Scripte şi dieci pe domeniile Făgăraş şi Gurghiu în secolul al XVII-lea
Scripts and clerks on the estates of Fagaras and Gurghiu in the seventeenth century

Summary/Abstract: This article follows in a functional perspective the writing practice on the Transylvanian fiscal estates (owned by the state) Făgăraş and Gurghiu in the 17th Century. A closer look is given to rent-rolls, inventories and accounts of the estates, written periodically for the administrators by literate individuals. The activity of these scribes (dieci, ro., literati, lat.) and the rich written material produced was the object of a complex economical legislation issued by Transylvanian princes (e.g. 1623, 1634 and 1676) or of other complementary laws. Hiring such functionaries, who were able to write and calculate – in order to increase the income revenue of the estates –, had as a meritocratic consequence their social and "professional" mobility, eventually, at times, their ennoblement. All these made a contribution to the advance of writing and to an increased interest for schooling and education in the rural area, but were also very important for the modernization of the economic life and a new social dynamics.

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