Kovács Kálmán Árpád, Die „gleichförmige Beobachtung” und Modernisierung des siebenbürgischen Zensurwesens 1772-1773 /45
The ”uniform observation” and modernization of censorship in Transylvania between 1772-1773
The censorship policy of the second half of the theresian era (1760’s and 70’s) was an important border region between the religious and the educational policy. Transylvania had a special religious situation in the Habsburg Empire, which was also visible in the censorship policy. The transylvanian censorship was more conservative at the beginning of the 1770’s than in Vienna. That was caused by several personal conditions. The jesuits kept the censorship longer in their hands in Transylvania than in the capitol city of the Habsburg empire. The tendency to form a state church from the roman catholic church in the Habsburg Empire had also its influences on the censorship policy. All religious works of the catholic press had to be taken under the revision of the state. Because of the slower bureaucratic system of Transylvania could these tencency appear with the supression of the jesuits in 1773. The religious conference of march 15th 1773 made its suggestions to form the transylvanian censorship policy under the Vienna patern. The reforms of the transylvanian censorship instruction aimed the effectiveness, the accelaration and the improvement. The changed paragraphs simplifyed the management of the censorship cases, the exchange of information between the imperial centre and the province became better. The imperial state introduced a stricter regulation on the provincial offices. The weak populational and cultural status of the roman catholicism in Transylvania was taken into deep consideration. For example was the superstition more typical of the roman catholic population than of the protestants. Its ban was ordained therefor only secretly by the roman catholic bishop. The reforminstruction also regulated the newest media of the era, which were not even known in Transylvania. This centralisation policy caused despite of all its inconsequences a significant improvement in Transylvania.
Keywords: censorship, religious policy, 1770’s, reform, centralisation, modernisation, supression of the jesuits
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