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TheTransylvanian School (Romanian:Școala Ardeleană) was acultural andpolitical movement which materialised throughout 18th centuryTransylvania. The movement emerged after much of theRomanian Orthodoxclergy inHabsburg-ruled Transylvania accepted the authority of thePope in 1700, forming theRomanian Church United with Rome. The newly formed connections withRome brought forth to theRomanians in Transylvania the ideas and principles of theAge of Enlightenment, allowing the movement to gain momentum. The Transylvanian School aimed to cultivate a distinct Romanian national identity, document thelatinorigin of the Romanian people, advocate for political rights within Transylvania, and spreadcultural,linguistic andeducational advancements to other Romanian-inhabited regions, such asWallachia andMoldavia. Its main activity peaked between 1785 and 1815.[1]
The movement was pivotal to the refinement of the Romanian national identity and the recognition of theRomanians as a distinct and unitedethnic group. Through it, Romanian scholars were able to trace the Romanians' latin roots and call for rights comparable to those of the privileged nations under theUnio Trium Nationum. It is typically regarded as the beginning of the greater aspirations and evolutions of a single, united Romanian state. While the Transylvanian School did not achieve full political emancipation for Romanians in Transylvania, it served as a catalyst for Romanian national consciousness, laying the intellectual foundations that would eventually lead to theGreat Unionof 1918.
The name Transylvanian School (Romanian: Școala Ardeleană) was not used contemporarily even though its members had a sense of belonging to a group. The literary historianOvid Densusianu, along withSextil Pușcariu, preferred the use ofșcoala latinistă (Latin School) orșcoala transilvăneană. The latter also used the expressiondirecția latinistă (Latin Direction), and in a similar manner the Italian Romance scholar, Mario Ruffini, wrote ofla scuola latinista rumena. Eventually, although the debate along the correct name and implicitly the nature and influence of the movement continued with scholars such asNicolae Iorga andLucian Blaga, the syntagmȘcoala ardeleană translated as "Transylvanian School" prevailed, and it is sometimes used for post-Enlightenment scholars and ideas influenced by the Transylvanian School and originating fromTransylvania.[2]
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Prior to 18th century theOrthodox Church in Transylvania, to which mostRomanians belonged to, was not recognized among the privileged estates:
The privileges define the status of the three recognized nations – theHungarians, theSiculi and theSaxons – and the four churches –Lutheran,Calvinist,Unitarian andCatholic. The exclusion concerns the Romanian community and its Orthodox Church, a community that accounts for at least 50% of the population in the mid-eighteenth century.[3]
The situation created a favorable situation for the work of Jesuit missionaries and the efforts of the Catholic Hapsburg Empire to discuss the union of the Orthodox communities with the Catholic Church. The act became official in 1698 when the Orthodox metropolitanAtanasie Anghel of Transylvania along with 38 protopopes aligned themselves and their communities with Rome.[4][5] The act was further bestowed in 1701 by EmperorLeopold I with a diploma which guaranteed thatRomanian Greek Catholics would have the same rights as theRoman Catholics.[6]
In this context, the origins of the Transylvanian School go back in time to the activity ofInocențiu Micu-Klein, GherontieCotore, Grigorie Maior, and Petru Pavel Aaron, all members of the Greco-Catholic clergy in18th century Transylvania[2] who in their quality of members of theTransylvanian Diet addressed the issue of political rights for Romanians in Transylvania.[4]
Within a span of fifty years, the majority national group in the Principality of Transylvania, the Romanians, succeeded in documenting their Latin origins, rewriting their history, language, and grammar, and building the pedagogical foundation needed to educate and gain political rights for its members within the Habsburg Empire.Its members contemplated theorigin of Romanians from a scientific point of view, bringing historical andphilological arguments in favour of the thesis that the Transylvanian Romanians were the direct descendants of theRoman colonists brought inDacia after its conquest in early 2nd century AD. The historical discourse and all the contributions of the Transylvanian School had a purpose, a program pursued and gradually put into practice by three generations ofRomanian Transylvanian intellectuals. It was a project devised by the generation of Gherontie Cotore and Grigorie Maior, yet started bySamuil Micu-Klein. Micu-Klein gradually gathered and systematized the internal chronicles and the general plan of the historical discourse of the Transylvanian School in his works, "Brevis Historia Notitia" (Short historical notice), "Scurtã cunoștințã a istoriei românilor" (Brief presentation of the history of the Romanians), "Istoria românilor cu întrebãri și rãspunsuri" (A history of the Romanians with questions and answers), and the ample synthesis "Istoria românilor" (History of the Romanians).[7]
Micu-Klein,Gheorghe Șincai,Petru Maior andIon Budai-Deleanu, who were members of the Transylvanian School during the era of Romanian national awakening, emphasised the ancient purely Latin origin of Romanians.[8] In 1791, they contributed in the memorandum: "Supplex Libellus Valachorum Transsilvaniae". In this memorandum, they demanded similar rights for the Transylvanian Romanians as those enjoyed by the (largely) Hungarian nobility, the enfranchisedSaxon patrician class,[9] and the free militarySzékelys[10] under theUnion of the Three Nations.[11] This document was presented to EmperorLeopold II by the Transylvanian School.[12] The Transylvanian school movement was financially supported by the Greek-Austrian banker ofAromanian descentGeorgios Sinas, who was a personal friend of Micu-Klein, Șincai and Maior and who funded the Romanian-language press ofBuda,Pest andVienna.[13]
One of the major contributions of the School was the writing and publication of the first Romanian grammar,Elementa linguae daco-romanae sive valachicae, a book that is considered the starting point ofModern Romanian language.[14] Another significant contribution to linguistics was the dictionary known asThe Lexicon of Buda, a starting point of Romanian modern lexicography, printed in 1825 with the title:Lesicon românesc-lătinesc-unguresc-nemțesc care de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trizeci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat seu Lexicon Valachico-LatinoHungarico-Germanicum, quod a pluribus auctoribus decursu triginta et amplius annorum elaboratum est(translated to English as "Romanian-Latin-Hungarian-German Lexicon, elaborated by thirty authors over more than thirty years").[15][16]
The Transylvanian School created the current phonetic system of theRomanian alphabet based on theLatin alphabet, first used in theBook of Prayers by Micu-Klein and referred to as the etymological alphabet by language historians but they later had to accept the use of graphemes specific to Italian writing (such as ce, ci, ge, gi or che, chi, ghe, ghi) and diacritics (mainly ș and ț).[17] This replaced the use of the medievalRomanian Cyrillic alphabet as well as the previously Latin alphabet based phonetic system which had been based on theHungarian alphabet. Its members, in particular Petru Maior, viewed the usage of the Cyrillic alphabet as detrimental to the very literacy of Romanians:[16]
"Everyone agrees, thus, to the fact that the Cyrillic letters that brought a deep darkness upon Romanian language need to be eradicated from the literary republic of Romanians"
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The Transylvanian School marks the beginnings of modernRomanian culture, contributing to the national awakening of Romania. Their ideas and writings influenced latter Romanian scholars, some of whom activated in neighbouringWallachia andMoldavia:Aaron Florian,Alexandru Papiu Ilarian,August Treboniu Laurian.[18]
The Transylvanian School believed that the Romanians and theAromanians were part of the same ethnic group.[19] Its teachings influenced some prominent Aromanian figures such asNicolae Ianovici.[20]
While considered founders and civilizing force in the cultural domain byTitu Maiorescu (himself related to Petru Maior) and the members ofJunimea, the Transylvanian School and later "latinists" scholars were criticised for their reliance on German and Latin loanwords.[21]
Contemporary thinkers, such asMihail Kogălniceanu andBogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, as well as later academicians criticised the abusive "purification" of the language proposed at various extents by the School and some of the later scholars influenced by it.[22] Another contemporary,Ion Heliade Rădulescu, although himself influenced by the School in his early years of activity, vividly criticised the School's insistence of using an etymological spelling and analogical adaptations of words directly from Latin.[17]
The harshest criticism came however during theCommunist Regime when the rivalry betweenRomanian Orthodox Church andRomanian Greek Catholic Church was employed politically, with the Greek Catholics being accused as far as being "non-Romanian agents of the West", or even as "Hungarians" since the latter were seen as Catholics. The hostility escalated to marginalization of public figures such as the Greek Catholic bishops and clerics from regional history. The Transylvanian School, as a group affiliated originally with the Greek Catholic Church, was dethroned as the main political movement that contributed to Romanian national identity in favour of a "nationalist Orthodox resilience that enabled the Romanian population to survive centuries of foreign rule".[23]
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