Samuel Clain and the Rumanian Enlightenment in Transylvania

Abstract

In the second half of the eighteenth century the leavening effects of the Enlightenment began to be felt among the Rumanians of Transylvania. The Enlightenment in Transylvania—and in Eastern Europe generally —was a curious blend of natural law, rationalism, and optimism, drawn from the West, and nationalism, a response to local conditions. It is no coincidence that the first tangible signs of national awakening among the Rumanians manifested themselves at this time. In the thought of the Enlightenment they discovered new justification for their claims to equality with their Magyar, Saxon, and Szekler neighbors. For example, they applied the notion of “natural” civil equality between individuals to the relationship between whole peoples, and they accepted wholeheartedly the myth of the social contract as the foundation of society and as the guarantee of the rights of all those who composed it.

Cântecul Gintei Latine: Vasile Alecsandri, ‘race’ connections and the Latinity of the Romanians (1850s–1870s)

“…The three major figures of this intellectual elite were Samuil Micu, who first set down the so‐called theory of Daco‐Romanian nationhood, Gheorghe Șincai and Petru Maior. Moreover, they were all ‘pioneering linguists, who found indispensable proof of ethnicity in the Latin origins of the Romanian language’ (Hitchins, 1999: 120–121). In 1780, Micu and Șincai published Elementa linguae Daco‐Romanae sive Valachicae , which was the first printed grammar and was written in Latin; the Lexicon Valachico‐Latino‐Hungarico‐Germanicum , published in Buda in 1825, included two major contributions by Petru Maior.…”

Mental Maps of Eastern Europe: States, Mentalities, Modernisation

“…7 7 These conceptions characterising, for instance, Max Weber, ignored or downplayed the wide circulation of Enlightenment ideas in the Commonwealth of Poland‐Lithuania or throughout the Habsburg Empire (Hitchins, 1964; Murphy, 2018). …”

“…It is only with the fall of Constantinople that the Ottoman Sultan appoints the Orthodox patriarch as the leader of Christian subjects(Krallis, 2013, p. 242).5 Suffice to say at this point that this perspective highlights the concentration of coercive means in Eastern Europe, and contradicts the account of Tilly and others(Tilly, 1990) who had identified such coercive concentration primarily in Western Europe (Spain and France).6 It contrasts with empirical accounts that question the accuracy of the thesis. Here is a quote from Katherine Verdery summarising the arguments of an Eastern European scholar: "The 'new' feudal master of bound labour, far from being directly or indirectly implicated in production for distant markets, is merely a local dignitary who wants a bigger castle, better fortified against external attack, more in keeping with castles encountered in an occasional journey to Vienna or Budapest"(Verdery & Prodan, 1990).7 These conceptions characterising, for instance, Max Weber, ignored or downplayed the wide circulation of Enlightenment ideas in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania or throughout the Habsburg Empire(Hitchins, 1964;Murphy, 2018).8 Most often, aristocrats, even when of local extraction, had abandoned the use of these vernaculars in favour of French, German or, in the case of South-Eastern Europeans under Ottoman Rule -Greek. "Vernaculus", meaning "native" in Latin, denotes a "local" language spoken by the lower classes; it is to be distinguished from an upper-class lingua franca, mostly used by those who could afford an education.9 This was not the only massive change in the ethnic composition of Eastern Europe brought by World War Two.…”