Reformation Habsburg Province
1683-1790






Szekler Rising, 1562 Wallachian Rising, 1594-1601




The Principality of Transylvania, 1526-1683



As a political entity, Transylvania had been established by three political acts - the Unions of the Three Estates of 1437, 1459 and by the Diet of Thorenburg 1542. The Diet decided over war and peace, fixed taxes, controlled the militia. At Thorenburg 1542, John Sigismund was elected Prince; in 1545 a standing army of 6,000 was established. The three estates also were referred to as the three nations - the Hungarians, the Szekler (Hungarian speaking pastoralists) and the Saxons (Germans). The majority Vlachs (ethnic Rumanians; by religion Orthodox christians) mostly were serfs and not represented.

In the Battle of Mohacs, the Hungarian branch of the Jagiellon dynasty had ended with the death of Louis II. Hungary now was open to Ottoman raids, but also open for Emperor Ferdinand I. of Habsburg to press his claim of Hungary's crown. Hungary's diet in the meantime had elected Janos Zapilyai, the Vajda of Transylvania, king. Ferdinand's army chased him out of the country, fleeing to Poland. He submitted to Ottoman rule; an Ottoman army defeated the Habsburg forces in 1529 and laid siege to Vienna in 1529, without success.
The war lingered on; the Turks took Buda in 1541. By now it had become apparent that Hungary was partitioned in three parts - Royal Hungary in the west, under Habsburg control (with core Croatia and much of Slovakia, then called Upper Hungary), Ottoman Hungary in the central plains, and Transylvania in the east, largely autonomous until 1683. In 1547 and 1568, peace was agreed upon on the basis of the status quo.

Transylvania became a separate duchy which in 1528 submitted to the Ottoman Empire. In 1540 it became an independent principality; the reunion with Royal Hungary in 1548 had little effect as both territories had only a short border in Slovakia and Transylvania in effect remained independent until 1683. In 1619 Transylvania's Prince Bethlen Gabor even took up arms against the Emperor, in the cause of Hungary's protestants.
In Kronstadt, Johannes Honterus published a booklet advocating the Lutheran Reformation in 1542; in 1547 the Lutheran Reformation was introduced at the Saxon churches in Transylvania. In the later 16th century there were four major churches, the Catholic, the Orthodox (Vlachs, Ruthenians), the Lutheran (Germans) and the Calvinist. Religious freedom - at the initiative of Ferenc David (1535-1579) - established at the Diet of Torda 1568 (3 accepted faiths : Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism; Orthodox church, Judaism merely tolerated). In 1566 the Transylvanian diet at Sibiu decreed the expulsion of heretic (i.e. Orthodox) bishops.
Transylvania did not have a capital, the diet traditionally assembled at Thorenburg. The country had a number of cities, it's mines of economic importance far beyond the country itself. Koloszvar (Cluj, Klausenburg) was the residence of Transylvania's princes. In 1582, the bible was published in a Vlach translation (translated and financed by protestant Hungarians).

Peace was fragile; the Habsburgs pursued plans to both reunite Hungary, to promote the Counterreformation and to continue with their policy of centralization. In 1548/1551 they failed to acquire Transylvania; in spite of religious toleration guaranteed in the Treaty of Vienna 1606 the Jesuits made extensive use of the inquisition in subsequent years, causing Transylvania's Prince Bethlen Gabor to rise in arms in the cause of Hungary's protestants. He was elected King of Hungary by the diet of 1620, and only the appearance of an Ottoman force prevented a clash.

Frequent warfare had a lasting impact on Hungary, as the population decreased and the countryside population, in order to find protection against raids, concentrated in huge villages. The ethnic pattern also was altered, to the disadvantage of the Hungarians, as other people (Serbs, Vlachs) etc. migrated into depopulated areas.
Transylvania emerged as a center of Hungarian culture. Here the freedom enjoyed by Calvinists and Lutherans resulted in the emergence of Hungarian- and German-language literature; the Princes, most of all Bethlen Gabor, also favoured the arts (Transylvanian Renaissance). In 1599 Prince Michael of Wallachia temporarily occupied Alba Julia, the Transylvanian capital.



iGENEA
FamilyTreeDNA, the leading platform of DNA genealogy worldwide.
Your family tree is still incomplete, even though you have already visited numerous public offices and institutions because of it. DNA genealogy can supplement or replace your documentation



EXTERNAL
LINKS 		The Rise of Transylvania, from A Short History of Austria-Hungary by H. Wickham-Steed, 1914
History of Cluj (Kolozsvar/Klausenburg), from webcluj
The Turkish Hegemony, from History of Transylvania, caution, nationalistic Rumanian site
The Hungarians of Transylvania, from Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Rumania, timeline
History of Protestantism in Hungary and Transylvania, Chapter 20 of History of Protestantism, by James A. Wylie (1878)
Siebenbürgen : Geschichte 1526-1705 (timeline history of Transylvania), by Christian Agnethler
Transylvania is Hungarian !, anonymous, nationalistic site which nonetheless contains detailed historical information
DOCUMENTS Maps from Magyar Elektronikus Konyvtar : Hungary during the Ottoman Occupation 1526-1606
Portraits of Sigismund Bathory, Prince of T., of Michael the Bold, Prince of Valachia, Stadholder of T., of Jan Zygmunt Zapolya, Prince of T., from Domenicus Custos, Atrium heroicum Caesarum, regum, [...] imaginibus [...] illustr[atum]. Augsburg 1600-1602, posted by MATEO, Univ. Mannheim
REFERENCE Peter F. Sugar (ed.), A History of Hungary, Indiana Univ. Press 1990, 432 pp.
Istvan Lazar, Transylvania - a Short History, Safety Harbor : Ingram 1997, 274 pp., KMLA Lb.Sign. 949.84 L431t
Carl Göllner, Geschichte der Deutschen auf dem Gebiete Rumäniens (History of the Germans living in Romanian Territory), 1st Vol., 12th century - 1848, Bukarest : Kriterion 1979 (i.e. an "official (communist)" Romanian publication) in German
Ernst Wagner (ed.), Quellen zur Geschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen (Sources on the History of the Transylvania Saxons), Köln : Böhlau, 2 Vol.s, 1981, in German
Milton G. Lehrer, Transylvania. History and Reality, Bartleby Press 1986 [G]


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on May 2nd 2006

Click here to go Home
Click here to go to Information about KMLA, WHKMLA, the author and webmaster
Click here to go to Statistics