Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: Culture, Politics and Religion, 1693-1773

Abstract

This book covers the attempts of Jesuits based in Cluj to promote the Catholic cause in Transylvania during the eighteenth century. This text on the Jesuits follows recent published work which has examined the role of the Habsburg court, the Franciscans, Catholic nobles and the laity in the development of early modern Transylvanian Catholicism. In the opening pages of his book Shore offers a sense of the tone of his subsequent analysis. The hasty retreat to the south of Muslim ‘infidels’ and Habsburg acquisition of Transylvania are seen to provide Jesuits with the opportunity to move into a land with a troubling ‘reputation for heresy’ and to win its population over to ‘the True Faith’ (p. 6). In 1691 the Transylvanian diet offered loyalty to Leopold on the basis of his acceptance of the legal rights of the principality's Evangelical, Reformed, anti-Trinitarian and Catholic churches. However, Transylvanian Catholicism thereafter benefited from strong state support. One strand of this policy was the promotion of a Uniate church. In 1692 Leopold declared that those who left the Orthodox church and united with Rome would be granted all the rights given to Latin Catholics. Shore examines the prominent role played by Jesuits in the subsequent direction of this Uniate church but is rather unimpressed by its relative lack of progress among Transylvania's Romanian-speakers. He also notes the lack of any substantial efforts by Jesuits in Cluj directly to ‘reach out to a largely illiterate Eastern Rite population’, instead concentrating on conversion efforts to the Hungarian-speaking Calvinist community (p. 82). Shore then describes the financial support provided by the Habsburg authorities to develop a Jesuit academy in Cluj, the Jesuit take-over and alteration of church buildings, and use of drama and other means to gain converts. He notes the growing numbers of pupils attending the Cluj academy, the apparent popularity of Jesuit plays, and the erection of a Mary column outside the Jesuit church which ‘affirmed the triumph of Catholic theology over Protestant and Unitarian beliefs’ (p. 123). However, in the end Shore concedes that the results of the Jesuit presence in Transylvania were surprisingly modest. In 1714 there were only around 30,000 Catholics in Transylvania, and at ‘the peak of the Jesuits’ strength’ in 1754 they could only muster 84 annual converts, even according to their own report (p. 158). While some interesting details are provided about Jesuit interactions with potential converts, the surviving sources of the Society treated here do not seem particularly helpful in reflecting on these limited achievements.