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)
gious tolerance is not an accident of the civil tolerance, but the concrete aspect of verticality, of openness towards transcendence of the horizontal aspect - contractual - immanent to the civil toleration. Therefore, in most of the cases, the religious tolerance is, or it should be, the factual expression of the iconomy of the Church, but, at the level of the church iconomy, there are limits of tolerance, understood as dialogue having a pedagogical function, that of evangelization. The biblical standpoint which stipulates three stages of dialogue and, in extremis, the exclusion from the Church, is well known. But an accurate evaluation of the concept of religious tolerance is not to be effected but through a reconsideration of the notion of Christian Church, of its inclusion meaning and of its exclusion one. “Tolerance” is a juridical, technical and theological term, but the most comprehensive meaning is that of mercifulness, of forbearance, of indulgence, of affording a period for betterment, for reformation. Or, the acts and the edicts of tolerance, beginning with the declaration, in Augsburg (1555), of the religious peace, and ending, in our case, with the Edict of civil toleration, given by the Joseph the II"a (1781) are nothing else but attempts of maintaining, in a diplomatic manner, the unity of the Habsburgic Empire, attempts which, once they reached to the constituent communities, generated, in the case of Transylvania, states of intolerance. Likewise, in its genesis, there are two concepts whose result converges toward secularization. According to CH. O’BRIEN, there are: the attempt of keeping the patrimonial unity of the House of Habsburg and of the Germanic empire, and the changes occurred at the level of the mentalities under the rule of the Enlightenment. During the short period we are referring to (1780-1790), the term of tolerance comprised in the Edict of Joseph the IInd modifies almost insignificantly the Diplomas of Leopold from 1690 and 1711. Romanians were tolerated, as a nation and as a confession, that is, they were allowed to exist. The content of the edict, emitted in the context in which the Romanians had a elite already materialized, will be used, from the juridical-argumentative point of view, for asserting their national ideal. There is a diversity of opinions expressed in relation to the questions, to the developments and to the confrontations inside religion/ religions and inside the society/societies. If we were to look 12
