The Epigraphic Self-Representation of Transylvanian Towns in the Middle Ages
The Epigraphic Self-Representation of Transylvanian Towns in the Middle Ages

Summary/Abstract: The study approaches how inscriptions constituted a vehicle of urbanself-representation, i.e. the town as such, its institutions, its elites and communitymembers, as well as the corporative representation, thus the way in which the townand its people epigraphically represented themselves.Being placed in public places like churches, public and private buildings,inscriptions had a major impact upon the construct of urban communities.The propensity of urban elites, in a broad sense, to emphasize the formal andpublic honorable insignia, mainly belong to commemoration and memorials in awritten and visual form, thus through text and image. These memorial recordsbecome a means of documentation of the way the elites had influenced the publicopinion, had presented the individual, the family or urban institutions. The medievalinscriptions were intentionally designed to preserve the individual and collectivememory, being associated to a monument and linked to the right of patronage (iuspatronatus) and its direct consequence, the right to lay inscriptions (iusinscriptionis).The analysis deals with the epigraphic self-representation of medieval Cluj,compared with other Transylvanian towns until the end of the 16th century.

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