Transylvanian School

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The Transylvanian School (Şcoala Ardeleană in Romanian) was a cultural movement which was founded after part of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Habsburg-ruled Transylvania accepted the leadership of the Pope and became the Greek-Catholic Church (ca.1700). The links with Rome brought to the Romanian Tranylvanians the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment. The Transylvanian School's major centres were in the cities of Blaj, Oradea, Lugoj and Beiuş.

Its members were the first Romanians that contemplated the origin of Romanians from a scientific point of view, bringing historical and philological arguments in favour of the thesis that the Transylvanian Romanians were the direct descendants of the Roman colonists brought in Dacia after its conquest in early 2nd century AD. (A theory which was further promoted during the nationalistic period of the comunist regine.)

The Transylvanian School had a notable impact in the Romanian culture of both Transylvania, but also of the Romanians living across the Carpathians, in Wallachia and Moldavia, leading to the National awakening of Romania.

The Transylvanian School created the current phonetic system of the Romanian alphabet based on the Latin alphabet, largely derived from the Italian and the French alphabets. This replaced the use of the medieval Romanian Cyrillic alphabetas well as the previously Latin alphabet based phonetic system which had been based on the Hungarian alphabet. Another notable contribution of the Transylvanian School was the usage of the first French and Italian neologisms.