Pionierii Blajului sau despre prima generaţie a Şcolii Ardelene
PIONEERS OF BLAJ OR ABOUT THE FIRST GENERATION OF THE TRANSYLVANIAN SCHOOL

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to outline the profile of the first generation of Transylvanian Romanian intellectuals in the 18th century through an interdisciplinary (historical and theological) approach. This approach aims to present two complementary components of the activity of the clerical elite: the intellectual formation in the Catholic academic institutions of the time (Trnava and Rome), and the identity works influenced by the Catholic reform. Effect of the religious Union of the Transylvanian Romanians with the Church of Rome (1700), the members of the first generation of the Transylvanian School were exclusively recruited from the clerical environment, and formed in the atmosphere of the Catholic Aufklärung. This fact imposed/required for the presentation and explanation of the ecclesiological and dogmatic positions of the generation. The author emphasis the way in which the united elite handled with the crisis, explained the Union itself, and faced the challenges generated by the attacks against the Union, nurtured by the interests of the metropolitan church of Karlowitz and the Russian interference in Transylvania under the circumstances of the Romanian confessional crisis in the middle of the 18th century. The present study illustrates an episode of the Transylvanian Romanians’ itinerary from a dominant and exclusivist confessional identity to their new national identity.

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