''Supplex Libellus Valachorum Transsilvaniae'' (

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for ''

Petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to an officia ...

of the

Romanians Romanians (, ; dated Endonym and exonym, exonym ''Vlachs'') are a Romance languages, Romance-speaking ethnic group and nation native to Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Sharing a Culture of Romania, ...

Transylvania Transylvania ( or ; ; or ; Transylvanian Saxon dialect, Transylvanian Saxon: ''Siweberjen'') is a List of historical regions of Central Europe, historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and ...

'') is the name of two petitions sent by the leaders of the ethnic Romanians of

to the

Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans (disambiguation), Emperor of the Romans (; ) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period (; ), was the ruler and h ...

Leopold II, demanding equal political rights with the other ethnicities of Transylvania and a share of the Transylvanian Diet proportional to their population. The first Supplex was sent in March 1791 by Ignațiu Darabant, the

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bishop of Oradea, to the State Council of

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. The second Supplex, a largely expanded and argumented version of the first, was brought before the Imperial Court of Vienna on March 30, 1792, by Ioan Bob,

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

of Blaj, and by Gherasim Adamovici, Orthodox

. The demands in the petition, according to the researches of David Prodan, were largely based on the ''

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'' of Revolutionary France, and it also included an essay reviewing historical reasons (such as references to a

Roman Dacia Roman Dacia ( ; also known as ; or Dacia Felix, ) was a province of the Roman Empire from 106 to 271–275 AD. Its territory consisted of what are now the regions of Oltenia, Transylvania and Banat (today all in Romania, except the last regi ...

-Romanian continuity) as well as statistics about the Romanians (who made up approximately 55% of the population of Transylvania). According to some more recent researches, the argumentation of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum based on the ideas of

natural law Natural law (, ) is a Philosophy, philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts ...

as well as on the Hungarian feudal judicial argumentation. In any case the petition brought in favour of its requests among others, the argument that the rights of Romanians and Hungarians were melded together from the reign of Töhötöm as alleged in the 12th century

Gesta Hungarorum ''Gesta Hungarorum'', or ''The Deeds of the Hungarians'', is the earliest book about Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian history which has survived for posterity. Its genre is not chronicle, but ''gesta'', meaning "deeds" or "acts", which is a medie ...

. The document was drafted by the most important representatives of the Romanian nation of Transylvania (which were, for the most part, clerics of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church): Samuil Micu, Petru Maior, Gheorghe Șincai, Ioan Piuariu-Molnar, Iosif Meheși, Ion Budai-Deleanu, Ioan Para etc. The petition was signed in the name of the Romanian nation by its free categories: Clerus, Nobilitas, Civicusque Status Universae Nationis in Transilvania Valachicae. The ''Supplex'' was rejected during the negotiations in the National Assembly where they discussed not so much the concept and reasoning of public law contained in the Supplex libellus Valachorum, but the issues contained in the royal transcript, and in response to them the following was established: * In counties and Székely chairs, the rights and duties of nobles, freemen and serfs are determined not by nationality, but by orderly affiliation, therefore it is not possible to grant additional rights to Romanians. As for the King's Land, the privileges of the Saxons granted in the Andreanum would be violated by the extra rights of the Romanians; the discussion of this was postponed at the request of the Saxons. * The free exercise of religion by Greek Catholics has been ensured since 1744, a separate bill will be drafted on the Orthodox. * Since each Transylvanian denomination maintains its own clergy, the same must be done for the two Romanian denominations. * The main reason for the ineptitude of the Romanian people is the backwardness of their own priests, to change this, the church commission is preparing a proposal for the next national assembly. As such, the status of the Romanians remained the same. Several such petitions were issued in the following decades, and they all met with the same reaction. Another major petition, the Transylvanian Memorandum, was drafted a century later (in 1892, following the new circumstances after the 1848 Revolution and the '' Ausgleich''), but its authors were sent to prison for

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...

References

Sources

* David Prodan, ''Supplex Libellus Valachorum'',

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

, 1948. * Aron Kovacs, Continuity and Discontinuity in Transylvanian Romanian Thought: An Analysis of Four Bishopric Pleas from the Period between 1791 and 1842. In.: Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 1 (2016): 46–72.

External links

Supplex Libellus Valachorum Transsilvaniae (1791), March 21st 2016, ''Enciclopedia Dacica''
{{Commons category, Supplex Libellus Valachorum Transsilvaniae 1791 documents 1792 documents 1791 in the Holy Roman Empire 1792 in the Holy Roman Empire 18th century in the Habsburg monarchy Age of Enlightenment Transylvanian School 18th century in Transylvania Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor