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# Writers and Literacy

Transylvania lacked the university that might have stimulated scholarly writing, and the strong demand for legal training worked at the expense of active theological debate. If a Transylvanian clergyman harboured ambitions to put his thoughts on parchment, he was likely to realize them in central Hungary, or abroad. Thus the archdeacon of Küküllő, János Apród, compiled his chronicle at the royal court; almost two centuries later, in 1523, the abbot of Kolozsmonostor, Márton Nagyszombati, penned his pamphlet against the Ottomans during a stay in Vienna. The earliest Transylvanian authors did their creative work, which was linked to their notarial duties, abroad. In the 14th century, the Franciscan János Erdélyi (Johannes de Septem Castris sive Transilvanus) penned his treatise on canon law during his stay in Italy, and the work is still preserved in Rome; Petrus de Dacia, who was a student in Cracow around 1381, earned fame abroad as a compiler of calendars. It was also abroad, in Florence, that a Dominican from Kolozsvár, Nicolaus de Mirabilibus, won renown in a debate — held in the presence of Lorenzo de Medici — with a Franciscan on the subject of original sin; he returned in 1489 to Hungary, where he lectured at his order's college in Buda, drafted the school's charter, and eventually became the order's Hungarian provincial. These few examples indicate that Transylvania's intellectual clerics were in the mainstream of Roman Catholic culture and contributed, mainly abroad, to its enrichment.

Although Transylvania's clerics produced few original works, they were clearly literate men. Early codices produced at Kolozsmonostor and in the scriptorium of the Gyulafehérvár chapter {1-540.} were written in Carolingian script. Then, towards the end of the 12th century, priests and monks who had studied in Paris began to experiment with transitional forms of Gothic script. The drafting of charters, an activity encouraged by Transylvania's bishops, was initially done in Parisian-style, Gothic script, before this was supplanted in the course of the 13th century by Italian lettering. Later, beginning in the mid-1300s, the hundreds of Transylvanian students who attended university in Prague, Vienna, and Cracow, propagated these schools' Gothic cursive, which came to be adopted in Transylvania's schools. (There is no information on the presence of Transylvanians at Hungary's first university, at Pécs, or on this institution's contribution to literacy.) The writing of humanistic works began in the mid-1400s, among a small circle of prelates who had studied in Italy, and became more common only with the advent of the Reformation.

Initially, the manuscripts were written on domestically-produced parchment, the quality of which was progressively improved and reached international standards around 1400. By then, paper had largely replaced parchment, which would be used only for important charters and liturgical works. In Transylvania, paper came into general use a generation later than in the rest of Hungary. The earliest surviving document on paper issued by the voivode's office dates from 1345; by Kolozsmonostor, from 1348; and by the Gyulafehérvár chapter, from 1350. However, parchment was also in use until 1400; all the paper had to be imported until local production began in 1545. At first, the church's 'responsible institutions' were the main repositories of the art of writing, but over time the great majority of priests and monks achieved full literacy. The requirement that they be able to read dates from the beginning of the 14th century, and from 1389 they were expected to know how to write in Latin. By that time, the clergy had become so literate that the Diet of 1397 prohibited the appointment of foreigners to benefices of the Transylvanian church; and, by 1498, the competition {1-541.} was such that no one was allowed to hold more than one benefice.

The proliferation of intellectual clergymen led to a certain underemployment within the church, but it contributed to the spread of literacy among the laity. Churchmen who failed to obtain a benefice became scolastici and took on tasks in public administration at the national, county, or town level, initially as occasion clerks, and later as permanent officials. The most talented found employment at the voivode's chancellery. Since the voivodes were generally aristocratic landowners from Hungary proper, the routine of administrative and judicial tasks befell on the deputy voivode, who would be assisted by three or four clerks.

The voivode's chancellery was established relatively late, between 1415 and 1437, when Loránd Lépes (whose brother, the bishop, played an important role in the Peasant Rebellion) was serving as deputy. The work of the chancellery was supervised by a prothonotary, whose office came to be identified more with the region than with the voivode: from 1442, he was referred to as partium Transsylvanarum prothonotarius. However, the prothonotary was not empowered to render judgment; that was reserved for officials appointed by the court. The functions were combined, at first in practice, then officially, during the administration of the voivodes István Báthori (1479–93) and Péter Szentgyörgyi (1499–1510), both of whom were also 'national' justices. Incumbents of the office of prothonotary included such prominent men as the chronicler János Thuróczi, Pál Magyi (who was concurrently deputy voivode), and István Werbőczy; the latter continued in office even after John Szapolyai, who was not a national judge, was appointed voivode. Beginning in 1503, if not earlier, the notaries in the chancellery were supervised by a secretary (secretarius). The first professional civil servant of noble origin, János Szucsáki, held the post of secretary under Szapolyai. Szucsáki had taken the job not as a temporary device to enlarge his estates but to {1-542.} make a career of it. He had worked as a clerk for the voivode, then did the same at Kolozsmonostor before returning to serve as secretary and de facto director of the voivode's chancellery. Two other secretaries, László Kecseti and Pál Barcsai, both began their careers in 1493, as clerks to the voivode. In 1519, the latter was promoted to the post of voivode's judge, an office now separated from that of national judge. With this step, the voivode's chancellery acquired its own hierarchical structure. Its officials, as is revealed by the above-cited names, came from the ranks of educated Transylvanian nobles.

One of the more noteworthy members of that growing group was István Rődi Cseh. He chose not to enter the public service, preferring to look after his estates, but he applied his literacy to the benefit of the county. In 1508, he drafted, in Hungarian, a letter of safe conduct for adoption by the county. A year earlier, he had written out his last will and testament in his mother tongue — Transylvania's earliest surviving document in the Hungarian language. Learning was a family tradition — one of his forebears served as canon in 1440 — and Cseh, after taking care of his older son, left most of the estate to his studious younger son: 'I bequeath my livestock, my grey cattle, [and] the rest of my possessions to Péter, so that he may study and not have to leave school.'[24]24. Zsigmond Jakó, Írás, könyv, értelmiség (Bucharest, 1976), p. 71.

Thus by the early 16th century, clerical and lay intellectuals could write not only in Latin but also in Hungarian or German. Literacy spread rapidly. János Hunyadi was still unlettered, but a century after his death, virtually all Transylvanian noblemen could read and write. The cultural evolution of the towns matched, and may even have outpaced that of the nobility. From the mid-1300s onwards, the larger towns had public notaries to do the work otherwise performed by the ecclesiastical 'responsible institutions'; sources mention the names of around a hundred of these notaries. Many were foreign-born and introduced to Transylvania the documentary practices prevailing in the more developed towns of the {1-543.} Germanic empire. They wrote in Latin, and always on parchment. In the 15th century, the patricians and many guild members became educated, and by the early 1500s only women and the plebs were still unlettered. Progress was slower in the villages, even in Saxon areas. In 1521, the judges and associate judges of Saxon villages in the Beszterce district asked the town to send them an auditor, explaining that they were 'unskilled in reckoning and writing'. Beginning around 1400, itinerant students would offer their writing skills to villages that lacked a parish priest and scolasticus teacher. It would take centuries before the rural population became literate.