Petru Maior

Petru Maior

Petru Maior (* 1754 in Târgu Mureş ; † February 2, 1821 in Buda ) was a Romanian theologian, historian, Romance scholar and lexicographer of the Transylvanian School .

life and work

Maior was ordained a priest in 1774. He studied in Rome until 1779 and in Vienna from 1779 to 1780, where he met Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Şincai . From 1780 to 1785 he taught in Blaj . Then he was pastor, then archpriest in Gurghiu . Micu was one of the authors of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum of 1791, in which (in vain) the political equality of the Transylvanian Romanians was demanded. In 1809 he went to Buda to the university printing press (as the successor to Samuil Micu) to supervise the printing of the Romanian texts until his death.

Maior belonged to the Transylvanian School , which combined historical research on the origin of the Romanians with language description and language planning of Romanian . He wrote writings on the Romanian language and was the chief editor of the Buda Dictionary (1825). He wrote on Romanian history and church history. Many of his books and abandoned manuscripts have recently been republished.

Numerous streets and institutions in Romania bear his name, first and foremost in Târgu Mureș the University of Petru Maior .

Works (selection)

• Protopopadichia , 1795; Clusium 1997; ed. by Laura Stanciu, Alba Iulia 1998
• Didahii , Adecă învăţături pentru creşterea fiilor, la îngropăciunea pruncilor morţi, Budapest 1809; ed. by Laura Stanciu, Cluj-Napoca 2011 (with an English summary)
• Istoria pentru începutul românilor în Dachia , Buda 1812 (therein: Disertaţie pentru începutul limbei româneşti); ed. by Florea Fugariu, 2 vols., Bucharest 1970–1971; Iassi 1990
• Istoria besericei românilor , Buda 1813; ed. by Ioan Chindriʂ, Bucharest 1995
• Ortographia romana sive latino-valachica , Buda 1819
• Lesicon romănescu-lătinescu-ungurescu-nemţescu quare de mai mulţi autori, în cursul a trideci, şi mai multoru ani s'au lucrat seu Lexicon valachico-latino-hungarico-germanicum, quod a pluribus electorate 18 a trigoribus decursatum ( Dictionary of Buda )
• Scrisori și documente inedite , ed. by Nicolae Albu, Bucharest 1968
• Scrieri , ed. by Florea Fugariu, 2 vols., Bucharest 1976
• (with Samuil Micu and Gheorghe Şincai ) Despre vechimea si continuitatea românilor , ed. by Dan Horia Mazilu and Anatol Ghermanschi, Bucharest 1989 (anthology)
• Scripta minora: Ars literaria. Animadversiones. Epistolarium. Ultimae , ed. by Ioan Chindriș, Bucharest 1995

literature

• Mario Ruffini: La scuola latinista romena 1780–1871. Studio storico-filologico , Rome 1941
• Maria Protase: Petru Maior. Un ctitor de conștiințe , Bucharest 1973
• Paul Miron: Romanian Lexicography . In: Dictionaries. Dictionaries. Dictionnaires. An international handbook on lexicography , second part, ed. by Franz Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand and Ladislav Zgusta, Berlin. New York 1990, pp. 1880–1891 (here: p. 1883)
• Jens Lüdtke : Diachronic Romance Linguistics and Linguistic Historiography . In: Lexicon of Romance Linguistics , I.1, Tübingen 2001, pp. 1–35 (here: pp. 23–24)

Web links

Commons : Petru Maior  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files