Transylvanian

The Transylvanian culture represents Romanian-speaking Vlachs inside the Carpathian arc. Whether they descend from the Romanized population of Roman Dacia or later migrants remains debated, but early thirteenth-century charters mention autonomous Vlach districts in southern Transylvania.

Under the Hungarian crown they remained mostly Orthodox peasants. The Union of the Three Nations of 1437 left them outside the privileged estates; the peasant rising at Bobâlna came that year. After Mohács in 1526 Transylvania became an Ottoman-vassal principality, and in 1600 Michael the Brave of Wallachia briefly joined it with Moldavia and Wallachia.

Habsburg armies took the country in the 1680s, and the Orthodox union with Rome of 1698 to 1701 created the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church. Its clergy produced the Transylvanian School, which traced Latin origins and backed the petition of 1791. Horea had led a serf revolt in 1784.