The Transylvania Connection [by Simon Strickland-Scott]
In a previous blog, I told the tale of Mary Shelley and John Polidari creating the literary phenomena of Frankenstein’s monster and the vampire genre whilst engaging in a friendly horror story writing competition at the Villa Diodati. Neither Shelley nor Polidari referenced Transylvania in their respective works but through retelling both Frankenstein and vampires have become synonymous with Transylvania. In the case of vampires, it was of course through the work of Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula in 1897, thereby creating the most iconic character of the genre, a character who hailed from Transylvania.
There was, of course, Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracul, after which Stoker based his character, but this historic personage, who really did impale his captured enemies on stakes in order to deter other would-be opponents, was actually from Wallachia (another part of modern-day Romania).
We probably have Hollywood to blame for relocating Frankenstein in the same territory as, in Mary Shelley’s original tale the scientist, Victor Frankenstein hails from Geneva, Switzerland (where the story was drafted) and the experiments which created the monster took place in Ingolstadt, Germany.
Thus, this territory, now part of Romania, has through the medium of popular culture become synonymous with gothic castles, dark foreboding, spooky graveyards and downright evil.
In stark contrast to this fictional image, for a period of time in early modern Europe Transylvania was an oasis of religious and racial tolerance in a sea of reaction. At a time when Catholics and Protestants were killing each other by the thousands over their differing interpretations of the Bible and ‘witches’ were being burnt in even larger numbers, Transylvania had an extremely progressive policy on religious freedom.
The further irony in this contrast between fiction and fact is that whilst Mary Shelley inadvertently laid the ground for the fictional treatment of Transylvania, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft had attended the Unitarian Chapel at Newington Green and it was the Unitarians who would form one of the cornerstones of Transylvania’s religious tolerance policy and benefit enormously from it.
The Unitarians were initially known as Socinians or Polish Brethren, after their Italian-born founders; uncle and nephew, Lelio and Fausto Sozzini. The Sozzinis had worked in Poland and developed a following for their non-trinitarian theology there. However, the entire denomination was forced to flee Catholic Poland under the threat of execution and arrived in Transylvania in 1565 where they were led by Ferenc David.
Squeezed between the Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires, political expediency had led Transylvania, formerly part of the Kingdom of Hungary but by then an autonomous principality, to grant religious toleration to all competing Christian denominations within the territory. Thus, in addition to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, as the Reformation unfolded, equal rights were granted to Lutherans (in 1537), Calvinists (1564) and Unitarians (1568). Religious observance often overlapped with ethnic identities (for example; Lutherans tended to be Germanic, Orthodox, Romanian, Catholic, Hungarian etc.) so religious tolerance translated into a certain level of inclusivity for different ethnic identities as well.
Further advances were made in 1571 when the Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans and Unitarians (though curiously not Orthodox Christians) were granted the status of ‘Received religions’ wherein these denominations were required to share church buildings but had equal status as de facto state religions.
Since that time and despite wars and boundary changes (from being an autonomous principality, Transylvania would once more become part of Hungary before becoming part of Romania), Unitarianism has continued to thrive in the area, especially among the Hungarian-speaking minority and remains a significant denomination in that part of Europe.
Returning to the autonomous principality of the sixteenth century; tolerance towards and among Christian groups was extended to a relatively tolerant approach to non-Christian religions so Jews and Muslims enjoyed certain rights unavailable in much of the rest of Christendom. Jews, for example, had been banished from England from 1290 and were only allowed to return under Cromwell’s Protectorate in 1656.
It has been suggested that the model for Transylvania’s religious policy came from the neighbouring Ottoman Empire in which, from the early fifteenth century under Sultan Mehmed, Christians and Jews were given certain rights alongside the dominant Muslim community. These rights included their own courts of law and right of access to places of worship. This eventually evolved into the millet system whereby many Christian denominations gained official recognition and a degree of self-rule; thus, there were Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian and Protestant millets by the nineteenth century.
As for Judaism, we find a local connection and a legacy of the relatively tolerant attitude to Jews in Transylvania. Within modern Transylvania is the city of Satu Mare the birthplace of the Haredi or ultra-orthodox Jewish sect known as the Satmar, who took their name from the city. Founded in 1905 by Joel Teitelbaum as an off-shoot of an older dynasty, today the Satmar are the largest of several distinct Jewish Haredi denominations in Stamford Hill that together make up the largest Haredi community in Europe.
On a final note, it is a peculiar coincidence that the real Transylvania shares with the one-time Quaker-governed Pennsylvania, not only the same suffix but also a historical reputation as a sanctuary of religious tolerance which pioneered the notion of religious pluralism which has become a staple part of mainstream modern European and North American thinking.
This blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It was made by New Unity and Simon Strickland-Scott. Find out more: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
