Fodor György - Török József - Tusor Péter (szerk.): Felekezetek az Igazság szolgálatában: történelem, teológia, önazonosság (1500-2000) - Studia Theologica Budapestinensia 34. (2009)

I. Catholic-Orthodox symbiosis in Transylvania (Katolikus-ortodox együttélés Erdélyben) - Ioan Chirila: Tolerance and intolerance in t he Transylvanian legislative corpora (the 16th-19th centuries)

The young monarch has rapidly understood that the instability inside Hungary and Transylvania is a major obstacle against the favorable evolution of the principles of monarchy in this area. Therefore, he gave some thoughts regarding its reformation.

The politic of Joseph the H"cl, known under the name of “josephinism”, practiced the religious tolerance, in a strict sense, in order to reach the civil tolerance, in a wide sense. The last one was identified by him with the idea of instituting a kind of natural religion. Substituting the religious ethics to a kind of laic morals which had to be practiced by all citizens, Joseph the IInd considered that the equality of all toward the state was in this way realized. These ideas were conformable to the German views about the natural right, whose representatives were Pufendorf, Thomasius and Wolff, as well as their Austrian disciples, professors Beck, Martini and Sonnenfels.

In such a system, the education of the citizens was on the first place. This system required that the education should be drawn out from the patronage of the Church and controlled and subordinated to the interests of the state. The finality of the university education has been, in this way, changed. The purpose was not any more the acquirement of the scientific knowledge in order to serve theology, but the promoting of the real disciplines which could contribute to the edification of the hereditary patrimonial constitution of the empire, aiming at the instruction of the state functionaries. Therefore, the main purpose of the josephinism was the reform of education, with a certain direction entirely subjected to secularism and oriented toward the achievement of the civil toleration in its wide sense. As a testimony of what has been said stay the economic and administrative reforms, more numerous than the others.

Of all his reforms, only the edict of toleration will remain after 1790, an edict which arouse different attitudes inside the empire. A change takes place in the Catholic world, too, in the way of accepting the idea of tolerance, but in coexistence with the idea of the dominant Church.

The main achievement accomplished by the Edict of tolerance in the life of the Romanians from Transylvania, besides the decisions of the Diet from 1744, was the union between Orthodox and Creek-Catholics in the fight for national emancipation and the opening of a large network of schools.

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