Structurile şi interferenţele învăţământului confesional din Transilvania în Epoca Luminilor

Up to 1760, Transylvania had an institutionalized, organized education, led and supervised by the clergy, by the religious confessions, which were functioning at that time: Orthodox, Greek-Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian. Consequently, the institutions of education had to serve the interests of the social categories belonging to the respective confessions, because they, with or without the Habsburg State’s contribution supported these institutions. Nevertheless, the situation of secondary education in Transylvania was more favourable. The powerful religious and cultural offensive launched by Catholicism after the inclusion of the principality into the Habsburg Empire, and which was raised at the rank of State religion was eventually materialized in the creation of a great number of middle education institutions that were mainly attended by the young Hungarian and Saxon Catholics. Beginning with 1760, the educational problem became an official political problem, so that the Court Study Commission was created that year for the guidance of school activities. After 1770, the Court of Viena disposed new measures destined to the education reorganization, aiming at the removal of the clergy from its leadership and control, and planning the foundation of a State elementary and high education. In Transylvania, the basic principles and stipulations of the Ratio Educationis law were applied through Norma Regia (1781), while the National school regulations were applied from 1784. Based upon the moderate Enlightenment principles with a limited bourgeois character, Norma Regia was consequently the first general, comprehensive school legislation in Transylvania.