RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: A GUARANTEE OF POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM?
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: A GUARANTEE OF POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM?

One Territory - Many Denominations, or the Diversity of Spiritual Models in 16Th Century Transylvania

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 16th century, the Transylvanian Principality had been an Catholic land within the Hungarian Kingdom, led by an elite consisting of three Estates, that of the nobles, later called the Hungarian nation, of the Saxons and of the Szeklers. However, the common population numbered a majority of Orthodox Romanians, without any administrative or political representatives and with restricted rights. The Reformation’s advent in Transylvania showed a broad causality, harbouring theological, moral, ethical reasons but was also pushed by political and stragic considerents.The reformatory process christalized in several confessions from which 3 became main stream and gained legal recognition: Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unitarianism. In the space of 3 decades (1540-1570) the denominations gained legal status and joined Catholicism as official religions. The new denominations and their variables found it relatively easy to emerge out of the Reformation theological pool and, with the exception of Sabbatarians, gained legal status and coexisted. This system became later known as “the Transylvanian system of tolerance” and represented the foundation of the Principality’s constitutionalism (in a broader sense). Even if remarkable, the Transylvanian tolerance didn’t cover all the religious and social layers and even if fueled by the Reformation and humanism, didn’t reach the discrimination and the social iniquitousness experienced by the Romanians.

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