A History of Szeklerland

It is not at all uncommon today for one to find only fragmentary or incomplete answers to even the most pertinent questions in the secondary literature, not to mention the various beliefs that have come to thrive on the margins of scholarly discussions. Yet in the quarter of a century that has passed since the changes that took place in 1989 there have been ample opportu-nities for a renewal of serious scholarship and research that builds on the finest traditions of the discipline. This is due in part simply to the fact that libraries, ar-chives, and various public collections have been opened to scholars and the public, and new methodologies have been adopted, sometimes imported from abroad. It is due, furthermore, to the rise of a new generation of scholars who have made new scientific contributions. The older works of secondary literature, which are more and more out of date anyway, are almost inaccessible to the larger public. There are very few scholars who can read the sources in their original languages, not to mention interpret them correctly, and in the absence of a modern, reliable body of secondary literature, many misguided notions have come to prosper again. Thus, it is high time for an up-to-date monograph on the history of the Székely Land.

We have now undertaken this, thanks in part to the coincidence of a number of circumstances. This three -volume work reflects our conviction that a synthesis of scientific knowledge goes beyond the individual interests of any single scholar, and a better understanding of the past, with an adequately broad perspective and synthesizing approach, is important even from the perspective of the future prosperity of the region. An understanding that is neither coloured nor corrupted by myths but that nonetheless acknowledges and even fosters attachment to the past and its values can help further the preservation of a community’s cultural cohesion. We have been motivated to undertake this challenge by several factors, for example the extraordinary natural resources of the Székely Land, its material culture, rich with a fascinating human geography that to some extent also mirrors the most important processes of European civilization. We deliberated for a long time before choosing a title for the book. We considered A History of Székelys, for instance, which would have placed the focus of our inquiry on the people themselves. But the historical significance of the region inhabited by Székelys proved to be a more important consideration, as it provided a concrete frame, which, however, admittedly shifted over the course of time. Naturally, the non-Székely population of the Székely Land and its surroundings, which is almost identical with the non-Hungarian-speaking population, also had an impact on the history of the region, but we were not able to present this in detail because of the dearth of sources and reliable secondary literature.

The title A History of the Székely Land, however, proves a bit narrow if one intends also to address antecedents to the Hungarian settlement of the region going back to the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin and before, the scattered communities in villages in Southern Transylvania where the Székely dialect is spoken, the “Csángós” of Ghimeș and Țara Bârsei, the Székely communities of Bucovina and the remains of such communities in Western Hungary, and Székelys who left their homeland and live scattered across the globe, not to mention the general questions of the essence of Székely identity. Of course, the authors have tried to resolve this dilemma, and they took great care, when presenting events and circumstances in the Székely Land, not to forget about the larger historical context. The title that was chosen makes it clear that the book offers a presentation of a region inhabited by a population with a distinct legal status, as well as an examination of the prevailing institutional structures and relationships and intercommunal ties in this region, the history of which goes back centuries. The authors have taken care, in doing this, to place the details of local histories into the larger Transylvanian, Hungarian/Romanian, and international context. Our primary goal has been to shed light on the institutions, interrelations, and internal and external processes which made the land of the Székelys the Székely Land and continue to exert a palpable and even decisive influence on the culture of this region today.

From the Árpád Era to the beginning of the 16th Century Székely Land belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. After the Battle of Mohács (1526), at which the Hungarian army fell to the Ottoman Turks, the Kingdom of Hungary was split into three distinct parts. The easternmost part was the Principality of Transylvania, which was largely autonomous, and within the Principality the Székely people were one of the governing nations. By the end of the 17th century the Habsburgs had re-conquered the central parts of the Kingdom from the Ottomans and re-annexed Transylvania – along with the Szekely land – to the Kingdom of Hungary under Habsburg rule. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918, Transylvania and parts of neighbouring territories (Partium and Banat) became part of Romania. For the short period between 1940 and 1944, Northern Transylvania was re-annexed by Hungary. Naturally the precise meaning of the term Székely Land and the exact area to which it referred changed over the course of time, denoting initially the areas in Southern Transylvanian that were settled in the Árpád Era, then shifting in the wake of changes to ecclesiastic administration in the 1330s and again with the 16th-century censuses taking during the time of the Principality of Transylvania, when the Székely seats had different jurisdictions than they came to have at the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century. After the administrative unification of 1867 and especially following the political changes that took place in the interwar period (between 1918 and 1940), Aranyosszék, the seat of the Transylvanian Székelys living in the Valley of the Arieş River (today Scaunul Arieşului in Romania), became simply part of the “historical Székely Land.” In the 1950s, the phrase “Székely Land” was understood as meaning only the Hungarian Autonomous Region, and in recent decades people have come to understand it as referring only to the counties of Harghita and Covasna.

The key concept for the history of the Székely Land is military service, as all the specific rights that were bestowed in the long period stretching from the Árpád Era to the age of the Habsburgs were based on military service. A significant part of the free Székely population became serfs in the 16th century, but then regained some of their rights in the following century, and in the 18th century some of them were incorporated into the institutional system of border defences (an array of military posts intended to provide protection against marauding armies). Another important aspect of the institutional history of the region was the specific organization of administration into so-called seats, which provided the framework for the functioning of Székely autonomous legislation from the 14th century to 1876. The self-governance of the Székely Land was based on a system of villages, market towns and seats, and its mechanisms were regulated by legal custom.

The privileged status of the Székelys in the Middle Ages, which was an essential aspect of the structure of their society, lingered in the public imagination as an idealistic military democracy, an idea which, indeed, is still alive in the minds of many people. Historical memory, which at times can tend towards idealization, sometimes regards the privileges of the Székelys as if they were a specific and unique phenomenon, though there are several well-known contemporary political institutions that were analogous: the Jász people, the Cumans from Hungary, the “lancer nobles” of Szepes County, and the Hajduks enjoyed similar privileges, and one could also mention the autonomy of the Romanian communities from the regions of Făgăraș, Banat and Chioarului. Each of these groups had a specific regional and group identity, with the basic pillars of the privileges enjoyed by the Székelys. The more firmly established these privileges were and the longer the communities in question were able to preserve them, the more enduring the deliberate differentiation of the group from the other groups living in the region proved.

In the period after 1790, a distinctive duality persisted, according to which the Székelys declared themselves a part of the modern civic Hungarian nation while at the same time they continued to refer to the Székely nation as privileged feudal nation. However, the “Székely nation” as a feudal entity came to an end with the Revolution of 1848, since at the 1848 assembly in Lutița the Székelys gave up the status of a privileged order, declaring that “all civilians of the Székely land […] are equal in rights and obligations”. The roots of the Székelys’ Hungarian national 

consciousness definitely go deeper than this, however. One could cite Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, who used to characterise himself as a “son of the Székely nation”, which in his view was “a part of the Hungarian nation”.

In the age of the Dualist Monarchy, the “Székely question” was an issue that was intertwined with the modernizing tendencies in the region. The disintegration of archaic communities, the overdue processes of urbanization and industrialization, the relative overpopulation of the region, and the spread of impoverishment had become important issues of state politics as well, and the answer was more accentuated intervention on the part of the state.

Since the end of the 19th century, the Székely Land has played an outstanding role in both the Hungarian and the Romanian nation building processes. After the tectonic shifts in the political constellation of all of Central Europe in 1918, in the wake of which Romania became a geographically comparatively enormous state with many linguistic minorities, the main objective of Romanian nationalism was the ethnic restructuring of the country, i.e. national homogenisation, in spite of the fact that the pre-war problems of social and economic modernization had hardly changed. The Székely Land and the Transylvanian cities were primary targets of Romanian assimilationist efforts. After the re-annexation of Northern Transylvania by Hungary in 1940, the systematic infrastructural and cultural development of the region became an outstanding goal for Hungarian nation building visions and initiatives. After the rise of the Romanian socialist state in the wake of the Second World War, the status of the Székely Land as an autonomous region initially meant the creation of a kind of “greenhouse”, in which the right to use one’s native tongue was ensured, while in other regions of Transylvania with Hungarian-speaking populations this rights was not protected. In the Ceaușescu era, beginning in the early 1970s the main plan involved the Romanianisation of the “Hungarian counties” and cuts in investment and development funds in the region.

With the fall of Ceaușescu in 1989 and then, a decade later, the dawn of a new millennium, a new image of the future of the Székely Land emerged that envisioned the building and institutional development of an autonomous region with a Hungarian-speaking majority. Along with this, an increasingly strong sense of Hungarian identity and the expression of a Székely identity based on both real and mythical elements and old and newly fashioned components of the representation of the region have become enduring parts of public memory and the politics of history. The most important characteristic of the Székely Land today is that one continues to find a compact Hungarian-speaking region of 12-13,000 km2 in the heart of Romania, with a population of 810,000, 72% of which – in 2011, 581,000 people – declare themselves to be Hungarians, compared with 23%, who declare themselves Romanian.

The authors sought to present the history of the Székely Land by synthesizing the most recent scholarly findings and assessing the work that is still to be done. The text, which deals with the questions at hand from many viewpoints at the same time, cannot be regarded as complete; the reader does not get detailed answers to all of the questions, because in some cases the authors did not have the relevant sources at their disposal, or there had been a hiatus in the research itself. While writing A History of the Székely Land, the authors relied in part on their own research and in part on the source work and research done by their colleagues over the course of the last few decades, as indeed used always to be the case with such ambitious endeavours. The authors undertook focused research on indispensable questions of detail in cases in which even basic data was missing, such as the case of the study of administration in the interwar period. In 1986, a three-volume book was published the objectives of which were similar to the objectives of The History of Transylvania. Instead of emphasizing mythical elements or adopting approaches that focused on establishing some kind of political legitimacy, they strove to put emphasis on objectiveness, the use of reliable primary sources, and transparent analysis. In the attempt to systematize the various conclusions that have been reached with regards to certain topics, conclusions that enjoy widespread consensus, on many occasions one finds divergent approaches to some of the hotly debated questions, such as the question of “origins” and the early history of the region. The reason for this is the scanty and fragmentary sources, which often give rise to radically different interpretations. There was one aspect with regards to which the authors consistently adopted a uniform approach: the avoidance of exaggerated, prejudiced or insulting statements. Naturally, in the course of our attempt to address the many blank spots in our knowledge, many debatable contentions were made. Further research will be necessary to clarify and assess these contentions.

Even today, the most popular topic in the historical literature on the Székely Land and the Székelys continues to be the question of origins, and implicitly the myth of Hun ancestry, which survives in spite of the refutations that began to made as early as the beginning of the 19th century. A reference work was written by Ferenc Kállay in 1829 (Historiai értekezés a’ nemes székely nemzet eredetéről, hadi és polgári intézeteiről a’ régi időkben [Historical Tractate on the Origins of the Székely Nation, Its Military and Civil Institutions in the Old Days]), which was surprisingly well documented and based on an approach that was objective for its age. The image of the region in Hungarian public opinion was shaped largely by the work of Balázs Orbán, edited in six volumes between 1868 and 1873, entitled A Székelyföld leírása (A Description of Székely Land), complemented in 1889 with Torda város és környéke (The City of Turda and its Surroundings), a work that presents the region around the Arieș River. The writing of a genuine scientific history of the region was initiated in the city of Cluj in 1874. A committee led by Count Imre Mikó appointed university professor Károly Szabó to carry out the project. However, Szabó focused on the debates concerning the question of origins and on the editing of Székely Oklevéltár (The Székely Archives). After his death, the work was continued by Lajos Szádeczky Kardoss. The work of the latter, entitled A székely nemzet története és alkotmánya (The History and Constitution of the Székely Nation) – only a short version of the synthesis planned and partially carried out by the author – was published in 1927 in Budapest. The book treated the documentable history of Székely institutions from their beginnings to the outbreak of the First World War. As is evident, emphasis shifted from the question of origins and local descriptions to the history of institutions. This approach was initiated by the great Saxon legal historian Hans Connert in two of his works from the beginning of the 20th century: A székelyek alkotmányának históriája különösen a XVI. és XVII. században (The History of the Székely Constitution, Especially in the 16th and 17th Centuries, 1901), A székelyek intézményei a legrégebbi időktől az 1562-iki átalakulásig (The Institutions of the Székelys from their Beginnings to the Changes of 1562, 1906). Along with these basic works on the history of law and institutions we have to include the work of György Bónis, Magyar jog – székely jog ( Hungarian Law – Székely Law), a reference book that was published in 1942 and remains in use today. In the interwar period, research on the Székely Land (understood broadly) involved primarily three major projects. The two-volume book entitled Emlékkönyv a Székely Nemzeti Múzeum ötvenéves jubileumára (50th Anniversary Jubilee Volume of the Székely National Museum), edited by Vilmos Csutak, was published in 1929 in Sfântu Gheorghe. It summarized the findings of an array of disciplines. In the city of Odorheiu Secuiesc a monthly review entitled Székelység (Székely Land, 1931–1944) was published under the editorship of János Bányai. It represented an excellent example of scholarly work addressing a large, non- specialist readership. The three-volume work entitled A nemes székely nemzet képe (The Image of the Noble Nation of Székelys), which was edited by István Kiss Rugonfalvi, was published in Hungary in 1939–1940. The first volume was written by Márton Roska and the editor, himself a historian, while the second one included contributions on geography, social issues, and economic questions by great Transylvanian scholars (who published under pseudonyms). In spite of all this, the volume did not meet the standards of its time. In the short period between 1940 and 1944, research focused primarily on the issues of the previous two decades and the interethnic relations in the areas with linguistically mixed populations.

In the period after 1945, scientific research related to the Székely Land could be done mainly on the local level. The decades of socialism did not favour scientific syntheses, especially not in the Székely Land. The few exceptions were published as a result of a brave initiative of the Kriterion Publishing House, as was true in the case of the volume entitled Székely felkelés 1595−1596. Előzményei, lefolyása, következményei (The Székely Rebellion of 1595–1596. Antecedents, Events, Effects), edited by Samu Benkő, Lajos Demény, and Károly Vekov. The book included studies based on new data in several issues, signed by authors like Zsigmond Jakó, Károly Borbáth, Lajos Demény, Ákos Egyed, István Imreh, József Pataki and András Magyari. Against all odds, in 1983 Lajos Demény and József Pataki succeeded in starting a new series of the Székely Oklevéltár, publishing three important volumes before 1989. Another significant contribution to the existing scholarship came with the publishing of the volumes by István Imreh on the organization and jurisdiction of the Székely village, a monograph by Samu Benkő on the small region of Niraj, and a book by Ákos Egyed on the defensive warfare of the Trei Scaune region in 1848–1849. These books not only were read enthusiastically by specialists in the field, but also came to play an important role in the preservation of identity. After 1989, the literature on the Székely Land consisted first of reprint editions and documentary books and then of the works published by revived museums, libraries and cultural institutions of the Székely Land. Since the turn of the millennium, new institutions of higher education and new publishing houses have produced the most significant scholarship on the region, along with doctoral theses and conference volumes on the Székely Land. We were not able, in this book, to undertake a survey or assessment of this secondary literature, but most of the relevant works can be found in the bibliography.

This monography is the result of major cooperation among specialists in many respects, presenting works by many authors in which the reader will find a variety of perspectives. As this work is dedicated not only to scholars, but also to members of the general public who take an interest in the history of the Székelys, we considered it important to offer the material in a clear, intelligible format. Footnotes and references were included for those who would like to know more about certain questions, but the book is adequately clear even to a reader less familiar with the formats of scholarly secondary literature. Furthermore, we have tried to enrich the book with a detailed visual presentation of the diverse sources at our disposal. This is also true of the published map and table annexes. With such unusually rich and fresh illustrations and visual material, we have endeavoured to provide images that themselves are revealing sources that complement the written text, providing engaging and vivid impressions, depending on the given possibilities, of the different historical periods and the varied geographical areas of the Székely Land. Given the ambitious scale of this monograph, at times there are overlaps and repeated citations from the sources. This is due in part to the large number of authors and the different approaches they adopted. Had we more aggressively edited individual contributions to avoid all overlaps, this would have detracted from the merits and thoroughness of some of the texts. While the editors sought to create a balanced general image, they did not wish to standardize the texts at the expense of their scholarly value.

We have published our work in three volumes. The first one deals with the history of the lands and their inhabitants from the earliest times up to the Székely rebellion of 1562. In this volume the authors relied on a preponderance of archaeological and architectural history, in large part because of a dearth of written sources. The second volume presents the changing relations of the region from the age of the Principality of Transylvania to 1867, the union of Transylvania with Hungary. The third volume sums up the history of the territory regarded as the Székely Land, a region that, until the parliamentary elections of May 1990, repeatedly found itself under the jurisdiction of a different state while also bearing witness to continuous shifts in its public administration. With regards to the events of the past two and a half decades, we did not even dare venture an overview, since in spite of the many complex works on political, sociological, and administrative issues that have been published since the change of regimes, the political history of the local societies and the policies that have been adopted and implemented by the Romanian state concerning the Székely Land remain obscure even on the level of sources.

The idea of writing a new history of the Székelys was proposed in 2008 by Levente Bunta, the newly elected mayor of Odorheiu Secuiesc. After a series of discussions, the de facto preparations started in 2011, with the collaboration of a committee of scholars who then came to serve as the editorial board under the leadership of Ákos Egyed, an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In order for this venture, which began in Odorheiu Secuiesc, to come to fruition, researchers, professors and museum specialists of the Székely Land joined forces. The work of the 22 authors was coordinated by the editorial committee, the Haáz Rezső Museum, and the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The Transylvanian Museum Society helped ensure the smooth publication of the volume.

The scientific committee selected and invited the prospective authors. They invited well-known scholars as well as younger colleagues in the early stages of their careers, and took care to include people from Transylvania and Hungary, because the basic criterion was expertise, as well as the ability to meet short deadlines, of course. Neither the office of the mayor, who launched the initiative, nor the scientific committee sought to be a controlling authority that would stipulate the content and the mentality of the work or – of course – formulate demands concerning actual politics. Mayor Levente Bunta proclaimed a single goal: to create a serious monograph, something comparable to the three-volume Erdély története (A History of Transylvania), if possible, written by the finest scholars and perused with approval and enthusiasm by a readership of prestigious historians. The details and complexities emerged continuously in the wake of the editorial meetings, the conferences organized in Odorheiu Secuiesc, and the discussions among the various authors, which were at least as intense. The genuine work of the authors was also carried out without any central control. They were guided exclusively by their own scholarly convictions and ethics. Serious changes were made only on the basis of considerations of style or in response to the suggestions of the readers.

In order to substantiate their contentions or simply render their contributions more enjoyable, the authors frequently quote unpublished sources or sources published sometime over the past 300 years, as well as passages from the older secondary literature. These writings do not always adhere to the same rules of orthography and editing, and the mixture of styles would have been hard to understand without long and detailed explanations. We therefore chose to follow one editorial principle, according to which quotations are given according to the original style and word use of the given author, but following the rules of orthography today, thus rendering the cited passages easily accessible to the reader. The original texts can be easily found using the references.

The editors of the book would like to thank here the following institutions for their kind support and their permission to publish the illustrations: the Museum of Balaton (Keszthely), the Székely Museum of Ciuc (Miercurea Ciuc), the Dr. Bernády György Cultural Foundation, the National Museum of Transylvanian History (Cluj-Napoca), the Transylvanian Unitarian Church (Cluj-Napoca), the Simor Archiepiscopal Library (Esztergom), the Haáz Rezső Museum and its Scientific Library (Odorheiu Secuiesc), the Military Institute and Museum (Budapest), the Incze László Museum of Guilds’ History (Târgu Secuiesc), the Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest), the Reformed Parish of Târgu Secuiesc, the Lucian Blaga Central University Library (Cluj-Napoca), the Kováts Photography(Odorheiu Secuiesc), the National Archives of Hungary (Budapest), the Hungarian National Museum (Budapest), the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest), the Mureș County Museum (Târgu Mureș), the Molnár István Museum (Cristuru Secuiesc), the Museum of Ethnography (Budapest), the Armenian Catholic Apostolic Governorate (Gherla), the National Széchényi Library (Budapest), the Austrian State Archives, the Military Archive (Vienna), the Archives of Political History and Trade Unions (Budapest), the Covasna County Department of the National Archives of Romania (Sfântu Gheorghe), the Mureș County Department of the National Archives of Romania (Târgu Mureș), the Sibiu County Department of the National Archives of Romania (Sibiu), the Harghita County Department of the National Archives of Romania (Miercurea Ciuc), the Historical Research Group of Székely Blazons, Seals and Flags (Odorheiu Secuiesc), the Székely National Museum (Sfântu Gheorghe), the Tarisznyás Márton Museum (Gheorgheni), the Teleki-Bolyai Library (Târgu Mureș).

We would also like to thank the authors, researchers and photographers who offered us the use of their photographs and drawings, which are often of artistic value, in order to sustain our endeavour to compile new, informative visual material, some of which has never been seen before, for our readers. We would like to thank Ödön Balázs, Imre Bartalis, Elek Benkő, Zoltán Bicsok, Zsigmond Loránd Bordi, Tamás Csikány, Zoltán Czajlik, Katalin Daczó, Csanád Demeter, István Demeter, Andrea Demjén, Derzsi Júlia, Levente Domokos, Albert Égető, János Fodor, Ibolya Geréb, János Gyöngyössy, Zalán Győrfi, Enikő Hegedűs, Róbert Hermann, Fialová Hilda, András Kovács, Lázár Kuthi, Ferenc Mihály, János Mihály, Attila Mudrák, Gyöngyvér Nagy, József Nagy, Csaba Zoltán Novák, Teréz Oborni, Sándor Oláh, Zsolt Orbán, Sándor Pál-Antal, István Plájás, József S. Sebestyén, András Sófalvi, Károly Szabó, Viktor Szinyei, Szabolcs Barnabás Tóth, István Ughy, György Vajda, Jenő Zepeczaner, Zsolt Zepeczaner for their generosity.

Finally, we would like to thank the directors of museums and archives who recognized the importance of our work and came to our aid. We would also like to thank our colleagues from the public collections, who were kind in responding to the demands of the editors in the shortest time possible. We would like to thank our colleagues, who provided assistance in the organizational and editorial work and in the assembly of the illustrations: Tamás Bélfenyéri (Babeș–Bolyai University), Zoltán Bicsok (Harghita County Department of the National Archives of Romania), Erika Czikkelyné Nagy (National Archives of Hungary), Attila Dimény (Incze László Museum of Guilds’ History), graphic artists Magda Éber, Sándor Ősi and Zsolt Réti (Archaelogical Institute of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Erika Kiss, Lajos Pallos and Csaba Tóth (Hungarian National Museum), Gabriella Kocsis (Historical Institute of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Zsuzsánna Kolumbán (Haáz Rezső Museum), Márton László (Mureș County Department of the National Archives of Romania), János Mihály (Historical Research Group of Székely Blazons, Seals and Flags), Melinda Mitu (National Museum of Transylvanian History), Botond Nagy (Covasna County Department of the National Archives of Romania), Gyöngyvér Nagy (Székely Museum of Ciuc), Erika Oniga (Mureș County Museum), Ágnes Póka (Historical Institute of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Ibolya Sándor-Zsigmond (Molnár István Museum), Enikő Szőcsné Gazda (Székely National Museum).

And last but not least, we would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the city of Odorheiu Secuiesc and mayor Levente Bunta for the generous support without which the publication of this volume would not have been possible.

The editorial committee