Augustin Bunea

Augustin Bunea (August 4, 1857–November 30, 1909) was an Austro-Hungarian ethnic Romanian historian and priest within the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church.

Biography Origins and role in Blaj Bunea was born in Vad, a village in the Țara Făgărașului region of Transylvania, then part of the Austrian Empire. He attended primary school from 1864 to 1870, there and in nearby Ohaba. He went to a gymnasium in Brașov until the spring of 1877, when he was briefly transferred to Blaj. While in Brașov, he and classmate Andrei Bârseanu edited a magazine by hand; it was called Conversațiuni. Jurnal literar. In the magazine, Bunea published 97 folk poems he had gathered around his native village, accompanied by commentaries that showed familiarity with the relevant literature. In autumn 1877, he began studying philosophy and theology on scholarship at Rome's Pontifical Urban University. Ordained a priest in 1881, he obtained a doctorate in theology the following year.

After returning to Blaj, the spiritual center of his church, Bunea was assigned to a number of posts within the hierarchy, from metropolitan's adviser and secretary under Ioan Vancea to scholastic and custodial canon under Victor Mihaly de Apșa. He was involved in organizing confessional education at Blaj and across the Făgăraș and Alba Iulia Archdiocese. At Blaj, he taught religion and dogmatic theology within both the gymnasium and the seminar, briefly serving as prefect of studies. From 1900 to 1903, he was archdiocesan commissioner for the examinations given by certain church schools in Blaj. He was a founding member of the Greek-Catholic teachers' association, and served as inspector for the archdiocese's village schools.

Bunea became a member of Astra in 1886. In September 1900, he was elected a corresponding member of its historical section. He was among the collaborators on the organization's Enciclopedia română project, signing around fifty articles that covered some sixty pages. These mainly dealt with important figures in the church's past, but also touched on internal administration, the history of Blaj and Romanian monasteries in Transylvania. The author later drew on the articles for other historiographical works.

Legacy During Bunea's lifetime, biographical data about him appeared in the 1898 first volume of Enciclopedia României and in three other sources, from 1899, 1900 and 1908. An article commemorating 30 years since his death appeared in the Cluj-based Tribuna in 1939. In 1940 and 1941, texts about him appeared in the book Dascălii Blajului, in Convorbiri Literare and in the Blaj high school yearbook. Subsequently, under the early years of the communist regime which banned the church, Romanian historiography fell silent about him.

His study of Micu-Klein, which also touched on Petru Pavel Aron and Dionisije Novaković, delved into the problems of the 18th century's first half, reconstructing the facts based on numerous sources collected from Transylvanian and foreign archives. It appears that Bunea began preparation as early as 1894, when he received several copies of documents from the Vienna imperial court's archive. The book demonstrates thorough research on the social, political and cultural history of the Romanians in that era. Later exegeses by Pâclișanu, I. Tóth Zoltán and David Prodan used it as a basis for further research into contemporary Romanian life in Transylvania.

Church historian and polemicist The 1902 Istoria românilor transilvăneni de la 1751 până la 1764 is similarly ample in depth. The preface speaks of the author's purpose: to advance the community's national development and to present his own concept of history. It deals with the figure of Aron; the question of Romanian religious movements, which is allocated considerable space; the organization of his church and of the Romanian Orthodox Church; the founding and development of Blaj's schools; the history of Transylvanian monasteries; the evolution of printing among the province's Romanians; and the political, economic and social situation of the peasantry. He pinpoints two important processes that took place in the history of Transylvanian Romanians during the period analyzed: their confessional disunity and the founding of the Blaj schools. While he opined that the first was in the interests of their neighboring political adversaries, he saw the second as elevating Micu-Klein above all other Romanians of the period. The book is based mainly on unpublished documents gathered from institutional archives in Blaj, Sibiu, Făgăraș, Vienna, Budapest and Rome, as well as from a few private individuals in Transylvania and the Romanian Old Kingdom. Some 250 documents were reproduced in the footnotes and appendices. He also used texts published by Timotei Cipariu, Iorga and Sterie Stinghe. During the interwar period, the topics broached by Bunea were taken up by the Cluj historical school. The latter work, a response to Vechile episcopii românesci, attempted to demonstrate the existence of a Romanian Orthodox metropolis in medieval Transylvania. Bunea, analyzing the church's institutional organization, reiterated that there was no documentary evidence of such an organization. The book displays a biting critique of Păcățian's way of writing history. It also elucidates his theory and approach to the practice: his knowledge of Latin, Hungarian and German allowed Bunea to use valuable historical information in order to complete what he found in Romanian sources, and to broaden his horizon when understanding the historical facts of the region. This made him an authority in debates on ecclesiastical history the western part of the Romanian-speaking lands. The second book, also a polemic, was the 1906 Mitropolitul Sava Brancovici. In his previous work, Bunea had already presented data about the life and activity of Sava Branković. The new text featured a detailed analysis of a book with the same title by Vasile Mangra and reached contrasting conclusions about Branković's place in church history. As with Păcățian, Bunea questioned Mangra's competence as a historian.

Late contributions Bunea's final studies, which have to do with medieval Romanian history, were left incomplete at the time of his death. At the Romanian Academy's request, they were published posthumously as Stăpânii Țării Oltului, which he had prepared as his maiden speech to the Academy; and Încercare de istoria Românilor până la 1382. He chose to analyze the historic importance of Țara Oltului (another name for Țara Făgărașului) because of its role in the origins of the foundation of Wallachia and the consolidation of the Romanian element through longstanding ties with the latter region. The theme also had an emotional resonance: as Bianu inferred, it represented "the country of his parents and his birth". The work comprises a succinct political history of the area from the 9th through the 18th centuries, describing its status and leaders, specifying the political implications of leadership for each of them. He insistently draws upon the document collections of Hurmuzachi; and among Hungarian historians, he prefers Karácsonyi, Frigyes Pesty and Gyula Pauler. An abundantly documented work, its bibliography features over 80 titles in Romanian, Hungarian, German and Latin; there are 225 footnotes, some shorter, others lengthy.

As to Încercare de istoria...., the manuscript was analyzed by Onciul at the Academy's request. He found that the contents mainly dealt with church history and, tangentially, with political history and ethnography. Although it remained unfinished, Onciul recommended publication, both in order to make Bunea's findings known and as an homage. He also began a vast work about the Romanian regiments in the Transylvanian Military Frontier. Although he did not live to complete it, he did gather rich material on the subject. His archive includes numerous documents, both copies and originals, in Latin, Hungarian and German, about the border regiments.