Noi date despre învăţământul din Transilvania: şcoala din Alba Iulia şi rectorul ei în 1574, Toma Kapliani
New data concerning the education in Transylvania: the school of Alba Iulia and its rector in 1574, Toma Kapliani

Summary/Abstract: In the protocols of the city of Baia Mare from 1574 there are two notes mentioning Toma Kapliani, the rector of the school of Alba Iulia. He, together with others of his brothers, claimed the inheritance of the possessions of the late Peter literate (litteratus), to whom they were true brothers. Peter literate was a very rich capitalist entrepreneur from Baia Mare, who got imprisoned by the Habsburgs from 1553 to 1556. In the time when the region of Baia Mare returned under the rule of the prince of Transylvania, he recovered the wealth previously confiscated by the Habsburg authorities. At his death in 1569, his possessions were once again confiscated by the Habsburgs. The rights of succession to his assets (mines, foundries, vineyards, houses etc.) were claimed both by Peter’s foster-son, as well as his brothers, headed by Toma Kapliani, the rector of the school of Alba Iulia. Peter literate possessed an important library for that time, comprising 35 volumes. As a promoter of the Reformation, he played a significant part in the dissolution of the Franciscan monastery in Baia Mare. Furthermore, he sponsored the printing of the Catechism in Hungarian by Gáspár Heltai in Cluj in the year 1553. The documents here adduced into consideration entail a revision of the history of education in Alba Iulia. The historians usually consider that the Catholic chapter school was abolished concomitantly with the secularization of Catholic Church’s possessions in 1556 and that only in 1579 a new school was put in place by the Jesuits. Being interested mostly in the Transylvanian prince’s project of establishing a university in Alba Iulia, the historians have neglected a work by Károly Szathmáry, dating from 1868, in which he asserted, based on a more ancient history of the Unitarians, that the chapter school had been taken over by the Calvinists and that, after 1567, it had passed under the control of the Unitarians. The two sources in the city of Baia Mare’s archive attest to the existence of a Reformed or Unitarian school in Alba Iulia, headed by Toma Kapliani as its rector, who was an erudite, according to the testimonial drafted by the notary of the city’s magistrate.

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