Cuprinsul ANUARULUI Nr. LVI din 2017

The Italian Peninsula, through its well developed and institutionally highly organized cities, had offered a shining example for the setting up and supporting the academy, as a space for literary, philosophical, historical and scientifically debate. Their large number, most often in the same city, indicated the enhanced interest of the urban patriciate for literature, art and science, becoming a model for other European territories and societies of the Modern Era. The study systematically shows the efforts to create and preserve the academies in the Italian Peninsula, providing informative and historical documentary material on them. The entire reconstruction and debate intend to bring, by highlighting the evolution in time, notable contributions to the knowledge of a prestigious institution toward which were targeted the efforts of the society’s elite in the early Modern Era.

This study includes a presentation of the concept of “public law” and of its parts, describing a series of political-legal evolutions which influenced the fact and law realities from Transylvania in the second half of the 18th century. As reference points of the analysis are approached the extraordinary proceedings with judicial nature based on which were ruled the conviction sentences of the leaders of 1784 rebellion: Horea, Cloșca and Crișan. In this meaning, the sentences ruled on 14 February 1785 and 26 February 1785 were described and reviewed, in the development are pointed out also the particularities of Crișan’s sentence, being declared deceased on 13 February 1785. Also, the analysis shows the nature of the accusations brought to the convicts, the authority of the Investigation Committee led by Anton Jankovich, the structure of the sentences and the legal grounds established by the Imperial Committee, based on which the convictions were ruled.

The present study is focusing to the connections between the National Movement of Roumanians and the Freemasonry Lodges from Transylvania during the second half of the XIX century. Our goal was to demonstrate that the german language Lodges from this area gave the main suport for the national movemevent of the Romanians, because of the Hungarian and Austrian nationalism in a period of political disputes and national contradictions in the space of Central-Eastern Europe.

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the political and ideological notes of Ion Codru Drăgușanu’s writings. He is a well known author due to his travel memoirs, The Transylvanian Pilgrim (1865). He also wrote several political articles which were published in the Romanian press of the Habsburg Empire. The first part of our study is an analysis of the way he described the political regimes of the European countries which he claimed to have visited. His main writing, The Transylvanian Pilgrim, describes, in various degrees the political regimes of France, England, Russia, Switzerland and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He made interesting observations about these peoples and the ways in which these countries were led. The second part of our research focuses on Ion Codru Drăgușanu’s opinions concerning liberty, nationalism and economy. To investigate these opinions and their evolution, several of his writings published during and after the 1848 Revolution were used. Drăgușanu appears to have largely been influenced by the French Revolution and its liberal legacy. Though, he has an interesting conception about liberty, considering that not all the peoples can benefit of it, because of their cultural legacy and of their climate. He shared with other members of the intelligentsia a cult for the Nation. He argued that the nation-state and the representative government are key elements in the process of nation building. Despite of the liberalism he proclaimed, Drăgușanu had a really negative opinion about commerce, considering that it is often a theft and a way used by some nations to dominate others.

This paper aims to analyse the impact of the “great liberal government” (1876-1888), led by the liberal leader Ion C. Brătianu, in the Romanian political regime. Romania during that challenging period experienced certain captivating political episodes, with both constructive and disapproving aspects concerning the government mechanism and, implicitly, the consolidation’s process of the Romanian state. The political leaders, be liberals, be conservatives tried and achieved, in time, to strengthen the country and, additionally, the government mechanism of the new political regime established in 1866 through the installation of the foreign prince and the promulgation of the Constitution. In this regard, our purpose is to illustrate both tensions and achievements of the liberal government, led by Ion. C. Brătianu during the period 1876-1888, and also the unfortunate outcome of the liberal government, apprehending, furthermore, the personality of the Romanian political leader, Ion C. Brătianu.

In summer 1994, a statue transformed the city of Cluj-Napoca into a front of battle for two local political forces: PUNR and UDMR. The purpose of the two parties was the same: to gain political capital.

The author of this article has been committed for several years to the study of a comparative history which focuses on the presence and influence of illegal networks in the working-class neighbourhoods of twentieth-century cities. From this analysis has emerged the necessity to explore the characteristics of, and the reasons for, the alternation of conflictual and sympathetic behaviours among ‘working-class cultures’ and those expressed by marginal social strata. More specifically, this study is being carried out by comparing the cases of the three cities of Barcelona, Milan and Marseille in the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Starting from this comparative study, then, this article will suggest a series of readings while showing three important themes in the bibliographical panorama: the “ultimate causes” of criminality; what is and what is not “organised criminality”; the quantitative theme.

The study analyses a request of Pope Gregory XI related to the financial revenues of the Papacy payable by the Teutonic Order for its property in Transylvania. Only that the request is from 1373, while the order was banished from Transylvania in 1225. The study answers the question: why is claimed a property confiscated 150 years ago? The answer is that the Holy See has never recognized the confiscation of the Teutonic property, as the documents show over the time and the fiscal needs of Pope Gregory XI in 1373 are for supporting a new crusade. In the context is remembered the great inquiry from 1373 for the census of all properties of the Hospitaller Knights intended to provide financial benefits for the crusade. The study concludes that the Holy See has not legally and patrimonially abandoned the Teutonic property in Transylvania.

The nickname is a denominative element present in most human societies, which represents an important source for understanding the community or the cultural environment that promoted this component of the anthroponymic system. The present study aims to analyse the medieval nicknames from Transylvania and the neighbouring counties (Maramureş, Sătmar, Bihor, Arad, Zarand, Cenad, Timiş and Caraş) from the first half of the 14th century, identified in medieval documents published by Romanian and Hungarian researchers. In order to achieve this, I have started from presenting the directions and the difficulties stamming from this type of research. Subsequently, the typology presented in the article comprises nicknames used in the above mentioned period, while the analysis focuses on the resulting main categories of the denominative system. Instead of definite conclusions, which will be drawn at the end of an ongoing research endeavour regarding medieval nicknames from Transylvania and the neighbouring counties (12th – 14th centuries), I have noted some observations that have already emerged at this stage of research.

The city of Cluj (Klausenburg, Kolozsvár) has lost especially during the last years its historical memory regarding its German population, who brought an extremely important contribution to the city history. King Steven V and the subsequent kings of Hungary offered privileges to the Saxon and Hungarian hospites, which built in the 13th century medieval city as the second greatest among the Hungarian Kingdom’s urban centres. The presence of the Germans in Cluj is to be found in the specific Saxon architecture, including certain buildings, houses and dwellings, wine cellars. In 1375, the Cluj brothers, Georg and Marten, made the famous bronze casted statue of Saint George killing the dragon. The original statue is to be admired at the Hradčany palace in Prague, as one of the exquisite works of art of the German Middle Ages; its copy can be seen in Cluj, of course. The German schools were organized in Cluj since the beginning of the 15th century, while the so-called Pelegrinatio academica to German universities was an organic part of the Transylvanian Saxon school-system in the 16.-18. centuries. Two thirds of the wealthy Cluj families of the 15.-16th centuries belonged to the Saxon patriciat, even if their role played in the city leadership was smaller than their number. Besides the economic aspects, involving the Saxon medieval guilds and brotherhoods, Cluj also became world famous due to personalities like: the founder of the Unitarian (Antitrinitarian) confession and church, the Saxon Franz Davidis, better known under his Magyarised name as Dávid Ferenc (1510-1579), or the printer Kaspar Helth, alias Gáspár Heltai (1520-1574), a writer of German mothertongue, as well, who inaugurated none the less the Hungarian literature of fiction. The later centuries of the Modern Age brought an increasing assimilitation and Magyarisation of the Saxon inhabitants of Cluj, a process that found an abrupt ending after the First World War.

Our study aims: a) to offer a general statistical view regarding the Romanians in 1848-1850; b) to analyse the proportion number-nationality in their case; c) to observe to what extent the imperial central authorities in Vienna, Constantinople and Sankt Petersburg acknowledged the Romanians’ nationality in the middle of the19th century. The analysis approaches several topics: 1) Romanian ethnic and national identity versus territorial identity; 2) and 3) geographic and political frame in 1848-1850; 4) statistical sources (the Austrian census of 1850, the Romanian katagraphies from Wallachia and Moldavia of 1838-1852, ethnographic-statistical press articles and printings); 5) statistical data about the Romanians living in the Austrian Empire (Transylvania, Hungarian counties, Bukovina, Banat), Ottoman Empire (Romanian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, Timok in the Serbian Principality) and Russian Empire (Bessarabia); 6) conclusions (statistical comparisons regarding the minimal and maximal numbers of Romanians in 1848-1848; limits of the statistical sources; the Romanians’ ethnonym).

The historical events of the 1848-1849 Revolution determined both material prejudice and human sacrifice among the Romanian people, including the priests of the Arad Diocese with its canonical jurisdiction from the North of the Mureş River till the Criş River area, and also including the counties of Arad, Bihor and Zarand, under the spiritual guidance of the Arad Bishop Gherasim Raţ (1835-1850).

This study analyzes the statistical data concerning the inhabitants of the settlements in the Lower Mureş area, from Arad to the Romanian-Hungarian border, meaning from Nădlac (in the north of the Mureş river) to Cenad (in the south part of the river). The Mureş river greatly influenced the settlements in the Arad- Cenad/Nădlac area. The demographical data is analysed from multiple points of view: ethnical, confessional, occupational and social living. The demographical data reveals the reality during the second half of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century.

In Transylvania, where the Romanians had been forbidden for centuries to create their own political and civil institutions, which could have safeguarded their interests and rights, the Church had become the representative national institution, while the clergy formed the country’s cultural and political elite, serving as the spokesmen of the Romanians’ desiderata. On the other hand, in the absence of an appropriate bureaucratic apparatus, the clergy had to assume many administrative tasks, often playing the role of civilian officials. The clergy fulfilled this administrative role also during World War I. In this capacity, priests became, against their will, agents of the official state propaganda. Because of this activity of mediating (disseminating) the so-called „patriotic” message of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, priests were often forced into positions that conflicted with their standing as representatives of the national projects. It should be noted that, above all, the priest’s fundamental role was that of a shepherd of the souls. This role increased in importance and responsibility in a rural world that was shaken up by the horrors of the war like never before, in a world of villages deprived of the presence of men, who stood for the main force of labour and protection. Another aspect that we wish to highlight is the functioning of the priest-teacher binomial. To avoid school instruction being affected by the absence of teachers, who had been recruited for the front, the hierarchical superiors (bishopsarchpriests) requested the priests to take over their teaching activities. All these overlapping of roles show once more the important status that the clergy continued to have among the Romanian communities in Transylvania, but also the delicate situation in which its members found themselves during these years, as they had to carefully navigate between the requirements and the suspicions of the authorities, on the one hand, and the most profound expectations of their conationals, on the other hand.

This article aims to present the beginning, integration and evolution of the baptist movement in the village Negrilești, Bistrița-Năsăud county. The integration and evolution of baptists passed through different stages defined by rejection-acceptance, acceptance-rejection alternation. Zadic Ioan, the initiator of this movement, together with its continuationists, Duncă Gavril and Costea Simion, left their mark on a major part of Transylvania’s baptist movement. The devotion, courage and their implication stimulated baptist’s development process. Negrileşti remains a reference point for the baptist believers in Romania, as well as a strong confessional baptist centre in Transylvania. At the same time, the baptist believers’ persecution history in this area cannot be neglected. The social life of baptist believers’ and habitants of Bistrița-Năsăud county was strongly influenced by fear. The origin of this fears, as well as the problem of persecution, can be found in the repoort State-Church tandem and in the unavoidable errors brought by such a partnership. What is even worse is the total arbitrary mode of keeping the constitutional laws of citizens regarding religious aspects. On the strenght of what was understood by Romanian spirit or Romanian origin, the state Constitution´s regulations were ignored. Moreover, the major Church was becoming the ultimate decisional court of state´s social and political life. It was not only about isolated cases of overzealous priests with fundamentalist or extremist views, nor cases of unreasonable servilism towards the Church, coming from employees serving the State; it was about a generalised mentality developing across the countrymen´s households, reaching even the Parliament and the Romanian Government. In this extremley difficult context, caught between the personal ambitions of the orthodox and greco-catholic priests, as well as their impetuous desire to stop the baptist developement in Negrilești, the believers succeeded in a remarcable way to institutionaly self-organize, to build their own house of prayer, to self-finance, to be socialy envolved and to contribute to the baptist belief development in Transylvania.

The 1956 revolution in Hungary had effects and repercussions throughout the Soviet Block and inspired many to take action against the regimes installed after 1945. Romania witnessed different organized political movements or individual actions that expressed dissent and / or discontent with regard to the political situation in the country. Many groups of “dissenters” formed across the country and the repressive measures against them were harsh in 1956 and several years after that. This article studies the contentious political actions taken by the ethnic Hungarian groups in Transylvania and the intersection of the political system with everyday life. The research relies on a theoretical background from history and political science, and it structured on three levels: ideological, macropolitical and micropolitical. The primary sources are interviews with former political prisoners or their family members of Hungarian ethnicity as well as documents from the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives.

One of the lesser-known aspects to the Romanian historiography remains the rapprochement between Romania and the first Slovakian Republic during the years of the Second World War. The creation of a new country on the map of Europe was not received with enthusiasm in Bucharest. The disappearance of Czechoslovakia and the collapse of the Small Agreement were considered by the Romanian diplomacy as a great loss and a danger for the integrity of the Romanian state. And the dependence of Slovakia on the Nazi Germany could not provide any guarantee for a possible rapprochement. This study aims at shedding light on how was achieved the diplomatic rapprochement between the two states, reflected by the activity of the plenipotentiary prime minister of Romania accredited at Bratislava, Constantin Dinu Hiott. He started the activity in September 1939, at an extremely complicated international moment. His reports, after his meetings with Slovakian officials, such as Monsignor J. Tiso, the foreign minister Ferdinand Ďurčansky or with the members of the diplomatic body, referred to foreign policy aspects, but they also contained information on the Slovakian state and its intentions. It was clear from the beginning for the two states that the rapprochement was based on their common relations to Hungary and not on the continuation of the relation between Czechoslovakia and Romania. In the political balance of Romania from the beginning of the year 1940, the position of Slovakia was increasingly carefully monitored and it became clear that Bratislava turned into an avenue to probe German and Hungarian intentions. The reports of Constantin Hiott referred also to issues relating to internal policy of Slovakia, but also to the bilateral economic relations. Replacing Hiott in March 1940, gave a wakeup call for Berlin and Bratislava. Knowing his feelings and closeness to the former Czechoslovakia, it was best for the Romanian foreign ministry to replace him with an official less close to Braga, but which ensured the balance between Berlin and Paris.

The study aims to analyze the problem of the Romanian-Vatican relations in August 1944, the last days of the Antonescu Government, based on a new and unpublished document, dated 14 August 1944, that captures the crisis of the Romanian Legation to the Holy See in a Rome controlled by the Allied forces. Since that document provides interesting and detailed informations about the staff of the Romanian Legation at the Vatican (Vasile Grigorcea, Mircea Moschuna-Sion, Theodor Scorțescu, Teodor Galiță, Mihai Cămărășescu, Nicolae Țimiraș, Emil Panaitescu, Horia Roman, Aloisie Tăutu), especially the position of each member of the mission to the Allied cause, the study has proposed a detailed biographical analysis of the Romanian diplomatic corps accredited to the Pontifical State, aimed to determine the motivation of their actions.

Taking place in a complex political and diplomatic circumstance, the Peace Conference which took place at the end of the Second World War had a difficult mission, therefore to bring long-awaited peace. Regarding Romania, the Peace Conference represented a complicated period of diplomatic point of view, in which the main battle was for the Western borders of the country.

This research is based on a new document: the Verbale Note No. 2667 of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bucharest to the Romanian Foreign Ministry during Ana Pauker. The copy of the Verbale Note was sent to Rome by the Minister of Italy in Bucharest, Michele Scammacca. He specifies that the Verbale Note which contained the protest against the arrest of the bishops Márton Áron and Anton Durcovici was denied by the Foreign Ministry as if the Holy See would not have been recognized by the Romanian government. The Nunciature made the Verbale Note to reach Ana Pauker by another method along with a letter, but the Foreign Minister of Romania has still not registered the Note, that can not be found in the archives of the Foreign Ministry. The episode demonstrates that political power in Bucharest despised diplomatic rules and was determined to destroy the Catholic Church in Romania.

Identifying in Sibiu the fragmentary text of “Speculum Historiale” compiled by Vincent de Beauvais around the middle of the 13th century – a valued work throughout the Middle Agest – could initiate a discussion regarding the place of historiography within the reading practice in Transylvania before the Religious Reformation of the 16th century. The following paper attempts to discuss the question of dating and localising the fragment, then argues that the two folios still at hand were initially part of a manuscript – so far, the most eastern reception of the text in this form – owned in Transylvania already around 1500.

The actions of the Fourth Crusade and the territorial changes brought to the Byzantine Empire imposed some changes in the ecclesiastical architecture of the area previously controlled by the Byzantine monarchy. The Archdiocese of “Bulgaria" with seat in Ohrid was territorially circumscribed to the newly created Despotate of Epirus led by members of the extended imperial family, like Komnenos Doukas Angelos. In the Archbishopric seat of Ohrid, the despot of Epiros – Theodoros Doukas Angelos – appointed Demetrios Chomatenos as archbishop, a well known authority of the ecclesiastical elite who fulfilled various functions within the clerical administration. The intellectual profile and his solid legal, canonical, and theological knowledge turned Demetrios Chomatenos into a court of appeal in matters beyond the territory of his archdiocese and the legal solutions proposed by him covered a wide range of situations, from matrimonial law to canonical provisions connected to monastic establishment. In this article Chomatenos is surprised in the position of conveying a legal solution to a certain hieromonk Sophrony, convicted of theft and perjury, in which he outlines the punishments Sophrony had to perform in accordance with the canon laws of Basil the Great.

The present approach is a little piece of the methodological analysis from a diplomatical-palaeographical and historical points of view of the 200 archivistic unities that consitute the corpus of the Archivistic Fund of Bánffy Family. The complex structure of the registry 1a, having the signature CJ-FD-00320-1-2-1a-17 implies even an accurate historical and juridical reconstruction of the motivation of the action of demand of the authentified copies of the litteralia instrumenta (i.e. juridical instruments of property) regarding the possession Mező Őrményes (the County of Thorda) asked on behalf of Georgius Liber Baro Losonczy from His Sacred Majesty Joseph the IInd, the Emperor of Austria: the inherity of the noted possession belongs to the Bánffy family, so that the Regius Fiscus (ius fiscalitatis) has no right upon it!

On occasion of the 150 years celebration, in 1934, of Horea’s Uprisal (1784), an account was drawn out by the Transylvanian Western Carpathians Commissioner’s Office (Comisariatul Munţilor Apuseni). Several measures were proposed in order to confer to this anniversary national dimensions, as well as to ameliorate the extremely needy situation of the Motz (moţi), the Romanians living in the respective area.

A document recently discovered in a private collection from Serbia completes the picture of the national movement of the Romanians from the Habsburg Monarchy in the first half of the 19th century, also offering interesting information regarding Andrei Şaguna’s biography. It is a letter written by the schoolteacher at the Romanian school in Pest, Ștefan Popovici Neagoe (Niagoe), noted man of culture and author of folk calendars, to Anastas(iu) Șaguna, student at the Institute of Orthodox Theology in Vârșeț, the future metropolitan bishop of the Monarchy Romanians. The manuscript has three pages and it was signed in Pest on 1 June 1830.