Drăgan, Ioan (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 2001-2002 (5-6. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
Etnie şi confesiune
Aspecte ale politicii confesionale a Principatului calvin faţă de români 181 Aspects of the Confessional Policy of the Calvinist Principality towards the Romanians: the Appointments to Ecclesiastical Positions and the Reformation-project of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania (Abstract) The period of the thirty-year wars and its aftermath caused recoil of the Protestantism in East-Central Europe. In this context, the Principality of Transylvania remained an important outpost of the Protestantism: the authority of the Princes supported the Hungarian Calvinist Church, which allowed it to promote destructive ambitions against the other churches. These ambitions, however, were not enough to expel the concurrent churches from the constitutional system of the Principality, but it caused to extend its own jurisdiction over the Unitarian clergy - in matters of discipline and moral issues - and received the exclusive right to maintain higher educational institution. Furthermore, the Calvinist church tried to outnumber the other churches by attracting the Romanians within its sphere of influence. In this sense, the Hungarian Calvinist Superintendent, together with the Princes, elaborated several projects — the same aims in different variants - to reform the Transylvanian Romanian Church. The first project was made during the reign of Prince Gabriel Bethlen, and contained five conditions, yet unknown due to the lack of sources. They were, however, described later by the contemporaneous as few and timid’. The second project was started during a meeting between the representatives of the Alba lulia Orthodox Metropolitan Seat and the Calvinist Superintendent, Geleji Katona István, in September 1640. This reform program was conceived in 15 points, and they became a component of the appointment-documents of Romanian bishops, used until the unification of the Transylvanian Orthodox Church with Rome. This reform-program lack was not quite coherent in respect to the attempted depth of the changes, which were to be introduced: the cut of the doctrinaire deviation and the orientation towards Calvinism. In fact, these proposed aims were not regarded as the only possible consequences, even by the contemporaneous. In February 1669, four more articles were added to the previous reform points. These articles represent a more emphasized variant of the requests expressed already by the Calvinist Church in the previous 15 points. Special focus was accorded to the subordination of the Orthodox bishops to the Hungarian Calvinist Superintendent. The reform program contained in essence stipulations such as establishing schools, printing books in Romanian, teaching the Heidelbergian Catechism, using Romanian as language of the religious service, renouncing a series of superstitions and specific ritual-practices and accepting the hierarchic subordination to the Hungarian Superintendent. All of these the programs proved to be too ambitious both for the Romanians and the political-religious authorities of the Principality. The Orthodox church had no material and intellectual means to implement the necessary requirements of the reform (such as printing press, schools etc.), and the authorities were unable to support an efficient and consistent Calvinisation process. (translated by Cătălina Dogaru)
