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churches was of lesser artistic significance. However, even if the baroque style that spread across Transylvania had a somewhat provincial
quality, it had the merit of being fresh and new.
Union with the Greek Orthodox was a distinctive feature of Catholicism's advance in Transylvania. The early, and somewhat superficial success
of this union had been undermined during Rákóczi's War of Independence. After 1711, the only Greek-rite church enjoying legal status in
Transylvania was the Uniate, but it is difficult to ascertain what part of the Greek-rite population was Uniate, and what part Orthodox. The state
gave considerable support to the Uniates, notably an episcopal estate (after several transfers, the Balázsfalva domain). The Jesuit college at
Kolozsvár enrolled many Romanian students; its alumni included the Uniate bishop Ioan Pataki and all his successors, as well as members of the
Dobra, Kalyáni, and Aron families. Other schools, Jesuit and {2-574.} Piarist, also enrolled numerous Romanian Uniates. Meanwhile, the Orthodox
had only one noteworthy school, at Brassó. Thanks to the assistance of the Jány Foundation, Uniates had access to the University of
Nagyszombat (Trnava), in Upper Hungary. From the 1730s onward, a number of Uniates would pursue studies at Rome's Collegium de
Propaganda Fide; among the first were Sylvester Kalyáni, Petru Aron, and Grigore Maior, who would come to play a leading role in the Uniate
Church. The Uniate bishops Ioan Pataki and Inochentie Micu-Klein were both granted a barony.
Protestants manifested their resistance to the Counter-Reformation partly in the political arena, and partly by safeguarding their contacts with the
intellectual life and Protestant culture of western Europe. That second line of resistance entailed defence of a modern system of education in
Transylvania. From 1717 on-wards, the Gubernium would give passports for study-tours abroad to those who had passed the required
examination; the Protestants, for their part, would first screen the candidates. Thus Transylvania's Protestants managed to stay in touch with west
European culture, notably through German universities; the latter, and especially Halle university, remained their fountainheads for Pietism and
the early German Enlightenment.
In the Saxon's Lutheran (Evangelical) Church, there emerged at the time of Rákóczi's insurrection a struggle between Pietists and conservatives.
The first Pietist professors, Voigt and Habermann, taught in Szeben, but the conservatives, led by Bishop Lukas Graffius, soon gained the upper
hand, and in 1713 the two men were driven out. The Pietists did win the backing of the Saxon count, Andreas Teutsch. By 1720, over fifty
Saxons had attended Halle University, and within a few years, the entire Királyföld was touched by the Pietist 'infection'. In 1719, the Pietist
tendency won out in Prussia, and, throughout the German lands, the intellectual foundations of religious conservatism grew weaker. There soon
{2-575.} appeared another ideological trend, one that would strongly influence all aspects of 18th-century Enlightenment in Transylvania; the
Saxons were the first to learn about Wolffianism (i.e. the philosophy of Christian Wolff) when, in 1737, Peter Clomp delivered a lecture at
Brassó.
There is less evidence of Pietist influence within the Calvinist Church. András Huszty, who taught at the Calvinist college in Kolozsvár, was a
Pietist. He followed the lead of Heineccius, his onetime teacher, in introducing the study of law and politics at the college. Huszty also
contributed significantly to the foundation of Finno–Ugric linguistics, building in this case on the work of Strahlenberg; his family tree of the
various Finno–Ugric languages proved to be largely accurate. A pioneer in the teaching of the natural sciences, István Vásárhelyi Tőke,
introduced experimental physics at Nagyenyed College. Sámuel Nádudvari taught in the 1730s and 1740s at the Calvinist college in
Marosvásárhely; it is likely that he was a Newtonian, for he translated several of Christian Wolff's works. The Unitarian College at Kolozsvár
played a particularly noteworthy role in educational reform. The era's outstanding Unitarian in Transylvania, Mihály Szent-Ábrahámi, introduced
courses in law as well as geography shortly before the college was taken away from the Unitarians; his was the first regular law course offered in
Transylvania. When the college was reorganized after 1718, Szent-Ábrahámi began to teach experimental and eclectic physics (1726), and his
geography course covered Copernican theory (1727).
The greatest figure of the early Enlightenment in Transylvania, Sámuel Köleséri, was not a teacher, but an expert in public administration. This
son of a Calvinist pastor pursued university studies in western Europe during the last years of the principality. Upon his return to Transylvania,
Köleséri worked, first as a doctor, then as a mining expert, before being appointed a councillor and secretary of the Gubernium. At the same
time, he devoted much time and energy {2-576.} to various spheres of the natural sciences. His scientific and cultural contacts ranged from
Constantinople and Venice to Paris, London, and St. Petersburg, and he published articles in German periodicals.
Köleséri produced some seminal works on several branches of the natural sciences. His best-know book, Auraria Romano-Dacica, is devoted to
the mineral riches and mining industry of Transylvania. He also wrote medical treatises; in his study of scurvy in the Érc Mountains, he linked
the disease to the inadequate nutrition of miners (and this a bare seven years after the publication of Ramazzini's ground-breaking work on
industrial pathology). Some aspects of the question are also dealt with in Köleséri's Auraria, where he recommends a new system for ventilating
the mines and calls for prompt medical treatment of the victims of mining accidents.
Several of Köleséri's studies dealt with the symptomatology of the plague, and some unpublished ones explored the curative effects of
Transylvanian spas. Intent on contributing to the debate that had arisen in western Europe on new techniques of inoculation against smallpox, he
investigated the vaccination methods used by the Turks. In 1722, at the request of the Gubernium and the military commander, General Virmont,
Köleséri developed a plan for the treatment of epidemic diseases in the general hospitals of the ten major towns as well as the more rudimentary
clinics in market towns and the larger villages; he called for the erection of separate facilities to house the newly-infected, the convalescent, and
those who had recovered but had to be kept in quarantine.
Köleséri also played a significant role in the transmission of the German Enlightenment to Wallachia. He ordered Pufendorf's works in Germany
for Constantin Brîncoveanu and, in the mid-1720s, forwarded a book by the Wolffian G. B. Bülfinger to N. Mavrocordat. He forwarded to the
latter a Turkish numismatic collection as well as some Transylvanian coins. It is partly thanks to {2-577.} Köleséri that the first descriptive works of
Oltenia (notably Sendo's Historico-physico-topographia Valachiae Austriacae subterraneae descriptio) bore the stamp of the early German
Enlightenment. His own library held over 3,500 scholarly works, including Cartesian, Pietist, and early illuminist studies.
Köleséri's career came to an end in typically eastern European fashion. In the political battles that raged around 1730, the elderly scholar-
administrator came to be victimized, and all the more because of his proposed elevation to aristocratic rank. Incarcerated on charges of having
broken the marriage law, he died in prison. His library and manuscript works were shifted to and fro over the next few decades, and then
dispersed.
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