Habsburg Transylvania and the National Movement (18th Century)

After the defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna (1683) and the Peace of Karlowitz (1699), Transylvania came under Habsburg rule. The Leopoldine Diploma (1691) guaranteed the privileges of the traditional estates (Hungarian nobles, Székelys and Saxons) and left the Romanians without political rights. They lived for the most part as serfs and were the majority by number. The efforts of the House of Habsburg to win the Romanians to their side led to the establishment of the Romanian Church United with Rome (Greek-Catholic) in 1698–1701, a decision with profound consequences for the culture and identity of the Romanians of Transylvania.

The Greek-Catholic Church preserved the Romanian rite and language, and its clergy gained access to education, which favoured the national revival. At Blaj a cultural centre grew up, with schools and a printing press. Bishop Inocențiu Micu-Klein (1729–1751), a leading figure, demanded rights in the Transylvanian Diet for the Romanians as a recognized nation. He was, however, exiled to Rome, where he died in 1768. Later, in 1761, Sofronie of Cioara led an Orthodox movement for religious freedom, which led to the official acceptance of Orthodoxy.

In 1784–1785 the uprising led by Horea (Vasile Ursu Nicola), Cloșca (Ion Oargă) and Crișan (Marcu Giurgiu) swept across the Apuseni Mountains, especially the Zarand region. The Romanian peasants, discontented with serfdom, taxes and noble landownership, asked Emperor Joseph II for justice. The uprising degenerated into violence and was put down by the imperial army. Crișan died in prison, while Horea and Cloșca were executed by breaking on the wheel on 28 February 1785 at Alba Iulia. In the same year Joseph II abolished personal serfdom.

The Transylvanian School was the cultural and political movement of the Greek-Catholic intellectuals of the late 18th century. Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Șincai, Petru Maior and Ioan Budai-Deleanu upheld the Latin origin of the Romanians, their continuity in Dacia and the unity of their language. They wrote grammars, histories and dictionaries, among them the “History of the Origin of the Romanians in Dacia” (Petru Maior) and the “Chronicle of the Romanians” (Gheorghe Șincai). Their works laid the foundations of the idea of the Romanian nation, and the adoption of the Latin alphabet was a decisive step towards modernization.

In 1791 Bishops Ioan Bob and Gherasim Adamovici submitted to Emperor Leopold II the memorandum “Supplex Libellus Valachorum”, in which they demanded recognition of the Romanians as a nation equal to the others, the right to political representation and access to offices. They invoked their antiquity and continuity in Transylvania. The petition was sent to the Diet, which rejected it. Nevertheless, the document became a fundamental political programme of the Romanians of Transylvania for the following century, on the basis of which the national movement of 1848 and, later, the struggle for unity were prepared.