Privilegiu și emancipare. Petițiile românilor villani din suburbii către Sfatul orașului Bistrița în perioada tereziană târzie și în cea iosefină 1770–1784
The petitions of Romanian Villani from the suburbs of Bistrița to the Town Council during the Late Theresian and Early Josephinian Period (1770–1784)

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the socio-legal dynamics between the Romanian peri-urban population (villani) of Bistrița and the privileged Saxon urban community during the late Theresian and early Josephinian reforms (1770–1784). Drawing on three key Latin documents – a Supplex addressed to Emperor Joseph II (10 June 1783), the Retorsio issued by the town authorities (27 July 1784), and the epistle of the Iudex Primarius of Bistrița – this article reconstructs the tensions inherent in the coexistence of unequal civic statuses within the framework of Transylvanian constitutionalism. The petitions of the Romanian villani reflect both the aspirations for civic emancipation fostered by the centralizing and egalitarian ideas of Vienna, and the resistance of transylvanian saxon urban institutions determined to preserve its historic rights over concivilitas and land property (Fundus Regius). The historical sources reveal how imperial reforms, particularly the Edict of Concivility (1781) and the abolition of serfdom (1785), challenged the long-standing territorial autonomy of the Saxon Nation, whose legal and confessional privileges increasingly appeared anachronistic in an age of enlightened egalitarian norms. By contextualizing the Supplex–Retorsio exchange within broader administrative, confessional and socio-economic transformations, the research paper offers new insights into the mechanisms of local governance, the rhetoric of privilege and the strategies of resistance and adaptation employed by both sides. Ultimately, the case of saxon transylvanian city Bistrița highlights the progressive emergence of Romanian civic consciousness and the gradual decline of the medieval Saxon territorium clausum under late eighteenth-century Habsburg reforms.

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