Un spirit polemic: Alexandru Sterca Şuluţiu
A Polemic Spirit: Alexandru Sterca Şuluţiu

Summary/Abstract: The present study intends to analyse Alexandru Sterca Şuluţiu’s historiographical work, but not from the direction of the polemics in which he was involved in the epoch. Consequently, we have used Şuluţiu’s relatively known texts, as well as some unpublished manuscripts, found in the archives and libraries of our country, with a historical and theological content. After the bibliographical retrospection, conceived in a thematic and chronological way, one can notice the complexity of the Romanian hierarch’s writing, who was engaged in long polemics not only with the Transylvanian intellectual circles, historians, Catholic hierarchs, but also with the Viennese or papal ones. In this way, on the one hand Şuluţiu was engaged in a polemic with historical destination, especially through the works written previously to 1848, and on the other, in a polemic with theological character, which was extended for several years. It can be said that, owing to this polemic spirit, Şuluţiu carries on a feature of the Transylvanian Enlightenment historiography, but, furthermore, the polemist Şuluţiu was a skilful hierarch, engaged in the defence of the confessional and national identity. If his historical answers had no echo, some of the texts not being even published, in exchange, the theological ones had the adhesion of the Greek-Catholic clergy and hierarchy from Transylvania.

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