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)
chronologically, only as a simple theoretical exercise, upon the tension/ harmony between religion and society (state), we would be tempted to give a sort of pre-eminence to religion (in the case we are the supporters of creationism), or a total pre-eminence to the state (in case we support the evolutionism). But this is not our purpose for now. We have introduced this preamble precisely because we want to underline the crumbling of what it should be unity. Our purpose is to talk about the status of religion, about the state of the religious freedom/religious tolerance in the case of the Transylvanian orthodoxy, as it is reflected, starting from the 16th century, in the official documents, in petitions and in the historical treatises of that time. But what it is, in fact, the religious freedom/ tolerance? Who is able to elaborate a “juridical status” for the religious freedom/tolerance, is it a strict part of the inner of the human being? And if it were so, then why it is this crumbling? What is or what should be the extension of the religious freedom, better said: it is possible to talk about an extension in... (what?) of the religious freedom? Homo religiosus? I think 1 should make a terminological explanation. Are we talking about the freedom of religion or about the freedom which is conferred to man by the religious experience, because especially in this case the concept of religious freedom/religious tolerance should be used? In my opinion, the prior terminological meaning of my speech is the one which aims at the freedom of religion, its consequence being the religious freedom/ tolerance, that is, the freedom which is granted by the truth — Christ in God, in the image of the Trinitarian communion. Freedom in the frameworks of space and time has a relative character. In fact, we want to observe the way in which consciousness or the structures of the consciousness of the religious freedom are built up, the fact that the freedom of religion transcends the state/the society and it is fully realized in/through person, not through individual, because freedom is a correlative act, it makes you feel yourself unable to speak about your freedom when the one near you cannot partake of this. We have taken into consideration the case of Transylvania, because here, “those many” were not allowed but later to partake of the liberties of others, but, with all this, they made reference, in their fight of emancipation, in their petitions sent to the authorities, to 13
