THE STORY OF DUMITRU AND ELENUŢA: A TRANSYLVANIAN ROMANCE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE STORY OF DUMITRU AND ELENUŢA: A TRANSYLVANIAN ROMANCE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The story of Dumitru and Elenuţa illustrates the intricacies of obtaining a marriage dispensation for two people who had become engaged in the village of Bucium Şasa, a small mining settlement in Transylvania, in the second half of the nineteenth century. The story offers the context for the activation of an entitre system of relations which functioned at local level but was also interconnected with decision-making factors at central level within the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church. Starting from archival documents, the essay allows an interdisciplinary approach to the issue combining historical and sociological methods in order to reconstruct the communication mechanisms representative for a rural and traditional society. At the level of the communities, the norms imposed by the Church were interpreted within various contingencies including the social status of each member of the group.

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