Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/94kl4c10gm
Privilege and Hierarchy, Village and Church: A Wallachian Case from Medieval Transylvania
Alexandru Simon
; Centre of Transylvanian Studies, Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The locations of Greek rite ecclesiastical seats in Transylvania prior to 1526 are known/ presumed only on the basis of circumstantial evidences, with one exception: Feleac (between the 1480s and the 1540s), in the immediate vicinity of the free royal city of Cluj (Klausenburg, Kolozsvár). The choice of Feleac seemed logical: a royal estate entrusted to the city of Cluj by Louis I of Anjou, where ‘Wallachians and serfs’ enjoyed “burgher-style” liberties in a rural milieu. Nonetheless, the preserved documents do not connect the establishment of the ‘archbishopric in Transylvania’ on the Feleac estate to the freedoms of the village. Secular and spiritual facts and deeds thus seem worlds apart, though they stood for delicate matters of the age: the Greek rite Church and the Wallachians. The disconnection appears deliberate and motivated by power-relations that predate the end of Matthias Corvinus’ reign, when the Feleac cathedral dedicated to St. Paraskheva was also built.
Keywords
Feleac; Transilvania; Church; Hungary; the Middle Ages
Hrčak ID:
318566
URI
Publication date:
27.6.2024.
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