awakenings. Most Rumanian

intellectuals either rejected outright or minimized the contributions of the Slavs to their ethnic and cultural development. Their | hostility to things Slav in an extreme form, expressed itself in. efforts to remove words of Slavic origin from the Rumanian vocabulary and to replace the Cyrillic with the Latin. alphabet. Fear of the Pan-Slav movement, which they regarded primarily as

an instrument calculated to facilitate Russia’s domination of southeastern Europe, caused them to seek support in Vienna rather than an alliance with, for example, the Serbs. No evidence © exists of close cooperation between Rumanians and Slavs against

overcome. - | oO

the oppressive regime which it was to their mutual interest to On the other hand, the Rumanian intellectuals of Transylvania displayed the liveliest interest in the cultural and political developments that were taking place in the neighboring Rumanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Despite their division into three separate states, the Rumanians of each were fully conscious of their ethnic and cultural unity. The intellectuals of Transylvania, particularly.in the two decades preceding the revolution of 1848, looked to their brothers beyond the Carpathians for moral and material support in the struggle for emancipation from the | domination of the privileged estates in Transylvania. However, they did not seriously contemplate secession from the Habsburg

x PREFACE Monarchy or union with Moldavia and Wallachia. The overwhelming majority did not regard this as feasible even in 1848. Yet the idea of a single Rumanian state was more than an ab-

straction. While the improvement of their status within the Monarchy monopolized their political energies, their struggle for autonomy, which reached its climax in 1848, was, nonetheless, a means of bringing closer to fruition their eventual political union

with the Principalities. Organized in a Rumanian duchy as a constituent part of the Habsburg Monarchy, they would have greater hopes for union ultimately than if they remained simply individual citizens of a foreign state. Thus, autonomy within the Monarchy—a modest goal, perhaps, compared with the programs of the Magyars and Croats—represented the maximum which

| Rumanian intellectuals thought possible in 1848-49. The object of my study is to describe the growth of Rumanian national consciousness and to measure its expression in literature

and politics. This was primarily an intellectual phenomenon rather than a mass movement or a product of economic forces. Since the scholar, the priest, and the writer stand at the center of it, it is mainly with their thoughts and aspirations that we will deal. Many persons have helped me by offering thoughtful criticism and by their kindness in providing access to the somewhat scattered materials necessary for a study of this kind. Iam glad to have

_ this opportunity to thank them. Professor Robert Lee Wolff of Harvard University inspired my interest in Rumanian history and encouraged me to pursue the present project; Academician Andrei Otetea of the University of Bucharest, who served as my director of studies during my first two years of research in Rumania, gave generously of his time in support of my work; Professor Emile _ Turdeanu of the Institut d’Etudes Roumaines of the University

of Paris introduced me to the scholarly study of Rumanian

| PREFACE XI literature and language; Academician David Prodan and Dr. — Pompiliu Teodor, both of the University of Cluj, have aided me | perhaps more than they realize in our discussions of the history of the Rumanians of Transylvania; Mr. Mihail Triteanu, Director of the Library of the Rumanian Academy in Cluj, kindly made _ available to me his library’s rich collections of Rumanian manu-

scripts, newspapers, and books. | |

For their generous assistance, I should also like to thank the

librarians and archivists of the following institutions: Widener | Library of Harvard University; Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris; Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv in Vienna; Biblioteca Academieli

Republicii Socialiste Romania and Biblioteca Institutului de Istorie “N. Iorga” al Academiei R.S.R. in Bucharest; Biblioteca

Academiei R.S.R. in Cluj; and the libraries of Universitatea

of Cluj. | |

Babes-Bolyai and of Institutul de Istorie al Academiei R.S.R., both

A grant from the Ford Foundation in 1955-56 enabled me to do

preliminary research in Paris and Vienna. A Fulbright-Hays Award under the United States-Rumanian Cultural Exchange program made systematic research possible for the first time in _ Rumania from 1960 to 1962, while a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies provided the wherewithal to spend another academic year there in 1965-66.

May 20, 1968 | |

Schenectady, New York KertH HITCcHINS

BLANK PAGE

CONTENTS [ . Transylvania in the Eighteenth Century I

II- The Advantages of Despotism 33 III. The Rumanians and the Enlightenment 58 IV - The National Movement of 1790-1792 = 112

V- Rumanian Society in the First Half of — 135 the Nineteenth Century

VI- The Field of Liberty 181 VII- The Struggle for Rumanian Autonomy 219

VIII - The Restoration of the Old Regime —_.257

Bibliographical Essay 283

— Index 299

_ BLANK PAGE -

THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA, 1780-1849

BLANK PAGE ~

ONE +- TRANSYLVANIA IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

iei. tions the first eight decades of thenational eighteenth century thelaid. foundaof the modern Rumanian movement were At the outset, a constitutional basis for political action was estab-

lished through the church union of a part of the Orthodox faithful with the Roman Catholic Church. Then, throughout the century, direct and continuous contact with Western thought and | institutions gave a powerful impetus to the development of the movement by providing it not only with indispensable weapons for use against obsolete feudal institutions but with the necessary _

criteria for establishing a new order. Finally, and perhaps most | important, a class of intellectuals, enlightened by Western learning

2 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

and at the same time conscious of their uniquely blended Eastern and Western cultural heritage, came into being to provide leader-

ship. |

The task which these intellectuals assumed in raising their people culturally, politically, and economically to a status of equality with the other inhabitants of Transylvania must appear to any observer as staggering indeed. Of all the peoples on that rim of Western civilization, the Rumanians were by far the least privileged, and the future seemed to offer them the least hope of amelioration. Nevertheless, they were not without means. In the absence of public institutions and a political base from which to operate, the Orthodox Church, which had sheltered their language

and preserved their national identity during the oppressive fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, served as a center

around which the movement for national regeneration might coalesce. In addition, the Rumanians’ sense of ethnic distinctiveness, nourished by the very discrimination to which they were sub-

jected and felt even by the humblest peasant, assured their continued national vitality. The movement for Rumanian emancipation in the eighteenth

centuty, based as it was upon the new thought of the age, collided with feudal institutions consecrated by custom and royal

charter and defended by all the powerful and privileged. That the Rumanian intellectuals achieved what small success they

did before 1780 was the result in part of the determination of a small group of dedicated clergy who could see beyond the

confines of strict confessionalism and in part of the support —often ill-conceived and almost always self-interested—of the Court in Vienna which regarded the Rumanians as useful pawns in its struggle to impose centralization upon the hostile and separatist Transylvanian estates.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 3

-Eighteenth-century Transylvania preserved almost intact its legacy from the Middle Ages. Relations between men and the conduct of public affairs still bore the characteristic stamp of feudal-

ism. To govern was the prerogative of the privileged orders, organized into three “nations,” or estates, and four “received,”

or recognized churches.

The dominance of the three nations—noble, Szekler, and

Saxon—went back to the early part of the fifteenth century, to a time of massive peasant rebellions against intolerable conditions on the land. In order to crush a particularly violent uprising in 1437 and to protect themselves against similar outbreaks in the future, representatives of the nobles, the majority of whom were Magyar, and of the Saxon and Szekler nations decided to unite their forces. In time, their agreement came to be known as the

Unio trium nationum (Union of the Three Nations). Subsequent | legislation and compilations of laws, which formed the bases of the Transylvanian constitution—the Iripartitum (1526), the Approbatae Constitutiones, containing all laws passed by the diet between 1540 and 1653, and the Compilatae Constitutiones, con-

_ taining laws passed between 1654 and 1669—consolidated the _ political rule of the three nations over all the inhabitants of the area. | In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformation won many

converts to the new Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian churches— | the Saxons to the first, the Magyars and Szeklers to the latter two.

In the second half of the century the diet recognized their full equality with the Roman Catholic Church. The faithful of each were guaranteed freedom of worship, and each church was granted

equal numerical representation in all branches of the central administration and was allowed to manage its own affairs and to

dispense justice to its adherents with a minimum of interference from the state. The clergy of each was accorded the same

4. THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

tights and privileges as the nobility. The new legislation made no mention of other churches, notably the Orthodox, to which the Rumanians belonged, with the result that their presence in the country was declared to be solely at the pleasure of the prince

and the estates. | |

The political organization of Transylvania was thus based upon the medieval principle of estates or nations. As in the Middle Ages, nationality was not the criterion for membership in a nation. The nation (vatio) did not include everyone of the same ethnic origin, but only that part which possessed special rights and immunities.

Consequently, Magyar, Szekler, and Saxon peasants, most of whom were serfs, did not belong to a nation and did not participate in political life. The system of the three nations and the four churches, which had

matured during the period of the native princes following the | Battle of Mohacs in 15 26, was not seriously disturbed by the Habsburg conquest at the end of the seventeenth century. After the Habsburg armies had lifted the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks in 1683, they quickly cleared Hungary and Transylvania of the invaders. On December 4, 1691, Emperor Leopold I (16571705) issued a diploma which was to serve as the foundation of public law in Transylvania until 1848. This so-called Diploma

Leopoldinum confirmed the tights and privileges of the three nations and the four churches and recognized the autonomy of Transylvania.? Later, the Pragmatic Sanction, ratified by the Transylvanian diet in 1722, specified that the firstborn of the House of Habsburg, who already bore the title King of Hungary, should also be designated the Grand Prince of Transylvania. 1 Friedrich Schuler von Libloy, Stebenbiirgische Rechtsgeschichte, 2nd ed.; 2 vols. (Hermannstadt, 1867), I, 380-385. 2 Ioan Lupas Documente istorice transilvane, vol. 1: 1599-1699 (Cluj, 1940), 439-446.

| TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 5 Thus, Transylvania became nominally one of the lands belong- | ing to the Hungarian Crown. In actual practice, it maintained an

independent existence with its own diet, administration, and judicial system. Beginning with the reigns of the native princes in | the sixteenth century and with Transylvania’s enforced separation

from Hungary in 1526 there developed among the estates a con- | sciousness of their distinctiveness from Hungary. The Habsburg emperors, pursuing their own time-honored policy of divide and conquer, were eager to strengthen this feeling of independence in

order to ensure more effective control over the Magyars of the | Empire. Consequently, they allowed native institutions to function

with some semblance of autonomy, though, as a noted Saxon

Vienna.3 |

historian has remarked, a wide chasm separated constitutional | from actual practice. Final authority in all matters rested with | the forms emperor and the central organs of government in The diet shared legislative power with the grand prince, who, before sanctioning a given law, might make substantial amendments. Membership in the diet was reserved to officials of the Gubernium (a kind of administrative council for the principality),

members of the High Court, important functionaries and representatives of the counties, officials of the Szekler syékek (districts)

and of the Saxon Sz#hb/e (districts), and regalists (personages - appointed by the prince). Since the constitution did not limit the _

number of regalists, the prince could usually assure himself of a majority. All members of the diet had to belong to one of the three nations and four received churches and were organized in three estates—the nobility (Magyar), the Szekler, and the Saxon. _ Voting was by estate, and a bill required the approval of all three 3 Friedrich Teutsch, Geschichte der Siebenbiirger Sachsen fiir das stchsische Volk, 4 vols.

(Hermannstadt, 1907-1926), II, 202. :

6 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

to become law. The number of representatives which each estate possessed was, therefore, relatively unimportant.‘

The Gubernium, an outgrowth of the privy council of the Transylvanian princes, exercised executive power. It consisted of

a ptesident (or governor) and twelve councillors. The three nations and four churches were supposed to be represented equally, but this provision was rately observed in the eighteenth century.5

The Transylvanian Aulic Chancellery (Hofkangz/ei) in Vienna, established in 1695, acted as an intermediary between the central government and the principality. It recetved addresses and reports

from the diet and the Gubernium and transmitted to them proposals and instructions from the emperor and the various imperial ministries. As in the Gubernium, its personnel was supposed to be

apportioned equally among the privileged nations and churches, _ but this practice was seldom followed, and in the eighteenth century Roman Catholics predominated.®

Territorially, Transylvania was parceled out among the three nations.? The northern and western parts, where the majority of the Magyars lived, were divided into eleven counties and two districts, with Kolozsvar (German: Klausenburg; Rumanian: Cluj) as the administrative and cultural center. Each county possessed a complete hierarchy of officials from the count (comes, foispdn, Obergespann), vicecount, and judges down to notaries and justices

of the peace. Almost without exception, Magyars held these offices. Within each county the will of the landowning aristocracy was supreme. 4 Joseph Benké, Transsilvania sive Magnus Transsilvaniae Principatus olim Dacia Mediterranea dictus, 2nd ed.; 2 vols. (Cluj, 1834), II, 2-5. 5 Ibid., 15-16. © Teutsch, Geschichte, II, 205. 7 Benk6, Transsilvania, I, 378, 399-400, 463-464.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 7

The Szeklers,8 a people closely related to the Magyars, 1nhabited an extensive area along the western slopes of the Carpathians. This area was divided into eight districts (sxékek) and four subdistricts which together formed a single county, with a

count, appointed by the king of Hungary, as its head. For several : centuries after their settlement in Transylvania, which probably occurred at the beginning of the eleventh century, all Szeklers had been free men who enjoyed the same rights as nobles. But by the

eighteenth century, although the outward forms were still generally observed, a considerable differentiation of classes had

become apparent. As the Szeklers gradually exchanged their nomadic ways for the settled life of farmers, many had been reduced to tilling the lands of their fellows who had had the good fortune to become large landowners. In language and customs the Szeklers differed little from the Magyars. Since they accepted the leadership of the Magyars in political matters, they will not be dealt with separately in the chapters that follow. The Saxons were the descendants of German colonists from Flanders and the Rhine and Moselle valleys who had first settled in Transylvania in the twelfth century. The early charters referred to them as Theutonici, Flandrenses, and Saxones, but in time all came

to be known as Saxons. In 1224, King Andras II of Hungary granted them self-government within the area they had settled around the city of Hermannstadt (Rumanian: Sibiu; Hungarian: Nagyszeben) in return for military service. Later documents usually referred to this territory as the Fundus regius or Konigsboden

because it had been a direct grant from the king. Eventually, as 8 Balint Hé6man, “Der Ursprung der Siebenbiirger Szekler,’’ Ungarische Jahrbiicher,

2 (1922), 9-36; Jules Németh, “La question de l’origine des Sicules,” Archivum Europae Centro-Orientalis, 6 (1940), 208-241; Gy. Gyd6rffy, “Der Ursprung der Szekler,”’ Ungarische Jahrbiicher, 22 (1942), 130-142.

8 § THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA |

new settlers arrived, the Fundus regius was extended to include the territory between Kronstadt (Rumanian: Brasov; Hungarian: Brass) and Hermannstadt, as well as the district around the city of

| Bistrita in the north. In the eighteenth century the Fundus regius was divided into eleven districts (S##h/e). A quasi-representative assembly, the Nationsuniversitat, served as an administrative council and legislature for the whole area and thus provided some degree of unity. Executive power was exercised by a count, who was elected by the Nazsonsuniversitat and confirmed by the king

| and who, in conformity with the autonomy granted the Saxons, was directly responsible to the king and not to the Transylvanian Gubernium. The Saxons’ relations with their neighbours were determined largely by their anxiety to preserve their autonomy. If it were weakened or abolished altogether, they feared that they could not

long resist assimilation by the more numerous Magyar and Rumanian populations. As a justification for their vigilance, they could point to what had happened in Kolozsvar, which until the middle of the sixteenth century had been a Saxon town, but, as a result of the gradual influx of Magyars, had become completely Magyarized by the eighteenth century. ‘To save Hermannstadt and

Kronstadt and the smaller towns of the Fundus regius from a similar fate, the Saxons enacted drastic regulations to preserve the German ethnic character of their territory. They forbade Magyars

and Rumanians to acquire landed property in their cities and villages, to become members of their merchant and artisan guilds, of even to contract marriage with Saxons.9 Yet in spite of these prohibitions, many Rumanians settled on land belonging to Saxon

villages. Sometimes, owing to the shortage of labor, they were 9 Teutsch, Geschichte, I, 263.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 9

welcomed and allowed to remain; at other times, they were

forcibly removed and their houses burned.!° | The Rumanians were the fourth major ethnic group in Transylvania. At the end of the eighteenth century they were, in fact, more numerous than the Magyars, Szeklers, and Saxons combined.! It was characteristic of the feudal Transylvanian constitution that

10 Thid., II, 165. | | | .

1! Population figures for Transylvania for 1794 in Michael Lebrecht, Versuch einer Etrdbeschretbung des Grossftirstenthums Siebenbiirgen, 2nd ed. (Hermannstadt, 1804),

8-10:

In the Counties:

_ Magyars and some Saxons 358,596

Rumanians $42,923

Gypsies 355,299 | Jews | 1,474 Greeks 464 Bulgarians 109 - :

Armenians 75

: 938,940

In the Szekler székek: i

Szeklers and some Magyars 123,085 , , Rumanians | 28,689 , Gypsies 8,208

|—Jews 107 , , 161,104 Armenians — 1,015 ,

, | | In the Saxon S7zu#ble: ,

- ~ Rumanians 157,704 , Gypsies 18,808 Saxons and some Magyars 181,790

| Greeks 188 | Jews 25 ,

, oo 358,515 | | Total population: 1,458,559 , Total number of Rumanians 729,316

IO THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

they were almost completely excluded from political life, for the overwhelming majority were peasants, or to be more exact, serfs, who, being subject in theit public and private relations to the will

of their landlords, were virtually without legal rights. Their personal freedom was so limited that they could not leave their

, landlord’s estate, marry, or take up a trade without his permission. In return for a plot of ground from which the serf eked out a bare existence for himself and his family, he performed various labor services for his lord and gave him a tenth, and often mote, of what he produced. In 1714 the diet fixed the number of days of labor per week at four for those who worked only with their hands and at three for those who could supply a cart and an animal. ‘The obligations of the serf to his landlord were not everywhere the same but varied from district to district and often from manor to manor. During the reigns of Charles VI (1711-1740) and his daughter Maria Theresa (1740-1780) some attempts were made to reduce these obligations. In 1769, for example, the number of days of compulsory labor was limited to two a week or 104 a year. This was done less out of concern for the serfs’ welfare as from a desire to make them better able to pay their taxes to the

state. Inasmuch as the nobility contributed little to the state treasury, the burden of supporting an expanding bureaucracy and frequent foreign wars fell chiefly upon the peasantry. !? Since the landed nobility had no intention of allowing their

incomes to decline and since they effectively controlled local government, regulations limiting the obligations of the serfs proved insufficient. Even when the maximum number of days of — 12 Augustin Bunea, Episcopii Petru Pavel Aron si Dionisiu Novacovici, sau istoria Roménilor transilvdneni de la 1751 panda la 1764 (Blaj, 1902), 404-411; Eugene Berlasz,

“Seigneur hongrois—paysan roumain en Transylvanie,” Revue d’histoire compareée,

n.s., vol. 4, no. 3-4 (1946), 225-258; Ferenc Eckhart, “A bécsi udvar jobbagypolitikaja 1761-1790,” Szdzadok, vol. 90, no. 1-2 (1956), 69-125.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY II

compulsory labor was respected, these were not always evenly distributed throughout the year. At harvest time, for example, the landlord might force his serfs to work six days a week on his land, while their own crops rotted in the field. In addition to what he owed his landlord, the serf paid a tithe to the church. If he was a Rumanian, he paid it to a Roman Catholic priest or a Protestant pastor, depending upon the religion of his landlord, instead of to his own Orthodox popa. In view of the serf’s numerous obligations to landlord, state, and church, it is little wonder that the documents of the period referred to him

as ““misera plebs contribuens.”’!3 | - Most Rumanians fell into this category. Moreover, they had no noble class to defend their national interests. Following the Magyar conquest in the tenth century, a Rumanian nobility had maintained itself for a time, but gradually its members had adopted the

language and customs of the ruling Magyar nobility. By the eighteenth century only a few cared to remember their Rumanian

origins. This attitude on the part of the native nobility helps ex- , plain why the Rumanians were not a party to the Union of the Three Nations in 1437 and why in subsequent legislation they were not included among the ruling estates. They did not form a

nation. | ,

Since the Rumanians were unrepresented in the diet and the | Gubernium and lacked any sort of political autonomy, the

Orthodox Church assumed a dominant role in their civil as well as in their spiritual life. An organized church seems to have been

functioning at least as early as the fourteenth century.14 A 13 Stefan Metes, “La vie menée par les Roumains en Transylvanie du X VI-éme au XVIII-éeme siécle,” in Institute for National History in Cluj, La Transylvanie (Bucharest, 1938), 261-336; Constantin C. Giurescu, Istoria Romédnilor, 3 vols. in 5 (Bucharest, 1942-1946), III, 1, 393-412. 4 loan Lupas, Istorta bisericeascd a Romdnilor ardeleni (Sibiu, 1918), 23.

I2 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA :

metropolis with its seat at Alba-lulia (German: Karlsburg; Hungarian: Gyulafehérvar) was in existence by the middle of the fifteenth century.15 The metropolitan of Alba-Iulia was under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Ungro-Valachia in Bucharest, in Wallachia, and from the beginning of thé seventeenth century had been elected by the synod of bishops of Ungro-Valachia and

consecrated by the metropolitan.!® |

Since the Orthodox Church was not recognized as one of the “received”? churches, and since, consequently, it did not share their

: rights and privileges, its position by the end of the seventeenth century had become critical. The economic resources at its disposal were inadequate to meet even its most rudimentary needs. It possessed little landed property, the main source of wealth at the time, with which to support its clergy, churches, and schools. Merely tolerated by the state, it received no assistance from that quarter. It was even forbidden to collect the tithe from its own faithful, who, as we have seen, were obliged to contribute to the support of Roman Catholic priests and Protestant ministers. !7 Most Orthodox priests knew how to read and write, but their formal training usually did not go beyond memorizing the liturgy and portions of the prayer books and instruction in how to perform the elementary duties of their office.!8 A few could not go beyond reciting the Lord’s Prayer.19 Since there were no semi15 Ibid., 26-27; A. Bunea, lerarchia Romdnilor din Ardeal si Ungaria (Blaj, 1904), 168. 16 J, Mateiu, Contributiuni la istoria dreptului bisericesc, vol. 1: Epoca dela 1848-1868

(Bucharest, 1922), 30-34, 53. , 17 Benk6é, Transsilvania, U1, 229-244. ,

18 Onisifor Ghibu, “Din istoria literaturii didactice romanesti: I. Bucoavnele; II. Abecedarele din Transilvania; III. Cartile de cetire din Transilvania,’’ Analele

Academiei Romdane, Memoriile Sectiunii Literare, ser. II, 38 (1915-1916), 239-240 and

passim; Bunea, Episcopit Aron si Novacovici, 363. , ,

| 19 Nicolao Nilles, Syebolae ad illustrandam historiam Ecclesiae Orientalis in Terris Coronae S. Stephani, 2 vols. (Innsbruck, 1885), I, 259.

‘TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 13 naries in the proper sense of the term, a candidate for the priest-

hood usually received his training from the village priest, often | his own father, or at a monastery (Balgrad, Bistrita, Geoagiu, _ Silvas, Vad), or even at a Calvinist school.2° Once ordained, he __ had to negotiate with his prospective parishioners concerning the compensation he could expect for baptisms, marriages, funerals, and other services.2! These fees were his main source of income, _

for he possessed no canonical portion—an endowment, usually in | land—with which to support his family. Often, to make ends meet, he worked the land of a noble like a common laborer and

was thus reduced to the status of a serf with all its attendant indignities and disabilities.22 His poverty was so great that he could usually not be distinguished from his parishioners.

A Jesuit, Andreas Freyberger, described the plight of the | Rumanian parish priest in 1702 in these terms: “‘ Priests... con-

duct the divine service on Sundays and feast days, but never during the week, [for then] they are busy working in the fields. They plow, harrow, reap, thresh wheat, just like other peasants. __ Their clothing is in no way different from that of lay peasants, for they wear sheepskin and goatskin and have only their clerical headcovering to distinguish them from the rest. This they never remove, not even when they meet gentlemen of the highest rank. ... Before their congregations they never preach sermons of their own composition, for with a simple knowledge of reading and writing they are considered learned enough [to hold their office]. After the liturgy is over, they pronounce little speeches from an 20D. Furtuna, Preotimea romaneascd in secolul al XVIII-lea: starea ei culturald si materiald (Valenii-de-munte, 1915), 107.

21 [bid., 109. ,

22 Stefan Metes, Istoria bisericit si a vief{ii religioase a Roménilor din Transilvania si

Ungaria, vol. I: panda la 1698, 2nd rev. ed. (Sibiu, 1935), 457-471; Bunea, Episcopii

Aron si Novacovici, 393-400. :

14 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

old book which is called a cazanie,23 and say nothing which is not

to be found in it... These priests are considered iobagi2+... As _ far as dues and services are concerned, no distinction is made be-

tween them and laymen.”’25 | The burdens and privations which priest and peasant endured together for generations created a strong bond of sympathy between them and accounts for the extraordinary influence, political as well as spiritual, that ““Domnul Parinte’? (Reverend Father) exerted over the village. This unique relationship had a decisive influence upon the Rumanian national movement throughout the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Generations of intellectuals—leaders in the political, cultural, and religious life of | their people—were priests or the sons of priests, who, raised in the village, knew at first hand the peasants’ hard struggle for existence. Even after they had gained a secondary or university

| education and had become lawyers or teachers in the city or had risen to high positions within the church hierarchy, they preserved their sympathy for the village and used their new power to

raise the material and intellectual level of its inhabitants. The peasant, in turn, displayed great reverence for learning and a remarkable willingness to follow the leadership of those who

possessed it. |

The upper clergy enjoyed a better standard of living than the parish priests, but lived quite modestly in comparison with their

Roman Catholic and Protestant colleagues.26 They bitterly resented the economic and social indignities and the discriminatory administrative controls to which the privileged nations sub-

23 A book of sermons. , 24 Serfs.

25 Furtuna, Preofimea romdneasca, citing N. Dobrescu, Fragmente privitoare la istoria

bisericii romane (Budapest, 1905), 64, n. 2; 67. 26 Metes, Istoria bisericitz, 448-449.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 15

jected them. Their discontent assured the success of the proselytizing campaign undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church at the end of the seventeenth century.

The campaign to convert the Rumanian Orthodox was planned | and executed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Hungary under

the personal direction of Leopold Cardinal Kollonics, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary.27 The Jesuits, who returned to Transylvania officially in 1693 after almost a century of exile, were his most faithful lieutenants. In

fact, several decades earlier, they themselves had proposed a similar project to the Church and the Court and, in 1664, following

their success among the Ruthenians, had been ready to carry it out.28 They served Kollonics well, for they possessed the necessary skill and learning with which to confound the Protes-

tant preachers who tried to win the Rumanians to their own churches.

In promoting the Union with Rome the Catholic hierarchy’s main objective was to spread the faith. On the other hand, Em-

peror Leopold I (1657-1705), who enthusiastically supported | their mission, regarded the extension of the Union to include the | Rumanians as a means of increasing the power of the central government at the expense of local autonomy. Although he had publicly promised to respect the constitution and laws of Transylvania, he secretly intended to merge this new acquisition, with its 27 Georg Popovici, Uniunea Romdnilor din Transilvania cu biserica romano-catolicd sub

imparatul Leopold I (Lugoj, 1901) 27-28; Zoltan Téth, Az erdélyi roman nacionalizmus elsé svdvada, 1697-1792 (Budapest, 1946), 20; for two recent interpretations of the

Union, both critical of the motives of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Court and both minimizing the success of their proselytizing, see Stefan Lupsa, Bzserica ardeleand si “unirea’’ in anii 1697-1701 (Bucharest, 1949), and Silviu Dragomir, “Rominii din Transilvania si unirea cu biserica Romei,” Studi st materiale de istorie medie, 3 (1959), 323-337. 28 Téth, Az erdélyi romdn nacionalizmus, 19, ni. 2.

16 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

bewildering diversity of peoples and institutions and its tradition of independence, with the rest of his hereditary possessions. He regarded the Roman Catholic Church, a force for unity in his conglomerate realm, as one of the principal instruments of this policy. After the reconquest of Transylvania it was natural therefore that he should promote the Catholic minority to a position of leader-

| ship at the expense of the hitherto dominant Protestant estates. This served the double purpose of strengthening imperial authority while curbing the power and independence of the Calvinist Magyar nobility. Employing a stratagem which his suc-

cessors would also find advantageous in times of crisis, he proposed to use the Rumanian masses as a counterweight to the Magyats. He gave no thought to their emancipation, however,

because he regarded them as instruments for changing the religious, not the social or political, structure of the principality.

The interests of State and Church thus coincided, and the Rumanians became the special object of the Catholic resurgence in Transylvania.

Considering it too long and difficult a process to convert the uneducated but devout Orthodox peasantry, Kollonics directed

his main effort at the clergy. He had pamphlets printed in Rumanian showing that the differences which separated Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers were in reality insignificant. Two typical examples of such propaganda were the pamphlet De Ortu, Progressu, ac Diminutione Schismatis Graeci, published by

the Jesuit Martinus Szent-Ivany in Trnava in 1703,29 and a Rumanian-Catholic catechism published by the Jesuit Francis

| Szunyog in Trnava in 1696.3° Catholic seminaries and lyceums 29 Andrei Veress, Bibliografia romdnd-ungard, 3 vols. (Bucharest, 1931-1935), I, 153-154. 30 I[bid., 137.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; 17

in Transylvania began to accept Rumanian students in large numbers, and in Kolozsvar a new seminary was built expressly

to train Rumanian priests for the work of promoting the

Union.

The differences between Catholic and Orthodox dogma and ritual constituted the most serious obstacle to the success of the

campaign. Kollonics proved equal to the task, however, and handled the problem much more skillfully than those Calvinist leaders who had tried to convert the Rumanians to Protestantism earlier in the century. The conditions which they, in their reform-. ing zeal, had tried to impose upon the Rumanian clergy struck at those visible forms of religion—icons and the veneration of saints—to which the Rumanians were most firmly attached.3! Such attempts to alter the fundamentals of Rumanian worship attracted few converts. Profiting from their failure, Kollonics proposed the Four Articles of the Council of Florence, which had briefly reunited the Latin and Byzantine churches in 1439, as the means best suited to allay the religious scruples of the Rumanians.

In return for equality with the Catholic clergy, the Rumanian clergy had only to accept: the Pope of Rome as the visible head of

the Christian Church; the use of unleavened bread in the Communion; the existence of Purgatory; and the Latin doctrine of the Holy Trinity, that is, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the

Father and the Son. . :

These four articles required very little change in their religious

life. Canon law and the liturgy would remain unchanged; Rumanian, not Latin, would continue to serve as the liturgical

language; and priests would still be permitted to marry. The 31 Samuel Clain, “Scurta cunostints a istorii Romanilor” (MS), Biblioteca Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania (hereafter, B.A.R.S.R.) (Cluj), Oradea

Collection, no. 163, copy 67, 105-106. oe

18 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

theological subtleties in the Four Points of Union meant very little to the average priest and the mass of believers. As far as they

were concerned, the old faith remained intact. Indeed, after the Union, it was not unusual for Orthodox and Uniate priests to alternate at Sunday services, weddings, and funerals. It has been suggested that the acceptance of Purgatory complemented and provided an explanation for the practice of saying masses for the

life. 32 |

dead and that the Latin doctrine of the Holy Trinity emphasized for the faithful the primacy of Christ in their spiritual However, it was not questions of ritual and dogma which

proved decisive in inducing a majority of the Rumanian clergy to enter into a Union with Rome but rather the expectation of a

better material existence.33 The promise of relief from constitutional and economic disabilities and the prospect of a position

in society befitting their station proved to be irresistible. In February 1697, Metropolitan Teofil of Alba-Iulia, who had until then vacillated, announced on behalf of himself and his clergy their unanimous acceptance of the Four Points and the reunion of their church with Rome. He made this declaration in the presence of Paul Baranyi, the Jesuit parish priest of AlbaIulia who was chiefly responsible for his conversion.34 In return, Teofil insisted that his clergy be granted the same rights as the

Roman Catholic clergy and that they be no longer merely tolerated but rather received as “‘sons of the fatherland.’’35 This

was a significant moment in the history of the Rumanians of 32 Carol Capros and Flaviu Popan, “Biserica unita intre anii 1700-1918,” Biserica Roménd Unita: doud sute cinciveci de ani de istorie (Madrid, 1952), 70. 33 Ibid., 69; Nilles, Sywbolae, I, 261; N. lorga, Istoria bisericii romdnesti si a vietti religioase a Romdanilor, 2nd ed.; 2 vols. (Bucharest, 1928-1930), II, 12-15.

34 Magavinul istoric pentru Dacia, 5 vols. (Bucharest, 1845-1847), I, 272-275. 35 Nilles, Syabolae, I, 168-170.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 19

Transylvania, for it was the first time that they had made formal

political demands. 3° | | | In July 1697 Teofil died. His successor was Atanasie Anghel, a

young man of noble ancestry who had been educated in the Calvinist school at Alba-Iulia. On January 22, 1698, he was consecrated in Bucharest by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, anxious

over the progress the Union had made, required him to take a special oath to preserve and defend Orthodoxy.37 Atanasie took the oath in good faith, but could not resist the pressure from his own clergy to accept the benefits which the Union offered. At last overcoming his spiritual reservations, he led fifty-five protopopes and 1,582 priests in the formal signing of the Act of Union

at a synod held in Alba-Iulia from October 7 to October 24, 1698.38 Atanasie made it clear before he signed that he would consider these signatures invalid should the promises made to his clergy remain unfulfilled; he also requested a solemn declaration in the form of an imperial diploma as an additional guarantee. 39 ~ On February 16, 1699, Leopold obliged by promulgating the so-called First Leopoldine Diploma. This granted those priests who adhered to the Act of Union the same rights and privileges en-

joyed by the Roman Catholic clergy and specifically exempted them from compulsory labor services, tithes to landlords, and provisioning.4° When the Diploma came before the Transylvanian diet for publication, without which it could not legally be enforced, the Protestant estates, who controlled the diet, vio-

lently opposed it. They were unwilling to relinquish the labor | 36 Téth, Av erdélyi roman nacionalizmus, 23. 37 Nicolae Popea, Vechia metropolia ortodosa romana a Transilvaniei, suprimirea $i

restaurarea ei (Sibiu, 1870), 92-98. : : .

38 Nilles, 1, 246-249 | , 39 Tbid.,Symbolae, 203-207. 40 Magazinul istoric pentru Dacia, III, 290.

20 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

services and payments in money and kind which they received from Orthodox priests or to permit the strengthening of Roman Catholicism. Some Calvinist leaders still hoped to persuade the Rumanians to unite with their church.4! The nobility, Catholic and Protestant alike, regarded the Court’s promises to the Uniates as an attempt to overturn the constitutional structure of the principality and to destroy the monopoly of power exercised by the

four nations. A threat from Leopold to send troops to protect

the diet to yield.42 |

Rumanian priests who wished to unite, however, finally persuaded

On September 4, 1700, the date which marks the formal conclusion of the Union, a general synod of the Orthodox Church,

the largest ever held in Transylvania, composed of fifty-four protopopes, 1,653 priests, and three inhabitants from each village, solemnly accepted the Four Articles of the Council of Florence.43 Even then Atanasie continued to have misgivings. Fearful that the Transylvanian estates would impede the implementation of the Act of Union, he requested a more explicit declaration concerning the benefits granted his clergy than that contained in the

Diploma of February 16, 1699. On March 19, 1701, Leopold renewed his earlier promises in the so-called Second Leopoldine Diploma.‘+ This apparently satisfied Atanasie, for on the following

day he formally severed his ties with the metropolis of UngroValahia. Five days later in a Roman Catholic ceremony .in Vienna he was consecrated Bishop of the Uniate Church in Transylvania.

Yet even as he signed the Second Leopoldine Diploma, the emperor displayed his actual lack of confidence in the clergy of the 41 Silviu Dragomir, Istoria desrobirei religioase a Romédnilor din Ardeal tn secolul XVIII, 2 vols. (Sibiu, 1920-1930), I, 23-24. 42 Téth, Az erdélyi romdn nacionalizmus, 30.

43 Nilles, Sywbolae, I, 247-249. |

44 Ibid., 292-301. |

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 21

new Uniate Church by severely restricting their independence. The diocese was placed under the jurisdiction of the archbishop

of Esztergom, who in turn was to appoint a “theologian,” a Jesuit usually, whose function it would be to supervise the activities of the Uniate bishop and clergy and to maintain their strict adherence to the articles of the Union. In time, the theologian gained a decisive voice in Uniate affairs, for, without his approval,

the bishop could not convoke a church assembly, appoint a protopope or priest, or even make a pastoral visitation.+5 Although it did not seem so at the time, such conditions were hardly

conducive to the smooth progress of the Union. The resulting friction with the Roman Catholic hierarchy caused many individual Uniate parish priests and their communes to return to

the Orthodox Church and their superiors to contemplate a

general reconciliation with Orthodoxy. | As far as tangible political gains were concerned, the Union with Rome meant very little to the Rumanians. Although Atanasie

and his clergy interpreted the promises of equality with the Roman Catholic clergy to mean their eventual elevation to the rank of a fourth “‘nation,”’ neither Leopold nor Kollonics enter- _ tained any such thoughts. Their promises to the Uniates were conditioned by their aristocratic appreciation of the Transylvanian constitution. In their view, to have introduced a hitherto unprivileged element into the political life of the principality would have amounted to revolution. Nevertheless, the imperial diplomas of 1699 and 1701 had an important influence upon the future course of the Rumanian national movement in that they marked the beginning of what for want of a better term we shall call a “‘partnership”’ between the Court and the Rumanians, 45 Jorga, Istoria bisericit romdanesti, U1, 27.

22 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA |

a partnership that was to last until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The Rumanians, frustrated by the Transylvanian aristocracy in their struggle for political emancipation, tended to rely more and more upon the beneficence of the Court. The Court frequently showed itself receptive to their appeals, especially when

the interests of the Monarchy as a whole could be served, although they never deigned to treat the Rumanians as equals. The diplomas, by recognizing the Uniate clergy’s equality with the Roman Catholic clergy, if only on paper, provided the Rumanians

with a constitutional basis for further political activity. In the beginning this was confined to the Uniate clergy, but by the end of the century it would outgrow confessional bounds and embrace

the interests of the whole nation.4® That it did was in no small measure due to the untiring work of Ion Inochentie Clain, Bishop of the Uniate Church between 1730 and 1751. Clain was the outstanding Rumanian churchman of the eighteenth century. He was born into a family of free peasants in the commune of Sad, near Hermannstadt, in 1692. Little is known of his early life beyond the fact that he studied for several years at the Jesuit seminary in Trnava, in Slovakia,4+7 where Cardinal Kollo-

nics had provided scholarships for twelve Uniate theological students. Clain’s intellectual abilities and devotion to the Union attracted the attention of his superiors, who, even before he had completed his studies, recommended his appointment to the then vacant episcopal see in Transylvania. On February 25, 1729, the Emperor Charles VI nominated him as bishop.48 46D. Prodan, Supplex Libellus Valachorum (Cluj, 1948), 126. , 47 Augustin Bunea, Din istoria Romdnilor: Episcopul Ioan Inocentiu Klein (1728-1751)

(Blaj, 1900), 7; D. Prodan, “La lutte de Inochentie Micu pour le relévement politique des Roumains de Transylvanie,” Revue Roumaine d’ Histoire, vol. 4, no. 3 (1965), 477—

ae Bunea, K/ein, 6.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 23

Clain believed that the Rumanians of Transylvania could best achieve their political emancipation by total acceptance of the Union, which would bring them all under the provisions of the two Leopoldine diplomas. This, rather than confessionalism, accounts for his zealous work of conversion, which his nephew, the historian and philologist Samuel Clain, compared to that of “‘an apostle and a true bishop and a good father of the Rumanian

people [who]... went from village to village preaching to the people, [and whose] efforts were not in vain, since he led 600 parish priests into the Union.’’49 It accounts also for his insistence

that the promises of political equality and economic assistance made to his clergy be carried out in full and that lay members of his Church enjoy the same rights and immunities as the members of the Catholic and Protestant churches. Only in this way, he reminded the Court time and again, could the Union succeed. He learned very early to expect little understanding from the _ Transylvanian diet and Gubernium and concentrated his efforts on the Court in Vienna. Between 1730 and 1744 he submitted twenty-

four major petitions to the Court on behalf of the Uniate clergy and laity in particular and the Rumanian people in general in order

to obtain the fulfillment of the promises contained in the Leopoldine diplomas. They are eloquent testimony to the failure of

the Court and the Roman Catholic hierarchy to improve the status of the Uniate clergy. More than thirty years after the Act of Union, Clain complained, they still did not enjoy equality, either economic or political, with the Roman Catholic clergy: they had

no canonical portions, but instead had to earn their living by field work, which left them little time to perform their spiritual duties, let alone propagate the Union; they possessed none of the 49 Samuel Clain, “‘Istoria si lucrurile si intamplarile Roménilor” (MS), 4 vols., B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Oradea Collection, nos. 67~—70, IV, 463.

24 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

immunities enjoyed by their Roman Catholic colleagues, but were habitually tried and punished by local officials and landlords; they were compelled to pay a tithe to their landlords and even to Calvinist and Lutheran ministers; and their numbers were kept small by local officials, to the detriment both of numerous communes, which were thus inadequately served, and of the Union itself.5°

Clain’s striving for justice was not simply the concern of a bishop for his clergy, but extended itself to include every segment of the population. He was a national leader in the fullest sense of the term and, in the opinion of many scholars, the out-

standing Rumanian political figure in Transylvania in the eighteenth century. It was he who provided the leaders of the so-called Transylvanian Schools! in the last decades of the century with the core of their political program. He argued that the Uniates

should at the very least be raised to the status of a fourth nation not only because they were more numerous but also because they contributed more taxes and more soldiers to the state than any of the received nations. For the same reasons the Uniate bishop should be given a place in the Gubernium, and a “suitable” number of Uniates should be appointed to every branch of the administration. He suggested that national enmity was primarily responsible for their exclusion from the estates; that although Roman Catholic churchmen and lay officials were, indeed, anxious to promote the Union, they nevertheless did little to improve the political or material status of the Uniate clergy because they were Hungarians and wished to keep the Rumanians in bondage.5?

The economic exploitation of the Rumanian peasants deeply affected Clain. Before the diet in Kolozsvar and at the Chancellery

50 Nilles, Sywzbolae, I, 513-514. , 51 See chaps. iii and iv. 52 Bunea, Klein, 37-38, 78-79. _

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 25

in Vienna he pleaded time and again for a reduction in the number of days of compulsory labor from four to two a week, since under the prevailing system the peasants were being driven to exhaus-

tion. He urged the Chancellery to force the landlords in the counties to return to the peasants lands which they had seized from them by force and to prevent the Saxons in the Fundus regius from treating Rumanian peasants like serfs when they were, de jure, ftee peasants. His desire to improve the welfare of the Rumanian people as a whole is evident from the fact that he made

no distinction between Uniate and Orthodox peasants. The principal concern of the Chancellery was to maintain the _

status quo. There could, it concluded, be no reduction in the amount of labor services required of the peasantry, for this would have a harmful effect on the economy of the country, based as it was upon agriculture. What was more, if concessions were made to Rumanian peasants, then Magyar, Szekler, and Saxon peasants would demand the same. As for the alleged illegal seizures of | peasant property by landlords, the Chancellery could take action only after it had received exact information on what lands were | involved, on what grounds had been appropriated, and by what

right the peasants had held them in the first place. 53 | | - Clain’s persistence—he was most energetic and often undiplomatic when convinced his cause was just—created numerous enemies and brought forth violent eruptions in the diet against him and the Rumanians. In 1736, for example, while considering one of his petitions, the estates could restrain themselves no longer:

“The Uniate bishop and clergy demand things which no one has ever dared to ask our ancestors and which they will never dare | to ask our descendants; they demand things which are absolutely __ 53 Ibid., 83-84.

26 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

contrary to the laws of the land; they demand things which affect in the highest degree the ancient privileges and immunities won from kings and princes; they demand things which cause the

greatest violence to the nobility and to noble prerogatives, the preservation of which is our sacred duty; they demand things which, indeed, shake the very foundations—treligious, political, and economic—of this land, which until now have been preserved in good order; finally, they demand things which are not suited to

the nature of the Wallach54 clergy and masses.’’55 a By 1744, the diet had been so little moved by Clain’s numerous

appeals that it would go no further than to approve what came to be known as Article VI. This provided that Uniate xobles should enjoy the privileges of the nation in whose territory they dwelt and that they should be regarded as members of it, but that

under no circumstances could they be permitted to form a separate nation since this would disrupt the constitutional life of the country.5® In submitting Article VI to the Empress Maria Theresa for her sanction, the estates took the occasion to attack the Rumanians in the most deprecatory terms. The very nature of the Rumanians and their low intellectual level, they asserted, made them unworthy of rights and privileges. The argument that they were entitled to equality with the received nations on the basis of their acceptance of the Union with Rome was invalid precisely

because they had not truly renounced their allegiance to Orthodoxy. Proof of this was the alacrity with which they returned to the Greek rite as soon as they crossed the frontier into one of the Rumanian principalities and the strong ties which the Ru-

manians maintained with all the Greek churches of the East,

and “lowborn.” - , 55 Bunea, Klein, 43-44. 54 Often used as a term of disparagement with the connotations ““schismatic”’

56 Schuler von Libloy, Ssebenbiirgische Rechtsgeschichte, 1, 328-330.

| | ‘TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 27

notably the Russian. (Accusations of pro-Russian and even of | Pan-Slavic tendencies on the part of the Rumanians of Transyl- | vania were later to become a favorite device by which Magyar

nationalists, playing upon the fears of the Court and of their own | people, hoped to discourage concessions to Rumanian national feeling). For these reasons, the estates continued, the kings of Hungary and the princes of Transylvania had refused to grant the _ Rumanians privileges. When in the Middle Ages they had per-

mitted Rumanian peasants to settle in Transylvania after the destruction wrought by successive waves of barbarian invaders, it was only on condition that they submit in all matters to the will of their landlords. Thus, the estates concluded, their continued so-

journ in Transylvania was solely at the pleasure of the prince

and the three nations.57 The court was becoming increasingly concerned by the continued religious unrest in the principality and on June 15, 1744, summoned Clain to Vienna for a review of the situation. Before his departure he convoked a synod of protopopes at Blaj to make

a detailed report on his political activities and to obtain approval ° of a new and more ambitious policy. It is significant that of the nearly 150 persons present, nobles and peasants as well as priests and even a few Orthodox had come to declare their support for

his policies.58 The synod thus assumed the proportions of a national congress, which itself is evidence that Clain did not regard himself as the representative of Uniate or noble interests _ alone. The synod expressed full confidence in his leadership and, it appears, gave him authority to renounce the Union if their just

demands continued to be ignored.59 | 57 Budoxiu de Hurmuzaki, Documente privitoare la istoria Romdnilor, 43 vols. (Bucharest, 1887-1942), VI, 577.

58 Bunea, Klein, 110-114; Prodan, Supplex, 24. | ,

59 Bunea, Klein, 117.

28 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Clain arrived in Vienna too late to influence Maria Theresa’s decision on Article VI. Although her sanction of it represented a

major setback for his own cause, he refused to become discouraged. He instead took the opportunity to address her in the strongest possible terms, warning her that hig clergy and people, driven to the limits of their endurance by the oppression of the Transylvanian estates, were of one mind that they would have been better off had they remained Orthodox, for at least then they

would have had the support of Russia and of the Rumanian princes of Moldavia and Wallachia.©° Clain’s bluntness was illconsidered, for it gave a semblance of truth to the accusations of his enemies that he was inciting his people to disobedience and was courting the favor of foreign princes. In the desperate hope that he might obtain the support of the Pope, he left Vienna for Rome on December 9, 1744, without imperial permission. This precipitate action cost him what remained of his influence at Court, and he was never able to return to Vienna or his diocese. His efforts to enlist the aid of the Pope proved fruitless. In 1751, after a seven-year absence from Transylvania, he resigned his office and entered a monastery in Rome, where he died on September 23, 1768.

| Although he had failed to obtain any significant political concessions from the Union, his contribution to the national movement was, nevertheless, fundamental. He was the first to formu-

late a broad program of political and social action designed to bring about the emancipation not only of a Rumanian “nation,” but of the peasantry as well. It was they, after all, who paid the taxes and provided the army with recruits, contributions upon which he based his arguments for equality with the three nations. 60 Ibid., 119.

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ——.29

He was thus opposing quantity to quality, a new idea for eighstteenth-century Eastern Europe. His legacy was carefully preserved and formed the basis for the political action undertaken by

Rumanian intellectuals in 1791 and 1792. |

The immediate benefits which the Rumanians derived from the.

Union were cultural. For the first time the state treasury dis_ pensed large sums of money for the education of Rumanians. By

the middle of the eighteenth century, Austrian officialdom was | obliged to recognize the failure of the Union to achieve its ob-

jectives.°! The resistance of the Orthodox, who, the Court had | been pleased to assume, no longer existed after the investiture of “Atanasie, had become increasingly vigorous. To make the Union more attractive, the Chancellery and the Council of Ministers

therefore recommended that more money be given the Uniate | bishop so that he might improve the education and material status of his clergy. This, they felt, would be more effective in strengthening the Union than theological arguments, since it appeared that the Rumanians were unshakably attached to their religion as to “a living expression of their primordial folk tradition.”’62 Austrian officials and the Roman Catholic hierarchy be-— lieved that the maintenance of the Union would also require large numbers of well-trained priests. Accordingly, they facilitated the admittance of numerous Rumanian students to Roman Catholic seminaries: the Jesuit colleges in Alba-Iulia, Kronstadt, Kolozs-

var, and Hermannstadt, and the Piarist college in Bistrita. The | most talented of these students received scholarships to complete

their studies abroad. | | | As eatly as 1738, Bishop Clain had set aside a part of the annual | - 61 Helmut Klima, “Die Union der Siebenbiirger Rumanen und der Wiener Staatsrat im theresianischen Zeitalter,” Sa#d-Ost Forschungen, 6 (1941), 250. —

62 Ibid., 251.

30 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

income of his diocese to send three students a year to the College for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. The number of students was small but select. Petru Pavel Aron (bishop, 1750-1764) and

Grigorie Maior (bishop, 1773-1782), Clain’s successors, and Gheorghe Sincai and Petru Maior, whose writings on the origins of the Rumanians were major contributions to the awakening of | the Rumanian national spirit, were among those who received the coveted scholarships. The program lasted until 1779, when Joseph II discontinued it.®3 Another important center for Rumanian students was Vienna, where the College of Saint Barbara received many candidates for the Uniate priesthood. Founded in 1773, it soon became the chief Uniate seminary in the Austrian Empire. The Rumanians who studied there, for the most part nobles or the sons of priests, lived at the seminary, but took their courses at the University of Vienna. Samuel Clain and his younger colleagues Sincai and Petru Maior received part of their training there. Another college, the Pazmaneum Institute, founded in 1623 for the purpose of strengthening Catholicism in Hungary, began in 1766 to receive two students

a year from the Uniate diocese in Transylvania. They also took their course work at the University of Vienna, a fact, as we shall see, of no little significance for the formation of the Rumanian intellectual class.

In Transylvania, the Uniate Church under the aggressive leadership of Bishop Clain and his immediate successor Petru Pavel Aron had begun to establish a center of learning of its own at Blaj in the 1740’s and 1750’s. Shortly after the Act of Union had

been signed, the Emperor Leopold had granted the Uniate bishop the domains of Gherla and Simbata de jos to provide for his maintenance. These yielded an annual income of 3,000 florins. In 1736, 63 Jacob Radu, Foytit elevi romdani-uniti ai scoalelor din Roma (Beius, 1929), 17:

TRANSYLVANIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 31

Clain doubled this sum by exchanging Gherla and Simbata for the domain of Blaj, thereafter allocating half his income for the maintenance of a monastery and for scholarships to a seminary, both still to be built. Clain was the real founder of Blaj. Little more than a small village of poor Magyar serfs when he took possession of it in 1737, it soon developed into a city, of which the nucleus was a spacious central square surrounded by the cathedral, the monastery, and its schools. Clain initiated the construction of the monastery and adjacent schools in 1741. Bishop Aron carried the work to completion and on October 11, 1754, presided over the formal dedication of the

first Rumanian secondary schools in Transylvania: a general school (scoala de obste) whete reading, writing, arithmetic, and | church singing were taught and in which the language of instruction was Rumanian and the tuition free; a Latin school (scoala latineascad) specializing in languages and science; and a seminary (scoala de preofie) for the training of priests. The monks of the new Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Blaj and other members of the

clergy served as teachers.®5 | | The installation of a printing press at Blaj was an event of

supreme importance, for it gave the Rumanians the means to print original works in their own language and to increase the supply of

books available to the schools and the general reading public. Clain had acquired a press in Alba-Iulia and had brought it to Blaj

in 1738. It was in such poor condition, however, that nothing could be printed on it before Bishop Aron had it repaired and procured new type.°® The first book came off che press in 1753. 64 Timoteiu Cipariu, ed., Archivu pentru filologia si istoria (Blaj, 1867-1872), no. 3, March 15, 1867, §2. 65 Stefan Manciulea, C7itorii scoalelor din Blaj (Blaj, n.d.), 22.

. 66 Bunea, Episcopit Aron si Novacovici, 356-357. |

32 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

This was an original work by Aron and several monks at Blaj entitled Floarea adevarului (The Flower of Truth), in which they celebrated the virtues of the Four Points of Union.°7 The press prospered, for it enjoyed the patronage of the Empress, who regarded it as a prime instrument for promoting the Union, and in time, it became one of the principal instruments of the Rumanian cultural renaissance.

As a result of these educational and cultural opportunities, which were largely a consequence of the Union, a class of intellectuals, most of whom were priests, began to develop. It was from among them that the leaders of the national movement at the end of the eighteenth century would come. Some proved to be more savants than priests and to be unusually sensitive to the

fresh currents of the Enlightenment emanating from Vienna. Their exposure to the concept of natural law and to the rationalism of the West, combined with discontent with their own mean status, made them the natural successors of Bishop Clain. Their objective, it must be emphasized, was not to destroy the constitution which had grown up gradually over the centuries—they were not revolutionaries in spite of what the privileged estates wished to think; it was simply to find a place for themselves within it. The reign of Joseph II at last seemed to offer them the possi-

bility of fulfillment. | 67 Ibid., 368.

TWO -THE ADVANTAGES OF

DESPOTISM

HE reign of Joseph IJ marksa turning point in the history of the |

T Rumanians of Transylvania. During the relatively short period of his rule (1780-1790) the dominance of the three nations was seriously shaken. His drastic reorganization of the Monarchy,

which’ destroyed many of the privileges upon which the Old Order rested, greatly enhanced the opportunities of the Rumanians

for intellectual and economic development. | As the most perfect exponent of enlightened despotism, Joseph sought to recast the conglomerate Habsburg realm into | the mold of Reason. The ideals of the Enlightenment—treligious toleration, just treatment for all, peasant as well as noble, under

34 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

the law, rationalism in government, and an end to the inequities of

serfdom—were his ideals too. No one labored more diligently _ than he to achieve them or to make the state an efficient instrument for ensuring the well-being of all classes. Yet he was essen-

tially despotic. He permitted no interference with his projects, and those groups and individuals who dared oppose him were

| usually given short shrift. He was no liberal, for, like his illustrious contemporary in Prussia, Frederick I, he adhered to the formula “government for the people, but without the people” and allowed his subjects little voice in shaping their future.! Joseph’s chief aim was to strengthen the unity of his diverse

territories and to concentrate the direction of their affairs in Vienna. Since he no longer deemed allegiance to the person of the monarch a sufficient unifying force, he set about to create more durable bonds: a common set of laws for the whole Empire, a uniform system of government, and a common language of adminis-

tration. In the process he severely limited the powers of local. diets and the privileges of local aristocracies.2 Yet, in his struggle

with the nobility, the most stubborn opponents of his reforms, he did not seek to destroy them as a class, but rather to bring them, along with all other classes and institutions, more directly under the control of the central government. In carrying out this plan, he was able for a time to set aside the feudal constitution of Transylvania and thus to offer his Rumanian subjects the hope of

eventual equality with their neighbors. |

Although situated on the farthest limits of Joseph’s Empire, Transylvania was frequently the object of his special attention. He

made three journeys there—in 1773, before his accession, and 1 Paul von Mitrofanov, Joseph II: Seine politische und kulturelle Tatigkeit, 2 vols. (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910), I, 81-112, 235—239. 2 Ibid., 239-252.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 35 again in 1783 and 1786—to acquaint himself personally with conditions.3 He displayed a deep interest in everything—politics, religion, agriculture, education—and received with disarming in-

formality everyone who came forth with some petition of gtievance: “All along the road petitioners of every age and sex,

and of all the nations of Transylvania knelt, holding up their petitions. Before each the emperor stopped and bade each to rise: ‘Steht auf!’ to the Saxon, and ‘Scula, scula’ to the Wallach. With his own hands he received each person’s petition and questioned him briefly about its contents. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he would say: ‘Ich werde untersuchen’ (I will look into this) to © the Saxon, or ‘ Voi cauta’ to the Wallach. With that, he placed the

petitions in a sack tied to the inside of the carriage door and

to take back to Vienna. | drove on.”’4 In this way Joseph collected nearly 19,000 petitions

On many occasions he showed a special concern for the

Rumanians and their specific problems. Once, he found himself in the middle of a dispute between rival Orthodox and Uniate congtegations over the possession of the village church. As his car-

tiage approached a small village, a group of Orthodox priests came out to meet him and to plead for the return of their church. They complained that the Uniates had recently taken it over for their own use. Joseph asked them why they simply didn’t use the church for their services, too; weren’t the Uniate and Orthodox

churches really one? One of the priests admitted that they were : (““Ba, ex tot una Domnuye’’). After pondering the question for a

moment, Joseph proposed a solution to the dilemma: “‘You 3 George Baritiu, Parti alese din istoria Transilvaniei pre doud sute de ani din urmda, 3

vols. (Sibiu, 1889-1891), I, 457-464, 468-473, 485-486. 4 Rudolf Theil, ed., “Michael Conrad von Heidendorf: Eine Selbstbiographie,” Archiv des Vereines fiir siebenbiirgische Landeskunde, N.S., XVI, part 2 (1881), 450.

36 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

should use the same building as the Uniates; when they come out,

you go in.” The priests declared themselves satisfied with this

decision and withdrew.5 |

The plight of the Rumanian peasant moved him deeply. In one of his reports home he wrote: “The Wallachian subjects, beyond all doubt the oldest and most numerous inhabitants of Transylvania, are so overwhelmed with injustices, be it by Hungarians or Saxons, and their existence is so pitiable, that it is astonishing that

all have not run away. I am not surprised that their houses are ramshackle; how can it be otherwise when they are not sure of their possessions from one day to the next, and when they are daily and even hourly at the beck and call of their masters >?’’6

More than any other province, he concluded, Transylvania needed a new general urbarium.? In seeking a solution to the economic problems of Transylvania, as well as of the Empire in general, he was greatly influenced by

the doctrines of the Physiocrats. The Physiocrats held that agriculture was the ultimate source of a state’s wealth and power

and regarded serfdom as a major obstacle to its development. Joseph concurred; as shown by his decree of January 31, 1784, forbidding any seizure of peasant lands which would diminish their capacity to pay state taxes, he was eager to divert some of the wealth produced by the peasantry from the coffers of the nobility to the state treasury—the better to enable him to finance his many projects.8 It was from Hermannstadt on August 16, 1783, that he issued

, 5 [bid., 484. ,

the preliminary decree emancipating the serfs of Transylvania. It 6 I. Lupas, “Imp4ratul Iosif II si rascoala taranilor din Transilvania,” Academia

Romana, Memoriile Sectiunii Istorice, ser. II], 16 (1935), 264.

7 A list of the payments and services owed by the peasant to his landlord and of the obligations of the landlord to his peasants. 8 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Doc. 636.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM | 37

forbade the landlord to deprive his peasants of their plots of land |

lords.9 | |

or to transfer them from one village to another except after due

process; it also permitted peasants to marry and to practice

the trade of their choice without the prior consent of their landThese measures were only a beginning. They did nothing to alleviate the fundamental causes of misery and discontent among the peasantry: the hunger for land and the crushing financial burdens placed upon what they-already owned. During the eighteenth

century, the condition of the peasants had steadily worsened.

Land available to them had become exceedingly scarce, as the | landowning aristocracy, eager to acquire new luxuries and to emulate their counterparts in Hungary, extended their estates

by appropriating peasant holdings and village common lands. , Members of the Uniate and Orthodox clergy were no more exempt

from this process than the peasants. Using the device of a new land census, the nobles seized hay fields and croplands belonging |

to the churches and subjected priests to the obligations of setfs.1° The situation on the land was further aggravated by a rapid increase in population. The peasant, therefore, found him_ self squeezed into a smaller and smaller plot, and this made it impossible for him to support his family. Added to the scarcity of land, the load of assorted taxes, tithes, and labor services made

the situation intolerable. . |

At the beginning of November 1784, a large-scale peasant uptising broke out in the Muntii Apuseni (Western Mountains). Its leader was Vasile Nicola, better known by his nickname Horia, 9 Ferdinand von Zieglauer, Die politische Reformbewegung in Siebenbiirgen in der Zeit

Joseph IT’s und Leopold I’s (Vienna, 1881), 16. ,

10 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Docs. 118, 119, 123. All are reports from Uniate priests to Bishop Aron in 1750.

38 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

from his skill in dancing the fora. He was a state serf who worked as a builder of houses and churches and was widely known and respected by the peasants. He had often represented them in their

| dealings with local authorities, and between 1779 and 1784 had made four trips to Vienna to present their grievances to the Emperor in person.!! The peasants sent personal emissaries be-

, cause they feared that their enemies—the local nobility—might intercept their petitions if they entrusted them to the mails or the Gubernium. On his last trip in 1784 Horia may have had a private audience with Joseph. On this occasion Joseph is supposed to have expressed his displeasure with the opposition of the nobility to his reforms and his sympathy for the plight of the peasantry. Although no evidence of such a meeting exists,!2 Horia, from the beginning of his uprising until the end, insisted that he was acting

in the name of the Emperor. |

Horia’s chief lieutenants were Ion Closca and George Crisan. Closca, his closest friend, was a state serf from Carpenis, whom the peasants of Carpenis Abrudsat, and Bucium had sent to Vienna three times to present their grievances to the Emperor.!3 Crisan, also a state serf,!4 had served in the imperial army and possessed some knowledge of military tactics. He was the most violent and ruthless of the three. 11 Nicolae Densusianu, Revolutiunea lui Horia in Transiluania si Ungaria 1784-1785 scrisa pe basa documentelor oficiale (Bucharest, 1884), 106, n. 1; 137-140; Alexandru St.

Sulutiu, “Istoria Horii si a poporului romanesc din Muntii Apuseni ai Ardealului (1860)” (MS), B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), 78-84. 12 Lupas, “Impdratul Iosif II si riscoala taranilor,” 271; Octavian Beu, Kaiser Josef II und der Bauernaufstand Horias (Sibiu, 1944), 12-13, argues that it was not Joseph’s custom to receive peasants in private audience and that the distance between the throne and the common people was carefully preserved. His adjutant would receive the petitions and Joseph in passing might exchange a few words with the petitioners. This is probably what happened with Horia.

13 Densusianu, Revolutiunea lui Horia, 140-141. 14 [bid., 141-142.

_ THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 39 Horia had planned to call a general uprising in the spring of 1785, but at the end of October 1784, an incident involving the recruitment of soldiers for the military districts along the Carpathians led to violence, and within a few days the whole of the © Muntii Apuseni was in arms. From there the uprising quickly spread to other parts of Transylvania—to Hunedoara and Tara Barsei in the south and east, to much of the Banat in the west, and

to Bihor and Maramures in the north. The peasants’ main objectives were to obtain relief from the burdens of serfdom, to force the nobles to assume a just share of the state taxes, and to divide up the lands of the nobility among themselves.15 There were also national and religious overtones to the revolt. Some leaders insisted that all Magyar officials should be expelled from

Transylvania and that, henceforth, it should be a Rumanian land.!© The peasants forced many nobles and their families, mainly

Magyar and Calvinist, to undergo rebaptism in the Orthodox faith.'7 In all their public utterances Horia and his colleagues declared that they were acting under the instructions of the Emperor and professed complete loyalty to him.18 _

But however great Joseph’s sympathy for the peasantry, he would not allow established authority to be flouted and therefore ordered his military commanders to take all necessary measures to re-establish law and order. That they might accomplish this with as little bloodshed as possible, he instructed local officials and the Orthodox clergy to accompany the army and to try to persuade

the peasants to disband and return peacefully to their homes.!° 15 Ibid., 150-152. 16 Ibid., 148-150.

17 Sulutiu, “Istoria Horii,” 89. 18 Thid,., 88, 101, 104

a8 Beu, Josef II, 35-37: Hand billet from Joseph to General Schackmin, Nov. 15,

40 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Persuasion, he believed, would be more effective in the long run than brute force, which would only lead to new violence.?° He considered the main cause of the uprising to have been the abuses to which landlords had subjected their peasants in the absence of an adequate urbarium.?! By the middle of December, pressed hard by imperial troops,

something he had not expected, and short of supplies, Horia ordered his forces to disband. On December 27, he and Closca, who had gone into hiding until spring when they hoped to resume the struggle, were delivered into the hands of the army by traitors. With the capture of Crisan a short time later, the resistance of the peasants came to an end. Joseph and particularly the nobles were determined to make an example of them. Crisan escaped the fate they had prepared for him by committing suicide

in prison, but Horia and Closca suffered the full penalty. On February 28, 1785, they were broken on the rack and quartered. In order to impress upon the peasants as vividly as possible the consequences of disobedience, 2,515 of them from 419 villages were brought to Alba-Iulia to witness the execution. Joseph was not satisfied merely to suppress the uprising, but — sought to discover its causes and to take measures to avert new violence in the future. On November 19, 1784, at the height of the revolt, he had appointed Count Antonius Jankovics, the royal commissioner for the Banat, to make a thorough inquiry. On July 6, 1785, Jankovics submitted his final report. He found the main causes of the uprising to have been the harshness and injustice with which the landowners had treated their peasants, the failure of the 20 Ibid., 47-48: Hand billet from Joseph to Count Jankovics, Nov. 20, 1784; 5o—51: Joseph to Count Esterhazy, Nov. 22, 1784. 21 Ibid., 53-54: Joseph to Jankovics, Nov. 27, 1784: “‘When men are brutalized and the bow is bent too far, it breaks for certain.”

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM _ 41 authorities in Transylvania to enforce existing regulations concerning landlord—peasant obligations, and finally, the almost total absence of moral and religious training among the Rumanians.?? He proposed, therefore, the immediate introduction of a general

urbarium with provisions to ensure its strict enforcement, the establishment of a system of state-supported schools for the Rumanians, and the construction of a seminary for the training of

Orthodox priests.?3 | |

Joseph acted immediately to implement these recommendations. On August 22, 1785, he issued a second and final decree of emancipation for the serfs. It granted the peasant his personal freedom,

so that henceforth he might move freely from one village to another, provided he had fulfilled all his obligations to his land-

lord. He could now acquire landed and personal property and could dispose of it as he wished. Yet in spite of these measures,

his emancipation remained incomplete, for Joseph had failed to | provide him with land. Consequently, he was still obliged to per-

form various labor services for his landlord as rent for the land he worked, a system which would serve the landowning class well | as a means of coercion. The decree did provide the peasant with additional protection in that it required landlords to keep a strict accounting of services rendered and dues paid and placed responsibility for enforcement of the law in the hands of the vice-count and the fiscus (a treasury official), who were responsible to the central government in Vienna rather than to the county governments which were controlled by the nobility.24 Its shortcomings

not withstanding, the new decree of emancipation aroused | great enthusiasm among the peasantry. Parish priests took it upon

23 Thid., 321-322. oe

22 Lupas, “Impdratul Iosif si rascoala taranilor,” 318-321.

24 Zieglauer, Reformbewegung, 23; B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Doc. 636.

42 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

themselves to interpret it to their people in such a liberal fashion that many ceased to perform their labor services on the spot. At the insistence of the Gubernium, however, Uniate Bishop Ioan

_ Bob dispatched protopopes to the villages to remind priests of their responsibilities to the civil authorities.25 Joseph now hastened to establish a network of state-supported Rumanian national schools, for he had great faith in education as an instrument of human progress. He believed that a system of state schools would enable his subjects to acquire new skills and improve old ones—which would make them capable of greater services to the state. At the same time, the schools would serve as a means of indoctrinating the peasantry and other commoners with the official ideology. On his journeys to Transylvania he had shown gteat interest in Rumanian education. On his first visit in 1773 he had the follow-

ing conversation with his Saxon guide, Michael Conrad von Heidendorf: The Emperor: Can you read and write Wallach? Heidendorf: No, Your Majesty, that I cannot. It isn’t necessary. There is very little in that language to read or write. E.: And can the Wallachians read and write? H.: Not the common people, Your Majesty.

K.: And their priests ? | H.: They can read, but not all can write. E.: Do the Wallachians not have any schools ? |

H.: They have a fair number, but not everywhere they live. FE.:; Do they not go to Saxon schools? H.: Oh no, Your Majesty.2¢

During the last years of Maria Theresa’s reign the Austrian government had begun to take an interest in the elementary educa25 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Doc. 684: Bob to protopopes, Nov. 20, 1785. | 26 Theil, ““Heidendorf,” XVI, part 2 (1881), 470. oS

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM | 43 tion of the non-German nationalities within the Empire. An imperial rescript of 1777, entitled Ratio Educationis, reorganized the non-German schools of Austria and Hungary (excluding Transylvania). It provided for a centralized system of elementary education, in which the content was to be as nearly uniform as possible but in which the respective national languages were to be used in instruction and in the textbooks. At the same time, students would be expected to learn German as the official state language, and for this purpose bilingual textbooks—one page in German, with the page opposite in the respective national language—were to be introduced as quickly as possible.27 The provisions of the Ratio Educationis fitted in perfectly with Joseph’s overall program of centralization. In 1781 he extended it to Transylvania and took steps to organize an elementary school system for the Rumanian Uniates; in the following year, he ap-

proved the appointment of Gheorghe Sincai as Director of Rumanian National (Uniate) Schools. Sincai had received doctorates in philosophy and theology from the College of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome and, in 1780, had come to Vienna to continue his studies at the College of Saint Barbara. Here he also studied new pedagogical methods in preparation for his appointment as director of the recently opened normal school in Blaj.?8 The first of Sincai’s schools opened in 1784. During the nextten years, as a result of his unceasing labors, the number of Uniate

schools grew to three hundred. In addition to his administrative | duties, he was also responsible for supplying textbooks. Besides being a zealous editor and translator, he was himself the author 27 Onisifor Ghibu, “‘Din istoria literaturii didactice romanesti: I. Bucoavnele; If. Abecedarele din Transilvania; III. Cartile de cetire din Transilvania,” Analele Academiei Romane, Memortiile Sectiunii Literare, ser. II, 38 (1915-1916), 35. 28 See chap. iii for more on Sincai; Octavianus Barlea, Ex historia romena: Ioannes Bob, episcopus fagarasiensis (1783-1830) (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1951), 416.

44 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

of numerous texts: Catechismul cel Mare (The Large Catechism) (Blaj, 1783); Prima principia latinae grammaticis (Blaj, 1783); and Indreptare cdtrd aritmeticd (Introduction to Arithmeric) (Blaj,

1785 ).29 |

Then in 1786 Joseph approved plans for a system of Orthodox schools to parallel that of the Uniates. The first director was Dimitrie Eustatievici, a priest of Kronstadt who had graduated from the Theological Academy in Kiev in 1754 and who three years

. later had written the first Rumanian grammar. In Hermannstadt in 1785 he had on his own initiative made a modest beginning at training elementary school teachers. The course lasted six weeks and consisted of reading, writing, arithmetic, and church singing. 3°

The task which faced Eustatievici was far more arduous than Sincai’s because the Orthodox Church lacked both the financial resources of the Uniates and the institutions of higher learning, like the schools of Blaj, where teachers and priests could receive proper training. Before Joseph’s accession the Transylvanian government had rejected out of hand all requests of the Orthodox for aid in building schools and improving the salaries of their teachers. On one occasion the Gubernium had even cynically suggested that if they were in need of money they should reduce the

number of priests and hire teachers instead. 3! | | The Gubernium, under pressure from Vienna, was now obliged — to change its policy. Joseph regarded the education of Rumanian >

youths as “‘one of the most important and pressing tasks of the 29 Ioan Bianu, Nerva Hodos, and Dan Simonescu, Bébliografia romdneasca veche, 4 vols. (Bucharest, 1903~1944), II, 281, 282, 310; IV, 264. 30 Nicolae Albu, Istoria invatdmdntului romdnesc din Transilvania pand la 1800 (Blaj,

1944), 209. :

31 oan Lupas, “Contributiuni la istoria Romdanilor ardeleni, 1780-1792, cu 84

acte si documente inedite culese din arhivele din Viena, Budapesta, Sibiu si Brasov,” Analele Academiet Romane, Memoriile Sectiunii Istorice, ser. II, 37 (1914-1915), 612.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM , — 45

state,”’32 and entrusted the responsibility for carrying out his instructions to a special committee of the Transylvanian Chancellery. In 1785 and the years following Joseph issued a series of

special rescripts which laid down the principles upon which Rumanian schools were to be built and operated. As a general rule,

parents, landlords, and the state were to share responsibility. Wherever possible, each commune was to have its own school. If,

in certain areas, individual communes were too poor to support separate schools, they would be allowed to pool their resources and establish a single one for the whole district. For the actual work

of construction, landlords were expected to contribute building — material and money, the peasants labor and carting. Parents were to be responsible for paying the salaries of the teachers, but could apply for grants from the Transylvanian or Hungarian school fund if necessary. The state would supply school books free of _ charge and would appoint and pay the salaries of district. school

inspectors whose task it was to ensure regular attendance at classes and to discourage parents from sending their children to work in the fields or to tend the flocks instead.33 These stipulations were set down in the form of contracts between the Tran-

-sylvanian Educational Commission, which administered the program, and the individual communies and districts.34 Such an ambitious project could not be put into effect everywhere at the same time. Many villages wete too poor to support — a school and a teacher, and, as the Transylvanian Chancellor himself observed, district schools in some areas were impractical because parents could not afford to clothe their children adequately 32 Toan Lupas, “Iosif IL si scoalele romanesti din comitatul Aradului,” Béserica si

scoala (Arad), vol. 41, no. 1 (January 1/14, 1917). 6. ,

33 Albu, Istoria invatamdantului, 208-210. 34 Lupas, “Iosif II si scoalele romanesti din Arad,” 6.

46 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

in winter for the long daily trek to and from school. Many landlords were naturally loath to allow their peasants’ children “‘free”’ time to go to school when, in their opinion, they might better be working in the fields. In spite of these and other difficulties significant progress was made in laying the foundations of Rumanian public education in Transylvania. The textbooks used in these schools clearly revealed the Court’s aims in expanding educational opportunities among the national minorities. Reading, which occupied a central place in the curriculum, was taught from a catechism, a ceasos/ov,35 a psaltire,3® a textbook on farming (economia cdémpului), and, with increasing frequency, from specially prepared readers.37 The first such reader,

in the modern sense of the term, for Rumanian schools was the Rumanian—German Duceré de mina catra cinsta si dreptaté, adeca la copit rumunestit neunitit cei ce in scole cele mici sa invata spre cetanie randuita carté (Vienna, 1777), 38 which served as a model for later

textbooks. It was not intended specifically for Rumanian schools;

the original German edition was translated into various languages.

The primary purpose of the readers as well as of the bilingual textbooks in arithmetic and composition was to teach the students German. As part of his program of centralization, Joseph wished to make it the language of administration for the whole Kmpire. He did so not out of feelings of chauvinism, for he him-

spelling book. ,

35 A chutch book containing selected prayers and songs. It was often used as a.

36 A book containing the 151 psalms attributed to King David and long used as an elementary school reader. 37 Carte trebuincioasad pentru dascalii scoalelor de jos romdanesti neunite, 2 vols. (Vienna,

1785), I, 108. 38 Introduction to honor and uprightness, namely a reader intended for Rumanian nonunited children who attend elementary schools.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 47 self had once claimed that had Flemish been the most important

language in his Empire, he would willingly have made it the official language, but because he regarded a knowledge of German as indispensable for the acquisition of scientific knowledge and for the development of cultural life in general. As a consequence,

teachers were exhorted to improve the quality of instruction in German in their classes and to impress upon their students its

—-usefulness.39 A typical teachers manual pointed out that a knowledge of German would make the peasant and the artisan more valuable assets to the state: “‘Many useful books are now published in German which give instruction even to the lower classes of people in all the branches of agriculture and cattleraising and in other arts, industries and occupations.”’4° The same

work contained an additional admonition: “‘For those who wish | to enter upon a military career or who seek some other official position German is practically an indispensable necessity.”’4! One of Sincai’s duties as director of Uniate schools was to make certain that German received as much attention as Rumanian.+? German was made a required subject at the normal school in Blaj, and no student from it could enter a gymnasium unless he

could speak it fluently.+43 | However noble Joseph’s intentions may have been, his imposti-

tion of German in government and education ran counter to the budding aspirations of the non-German nationalities—the Magyats in particular—who wished to assure the free development of

41 Tbid., 257. ,

39 Carte trebuincioasd, II, 249. 40 Ibid., 255.

42 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Doc. 554: Sincai reports to the Gubernium on his efforts to introduce German in the schools of Blaj and on the difficulties of teaching

Feb. 8, 1788. German to Rumanian students, July 9, 1787. 43 B.A.R.S.R. (Bucharest), Ms. rom., vol. 967, 19: Governor Banffy to Sincai,

48 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

_ their own languages. The subsequent language struggle in Transylvania may thus be said to have had its origins in Joseph’s wellmeant efforts to replace Latin with German. Another important function of the new textbooks and of primarty education in general was to impress upon the peasantry the idea that the social system into which they had been born was fixed for all time: ‘““Man may be happy regardless of his rank. Some believe that normally only kings, princes and nobles lead happy lives. This is an error. Heavenly benevolence has not excluded anyone from happiness; town-dwellers, artisans, peasants and even servants and common day laborers may be happy... We must never wish for those things which are beyond our station in life, for we can never obtain them.’’44 Class differences, it was

emphasized repeatedly, were instituted by God. Under the heading “The function of our superiors,” we find the following

admonition: “God rules men through earthly masters. This overlordship is ordained by Him. It punishes those who are evil and protects and aids those who ate good. Therefore, everyone should willingly submit to his superiors, who have power over him.”’45

This message might have been intended for the privileged orders of Transylvania as well, for it was Joseph’s ambition to create a uniform system of administration in the principality and to bring it firmly under the control of the central government. The Saxon patriciate was the first to suffer a curtailment of its

privileges. On July 4, 1781, Joseph issued the Decree of Concwilitat, which granted equal rights of citizenship to all the in44 Ghibu, “‘ Din istoria literaturii didactice,” 246-247, quoting fron Duceré de mana (Vienna, 1777). 45 A.B.C. sau alphavit pentru folosul si procopsala scoalelor celor normalesci a némului romanesc (Blaj, 1783), 84.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 49 habitants of the Fundus regius.4® By its provisions, Rumanian peasants thereafter were to be treated the same as Saxon peasants and Rumanians were to be allowed to acquire landed property in Saxon cities and to enter the guilds; in this way they would obtain full political rights. The Saxons, to preserve their autonomy and to save themselves from eventual assimilation by the more numerous Rumanians (an inevitable consequence of Concivilitat, they believed) stubbornly, and with considerable success, resisted the

application of this decree. |

On July 3, 1784, three years after the promulgation of the

Decree of Concwiltat, Joseph drastically reorganized the entire governmental structure of Transylvania by replacing the counties, svtkek, and Stihble, in which the local aristocracy had held sway, with eleven new counties, over each of which an Obergespann, or prefect, appointed by and responsible to the central government, was placed. In drawing up the boundaries of the new counties he paid little attention to ethnic divisions or historical traditions. Within each, all nationalities were to receive equal treatment before the law, and the sole criteria for public office were to be merit and ability.47 To make the administration more efficient, he ordered the introduction of German into all its branches as quickly as possi-

ble. 48 | | ;

Joseph further sapped the power of the three nations by his proclamation of religious toleration. Apart from a deep personal commitment to this principle, he hoped thereby to reduce friction among the various churches, to contribute to internal peace and

46 Friedrich Teutsch, Geschichte der Siebenbiirger Sachsen fiir das sachsische Volk, 4 vols. (Hermannstadt, 1907-1926), I, 279-283; Zieglauer, Reformbewegung, 34-35. 47'T, V. Pacatian, Cartea de aur, sau luptele politice-nationale ale Roméanilor de sub coroana ungard, 8 vols. (Sibiu, 1904-1915), I, 87; Zieglauer, Reformbewegung, 23-26;

Theil, ““Heidendorf,’” X VIII, part 1 (1883-1884), 94. , :

48 Zieglauer, Reformbemegung, 28. ,

50 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

stability, and to weaken the political dominance of the privileged

orders and their resistance to his reforms. | The Edict of Toleration, issued on October 13, 1781, granted to

non-Catholics freedom of worship in their own homes and the right to build churches and to open schools in those places where they numbered at least one hundred families.49 As far as the Orthodox were concerned, the Edict specifically stipulated that their faith would no longer exclude them from public office or from equal treatment under the law. As a result, in many areas for the first time in almost a century they were able to build their own churches. Before the Edict of Toleration, the Orthodox of Medias, for example, had been obliged to travel many miles to Copsa mica

ot to private homes outside the boundaries of the city for their Sunday services. But in 1787 they built a large church in Medias itself 5° and, during the same decade, smaller churches throughout

the district: Noul Sdsesc (1784), Frena (1785), Ibisdorf-Sasesc (1789), and Atielu (1792).5!

The Edict of Toleration did not usher in an era of complete religious freedom, however, for it produced results which Joseph had not anticipated. In certain areas, Hateg and Fagaras in particular, large numbers of Uniates began to return to the Orthodox

Church. Although he was hardly a loyal son of the Roman Catholic Church, Joseph nevertheless did not wish to jeopardize the unity it represented. He wished also to avoid the strife which

competition for converts between the Uniates and Orthodox would inevitably cause. On August 20, 1782, therefore, he issued 49 Joan Lupas, “‘Edictum Tolerantiae, 1781,” Transilvania, 41 (1910), 446-455; Teutsch, Geschichte der Siebenbiirger Sachsen, I, 272-275.

50 Stefan Moldovan, “Schite istorice despre starea bisericeasca a districtului gr. cat. a Mediasului in anul 1852” (MS), B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), no. 195, 4. 51 [b#d., 12, 15, 16, 23.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 51 a decree which threatened severe punishment to all who attempted to persuade others to leave the Roman Catholic or Uniate churches

for Orthodoxy and made a six weeks’ course of instruction in Catholicism mandatory before any Roman Catholic or Uniate

Orthodox priest.5? a

could be received into the Orthodox Church or even buried by an

Although Joseph thus continued his mother’s policy of discoutaging the growth of the Orthodox Church, he also sought to introduce order and stability into its affairs. He proposed to do this by investing it with a full-time bishop to replace the temporary bishop-administrators appointed by Maria Theresa. The Church was not to gain thereby a greater measure of autonomy, for he demanded that its bishop be guided in all matters except dogma and ritual by the interests of the state. A well-organized Orthodox Church would enable the state to exert more effective control over the Rumanian masses. The church hierarchy from bishop down to

parish priest could be used to make known official decrees and instructions, to influence public opinion, and, in effect, to serve as a kind of auxiliary civil service. For sixty years, ever since Atanasie had signed the Act of Union and had been reconsecrated Uniate Bishop of Transylvania, the Orthodox had had no regular bishop of their own. As a result, their Church had practically ceased to function as an organized body. In fact, the Court in Vienna had chosen to believe that the Orthodox Church in Transylvania no longer existed. This was mere wishful thinking, however. Almost from the moment the Act of Union was signed groups of Orthodox faithful had resisted 52'T, V. Pacatian, “Contributiuni la istoria Romdanilor ardeleni in sec. X VIII,” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie Naftionala din Cluj, 3 (1924-1925), 174-178; B.A.R.S.R.

(Cluj), Doc. 649: Joseph’s edict of May 24, 1782; Protocol cu acte consistoriale: Gubernium to Orthodox consistory, April 22 and July 20, 1782 and April 29, 1783.

52 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

the proselytizing efforts of Uniate and Roman Catholic priests. 53

Perhaps the main reason for their resistance was their fear that tampering with the old faith would jeopardize their salvation. Also, the Union brought no benefits to the peasants, but often only increased burdens, for if their priest went over to the Union they were obliged to support him with a tithe and other pay_ ments. The Catholic as well as the Protestant nobility encouraged their opposition because a Uniate priest meant one less serf to

work their lands. ,

Resistance frequently took the form of widespread violence.

In 1760, for example, a major uprising of the Orthodox took place in the Muntii Apuseni and the Mures Valley under the leadership of a monk named Sofronie.54 Only after strong military reinforcements had been sent to the area was the uprising finally brought under control. In order to maintain calm, Maria Theresa’s minis-

ters advised her to appoint a bishop for the Orthodox. On July

13, 1761, she named Dionisie Novacovici, a Serb who was Orthodox Bishop of Buda, provisional bishop of the Orthodox of Transylvania.55 The devout Empress, reluctant to hinder the progress of the Union, 5° refused to make the appointment permanent

and admonished the new bishop to refrain from proselytizing among the Uniates. Novacovici spent little time in his new diocese and conducted its affairs from Buda. After his death in 1767, the diocese was administered by Ioan Georgevici, Bishop of Varset in the Banat, until 1773, and by loan Popovici of Hondol, vicar of the Orthodox 53 Silviu Dragomir, Istoria desrobirei religioase a Roménilor din Ardeal in secolul XVIII,.2 vols. (Sibiu, 1920-1930), I, 33-41, 96-112, 150-162, 224-259.

54 152-219. |' 55 Tbid., Ibid.,II,249-250.

56 Rudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, Fragmente zur Geschichte der Rumdnen, 5 vols. (Buchatrest, 1878-1886), II, 201.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 53 Church in Transylvania, until 1784.57 During this time Orthodox

leaders in Transylvania and Novacovici himself repeatedly petitioned the Court to install a permanent bishop, but to no avail. It was only after Joseph’s accession that they received a

sympathetic hearing. 7 Joseph gave the Orthodox no voice in the selection of their new _

bishop. Instead of convoking a Church synod to deal with the

matter, as canon law prescribed, he requested the Serbian metropolitan of Carlovitz to propose three candidates, from among whom he would select one. His choice was Ghedeon Nichitici, the

archimandrite of the Monastery of Sistovac and a Serb, who assumed his duties in 1784. His independence was severely limited, for Joseph had by decrees of September 30 and October 9, 1783,

made him subordinate to the metropolitan of Carlovitz in all matters involving dogma and ritual. He repeated these injunctions in a decree of December 8, 1786, which also served notice

on the Rumanians that they could not share in the political privileges of the Illyrian Nation, as the Serbs of the Empire were ©

officially designated.58 , Joseph felt justified in placing the Orthodox of Transylvania

under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Carlovitz, for rela-_ tions between the two churches had become very close during the

eighteenth century. The Orthodox of Transylvania, lacking a proper church organization of their own, had turned to Carlovitz for support. They participated in the synods of the Serbian metropolis and frequently sent candidates for the priesthood to Carlovitz for ordination. Although it was.natural for Joseph to 571, Lupas, “O incercare de reunite a bisericilor romane din Transilvania la 1798,” in Ioan Lupas Studit, conferinte si comunicari istorice, 4 vols. (Bucharest, Cluj,

and Sibiu, 1928-1943), I, 390-391. , -

1900), Acts, 1-2. , : , ,

, 58 Tlarion Puscariu, Mitropolia Romdnilor ortodocsi din Ungaria si Transilvania (Sibiu,

54. THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

strengthen ties which already existed, his behavior once again demonstrated his disregard for national sensibilities; he could not see the incongruity of placing a Serb at the head of a Rumanian church. Nichitici found his diocese in dire need of reorganization. In Hermannstadt, the headquarters of the diocese, he could find no

suitable residence and was obliged to move to the nearby Ru-

manian village of Rasinari where the community gave him lodgings in a private home.59

He also discovered that his freedom of action was severely limited by a steady flow of imperial decrees. In pursuance of his policy of centralization, Joseph destroyed much of the Church’s autonomy. In addition to reserving for himself the right to appoint the bishop, he brought the activities of the consistory under close state supervision. He discouraged contacts between the bishop in Transylvania and the metropolitan of Ungro-Valachia because he opposed the exercise of foreign ecclesiastical authority within

the Empire.6° He forbade the immigration of priests from Orthodox Wallachia, who, like Sofronie, might have disturbed the religious peace he wished to impose.®! On the parish level he instructed Nichitici to see that priests taught their people obedience

to the Emperor and contentment with their lot, that they performed their religious duties conscientiously, and that they refrained from holding meetings of any sort.°? He set strict limits to the number of priests in any given village: less than 130 heads of family (gazde), one priest; up to 250 gazde, two priests; 59 Andreiu Saguna, Istoria bisericei ortodocse rasdritene universale, dela intemeierea ¢i, panda in zilele noastre, 2 vols. (Sibiu, 1860), II, 187-188. 60 T, Mateiu, Contributiuni la istoria dreptului bisericesc, vol. 1: Epoca dela 1848-1868 (Bucharest, 1922), 83, 198.

61 B,A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Doc. 657: Gubernium to Orthodox consistory, Nov. 12, 1782. 62 Ibid,, Protocol cu acte consistoriale, p. 5: Gubernium to Orthodox consistory, May 17, 1784.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM 55 above this figure, three priests. In very large communities additional priests might be engaged, but only with the consent of the civil authorities.©3 He forbade absolutely the hiring of any priest who had been ordained in Wallachia.°+ The main purpose of these

regulations was to prevent the diversion of too much of the village’s resources to what Joseph considered nonproductive ends. For the same reason he had the number of religious holidays reduced so that the peasants would be able to devote more

days to field work.®5 |

The Emperor’s influence was thus felt in all areas of public and

private life. Nevertheless, the tangible benefits which the Rumanians derived from it were few. Probably the most important progress was made in the field of education. The appointment of an Orthodox bishop was also significant, because it gave the Rumanians another spokesman to represent their interests in Vienna and Kolozsvar. The Edict of Toleration recognized the tight of the Orthodox to freedom of worship, though it did not

remove all the restrictions upon their economic and political activities. More Rumanians than before were appointed to public office, but their numbers were still small. As a whole, Joseph tregatded the Rumanians as too insufficiently educated and cultured to hold political office and preferred to appoint German-speaking Saxons instead. Serfdom was abolished and the burdens of the

peasants lightened somewhat, but owing to the refusal of the majority of landlords to respect the regulations of the central

government, the lot of the peasant remained hard. |

63 Ibid.,p.p.7:8:July April 1786. a 64 Ibid., 12, 18, 1786. ,

1946), 309-310. , 65 [bid., pp. 8-10: Dec. 9, 1786. 66 Zoltan Téth, Ax erdélyi roman nacionalizmus elsé szdzada, 1697-1792 (Budapest,

56 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

More significant for the development of Rumanian nationalism than any of the specific acts mentioned above was the new spirit of optimism which Joseph inspired in Rumanian intellectuals. He

had demonstrated to them that a political and social system which had at one time seemed eternal could be dramatically altered. Rumanian intellectuals were for the most part men of the

Enlightenment like Joseph and enthusiastically supported his reforms. For the first time, the Rumanians as a whole had received serious attention from the state, and the fact that it came not from the government of Transylvania but from the imperial throne was not lost upon this or later generations. Indeed, the legend of the ““Good Emperor”’ remained an important factor in Rumanian political life as late as the revolution of 1848-49. It seems paradoxical that Joseph should have given impetus to the Rumanian national movement, for its objectives eventually became self-determination and political autonomy—the antitheses of centralized monarchy.

Fach new reform introduced by Joseph had alienated some hitherto privileged group. By 1790, his cavalier disregard of tradition and privilege had brought internal unrest to the breaking

point. Throughout Transylvania, Magyar nobles and Saxon burghers were holding public meetings of protest and were re-

fusing to provide supplies for the imperial armies until their demands had been met.®7 Owing to the threat to the Empire posed by the French Revolution and the financial crisis occasioned by an

expensive and unsuccessful war against the Ottoman Turks, a reconciliation between the throne and the privileged orders became imperative. On July 28, 1790, therefore, Joseph—physically exhausted by his unceasing labors and depressed by the apparent 67 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Archive, Doc. 553.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DESPOTISM = | historiography and represent a significant departure from the

chronicles of his predecessors in Moldavia and Wallachia. He | possessed a good reading knowledge of Latin, Magyar, German, Italian, and French, and a little Greek, which enabled him to draw

a 34 Clain, “Scurtd cunostinta,”’ 30.

| 74. THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

upon a wide variety of manuscript and published sources. Although he used a large number of foreign works, especially Hungarian,35 he was also familiar with the writings of the great Moldavian and Wallachian chroniclers—Grigore Ureche, Miron Costin, Nicolae Costin, and Radu Popescu—and with those of Dimitrie Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia (1710-1711) and a scholar © of European renown. Clain generally maintained a critical attitude toward his sources, but whenever the “nobility”? of the Rumanians or their historical

rights were in question, he used those which bolstered his own point of view. His insistence upon the purity of Rumanian descent from the Romans is a good example. He allowed the other

peoples whom the Romans conquered, such as the Gauls, to sutvive, but refused the same boon to the Dacians. Furthermore, he insisted that the colonists who resettled Dacia came only from Rome or the Italian peninsula, and thus did not take into account the mixed character of the legions. Modern scholarship has shown | that the Dacians were not annihilated and that the Rumanians are

in fact a fusion of Dacian, Roman or Romanized, and Slavic peoples. Clain’s position on the continued presence of a Romanized

population in Dacia after the withdrawal of the administration and the army in 271 is corroborated, at least in part, by modern archaeological investigations. Although no concrete evidence has

as yet been unearthed to prove continuity in the seventh and eighth centuries, persuasive arguments drawn from toponymy, language, and historical tradition lead to the conclusion that the formation of the Rumanian people took place north of the Danube and that their forebears had lived in Dacia without interruption since the time of the Roman conquest. 35 Ladislaus Galdi, “‘Beitrage zur Geschichte der Siebenbiirger Trias,”’ Archivum FEturopae Centro-Orientalis, vol. 8, no. 1-2 (1942), 9.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 75

The deficiencies in Clain’s work were due in part to the rudimentary state of contemporary historical scholarship and in part to the political and social milieu in which he was writing. In a feudal society, “nobility,” or quality, was the prerequisite for political rights, and Clain was anxious to place Rumanian claims on a firm historical foundation. Clain made extensive use of language and folklore to prove the Roman origins of the Rumanians. He described many customs which were common to both peoples and which he claimed had been handed down from one generation to the next since the settlement of Dacia by the Romans.3¢ “‘In the month of February the

Romans celebrated the ascension of Romulus among the Gods | and sent one another gifts. At that same time the Rumanians of

Sintoadu hold a celebration and send one another colaci37 and , wrteathes made of fir branches . . . The Romans on April 28 held the festival of flowers, and about the same time the Rumanians observe the Sunday of peace, which the common people call the Sunday of flowers.” He used linguistic evidence to prove that Christianity from its eatliest days had existed in Dacia. He cited, for example, the Latin _ origins of the most important religious terms used in Rumanian: botez (baptism, from Latin baptizare), cuminecaturad (the Eucharist,

from Latin comminicare), bisericd (church, from Latin basilica), dumineca (Sunday, from Latin dies dominica), and crdciun (Christmas,

from Latin creatio). The early Rumanians, he argued, could not have used such words and not have been Christian. They could not have

inherited them from pagan Romans, for they referred to Sunday as “‘day of the Sun” and did not know what communion was.38 36 Clain, “Scurté cunostinta,”’ 82-86; Muslea, “Micu-Clain si folclorul,” 251. 37 Fancy bread, usually twisted. 38 Clain, “Istoria,” IV, 35-37.

76 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Clain was a firm believer in the didactic value of history and hoped that the Rumanians, who had fallen upon evil days—“‘ Alas,

the most abject of nations!”"—might, by reading about the deeds of their illustrious forebears, be aroused to emulate them.39 Deeply _ affected by the ignorance and misery he observed around him, he preached that the Rumanians’ regeneration could come about only through the acquisition of knowledge: “How shall we regain our honour and glory? Let us seek out learning, for through it we shall gain wisdom, and through wisdom happiness.”’4° He admonished the clergy not to be content with merely learning the church rituals and songs, but to study philosophy and theology and to establish schools; and he urged the bozers (great landowners) to contribute as much of their wealth as possible toward making education in the national language, which he regarded as the only sure way to knowledge, a reality.+! Perhaps to an even greater degree than his colleagues Clain felt the essential unity of all Rumanians despite their lack of political

unity. He expressed his feelings unequivocally in his Istoria Romédnilor cu intrebari st rdspunsurt:

Question: What areas do the Rumanians inhabit ?

Answer: The areas which the Rumanians inhabit today are Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, where the

Rumanians form a majority. They also inhabit Hungary, from the borders of Transylvania as far as the

Tisza, and the Banat and Maramures and across the

Danube in Bulgaria.42 |

In his historical works he continually emphasized their common 39 Timoteiu Cipariu, Acte si fragmente latine romanesci pentru istoria beserecei romane mai alesu unite (Blaj, 1855), 139-140. 40 Clain, ““Scurta cunostinta,”’ 89. 41 Thid., 90.

42 Teodor, “‘ Despre ‘Istoria Rominilor’,” 203.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 77

— ethnic origins. He regarded their culture as proof of their oneness. In his Scurta cunostinta he devoted a few pages, which some scholars

consider the first literary history of the Rumanians, to writers from all the Rumanian lands “‘who left behind . . . some piece of didactic writing for their people and for the general welfare.’’43 He never speculated, however, on the possibility of a political union of the Rumanians of Transylvania with their brothers be-

yond the Carpathians. The ties which he and his colleagues felt _ with them were, at this time, spiritual rather than political. Clain was also a pioneer in the study of the origins and character of the Rumanian language. He wished to refine and polish it so that his people might use it to acquire that precious knowledge which, if possessed in sufficient quantity and used reasonably, could ultimately bring happiness to all mankind. He was, of course, also eager to use the evidence provided by language to reinforce his _

arguments concerning the Roman origins of the Rumanians. | _ He argued that the Rumanian language had its origins in the Latin spoken by Trajan’s colonists.44 Unfortunately, over the - course of time, its true nature had been obscured by the introduction of non-Latin words and by the substitution of the Cyrillic | for the Latin alphabet. All of this had come about asa result of the |

barbarian invasions of Dacia following the Roman withdrawal, which severed the Rumanians’ contact with other Romance peoples, and of the centuries of foreign domination which followed. Neglected and “corrupted,” the Rumanian language

had failed to develop as had the other Romance languages. | In order to demonstrate the Latinity of Rumanian and, by —

extension, the Roman origins of those who spoke it, Clain

43 Clain, “Scurta cunostinta,” 69-74. ,

371-378. :

44 Al, Rosetti and Boris Cazacu, Istoria limbii romine literare (Bucharest, 1961), ,

78 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

devised a system of Latin transcription which he and Sincai used in their Evementa linguae daco-romanae. Their spellings were

| etymological rather than phonetic, since this would make clearer the relationship of Rumanian to Latin. They preferred, for

dies) .45 |

example, to write filiz instead of fi (son, from Latin fi/ius) and

bona dia instead of buna ziua (good day, from Latin bonus To compensate for deficiencies in the vocabulary of Rumanian,

Clain recommended that borrowings be made from other languages, especially Latin, and that new words be formed from existing roots. He cautioned, however, against the wholesale introduction of neologisms lest the resulting language be unintelligible to the masses. It was a matter of deep concern to him that the intellectual not divorce himself from the needs and interests of the common people, for only he could impart knowledge to them and in this way lead them to their emancipation. Even in his transla-

tions of philosophical works, which required considerable innovation, Clain took care to use words which would be com-

prehensible to the general reading public. , Il Since Clain was able to publish only a few of his historical and philological works, his influence was limited mainly to a small circle of intellectuals. One of those who shared his passion for scholarly inquiry and the regeneration of the Rumanian

| nation was his friend and occasional collaborator Gheorghe Sincai. 45 Samuel Klein [Clain] and Gheorghe Sincai, E/ementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae (Vienna, 1780), 86-87, passin. 46 Samuel Clain, Logica, adecad partea cea cuvantdtoare a filosofiei (Buda, 1799), 57-58.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 79

Sincai was born in 1754 in the district of Mures.47 His father belonged to the lesser nobility, and from his modest income was able to send his son to the best secondary schools in Transylvania.

Between 1766 and 1772 Sincai studied successively at the Reformed gymnasium in Targu-Mures, the Jesuit Academy in Kolozsvar, and the Piarist gymnasium in Bistrita. In 1773 he entered the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Blaj and shortly thereafter was appointed professor of rhetoric and poetics at the seminary. Later, he took his final vows for entrance into the Order of Saint Basil. In 1774 he and Petru Maior, a younger colleague, received scholarships to study theology and philosophy at the College of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. It was in Rome, during spare moments away from classes, that Sincai began his imposing

collection of documents on the history of the Rumanians—a collection which eventually was to fill thirty folio volumes.48 The officials of the College gave generously of their time in assisting

his search for books and manuscripts, and through the good offices of Stephan Cardinal Borgia, Secretary of the College, he received permission to carry on his research in all the libraries of Rome. These labors did not interfere with his academic progress, 47 Alexandru Papiu-Ilarian, “Vietia, operele si ideele lui Georgiu Sincai,” Annalele Societatei Academice Romane, 2 (1869), 1-140; G. Sinka [Sincai], Elegia... data ad Auctorem Orodiadis, Magno-Varadino ipso Festo die S. Michaelis Archangeli A. 1803, ex Episcopali Darabanthiano Tusculano, in Papiu-Marian, “ Vietia .. . lui Georgiu

Sincai,” 106-126: this edition contains copious notes; Zenovie Paclisanu, ‘‘Contributii la biografia lui Gheorghe Sincai—legaturile lui cu episcopul I. Bob,” Transilvania, 53 (1922), 295-310; Andrei Veress, “Note si scrisori sincaiene,”’ Academia Romana, Memoriile Sectiunii Literare, ser. Ill, 3 (1927), 479-503;

1965). | ,

Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 202-222; Mircea Tomus, Gheorghe Sincai, (Bucharest,

48 Jacob Radu, “Manuscriptele din Biblioteca Episcopiei Unite din Oradea-

Mate,” Academia Romana, Memoriile Sectiunii Istorice, ser. IT], 1 (1924), items no. 90-92 (p. 277), 235, 239-241 (p. 299); Veress, ‘Note si scrisori sincaiene,” 495-496.

80 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

philosophy. |

_ however, and in 1779 he received his doctorate in theology and The important connections which Sincai made in Rome served as his introduction to the Court in Vienna, then engaged in the organization of school systems for the non-Germans of the Em-

pire and in need of talented nationals to direct them. With the expectation of receiving an appointment in the Uniate school system of Transylvania, Sincai went to Vienna to acquaint himself with new pedagogical methods and, incidentally, to continue his study of canon law. In Vienna he met Samuel Clain, and they soon became close friends, although the differences in their temperaments were striking—Clain was mild-mannered and able to endure

disappointment and hardship, while Sincai was hot-tempered

and impatient with injustice and ignorance. | In 1782 Sincai was appointed director of the newly opened normal school in Blaj and of the Uniate elementary schools then in the process of formation. In 1784 he abandoned holy orders, partly because of his personal distaste for monastic life and partly, influenced as he was by the Enlightenment, because of his inability to accept the official teachings of the Church that the present order of society was preordained and unchangeable. . His successful career as director of schools came to a tragic end in 1794 with his arrest on charges of incitement to rebellion. For some time his relations with Bishop Ioan Bob had been strained, for he was repelled by Bob’s lack of initiative during the national movement of 1791 and 179249 and had come to regard him as an

instrument of the reaction which had set in after the death of Joseph II. His resentment eventually became so strong that in a fit of rage he publicly threatened to lead a rebellion against Bob.5°

When the Bishop heard of the incident he informed the civil 49 See chap. iv. 50 Papiu-Ilarian, “‘ Vietia ... lui Georgiu $incai,” 93.

: THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT SI authorities and demanded that Sincai be removed from his post. The government acted with dispatch, for, given the state of mind cteated by the revolutionary events in France, they were prepared to see plots against the established order everywhere. Sincai was therefore summarily dismissed and imprisoned for ten months. Although a subsequent investigation showed that the charges

against him had been much exaggerated and although he was _ permitted to go free, he was never reinstated in his post or com-

pensated for his loss of salary.5! Oo

_ The years which followed brought him neither personal happiness nor professional success. In 1804 he was appointed “cortector” of Rumanian books published by the University of Buda | press, where his friend Clain was an editor. During the respite from aimless wandering and material want which this new post afforded him he completed the Rumanian draft of his life’s work, Chronica Romédnilor si a mai multor neamuri (Chronicle of the |

Rumanians and of Many Other Peoples), which he began to publish in installments in Calendarul de Buda in 1807, 1808, and © 1809; but although he hoped to bring the entire work out in this way, he was soon forced to abandon the project because of the

censor’s opposition. 5? | ee After Clain’s death in 1806, Sincai had hoped to succeed him as

editor of Rumanian books, but the post was given instead to Petru Maior. After serving two more years as corrector, Sincai returned | to Transylvania where he continued, unsuccessfully, to seek the permission of the censor to publish his history.53 Discouraged by 51 Ion Modrigan, “Inlaturarea lui Gheorghe Sincai din directoratul scoalelor,” in Lui Nicolae lorga, Omagiu (Craiova, 1921), 207-215; Lucia Protopopescu, ““Con- __ tributii la biografia lui Gheorghe Sincai,” Limba si literatura, 6 (1962), 489-495. 52 Jon Modrigan, “Soarta cronicii lui Sincai,” Cultura Crestind, 6 ( 1916-1917), 23.

53 Ibid., 21-22; Zenovie Paclisanu, ‘“‘Cenzura cronicii lui Gheorghe Sincai,”

Revista Arhivelor, 1 (1924-1926), 22-30. .

82 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

the thought that his life’s work had been in vain, he retired in 1808 to the estate of a Hungarian nobleman, Daniel Vass of Tag, whose children he had once tutored. Here he died on November 2, 1816.

Sincai’s literary production was as varied as Clain’s but not neatly so voluminous. He was not attracted to theology and produced only one important work in this field: Catechismul cel Mare (Large Catechism, Blaj, 1783), intended for the use of the humble rather than for the delectation of scholars. Like Clain, he accepted the basic tenet of the Enlightenment that ignorance and irrationality were the major causes of evil in society and made prodigious efforts to eradicate both. As director of Uniate schools he wrote

and translated numerous textbooks and made frequent tours of inspection of the village schools, believing that ‘‘our future depends upon the education we give our children.’’54 He was the author of one of the most characteristic works of the Enlightenment in Transylvania: Invdtdturd fireascd spre surparea superstitilor norodulu: (Natural History as a Means of Eradicating Superstitions among the People.)55 His purpose, he wrote in the preface, was to teach men how to use their reason to gain a better understanding of the phenomena of nature, which in turn would

enable them to live healthier and happier lives. It could, for example, teach the peasant what crops and fertilizers were most suitable for what soils, what kinds of fodder would provide the best nourishment for his animals, or where and how he could build the right kind of house and heat it properly5*—subjects to 54 Nicolae Albu, Istoria invatdmdantului romdnese din Transilvania pand la 1800 (Blaj,

1 ARSR. (Cluj), Ms. rom., no. 421; a critical edition by Dumitru Ghise and Pompiliu Teodor has recently been published: Gheorghe Sincai, Lnvatdturd fireasca spre surparea superstitiet norodului (Bucharest, 1964).

56 Gheorghe Sincai, “Invataturd fireascd spre surparea superstitilor norodului”’ (MS), B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), 421, paragraphs 2, 3.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 83

which he subsequently returned in such works as Povajuire catra economia de camp (Advice on Agriculture).57 He was well acquainted

with the superstitions of the peasants and regarded them as a setious hindrance to their material and spiritual development. He wished to show them, for example, that comets were not fiery

birds with the power to make men happy or miserable but simply stars with tails which followed a regular course through the sky. Natural phenomena, he admonished, were not the creations of devils but rather tools which man could use to increase his happiness.58 Sincai’s other works included several poems written in Latin,

the most important of which were an autobiographical Elegia, published in 1804,59 and an ode to Napoleon Bonaparte.®° He took a lively interest in natural history and was the author of the first works in Rumanian on the subject: [storia nature sau a firei (Natural History), an adaptation of a German work, and Vocabularium pertinens ad trium regna naturae, the first Rumanian dictionary of the natural sciences, both probably written between 1806 and 1810. In both he had to borrow extensively from Latin and from the spoken language of the people to compensate for the lack of scientific terms in literary Rumanian.®! _ In the field of philology Sincai was the co-author with Clain of the Elementa linguae Daco-Romanae sive Watlachicae. Clain had pre-

pared the text for publication in 1780, at which time Sincai edited it and wrote the preface. In 1805 he published a second, carefully 57 Al. Borza, “Povatuite catra economia de camp,”’ Dacoromania, 1 (1920-1921), §59.

58 Sincai, “Invatatura fireasc4,” paragraph 4. 59 Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 293.

60 Radu, “‘Manuscriptele,” p. 281.

61 Al, Borza, “‘ Prima istorie naturala rom4neasc4: Istoria naturei sau a firei de Gh. Sincai, 1806-1810,” Transilvania, 52 (1921), 825-836; Al. Borza, “‘Primul dictionar de stiinte naturale romanesc: ‘Vocabularium pertinens ad Tria Regna Naturae’ de Gh. Sincai, 1808-1810,” Dacoromania, 5 (1927-1928), §53-562.

84 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

revised edition which carried only his name. The two editions

differed substantially in their approach to the problems of etymology and orthography. The first, primarily the work of Clain, exhibited a marked tendency toward Latinization. The orthography employed followed closely the rules which Clain had set down the year before in his Carte de rogacioni. In both works he was eager to emphasize the Latin derivation of Rumanian. For example, the sound “z” was rendered by “‘d” plus “i”: dieu, from Latin deus, instead of yzeu; dice from Latin dico, instead of vice; the sound “‘c” before “‘a”’, “‘o”’, “u’’, or “i”? was rendered by “‘qu’’: quand (when), guare (which), guum (how), for cand, care, cum, trespectively; the Latin intervocalic “1”? was retained in spelling, but was not pronounced: caf (horses), e/7 (they), vol/ze (will, wish), fdiu (son), for cai, e7, vote, fiu, respectively.®? In the second edition Sincai

replaced these confusing spellings with others which were more nearly phonetic: for example, mu/iere (woman), e// (he), e/ (they), and fii (sons) became in 1805 mutere, tel, ze¢, and fi.63 He did not, however, insist any the less upon the Latinity of Rumanian, which he continued to regard as a corrupted form of classical Latin.

Of all his works that which he himself prized most was Chronica Romédnilor si a mai multor neamuri, apon which his reputa-

tion largely rests today. Only a small part of it was published during his lifetime; the first complete edition appeared posthumously in 1853. A Latin version, intended for scholars, has survived only

in fragments.°4

Chronica is broadet in scope and more comprehensive than

62 Klein and Sincai, E/ementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae, 86, 87, passina.

63 Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 248. 64 For the fate of Sincai’s manuscript, see I. Verbinad, “Dela Sincai la Gavra,” Studti Literare (Cluj), 4 (1948), 135-169; the first complete edition was published in three volumes in Iasi, 1853-1854, under the auspices of Grigorie Ghika, Prince of Moldavia: I, A.p. 86 to 1439; II, 1440-1614; III, 1614-1739. It was Sincai’s intention to bring the narrative down to 1808. A second edition was published in Bucharest in 1886.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT —_ 85

-Clain’s storia. Sincai set for himself the task of writing the history of the Rumanians living both north and south of the Danube, for “all are Romans by blood, as is shown by their nature and their

virtue.”’65 As the title indicates, he also dealt at length with other peoples who had had an important influence on the history of the Rumanians. He was more successful than Clain in demonstrating the essential historical unity of the Rumanian people, for instead of reserving a separate volume for each province, he dealt

with all simultaneously. a

Although he arranged his material by years, his work was not simply a compilation of facts, but a highly critical and selective | study, for which he drew on a wide variety of sources: manusctipts in the Vatican archives, Latin inscriptions from Dacia, the works of Greek and Roman historians, Byzantine narratives, Moldavian and Wallachian chronicles, and numerous Hungarian works. Eschewing a long introduction on the history of Rome, he © _ began his narrative with a.p. 86 with the wars between the Romans

and the Dacians. His account of the Roman conquest and settle- _ ment of Dacia, the withdrawal of the army and the administration _

in the time of Aurelian and the uninterrupted presence of a Roman population in Dacia afterwards, the entrance of the Magyars into Transylvania, and the equality of rights enjoyed by the Rumanians until the Union of the Three Nations did not differ essentially from Clain’s.®7 It was his forceful defense of Rumanian

1886), I, year 274, p. 30. .

65 Sincai, Chronica Romdnilor si a mai multor némuri, 2nd ed.; 3 vols. (Bucharest,

66 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Ms. tom., no. 545, Sincai, ‘‘Colectie de Documente,”’ VI; on the cover: “Inscriptiones Daciae a Rdmo Dno Jacobo Aron Transmissae Roman Illmo ac Rdmo Dno Stephano Borgia, Sacrae Congreg. de Propg. Fide Secretario. Anno 1778. Mense Julio.” 67 Sincai, Chronica Roménilor, I, year 105 (p. 7), yeat 274 (p. 30), yeat 319 (pp. 40-41),

year 458 (p. 88), year 904 (pp. 169-170), year 1152 (pp. 217-218), year 1186 (pp. 220-222), yeat 1206 (pp. 245-247), year 1437 (pp. 395-396); II, year 1494 (pp. 90-92), yeat 1503 (pp. 104-105), year 1529 (pp. 158-160); III, year 1683 (pp. 133-136).

86 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Tr

historical rights which caused the censor, the Roman Catholic Bishop Martonfy of Alba-Iulia, to prohibit the publication of his work.

Petru Maior, the third great luminary of the Transylvanian school, was born in 1760 in Targu-Mures.°8 His father was the Uniate protopope of Targu-Mures and his three older brothers were priests. He attended schools there and in Kolozsvar and at the age of thirteen entered the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Blaj. In 1774, in recognition of his scholarly achievements, he was

awarded a scholarship to the College of the Propagation of the

Faith in Rome. He applied himself diligently to the study of theology and philosophy and, in his spare time, like his friend Sincai, combed the libraries of Rome for books and manuscripts concerning the history of the Rumanians. In 1779 he went to Vienna to study canon law and in the following year returned to Blaj as professor of logic and metaphysics. Here, in 1783, he - completed his first work, Procanon, a spirited attack against the doctrine of papal supremacy and the claims of the Roman church to universal dominion.®9 Deeply influenced by the enlightened thought of the period, he soon found the life of the cloister too 68 Atanasiu Marianu Marienescu, “‘ Vietia si operile lui Petru Maioru,” Analele Academiei Romana, ser. Il, 5 (1882-1883), section I], 31-138; Popovici, La /ittérature roumaine, 222-244; G. Bogdan-Duica, Petru Maior: Un studiu biografic (Cernauti, 1893) ;

V. Netea, “‘Cateva precizari in legatura cu Petru Maior,” Revista Fundatiilor Regale,

vol, 8, no. 6 (1941), 691-696; Maria Protase, “Petru Maior polemist,” Studii si cercetari stiintifice, philology, Academia R.P.R., Iasi Branch, vol. 11, fasc. 1 (1961),

are Masia Protase, “ Semnificatia social-politicd a ‘Procanonului’ lui Petru Maior,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philology Series, fasc. 2 (1963), 61-65.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 87

confining and in 1784 announced that he would not take his final vows. He asked for and received an appointment as protopope in

Reghin, a post he held until he moved to Buda in 1809. | He considered himself a missionary whose duty it was to bring the benefits of the new learning to the common people.7° By his own account, he traveled to the remotest villages of his district in search of peasant children deserving of the opportunity to learn, and often, seeing them tending their flocks in the fields, he would

gather them about him for a lesson. He devoted much of his attention to their elders too, employing the sermon most effectively as a means of communication. Funerals offered him the best opportunity to reach the largest audience, for those who rarely or never came to church could be counted on to partake of the meal which custom decreed must follow the burial. He composed many

sermons to be preached at the funerals of children, when the words of the priest could be expected to make their deepest impression. After his removal to Buda he gathered all these sermons together in book form under the titles Propovedanii la ingropaciunea oamentlor morti (Funeral Orations), Buda, 1809; Didahit, adica invajaturi pentru cresterea filor, la ingropaciunea prun- | cilor morti (Sermons on the Education of the Young Preached at the Burial of Children), Buda, 1809; and Prediche sau invafaturi la toate Duminecile si sdrbatorile anului (Setmons for Every Sunday and

for Feast Days), Buda, 1810-1811. | In 1809 he left Reghin for Buda to take up his new post as “censor et corrector valachicus” at the University of Buda press. Shortly after his arrival he began work on his masterpiece, Istoria pentru inceputul Romdnilor in Dachia (The History of the Origins of the Rumanians in Dacia), which he published in Buda in 1812. 70 N. A. Ursu, “Carti de popularizare a stiintei traduse de Petru Maior,” Limba romind, vol. 10, no. 2 (1961), 135-143.

88 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

His association with the University press and the modest wealth he was able to accumulate enabled him to publish his most im-

portant works. In his later years he showed no inclination to slacken his pace, and until a few days before his death on Februaty 14, 1821, he was busy editing what was to be the first etymological dictionary of the Rumanian language. His Istoria pentru inceputul Romdnilor in Dachia,7' differed in several important respects from the works of Clain and Sincai.

It was a short synthesis of barely three hundred pages from which all material irrelevant to the main theme had been excluded. It was not, in fact, a general history of the Rumanians at all but a study of their origins and their presence in Dacia up to the Magyar invasion in the tenth century. Nor was it the work of a lifetime of scholarship, but a “‘reply’’, written in three years, to the “calumnies”? which foreign historians had heaped upon the Rumanians.

Its polemical tone is evident in the first few lines: “A strange custom is shared by many foreign writers with regard to the Rumanians, the descendants of the ancient Romans. They spread tales about them like those which the Evil One whispered into the ears of the barbarians to make them hate and envy the conquerors of the world. Without a shadow of proof they invent the most shameful lies, hoping that they will find persons credulous enough to accept them. For some time now, just as one donkey will scratch the back of another, they have been loaning out their calumnies to one another which thus find their way into print over and over again. The longer the Rumanians disdain to answer these

wicked slanders, the more these writers will insist upon their deprecations and infamies.”7? 71 First edition, Buda, 1812; 2nd edition, Buda, 1834; 3rd edition, Budapest and Gherla, 1883. 72 Bianu, Hodos, and Simonescu, Bibliografia romdneascd veche, IX, 57.

| THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 89 Maior insisted that the Rumanians were “‘true Romans descended from true Romans.”73 His evidence did not differ in essentials from that of Clain and Sincai. To assure the Rumanians’

purity of descent he claimed that the Romans had exterminated the Dacians. Although he admitted that a few women might have been spared, these were slaves, he naively suggested, to whom the Roman legionaries were not consequently attracted. With regard to the question of continuity, he insisted that only the legions and the administration had been withdrawn by Aurelian. The rest of the population was too large and too deeply attached to the soil to have made a mass migration. Even if they had wished to leave,

the Goths, who had taken possession of most of the province, _ would have prevented them from doing so, for they depended upon the local population to supply them with food. In the following centuries, as one barbarian tribe after another swept across Dacia, the Roman population took refuge in the mountains.

After the collapse of the Avar khanate in the eighth century, Dacia became independent and remained so until the invasion of the Magyars under Tuhutum in the tenth century. The narrative

ends with a description of the pact between the Magyars and

lished between them.74

Rumanians and a spirited defense of the equality which it estabMaior’s book provoked lively discussions with other scholars.

His most notable dispute was with the renowned Slavist, Bartholomeus Kopitar.75 Kopitar published a review of Isforia in the December 7, 1813, issue of the Weener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung in which he took issue with some of Maior’s most cherished theories. In the first place, he could not accept the premise that

Gherla, 1883), 11. , oe 74 Ibid., 5-17, 34-36, 235-241. ,

73 Petru Maior, Istoria pentru inceputul Roménilor in Dacia, 3rd ed. (Budapest and

75 Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 241-243. ,

90 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Rumanian was derived directly from Vulgar Latin, for it ignored the influence of the indigenous Dacian language. He was convinced that the origin of those phenomena in Rumanian, like the postposed article, which differentiated it from the other Romance languages, must be Dacian. He also objected to Maior’s proposal to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin and wondered how the latter could adequately represent such characteristic Rumanian sounds as 4, 4, s, 7. He rejected many of the etymologies Maior had

offered as a proof of continuity. Finally—and here Kopitar revealed the inadequacy of his knowledge—he declared that the Rumanians had no literature except for translations of the Bible. Maior replied in a brochure entitled Animadversiones in recen-stonem Historiae de origine Valachorum in Dacia, published in Buda in

1814; in this he disposed of some of Kopitar’s arguments with ease, but he could not shake his basic premise about the important role the Dacians had played in the formation of the Rumanian people.7° Tstoria pentru inceputul Romdnilor in Dachia exercised a profound

influence upon later generations. Through it they absorbed the historical teachings of the Transylvanian Enlightenment. Ion Bliade Radulescu, the great Rumanian man of letters of the midnineteenth century, once recalled to a friend the enthusiasm which their first reading of it had evoked: ‘Do you remember what the Origins of the Rumanians of the blessed Petru Maior was for us, with what passion we read it together, and with what noble, and 76 The discussion went on for several years. Kopitar replied to Maior’s Animadversiones in a personal letter. Maior’s answer to this was contained in a brochure entitled Reflexiones in responsum Domini recensentis Viennensis ad animadversiones in recensionem Historiae de origine Valachorum in Dacia (Buda, 1815). Kopitar wrote an angry reply in an article entitled “Eine walachische Antikritik” which appeared in the Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung for Feb. 7, 1816. Maior had the last word in a brochure entitled Contemplatio recensionis in valachicam anticriticam.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 91

yet childish ideas it made our heads swim ?’’77 George Baritiu, who

was to become one of the leaders of Rumanian intellectual and | political life in Transylvania in the nineteenth century, translated Maior’s work into Magyar while still a lyceum student in order to

correct the misconceptions of his teachers and fellow students concerning the Rumanian past. The editor of the second edition of Istoria, published in 1834, proclaimed it a major force in the new

national awakening: “Petru Maior aroused in the nation an ardent desire for self-knowledge . . . From the time his History appeared, the Rumanian, who before was cast down in darkest ignorance, - began to know his heritage and his own nature.”’78 Istorta was the pteferred reading of the generation of 1848, and their speeches and

author. |

writings ate eloquent testimony of the debt they owed its Maior was equally concerned with linguistic problems and

provided a succinct exposition of the philological credo of the | Transylvanian School in the preface he wrote for the Lexicon de Buda, the first etymological dictionary of the Rumanian language.79 Rumanian intellectuals had been preoccupied with the writing of a dictionary of their language since the middle of the eight-eenth century.8° Bishop Petru Pavel Aron seems to have been the

first to have formulated a definite plan. In 1759 he wrote to | _ Grigorie Maior suggesting a collaboration,’! but, owing to the press of Aron’s official duties, nothing came of this initiative. In 1780 Sincai wrote in thé preface to the Elementa linguae DacoRomanae that he intended to begin work soon on a dictionary, 77D. Popovici, Ion Heliade Radulescu: Opere, 2 vols. (Bucharest, 1943), II, 414. 78 Bianu, Hodos, and Simonescu, Bibliografia romdneasca veche, III, 59. 79 The full title is Lesicon romanescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemtescu (Buda, 1825).

80 Z. Paclisanu, ‘‘Din istoria Dictionarului de Buda,” Transilvania, 52 (1921), 260-269. 81 Cipariu, Acte si fragmente, 224.

92 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

but it was his collaborator, Samuel Clain, who prepared the first

manuscript for publication. |

Clain had long wished to provide Rumanian students with a useful tool for learning the other languages of Transylvania and to make permanent the orthographical changes and new words he and his colleagues had introduced. In 1805, he submitted the manuscript of a Rumanian-Latin-Hungarian-German dictionary to the University of Buda press. Although impressed by its size and uniqueness, the editors refused to put it into production until Clain could guarantee them a sufficient number of subscriptions. These were slow in coming, in spite of the devoted efforts of Clain’s friends,8? but at last he was able to advance the press a sum large enough to enable it to begin work. His untimely death temporarily brought the project to a halt. Vasile Colosi, a Uniate priest of Saracamb, acquired Clain’s manuscript with the object of incorporating it into a dictionary of his own, but he too died before he could complete his work. For a time Joan Corneli, a canon of the Uniate cathedral of Oradea Mare, and Petru Maior worked together on a revision of Clain’s manuscript. Then from 1819 until his death in 1821 Maior carried on alone, reaching the letter “H.” A group of scholars, guided by

Maior’s example and headed by Ion Teodorovici, a Rumanian Orthodox curate of Buda, finally completed the task in 1825. Although the finished product represented the contributions of many persons, the Lexicon de Buda in the main reflects the influence of Maior’s linguistic theories, which Maior himself set down in the preface entitled Dialogu pentru inceputul limbei romdne 82 One of these was George Angyal, parish priest of Zlatna, who wrote to Clain on Sept. 25, 1805, that he had fifteen subscribers: “‘ Let the printing house have no doubts that [the dictionary] will sell; all they need do is send copies to Transylvania, and everyone, German and Hungarian included, will buy them.” B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj),

Ms. tom., no. 470. ,

| THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 93 intre nepotu si unchiu (Dialogue between a Nephew and his Uncle |

on the Origins of the Rumanian Language). | In the course of a conversation an uncle (Petru Maior) explains

to his nephew the origins and true nature of the Rumanian language. The nephew declares that he accepts the thesis propounded in Istoria pentru inceputul Romdnilor in Dachia that the

Rumanians are the direct descendants of the ancient Romans, but | admits that the origins of the Rumanian language still puzzle him. | The uncle replies that there were really two Latin languages, one > the classical or literary language and the other the vernacular used by the common people. It was the latter which was spoken by the colonists brought to Dacia by Trajan and which formed the basis of modern Rumanian.83 The nephew accepts the derivation of Rumanian from Vulgar Latin, but cannot understand why French and Rumanian appear so dissimilar. ““Didn’t Roman colonists bring their language to Gaul also?” he asks. The uncle replies that in Gaul the numerous -

_ autochthonous population survived the Roman conquest and that |

their language fused with the Vulgar Latin of the Romans to produce modern French. The situation in Dacia was quite dif-

ferent. There the native population was annihilated during the | wars of conquest; as a result, from the beginning of Roman tule,

no other language was spoken there except Latin. It is true that later on numerous Slavs settled in the area, an event which could | | not but have had some influence on the language, but Slavic influence, the uncle maintains, was superficial and did not affect | the basic texture of Rumanian; its traces could easily be removed. 4 83 Petru Maior, Dialogu pentru inceputul limbeit romdne intre nepot si unchiu, in Lexicon

84 Ibid., 64-68. |

Valachico-Latino-Hungarico-Germanicum (Buda,1825), 63: “Limba poporului ~ Romanilor quelor de demultu vecuesce pino astadi in gura Romanilor nostri.”

94 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

This, explains the uncle, is one reason why French and Italian appear to be much closer than Rumanian to their common Latin . progenitor. Another reason is that the true nature of Rumanian is obscured by Cyrillic letters. ““How often this has happened to me,” the uncle laments, “‘that whenever I was in doubt whether a word was Latin, I would write it with Latin letters, and at once its gleaming Latin face would appear and would seem to smile at me | for having freed it from slavery and from its poor Cyrillic rags.”’85 The uncle brings the conversation to a close at this point with an appeal to patriots to cultivate their language and to restore it to its original form. Maior himself provided prospective reformers with a suitable model for their activity by introducing into Rumanian

many wotds of Latin derivation from Macedo-Rumanian— dimdndu (order) in place of the Slavic poruncad and plagd (wound) in

place of the Slavic rand’’—and from Italian—guerra, dogana, avenire 87

In the Dialogu, Maior was in effect asserting that Vulgar Latin and Rumanian were essentially the same thing. Though clearly

in error, he did have the insight to realize that Rumanian was derived from Vu'gar Latin and not from Classical Latin, as most

of his contemporaries believed. The danger inherent in his assumption that Rumanian was only a corrupted form of Vulgar | Latin revealed itself later on when otherwise competent scholars attempted to restore Rumanian to its supposedly pristine purity by removing “foreign”? words and replacing them with sometimes

bizarre neologisms. |

85 Ibid., 72-73. 86 T’. Capidan, “Petru Maior si aromanii,”” Junimea literard, 12 (1923), 63-69.

87 St. Cuciureanu, “Italienisme la Petru Maior,” Studi si cercetari stiintifice, philology, Academia R.P.R., Iasi Branch, vol. 10, fasc. 1-2 (1959), 53-67.

a IV |

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 95

The fourth great figure of the Rumanian Enlightenment in |

Transylvania was Ion Budai-Deleanu, whose merits have only recently begun to be fully appreciated. His works, which were still in manuscript form for almost a century after his death, were

known to only a few, and he remained for years in the shadow of |

his contemporaries.88 |

The son of a Uniate priest, he was born in 1760 or 1761 in the village of Cigmau in the county of Hunedoara. He studied theology

at Blaj and then enrolled in the University of Vienna, where, in | addition to continuing his theological studies; he attended courses

in philosophy and law. He lived in Vienna from 1777 to 1786, during which time he probably met Samuel Clain, Gheorghe Sincai, and Petru Maior. His studies of Classical Latin, French, Italian, and English literature plus his contact with the philosophy of the Enlightenment profoundly influenced the development of

his own social and political thought. For a short time in 1787 he taught at the seminary in Blaj,89 but the advanced thought he had imbibed in Vienna soon led him to rebel against the dull clerical routine and anemic intellectual climate imposed by Bishop Bob.9° He returned to Vienna, where he served for a time

as a clerk in the Ministry of War. Then, about 1788, he moved to | Lemberg, the administrative capital of Galicia and Bukovina and a center toward which Rumanian intellectuals of these 88 Erich Prokopovitsch, “‘Zur Ion Budai Deleanus Lebensgescchichte,” SidostForschungen, 19 (1960), 285-299; Lucia Protopopescu, “‘Contributii la biografia lui I. Budai-Deleanu: Familia Budai, schita biografica,”’ Limba si literatura, § (1961), 155—

180; Paul Cornea, “I. Budai-Deleanu—un scriitor de renastere timpurie intr-o renastere intirziata,” in Paul Cornea, Studii de literatura romind modernd (Buchatest, 1962), 5-78; Al. Piru, Literatura romind premodernd (Bucharest, 1964), 86-134; Ion Ghetie, Opera lingvistica a lui Ion Budai-Deleanu (Buchatest, 1966). 89 Joan Ratiu, Dascalii nostri, 1754-1848 (Blaj, 1908), 42-44. 90 Cipariu, Archivu pentru filologia si istoria, no. 36, July 5, 1870, 705.

96 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

provinces gravitated. There he remained for the rest of his life, first as a secretary (Landgerichtssekretar) to the provincial court and then as a councillor (Landrat) at the Court of Appeals. One

year before his death in 1820 the Transylvanian Chancellery

service to the state. |

eranted him a title of nobility in recognition of his distinguished

In Lemberg, apart from his official duties, Budai-Deleanu devoted himself to the study of Rumanian history and linguistics. He thus shared the main preoccupations of his contemporaries. His most important historical work is De originibus populorum LTransylvaniae commentatiuncula, cum observationibus historico-criticis.9}

In the first part he describes the history of Transylvania up to 1699, and in the second, deals with the origins of the various peoples—

Dacians, Huns, Bulgars, Slavs, Magyars, and Saxons—who at one time or another inhabited the province. He is most interested, of course, in the Rumanians. He accepts as axiomatic the purity of

their descent from the Romans, but rejects Maior’s contention that the Dacians were totally annihilated; they were too numerous

for this to have happened. Instead, they fled to the north, completely abandoning Dacia to the Romans. He also accepts the

theory of continuity. It is inconceivable to him that when Aurelian withdrew the army and administration, the whole population should have followed, leaving behind their homes and their work. He argues rather unconvincingly that, in any case, the population of Trajan’s Dacia could hardly have fitted into Aurelian’s Dacia south of the Danube, for it was only half the size of the former. In addition to several short dissertations which were probably intended as parts of a larger work, Budai-Deleanu wrote a lengthy 91 A, Cioranescu, “Opera istorica a lui Budai—Deleanu,” Cercetari literare (Buchar-

est), 2 (1936), 102-128. ,

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 97

indictment of the constitutional system of the three nations entitled De wnione trium nationum et constitutiones approbatae Transyl-

vaniae. The misery in which the Rumanians languished was, he declared, in large measure due to their subjection to the ruling class of another people, the Magyar nobility. All benefits and privileges were reserved to this class, and the only way a Rumanian

might share them was to abandon his language and nationality. The schism between the Western and Eastern churches, which accentuated the differences between Catholic rulers and Orthodox subjects, the exclusion of Rumanian representatives from diets and other political assemblies where laws were made, and the inability

of the Rumanians to share in the benefits of higher learning all

contributed to their subjugation. |

A work quite different from any produced by his Transylvanian contemporaries was his Kurzgefasste Bemerkungen iiber Bukowina (Brief Notes on Bukovina).93 More than a history, it describes the economic, administrative, and social life of the province and calls to mind Dimitrie Cantemir’s Descriptio Moldaviae.

-~Budai-Deleanu shared the Latinist beliefs of his colleagues concerning the Rumanian language but was more realistic in his

approach to certain problems. For instance, in his grammar, Temeiurile gramaticii romdnesti (The Fundamentals of Rumanian Grammar), he argued in favor of the adoption of Latin letters and _ criticized his fellow grammarians Ioan Piuariu-Molnar and Radu

Tempea for their failure to adopt the Latin alphabet out of fear of being considered papists.95 However, ne agreed with Petru Maior that the Cyrillic alphabet should be retained in church

92 Ibid., 123. | | ——

93 Published in Ion Nistor, Roménii si Rutenii in Bucovina: Studiu istoric si statistic (Bucharest, 1915), 168-200. 94 See below, part 5 of this chapter. 95 Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 262.

98 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

books; otherwise, the common people might feel disturbed in their faith. In another grammar, written in Lemberg in 1812, entitled Fundamenta Grammatices linguae Romaenicae seu ita dictae Valachicae, he accepted the derivation of Rumanian from Vulgar Latin, but admitted that the Latin spoken in Dacia had been altered by contact with the Dacian, Gothic, Gepid, and Slavic tongues. Although he conceded that they had exerted a strong influence on

the makeup of Rumanian vocabulary, he insisted that they had not altered the basic structure of the language, which remained Latin. 96

Budai-Deleanu’s most ambitious linguistic work was his Lexzconul romdnesc-nemfesc (Rumanian-German Lexicon)97 the final — version of which, consisting of 1,238 pages, was completed in

1818. This was only part of a still vaster work, which was scheduled to include Latin, Greek, Italian, and French sections as well. He worked on the Rumanian—German part first in order to provide Rumanian students and scholars with a tool to aid them in the study of the German language and German culture, which he

believed would be of the greatest importance in shaping the intellectual development of the Rumanians of the Austrian Empire. His was the attitude of a man of the Enlightenment whose principal concern was the advancement of learning in whatever language it might take place. His moderation contrasts sharply with the later insistence of the leaders of the national movement

in 1848 that cultural progress could occur only through the

medium of the national language. |

96 Ibid., 262-263; for a detailed discussion of Budai-Deleanu’s two grammars, see Ghetie, Opera lingvisticad a lui Ion Budai-Deleanu, 81-93.

971, Sangiorgiu, “Lexiconul rom4nesc-nemtesc al lui Budai-Deleanu,” Revista Fundatiilor Regale, vol. 11, no. 2 (1944), 391-412; Lucia Protopopescu, “‘ Contributii la istoria operei lexicografice a lui Jon Budai-Deleanu,” Cercetari de lingvisticd (Cluj), vol, 6, no. 2 (1961), 267-291; Ghetie, Opera lingvisticd a lui Budai-Deleanu, 94-110.

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 99

Budai-Deleanu included in his dictionary only words which were in common use in all the Rumanian lands.98 It made no

difference to him from what source such a word came, “because as soon as it has been accepted by the whole nation ... we can no longer regard it as foreign but [must look upon it] as a possession of the Rumanian nation.”’ Accordingly, he did not consider words _ of Slavic origin commonly used in all the dialects as “impurities,”’ but did exclude words which were used in only one province and

whose Latin derivation could not be verified. He included in this category all “Russian and Serbian”? words used in the church books in place of Latin words, which, he believed, would have served just as well. If a word like mdéntwitor (savior), derived from

Latin, was in general use, there was no reason to employ the Slavic apdsitoriu. He also omitted borrowings from Turkish and Greek used extensively in Moldavia, borrowings from German and Magyar prevalent in Transylvania, and made no reference at

all to the dialect spoken in Muntenia because he had had no opportunity to study it. He introduced numerous words of Latin derivation, mainly French, which were current in Western Europe and for which Rumanian had no equivalent such as atlanta, cabinet, echipaj, bagaja, avangardd, and modd. But although the cen- , sor approved publication of the dictionary, it remained in manuscript for lack of funds. Budai-Deleanu was the only one of the four great historianlinguists of the Transylvanian School to produce an original literary work. Through his heroic-comic epic J 7ganiada (The Gypsy Epic),

he introduced a new genre into Rumanian literature and at the

same time demonstrated the great poetic possibilities of the , 98 L, Seche and M. Seche, “‘Creatiile lexicale personale la I. Budai-Deleanu,”’ Limba romind, vol. 7, no. 3 (1958), 39-47.

100 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TR.ANSYLVANIA

language.99 The poem is an allegory, whose leading characters, the Gypsies, represent all those who behave like Gypsies. The raillery and lack of respect shown for established institutions reveal a critical spirit characteristic of the eighteenth century.!©° The first version was written between 1802 and 1812, the second, a short time later. The scene is laid in fifteenth-century Wallachia and the action

centers about the struggle between Prince Vlad Tepes and the Turks. Vlad seeks to organize the Gypsies for the defense of his realm. As an inducement, he promises them lands with which they will be allowed to form a state of their own. The Gypsies agtee, but request an escort of two hundred soldiers to protect them on the way to their new home. They never do meet the Turks in battle, but nevertheless ascribe Vlad’s successes to the fact that he has had their support. When the Turkish danger momentarily subsides, the Gypsies finally get around to a discussion of their future form of government. Some ate advocates of democracy, others of monarchy, still others of various combinations of the two, and none is willing to share power with another. Since no agreement is possible, the Gypsies fall back into their traditional anarchy, thereby losing the opportunity for a state of their own. Here the first version ends. In the second version the natrative is extended and we see Vlad, deserted by his boyars, being warned by the Archangel Gabriel that God has decided to allow the Turks to subjugate Wallachia. Vlad decides to go into exile, but his troops, led by a young captain, vow to continue the struggle.

Budai-Deleanu used the personal adventures of a variety of characters to satirize and censure the political and social mores of his time. He exhibited little sympathy for the nobility, either °9 For a discussion of [zganiada, see Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 109-116, 450-475; Piru, Literatura romind premodernd, 97-132. 100 Ton Lungu, “‘Idei iluministe in Tiganiada lui Budai-Deleanu,” in Dim istoria filozofiei in Rominia, 3, vols, (Bucharest, 1955-1957), II, 157-181.

| THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT _ IO] Magyar or Rumanian. His Magyar noble, Becicherec Istoc de Uram Haza (Transylvania), with his penchant for boasting of his

purity of race, is, for instance, sardonically portrayed as the descendant of Gypsies, one of whose forebears, a mender of pots | and a lute player, had so charmed the king by his playing that he had won ennoblement. Becicherec has only disdain for his Ruma| nian squire, Haicu Craciun. He calls him “iobag” (serf) and boasts

of his power of life and death over him and all Rumanians; Haicu, with great dignity, can only reply that in spite of appearances, he too is a man like Becicherec. Becicherec explains the origin of serfdom among the Rumanians as a result of their failure to submit

willingly to his (Magyar) ancestors when they conquered the country. Haicu admits that things may have happened as his master says, but cannot understand why he must suffer punishment for the misdeeds of his ancestors.

In spite of their loquacity and inactivity, the Gypsies served | Budai-Deleanu well as spokesmen for his own political ideas. | He was eager to rouse his people to struggle against the oppressive

tule of the three nations, but knew how dangerous it was for a Rumanian to involve himself in political controversy. It was not accidental therefore that he selected the reign of Vlad Tepes as the time for and the Gypsies as the protagonists of his epic. The circumstances in which both found themselves provided the-author ‘with a convenient opportunity for expressing his views. Since

Wallachia in the middle of the fifteenth century was engaged in | mortal combat with the Ottoman Empire, Vlad Tepes’ struggle | could serve as a symbol for all Rumanians who yearned for freedom. In addition, the status of the Gypsies, who had no state of

their own resembled that of the Rumanians of Transylvania. Thus, Budai-Deleanu could dare to have one of his Gypsies exclaim: “Let us gypsies have a country... where we shall be _

102 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

alone... Let us have villages, houses, and gardens and all the rest which those before us had!” After the gypsies receive their grant of land from Vlad Tepes they hold a general assembly to discuss their future form of political organization. The first orator praises monarchy. While ad-

mitting that human society may in the beginning have been | governed by a sort of primitive democracy, he believed that this form of government had proved itself deficient in that it had armed citizens one against the other and had soon given way to a state of anarchy. Eventually, some members of society had gained control over the great mass of men, for whose welfare they had little concern. But this government by aristocracy was even wotse than what had gone before, for it had none of the virtues and all of the faults of democracy. In time, quarrels broke out among the aristocrats themselves, and society passed through another period of turbulence until the strongest individual among them triumphed and became king. Instead of oppressing his people as the aristocrats had done, he attempted to improve their lot through wise laws and efficient and just administration. The second speaker agrees that a good monarch is indeed a great blessing for a people, but expresses anxiety lest his successor rule according to his own pleasure and end up a despot. He concludes that the most beneficial and just form of govern- __ ment is a republic, where all men have equal rights and can “‘raise themselves to their full worth.”

The third speaker declares himself unable to accept wholeheartedly any of the forms of government proposed by his colleagues. Monarchy, aristocracy, or a republic might be good or bad; this depended upon the character of the people and upon the circumstances of a given period. In time of national danger, when decisions of great importance had to be made quickly, monarchy

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 103

would prove most effective; at other times, it might be preferable to allow the people to govern themselves through elected representatives. Since there was some good in every form of govern-

ment, he urges his compatriots to adapt to their special needs what was useful from all three. This may have been the solution which Budai-Deleanu himself favored.!°! Certainly it was in harmony with the political philosophy of the French Enlightenment

as embodied in Montesquieu’s De esprit des lois and d’Holbach’s S§ Systeme social, both of which advocated mixed forms of

government to fit varying economic, social, and geographical conditions and which Budai-Deleanu had undoubtedly read. Some scholars consider the poet an advocate of enlightened despotism as practiced by Joseph I. But although Budai-Deleanu greatly ad-

mired Joseph for his efforts on behalf of the Rumanians of Transylvania and found much virtue in monarchy, he would not have allowed the advocate of a mixed form of government to have had the last word had he been a patron of enlightened despotism. | His political thought was thus more radical than that of Clain, Sincai, and Maior, who remained faithful to the ideals of enlight-

ened despotism. It was unfortunate for the development of Rumanian political thought and literature that the works of this remarkable savant were almost completely ignored for almost a

| century after his death.

v Joan Piuariu-Molnar was born in 1749 in the village of Sad, neat Hermannstadt.!°? He was the son of the Orthodox protopope 101 Piru, Literatura romind premodernd, 118-120.

102 The most complete study is: Ioan Lupas “‘Doctorul Ioan Piuariu-Molnar, viata si opera lui, 1749-1815,’ Academia Romana, Memoriile Sectiunii Istorice, ser. III, 21 (1939), 653-696; see also P. Berariu, Ioan Piuariu-Molnar: Studiu economic (Cluj, 1939); Al. Neamtu, “Date noi privitoare la Ioan Piuariu-Molnar,” Szudii.

Revista de Istorie, vol. 13, no. 1 (1960), 83-90.

104 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

loan Piuariu, the famous “‘Popa Tunsu,”’ whose violent opposition to the Union in the 1760’s had led to his imprisonment. He studied first in Kolozsvar, where he probably Magyarized his name to Molnar after the fashion of the time, and later, under the

patronage of Governor Samuel Bruckenthal, attended the Univetsity of Vienna. He was the first Rumanian of T ransylvania to receive the degree of doctor of medicine. For a time after com-

pleting his studies he held an appointment as a doctor in the Rumanian border regiment in the Banat and, at the same time, served the families of the soldiers as a school teacher. In 1777 he was appointed oculist for the Principality of Transylvania and established a practice in Kolozsvar. His reputation grew rapidly and in 1791 he was appointed professor of ophthalmology at the

a title of nobility. |

medical academy in Kolozsvar. The following year he was awarded

Like all Rumanian intellectuals of the period, he took a lively interest in philology and in the progress of culture. In 1788 he published the Deutsch-Wallachische Sprachlebre, a practical guide to the Rumanian language for the use of German-speaking mer-

chants and businessmen, based in large part on Clain’s and Sincai’s Elementa. He employed neologisms, but cautioned against their wholesale introduction lest they create a barrier between the intellectual and the people, whom he felt obliged to serve.!03 His other major contribution to Rumanian philology was as a collaborator on Clain’s Rumanian-Latin-Hungarian-

German dictionary.1!°4 oe

Molnar believed that the surest way to progress was through education. Characteristically, he opposed violence as a means of 103 Johann Molnar, Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre (Vienna, 1788), Introduction. 104 GAldi, Dictionarium, 20.

_ THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT ——_—_iI05§

solving social and economic problems, and in 1784, at the request of Governor Bruckenthal, went to the Muntiit Apuseni to try to calm the peasantry.!°5 He was particularly anxious to disseminate

practical knowledge among the common people so that they might improve their standard of living. In 1785 he published Economia stupilor (The Raising of Bees), which he hoped would

enlighten the peasants as to the correct method of collecting honey. The practice of the time was to kill the bees in the hive so that the honey could be safely extracted. Molnar showed how |

the bees could be lured from the hive and thus spared for further / production. In 1808 he published another work on the same subject entitled Povdtuire cdtre sporirea stupilor (Advice on the |

Development of Bee-keeping). oe

Molnar was a member of Saint Andrew’s Masonic Lodge in : Hermannstadt, to which belonged leading German, Hungarian, ~ and Rumanian intellectuals and public figures of the principality, including Governor George Banffy.1°° Its purpose was to spread

the principles of the new enlightenment, especially among the | lower classes. One of its projects was the publication of a news- paper in Rumanian entitled Foaze romdna pentru economi (Rumanian |

Journal for Farmers). Molnar, together with Radu Tempea, an | Orthodox priest from Kronstadt, and Aron Budai, brother of the poet, were the initiators of the project. Molnar was disturbed by the fact that the rural population was not sharing in the general progress of culture. He proposed that the new Foiae be a weekly

devoted specifically to the interests and needs of the peasants. It | would contain articles on how they might improve the manage-

ment of their farms and practical advice on everyday problems. | | There would also be a serial about a priest named Miron of a “105 Lupas, “Ioan Piuariu-Molnar,” 660.

106 Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 278. , |

106 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Valea-Frumoasa (Beautiful Valley) and how he kept house, earned

his living, helped the poor, and obeyed his superiors. Molnar tealized that few peasants would be able to read his newspaper, let alone afford to buy it, so he planned to have the village priest read it to his congregation on Sundays.!°7 Although the project had the support of Banffy and the Chancellery in Vienna, it did not appear for want of funds. In 1793 Molnar again applied for permission to publish his newspaper, but this time he encountered the opposition of Banffy, whose attitude toward such ventures had changed under the pressure of revolutionary events in France. The Chancellery in Vienna, eager to discourage the spread of ideas which might disturb public tranquillity, supported Banffy. 18 In 1795, Molnar, Samuel Clain,1°° Tempea, Budai, the poet Vasile Aaron, and others who preferred to remain anonymous founded in Hermannstadt the Sofzetate Filosofeasca a neamului romdanesc in Mare Printipatul Ardealului (Philosophical Society of the

Rumanian Nation in the Grand Principality of Transylvania). Its model was the Erdélyi Magyar Nyelvmiivelé Tarsasdg (Society for

the Cultivation of the Hungarian Language in Transylvania), founded in 1793 and of which Molnar was a member. He had, in

fact, been commissioned by the Society to write a Hungarian grammar for the use of Rumanians.!!° The Rumanian Society proposed to publish a scholarly review entitled Vestiri filosofesti si moralicesti (Philosophical and Moral News), which would contain 107 Lupas “Ioan Piuariu-Molnar,” 673-675; Benedek Jancsé, A romdn nemzetiségi térekvések torténete és jelenlegi dllapota, 2 vols. (Budapest, 1896-1899), H, 2738—

ae 8 Jancsé, A romdn nemvetisési térekvések, I, 285. | 109 N. Jorga, Istoria preset romdne dela primele inceputuri pand la 1916 (Buchatest,

TO, 354- ,

Ore Elem Jancs6, Az erdélyi magyar nyelumiivelé tarsasdg iratai (Buchatest, 1955),

THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 107

atticles on religion, science, and education.!!! The Gubernium,

which suspected the society of spreading “‘dangerous” French |

ideas, forced it to disband.!!2 |

Molnar continued his teaching and remained active in cultural affairs until his death on March 16, 1815. Of the life of his close collaborator in so many ventures, Radu

Tempea, little is known.!!3 From the end of the eighteenth cen- | tury until 1808, he was the director of Orthodox national schools, |

a position similar to that which Sincai had held in the Uniate school system. As episcopal vicar in 1799 and 1800 he ad- | ministered the affairs of the diocese in the absence of the bishop.!!4 As parish priest in Kronstadt he was one of the leaders of the

movement to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Bishop Gherasim Adamovici in 1796. For this and for alleged contacts

with the Serbian Orthodox metropolitan of Carlovitz, which were | strictly forbidden, he was severely chastised by Governor Banffy.1!5

Tempea was distressed by the low state of cultural life among his people, which he ascribed to their failure to cultivate grammar, “the key to all higher learning,” and to the numerous periods of foreign domination they had had to endure. Foreign domination

“corrupted”? their language and hence their best means of enlightenment and progress.116 He published his Gramatica | romdneascad in Hermannstadt in 1797 in the hope of bringing order

to the Rumanian language and of thereby facilitating the 111 Bianu, Hodos, and Simonescu, Bibliografia romdneasca veche, Il, 376. | 112 TD), Popovici, “La littérature roumaine de Transylvanie au dix-neuviéme siécle,” in Institute of National History in Cluj, La Transylvanie (Bucharest, 1938), ae Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 263-266. | 114 Telegraful Roman (Sibiu), vol. 36, nos. 18, 19 (1888).

115 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Ms. rom., no. 821, Dec. 20, 1802. |

116 'T’, Cipariu, “Gramatistil si ortografistii romani,” in Archivu pentru filologia si _ istoria, nO. 33, March 15, 1870, 644-648.

108 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

acquisition of useful knowledge. Although his debt to the Latinists is clear, and although he himself recommended the replacement —

of Slavic words with their Latin equivalents, he nevertheless urged that “purification’’ proceed cautiously. Since many Slavic

words had entered everyday speech and were used extensively in the church books, their hasty replacement would only make communication between the intellectual and the mass of the people more difficult.

- 'Tempea probably intended to use his grammar in his own schools. ‘This would have presented no particular problems, for,

unlike Clain and Sincai, who had used Latin for grammatical explanations in the E/ementa, and Molnar, who had used German,

Tempea explained the intricacies of Rumanian grammar in Rumanian. Since no commonly accepted grammatical terminology existed in Rumanian, Tempea devised his own—with some highly

original results. Vowels were g/asnice (sonorous), consonants neglasnice; a verb could be /wrdtoriu (working, that is, active), patimitorin (suffering, that is, passive), or meutru (neutral). Although these terms were awkward and were not adopted by later srammarians, they nonetheless demonstrated the possibilities of expression which the language possessed. Paul Iorgovici was born in 1764 in the commune of Varadia in the Banat.!!7 He studied law in Pest and Vienna, and then went to Rome, where he searched for documents concerning the origins

of the Rumanians. Intrigued by the Revolution in France, he moved on to Paris in 1790 and remained there for three years. Then, in 1793, he crossed the Channel to England to take up residence for almost a year in London; here he not only acquired a fluent knowledge of English but developed a preference for the 117 Tr. Topliceanu, ‘‘Paul Iorgovici: Viata si opera lui (1764—-1808),”’ Analele Banatului, vol. 4, nos. 2-4 (1931), 133-148.

| _ THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 109 English social system with its gradual evolution of political institutions over that which he had observed in France. On his teturn to the continent he spent a short time in Vienna as corrector

of books published for the Orthodox of the Habsburg Monarchy | _ by the so-called Illyrian Press, and then accepted a position as lawyer for the Orthodox consistory of Varset in his native Banat.

Here he completed the one work of his which has survived, — Observatii de limba romaneasca (Observations on the Rumanian Language), published by the University of Buda press in 1799.118 This he hoped would contribute to the cultural progress of his

people. He insisted that it was the duty of the intellectual to | educate the common people and to this end urged scholars to use a language which could be readily understood. Iorgovici’s debt to the Latinists is evident, but he rejected as unjustified by experience any attempts to purge the language of so-called foreign elements. Unlike his contemporaries, he did not seek to reduce the

Slavic content of Rumanian: “Let no one think that I intend to |

remove foreign words from our language, for I know well that _ , there is no language into which some foreign words have not crept.”!!9 Yet his acceptance of Rumanian’s mixed character did 7

- not in any way diminish his belief in its basic Latin derivation: | “Even though our language is poor and mixed with foreign terms, its words, its rules, and its characteristics do not demonstrate any the less that it is descended from the ancient Roman tongue, asa stream of pure water flows from its source.”!20 As — the most effective way of enriching the language, he favored the creation of neologisms, which could be formed easily from the 118 Bianu, Hodos, and Simonescu, Bibliografia roméneasca veche, II, 413-416; _ published by Ion Heliade Radulescu in Curier de ambe sexe, period 2 [1838-1840], 2nd ed. (Bucharest, 1862), 79-117. 119 Paul Iorgovici, Observatii de limba romaneascd (Buda, 1799), 77.

120 Cited by Popovici, La littérature roumaine, 269.

110 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

Latin roots of existing words. For example, from the word rugare (to ask), by using Latin prefixes such as a, ad, de, in, and inter, he formed a host of new words: abrogare, abrogatie, arrogare, arrogante, arrogantia, derogare, interrogare, and interrogatie.

lorgovici’s insistence upon the Roman origins of the Rumanians

soon aroused the apprehension of local officials who suspected

that he was planning to use this as a pretext for demanding political rights for the Rumanians,!2! and he was thrown into prison and his manuscripts burned—including the draft of his dictionary and the precious notes he had copied in the West. But | the charges against him proved false and he was eventually freed. He was professor of Latin at the recently established gymnasium in Varset and was engaged in rewriting his dictionary, the manuscript of which was eventually acquired by Vasile Colosi, when he

VI | |

died on March 21, 1808. |

The scholars whose thought and work we have examined, together with many of their lesser known colleagues, caused great ferment among Rumanian intellectuals. Their works of history,

their grammars and dictionaries were not merely learned disquisitions; they were weapons intended to secure recognition of the Rumanians’ rightful place in their own homeland. There can be no doubt that their indignation at the poverty and servitude of the peasantry and their desire to obtain justice for them were deep and genuine. They were also profoundly affected by, in fact even ashamed of, the “‘decadence” into which their people had

| fallen since the glorious days of their Roman forebears. As we have seen, they worked like zealots to eradicate ignorance and 121 Topliceanu, “JIorgovici,” 139.

ss "THE RUMANIANS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT III supetstition from the lives of the people and to lay the ground-

work for the unlimited progress of which they believed the Rumanian nation capable. In spite of their hostility to the system of privileged nations as it was then constituted, they were far from being revolutionaries. They did not challenge the fundamental notion of privilege, but sought rather, as we shall see in the following chapter, to extend it

by obtaining for themselves equality with the other political nations. To do this it was first necessary for them to prove their “nobility,” their worthiness to enjoy rights and immunities, or, in other words, to be “teceived”’ into the constitution of the land. They were not, after all, a commercial or industrial bourgeoisie, who, stymied by outmoded feudal restrictions in developing their

enterprises, could be expected to rebel against the existing

structure of society. _ | | Characteristic of the enlightened thought of the age was an

almost fanatical belief in the efficacy of reason and culture. The intellectual alone, they insisted, was endowed with the qualities necessary to lead men to unlimited happiness and well-being. It is not surprising therefore that they condemned the efforts of the peasants to liberate themselves from social and economic oppression by means of revolution. Revolution in their eyes was violence

and blind emotion let loose by the “‘mob,” by men without learning or reason who ignored the counsel of the enlightened. The very failure of such uprisings as Horia’s confirmed their belief

that the regeneration of the people could be accomplished only through an orderly process of enlightenment directed from above

by the intellectual. |

FOUR+- THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF 1790-1792

Vnordinationum. 1 died barely a month had signedinthe Revocatio News of hisafter deathhe was received Transylvania with, mixed emotions. The Magyar nobles and Saxon burghers were jubilant, for the main obstacle to the restoration of the old constitution had thus been removed. In many areas they celebrated the event with banquets and dancing.! In marked contrast to this holiday mood, the Rumanians commenced what was in 1 Ioan Lupas, “Contributiuni la istoria Romanilor ardeleni 1780-1792, cu 84 acte si documente inedite culese din arhivele din Viena, Budapesta, Sibiu si Brasov,” Analele Academiei Romane, Memoriile Sectiunii Istorice, ser. I, 37 (1914-1915), 620 (hereafter, ““Contributiuni”’); Friedrich Teutsch, Geschichte der Siebenbiirger Sachsen fiir das sachsische Volk, 4 vols. (Hermannstadt, 1907-1926), II, 318.

| THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF 1790-1792 113 effect a period of national mourning. In Orthodox and Uniate parishes throughout the land church bells were tolled at regular intervals and special memorial services held. 2

| The new Emperor, Leopold II, although more moderate and conciliatory toward the nobility than Joseph, supported many | of his brother’s projects, and as Austrian viceroy in northern Italy

had introduced many enlightened reforms. Yet however sympathetic he may have been to the idea of further reform, he con-

sidered it his first duty upon ascending the throne to restore tranquillity throughout the Empire. He regarded this as the essential precondition to his dealing effectively with the threat to his realm posed by the French Revolution. He therefore agreed to re-establish constitutional forms in the various provinces as they

had existed before his brother’s accession. In Transylvania, this meant that the three recognized nations and the four re- | ceived religions would again dominate political life.

The period of restitution and reorganization that followed gave tise to intense political activity. During the spring and summer of 1790, the Magyars and Saxons held political meetings to plan their strategy in the forthcoming diet. They were deter-

mined to accept nothing short of the full restoration of their | constitutional rights and privileges. In many places they did not wait for the diet to act, but simply installed the former system on their own authority. A Rumanian priest wrote from Hermannstadt: “The Saxons have taken back their privileges with great pomp and with illuminations and with Te Deums.”3 The Rumanians, on the other hand, fearing that what they had gained under their beloved Joseph would be entirely lost, viewed the turn of events with anxiety. They were resolved not to remain | 2 Lupas, “Contributiunt,” Docs. 22, 23, pp. 675-676. 3 B.A.R.S.R. (Cluj), Ms. rom., no. 553: Ciril Topa to Samuel Vulcan, June 3, 1790.

114 THE RUMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TRANSYLVANIA

passive spectators but to use every legal means at their command to obtain equality with the other nations of the principality. The

leaders of their cause were the intellectuals of the Uniate and Orthodox clergies and a handful of civil servants, all of them inspired by their Roman heritage and eager to restore their “nation” to its ‘former greatness.”’ They also had practical grievances which could be answered

only by a continuation of the policies of Joseph II. As men of education, many of whom in their studies abroad had become acquainted with the ideas of natural law and the rights of man, they were little disposed to accept the inferior status which the constitution of the land reserved for them. If they were priests, they complained that their churches received too little endowment—the Orthodox none—from the state to support them adequately. They wanted canonical portions,* the right to receive the tithe from their faithful, and the respect which they felt was

their due. Educated laymen found it difficult to market their talents. Since large-scale commerce was in the hands of Germans ot Magyars, and industry was still undeveloped, they turned per-

force to the civil service. Throughout the eighteenth century Rumanians had found employment in the various departments of the provincial administration, in the law courts, and even in the Transylvanian Chancellery in Vienna. Usually, however, they had had to prove that they were of noble descent and that they were members of the Roman Catholic or the Uniate Church, preferably the former. Even when they could satisfy these requirements, they could generally expect appointment only to a minor position. After Horia’s uprising, Rumanians in government were generally

regatded as poor risks; appointments to the provincial civil 4 Generally, arable land from which a priest obtained rent and produce.

THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF 1790-1792 -—s—s«