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# The Intelligentsia

In the 17th century, there were still very few natural scientists among Transylvanian scholars. Most students took a degree in theology, then found employment as teachers or pastors. Very few pursued secular studies. Of those who are known to have graduated at foreign universities in the 16th and 17th centuries, only 10.3 percent went on to become medical doctors, civil servants, or printers in Hungary; and even if the proportion increased in the first half of the 17th century, the absolute numbers must have remained small.

Thus Transylvania's intelligentsia consisted in the main of pastors and teachers, including those who took a degree in theology {2-207.} only after some years of teaching. Most of the preachers were university graduates. After completing their studies abroad, barely 2.4 percent of the sample chose to stay away. The others traded the great centres of learning for the villages and primitive conditions of their homeland, although more than one had been offered tempting opportunities abroad. The establishment of the college at Gyulafehérvár gave those who wished to become pastors the option of completing their studies in Transylvania; their numbers are unknown, for the college's records have not survived. The majority of teachers, on the other hand, had not attended universities abroad. The Saxons may represent an exception, since they had a higher proportion of graduates and graduate teachers than the rest of Transylvania.

Among the teachers, those at Kolozsvár formed a distinctive group, for this city's Unitarian school served as a centre for Transylvania's medical doctors. One prominent teacher at the school was Máté Csanaki. After serving the lord chief justice, István Báthori, at the latter's court, which was renowned for its high cultural level, he attended several distinguished universities and obtained his medical degree at Padua. He joined the entourage of György Rákóczi I, then became head of the Kolozsvár school. Many other doctors had taught there before him, for the teaching staff consisted mostly of Unitarians. The latter were generally graduates of foreign medical faculties, for the denomination's only theological school was located in Poland. Most of them would do a stint at the Kolozsvár school, where they were occasionally joined by visiting professors from Poland.

Gabriel Bethlen invited several noted foreign professors to the college at Gyulafehérvár. The first such visitor was Martin Opitz, one of the most prominent German poets of the day; his qualities as a teacher could not be fully assessed, for he was less than entranced with life in Transylvania and left within the year. He was followed, a few months before Bethlen's death, by three professors from the {2-208.} disbanded university at Herborn, Johannes Alsted, Johannes Bisterfeld, and Ludwig Piscator. The latter soon returned to Germany, but Alsted and Bisterfeld settled permanently in Transylvania.

These three German scholars are often cited in accounts of the Gyulafehérvár college. Enjoying a well-deserved esteem among the scholars of the day, they brought the best of European culture to Transylvania and towered over their Hungarian colleagues. When the war drove them away from Herborn, they could have chosen other destinations, yet came to Transylvania. Bisterfeld would subsequently turn down several invitations to teach elsewhere. The others' motivation is not clear, but there were political considerations in the case of Bisterfeld: he not only taught and reorganized the college but also served as a close political advisor to György Rákóczi I, notably in the context of the latter's alliance negotiations.

Another prominent lecturer at the Gyulafehérvár college was Pál Keresztúri, a masterful teacher who influenced several generations of students. Despite his tempestuous personality, Keresztúri was not so much a revolutionary as an essentially moderate reformer. His great innovation was to step down from the professor's customary pedestal and involve himself in all stages and aspects of the student's education, although he kept these activities strictly within the walls of the college. The Puritans associated with János Tolnai Dali caused greater turmoil. Although some of them also studied in Germany, all had attended universities in England or the Netherlands. In those countries, which had progressed farthest on the road to a bourgeois society, they became acquainted with innovations in church organization and pedagogy that, in their essence, turned away from authoritarianism and aimed at intellectual and social freedom. Scholasticism, the medieval brake on free enquiry, was to make way to empiricism and rationalism, and, with regard church governance, deliberative assemblies of selected laymen would curtail the authority of the bishop.

{2-209.} These new ideas may have been admirable, but, in their reformist zeal, the Transylvanian Puritans overlooked an important factor: circumstances in their country differed greatly from those in Holland, not to speak of England. Their equally aggressive opponents blindly rejected the proposed reforms and idealized the status quo. Nor was the Puritan reformers' task made any easier by the violent temper and chronic contentiousness of their leader, János Tolnai Dali. He was largely responsible for the tactical mistake of trying sweep away all previous initiatives in order to carry out a Puritan revolution. His aggressiveness provoked great turmoil at Sárospatak, where the calm and determined János Bényei had already begun the task of reform. There would have been far fewer disputes and problems if the Puritans had adopted a more measured approach.

A case in point is the school at Várad, which, by the 1640s, had become — largely through the reform activities of Mihály Kecskeméti — the most important centre of learning in eastern Hungary. The school was the first in Hungary to use as textbooks the most progressive works of the times, those of Comenius, Ramus, and Amesius. It was also the first Protestant school where students staged plays. The teaching staff included Sámuel Enyedi, who had obtained a medical doctorate in the Netherlands; Sámuel Köleséri, a great admirer of the English revolution; and Benedek Nagyari, who compiled the first Hungarian anthology of Puritan theological works. Perhaps the most outstanding was György Martonfalvi. Soon after his return from the Netherlands. the Turks invaded Transylvania, and the school was transplanted to Debrecen. It was in the relocated school that Martonfalvi initiated his far-reaching reforms.

These famous colleges and their faculty played a role in educational reform, as did the initiatives of the government. But perhaps the most important motive force came from the preachers and teachers who returned to the villages and testified personally to the {2-210.} liberating force of knowledge. With their help, young villeins would overcome countless material and psychological obstacles and receive an education that changed their lives.

The presence in the villages of highly qualified preachers and teachers must have contributed to the rise in social esteem for churchmen. The government, for its part, was intent on fostering such esteem. Thus the intelligentsia underwent a major transformation in the first half of the 17th century. Several factors came into play. One, which characterized the absolutistic regimes of the period, was that the ruler selected a dominant religion. Transylvania's Protestant princes chose Calvinism. There thus arose a reciprocal relationship: the prince backed the Calvinists in social or ideological conflicts, and expected them to support his own priorities and measures.

The preeminence of Calvinism can be traced back to István Bocskai. Gábor Báthori went so far as to intervene in the church's internal disputes: when the scholarly Imre Újfalvi rebelled against episcopal high-handedness, the prince had him thrown in jail. The entrenchment of Calvinism as the official religion was completed by Bethlen. This came about not simply because he was the first to consolidate princely power after the turn-of-century turmoil, but because he nurtured a special relationship with the intelligentsia. Unlike his predecessors, Bethlen consciously and deliberately exploited the learning and skills of this social group. One example may serve to illustrate the change: whereas Bocskai's most widely known pamphlet had been drafted by a noble courtier, Mihály Káthay, Bethlen assigned a similar task to Péter Alvinczi, who was a preacher at Kassa. The theoretical justification for the prince's absolute authority was also provided by Calvinist ministers, notably János Pataki Füsüs, András Prágai, and István Milotai Nyilas. Bethlen gathered around him a group of learned churchmen who could effectively serve his needs. He appointed them not to state posts but to remunerated, high offices in the Calvinist Church. {2-211.} In fact, their function was the same as that of the earlier 'familiars', the lesser nobles who served a lord. Sovereigns commonly rewarded their faithful with estates; in Transylvania, the prince handed out ecclesiastical posts.

This policy was sustained by Bethlen's successors. In the process, the Calvinist Church acquired a leadership that was highly esteemed and, thanks to its ability to influence the prince's policies, powerful as well. Although none of them became a member of the princely council, they were rightfully considered by their contemporaries as part of the ruling elite.

The rise to eminence of a church-based intelligentsia even had an impact on the Romanians, who were the farthest removed from the dominant religion. Gábor Báthori freed Romanian priests from villeinage, and thus from feudal obligations as well as the constraints on freedom of movement. Although the Orthodox priests did not win the privileges enjoyed by Calvinist ministers, their prestige among Romanians was certainly enhanced by their free status. To be sure, Báthori's decree probably served only to confirm a new reality. As far is known, he had no particular plans for the Romanian priests, nor any expectation of reciprocal concessions. The dynamics of this episode remain unclear; perhaps the prince was simply endorsing a status that was already acknowledged by the Orthodox congregations. The growth in the number of Romanian priests in the first half of the 17th century may be related to their enhanced social prestige. The registers of the Fogaras domain offer some statistical evidence. In 1632, the 33 Romanian settlements had 29 Orthodox priests; by 1640, the number of households had grown by 181 percent, and of Orthodox priests by 259 percent. This change may have played a part in Zsuzsanna Lorántffy's decision to found a Romanian school.

The one exception to this general trend was found among the Saxons. In the early 1600s, the Saxon notables took measures to draw the Lutheran Church under their supervision. To some extent, {2-212.} the change followed naturally from their special status: since the central government did not intervene in the Saxons' religious affairs, their local governors sought to assume ultimate authority. Previously, the Lutheran synod and the Saxon national assembly had enjoyed roughly equal status, but the balance now shifted in favor of the civil power. By the end of the period, the latter was supervising everything from the content of sermons to the garb of the pastors' families.

The decline in the prestige of the Lutheran Church may have been linked to the rising influence of worldly intellectuals in Saxon society. As noted, a relatively large number of Saxons pursued studies abroad, and the intelligentsia spread beyond the confines of the Church. The Saxon chief justice, Mihály Weiss, is a case in point. He was as learned as any Lutheran Church leader. Indeed, Weiss had no reason to bow to the head of Transylvania's Lutherans, the senior vicar of Szeben; it was common knowledge that his alma mater outranked that of the latter. It appears, then, that the church-based intelligentsia lost some of its prestige among Saxons.

The case of Mihály Weiss also underscores the difficulty of defining what constituted a worldly intelligentsia in the early 1600s. Education, be it at the university level, was not a clear criterion, and intellectual activity did not necessarily carry a specific social status. When, as often happened, nobles or burghers temporarily assumed functions that required a certain education, they seldom gave up their basic income-generating activity, and then only for the duration of their new occupation. The chief magistrate from Marosvásárhely, Tamás Borsos, spent many years on diplomatic assignment at the Sublime Porte, but never ceased fretting about his properties back home. In terms of their basic social status, most of those who held high non-church offices could not really be categorized as members of the intelligentsia.

{2-213.} This highly variegated, secular intelligentsia underwent a considerable growth in numbers over the course of the 17th century. As the principality's foreign links multiplied, so did the number of diplomats. There was only one permanent mission, in Constantinople, but Transylvanian envoys travelled frequently to other major capitals as well. Some were eminent nobles, others mere letter-carriers, but the majority of diplomats came from the ranks of the ordinary nobility and the urban middle class. The princes, intent on preserving their freedom of action, refrained from reorganizing and expanding the structure of state administration, but the number of civil servants may have risen as well. The demand for qualified manpower was all the greater at lower levels of administration, in the counties, districts, towns, and Székely széks. Many of these jobs came to be held by people who had studied or simply travelled abroad.

There is little information people at the lowest rungs of the secular intelligentsia, those who, having acquired some basic learning, applied it in villages, market towns, and on the estates. Their ranks would include the clerks at the courts of the high nobility, some of whom rose to be accountants. On the other hand, the bailiffs (udvarbírák) who administered estates and came mostly from the lesser nobility cannot be neatly categorized. Their formal education was no greater than the average for the lower levels of the secular intelligentsia, but they had considerable practical experience. Characterized by a blend of theoretical and practical knowledge, they were entrusted with great responsibility on the estates and, at times, in national politics. However, unlike typical members of the intelligentsia, most of them also owned and managed a farm.