Constitutional History Of Transylvania

This book examines the constitutional history of Transylvania, a region of Central Europe that has experienced a compelling series of historical events and been governed by a variety of ancient, medieval, and modern entities, as well as its own peoples, who from time to time have jointly or separately exercised their right to self-governance. The book’s main goal is to provide, for the first time in English, a comprehensive source for those interested in the variety of states, constitutional and public legal orders which have succeeded one another during Transylvania’s tumultuous history. It serves to underline the region’s uniqueness as a space where (for better or worse) several nationalities, multiple religions and varied cultures have had to find a way to get along, under the pressures of external state and constitutional orders. It seeks to show both the positive and the negative solutions found, which advanced or hindered this goal of organised coexistence.

These volumes of a three-volume history of Transylvania are designed to present Transylvanian history in a European context and with due attention to Transylvania's links to Hungary, the Habsburg Empire, the Romanian Principalities, Turkey and other states of Europe. The comparative approach is also prominent in the presentation of Transylvania's internal affairs in that the authors address the history--demographic, economic, social, political and cultural--of the three major national groups: Romanian, Hungarian, and Saxon.

This book is an examination of why and how the elective principle, already established in Transylvanian and Polish political culture in the late medieval period, was transformed in the early elections of the 1570s. In this period, the two polities adopted constitutional arrangements different in depth and scope but based on the same fundamental principles: elective thrones, state-sanctioned religious pluralism, and constitutional guarantees for the right of disobedience. There were important variations in their regulation and application, but Transylvania and the newly created Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had one essential thing in common: they were the only two polities in early modern Europe whose political systems secured the succession of their rulers through large-scale elections in which the dynastic principle, although still important, was not binding.

In Transylvania in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century Tudor Salagean describes the rise of Regnum Transilvanum, a historical link between the early medieval regnum Erdewel of duke Gyula and the early modern Principality of Transylvania.