State and Governance in the Principality of Transylvania

Oborni, Teréz (2013) State and Governance in the Principality of Transylvania. Hungarian Studies, 27 (2). pp. 313-324. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

This study offers a brief survey of the Transylvanian state and the administrative structure of the Principality of Transylvania. First, it reveals the changes taking place in the operation of the Transylvanian diet after the fall of Buda (1541) — this authority developed from a partial diet into a general assembly. The formula used until 1690 by the assembly of the Transylvanian estates for naming itself had settled by the mid-16th century: states and orders of the three nations of Transylvania and of the Joined Parts of Hungary (status et ordines trium nationum regni Transylvaniae Partiumque Hungariae eidem annexarum). The author describes the unique legal status of the new state, the Principality of Transylvania as a “dual dependence”. On the one hand, as a vassal state, the Transylvanian state depended upon the Ottoman Empire, and on the other, in theory, it remained part of the Kingdom of Hungary — as was proclaimed in several public or secret agreements between the princes and the kings. The study shows how the estates could practice their right of free election of the prince and the difficulties of the method, it also discusses the peculiarities of the division of power between the estates and the prince, and it considers the union (treaty of alliance) of the Transylvanian estates as the constitution of the new state.

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