Mitropolitul Andrei Şaguna – promotor al emancipării prin cultură şi educaţie a românilor din Transilvania secolului al XIX-lea
Metropolitan Andrei Şaguna – Promoter of the Movement of Emancipation through C
ulture and Education for the Romanians in 19th Century Transylvania
The history of the Romanians in Transylvania acknowledges Saint Metropolitan Andrei Şaguna’s shepherding of the Church as a reference point, that had crucially contributed to the creation of the Romanian people’s unity of conscience, which ultimately led to the Great Union in 1918. The great Metropolitan knew that a people enlightened through culture and education is thus enabled to overcome all the hardships and challenges of history and is subsequently empowered to pursue tenaciously its political and ecclesiastical goals and ideals for a union. Like a true apostle of the Transylvanian Romanians, Metropolitan Andrei Şaguna bestowed on the Transylvanian Church the treasures of his charisms, his energy and tireless fervour and the wisdom of his remarkable diplomacy, and made it bring forth a “hundredfold fruit”, i.e. he set up hundreds of religious and lay schools of all levels of education. He also supervised the compilation of school manuals and syllabuses, and the training of school teachers. Yet his greatness actually lies in that he managed all these amid extremely harsh political conditions. He was intuitively certain that only the existence of a solid Orthodox confessional educational program would allow the Romanians to exist as a nation and play an active role in Transylvania’s social-political life, which would eventually contribute to the achievement of the national union of all Romanians from the three Romanian Provinces.
Keywords: History of Transylvania, Church History, Confessional Education, Transylvanian Art and Culture
