„Sensul toleranței este comunicat ...” (A tolerantia sensussa communicaltatik ...). Dreptul de împotrivire al reformaților transilvăneni în anii dinainte și de după enunțarea Edictului de toleranță
Abstract
Edict of tolerance, in its Transylvanian Abstract variant, represented a real challenge
for the Reformed Church from Transylvania. Noticed as imperial involvement in often
conflictual confessional issues, it was hoped in its retroactive efficacy concerning those
religious problems, which were already known ever since the Theresian period by
endless gravamina of the Reformed Supreme Consistory. Yet Edict did not wish to solve
old wounds of Transylvanian cohabitation difficult to hold back by previous
jurisdictional interconfessional compromises. On the contrary the Edict suggested
personal Christian responsibility as regards religious tolerance as opposed to corporative
Reformed recuperative actions. Challenging for the long process of symbiosis of
confessional legislation from the period of the autonomous principality and then of the
Austrian province, its effects next to the positive ones (construction of cult buildings,
concivility) for the Reformed society confounded with diverse antagonist reactions.
Idea of religious tolerance provoked resistance towards its effects. Edict within
Reformed conscience was one and the same with “6 week teaching” and its
consequences within matrimonial jurisdiction. Remarking sources of imperial illuminist
policy (ius gentium, ius naturae etc.) concerning tolerance, understanding idea of
tolerance within the Reformed was different from that of Joseph II. The Reformed
asked adaptation of church law on the whole to provisions of the Edict, the Court
demanded observance of Roman-Catholics as “religio dominans”. During the
implementation period of the Edict 1780-1784, are noticeable differences between what
the Edict wished to implement and what the Consistory recorded. Thus, most of
complaints refer to interconfessional conflicts, followed by official gravamina, issues
concerning construction of churches and matrimonial issues. Vienna wished to assure a
calm confessional climate, yet without unsettling the balance of confessional forces
from Transylvania in the second part of the 18th century. This difference in interpreting
idea of tolerance led to new gravamina, by which the Reformed Consistory
imperatively asked “Meaning of tolerance to be communicated to us ...”. Diminution of
the new religious problems represented the meaning and direction of the Transylvanian
Edict itself towards realisation of new confessional references.
Keywords
tolerance, reformed, Reformed Consistory Keywords , apostasy, gravamina.