Transylvania in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Accounts of the Papal Legates

Transylvania in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Accounts of the Papal Legates This article describes and analyses the image of Transylvania and the Transylvanian Romanians as it is reflected in the accounts written by the legates of the Holy See in the mid-nineteenth century This image was constructed from a series of stereotypes and cliches that were commonly used in the milieus of Western extraction and that reinforced, most of the times, the existing negative bias against the Romanians and the Romanian space. The papal legates' accounts included reflections on: the geographical and climatic conditions, the level of civilization, education, the material situation, the bookish horizon and the understanding of religious dogmas and doctrines. All of these aspects were perceived in prevalently negative terms, emphasizing the inferiority of this space and signaling, implicitly, the gap that separated Western and Eastern Europe. The only aspects that were perceived in a positive light were the physiognomic similarities between the Romanians and the Italians, the fact that a part of the Transylvanian Romanians were Catholics (belonged to the Greek-Catholic Church) and the Romanians' Latin descent. As the envoys of the Holy See confessed in their reports, their mission was to pave the way for Transylvania's integration within the value system of Western civilization.