Beyond the Master Narrative: Literate Practices of the Transylvanian Saxons (1350-1550)

University of Helsinki, Finland, 12 November 2025

On 12 November 2025, the University of Helsinki — a partner institution in the RESTORY – Recovering Past Stories for the Future project — will host the lecture “Beyond the Master Narrative: Literate Practices of the Transylvanian Saxons (1350–1550)”, delivered by Dr. Adinel C. Dincă, Associate Professor at Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania) and leader of the Horizon Europe project RESTORY.

Rethinking the story of medieval literacy

The lecture invites participants to reconsider the traditional “Master Narrative” of medieval literacy — a view largely shaped by Western European experiences centred on cathedrals, universities, monastic schools, and aristocratic courts. This dominant model equates literacy with scholarly or devotional refinement but often overlooks the pragmatic, community-based writing practices that animated much of Late Medieval Europe.

Focusing on the Transylvanian Saxons — an autonomous network of towns and villages within the Kingdom of Hungary — Professor Dincă highlights a distinct trajectory of literate development. In this region, literacy thrived without the traditional institutional frameworks of the West. Towns functioned as centres of mobility and communication, spreading urban culture deep into the countryside through local priests, clerics, and notaries who carried both linguistic skill and administrative knowledge across settlements.

Here, writing served governance, commerce, and moral cohesion rather than purely personal devotion or academic display. These literate practices reveal a vibrant culture of documentation and exchange that sustained community life and identity.

A broader view of literacy

By exploring this case, the lecture challenges the West-centric paradigm of medieval learning and broadens the understanding of literacy as a constellation of localised practices — dynamic, adaptive, and deeply rooted in the social and institutional diversity of medieval Europe.

The event continues RESTORY’s mission to shed light on how small communities across Europe shaped and transmitted their knowledge, values, and heritage — offering new insights into the many ways the past continues to inform cultural resilience today.