More often than not, the State did not acknowledge the matrimonial norms as settled by the Church. This relation seems to have altered towards the end of the 19th century, when the State succeeded in imposing on the Church the respect for the general civil framework. Yet, the change was not radical. The Church and the State were still pretty connected. The State acknowledged the Church's right to be in charge with officiating marriages, with bed and home separation according to the requirements of each confession. However, the State had the right to supervise the civil and military status, the relationship between the spouses, legacy, legal guardianship, the issue of supporting children and spouses and many others. The Church admitted the involvement of the State in major demographic issues in an individual's life. As time went by, the State became more and more complex while its legislation became ever more "lay". It is true that willy-nilly lay legislation borrowed norms and regulations belonging to Church's legislation. The frail State – Church dualism on family law was influenced by lay laws enforcing the lay legitimacy of important moments in man's life. Matrimonial laws as set out in 1894 were the most complex laws in the 19th century. Due to their clarity, they managed to put an end to misunderstandings between lay and Church authorities. Moreover, the matrimonial issues between different confessions were in favour of the State. Civil law very clearly favoured family and children's interests. They were all conceived to better supervise individual's education in a moral family where the Church would still have an influence.
Im Zuge der Josephinischen Reformen kam es im gesamten habsburgischen Herrschaftsbereich zur Umgestaltung kirchlichen Eigentums. Entsprechend wurde bereits 1783 ein dezidiert der Bukowina zugeordneter griechisch-orientalischer Religionsfonds eingerichtet. Über seine wachsende wirtschaftliche und politische Bedeutung entwickelte sich diese Institution bis zu ihrer Auflösung 1949 zu einem die Region maßgeblich prägenden Faktor. ; A comprehensive secularisation process in the course of the Josephinian reforms led to a complete restructuring of church assets. As early as 1783 a Greek-Oriental Religious Fund attributed to the Bukovina was established. Its growing economic and political role made this institution a major factor in the development of the region. It kept this important position until its eventual dissolution in the course of socialist restructuring of Romania in 1949.
After the peace of Karlovitz, the Mureş River became the official border between the two great empires: the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empire. In this context was organized the military border Tisa-Mureş, and the first called to defend the region were the Serbs, recognized for their military skills. The authorities created the first militarized localities in the county of Arad simultaneously with the first arrival of Serb immigrants in this region. Their presence in the city of Arad and other settlements located on the right bank of the Mureş River changed the ethnic proportions in these areas. The situation modified after Banat was conquered by Austrians and after the abolishment of the Tisa-Mureş military border. Most Serbs emigrated to the south of Mureş River and even in Russia, their share in the city and county of Arad decreasing significantly after the mid eighteenth century.
The article is an account of Romanian Marxist discourse between 1970 and 1980, one that was completely engaged in the justification and legitimation of the contemporary totalitarian political regime. Radu Florian's works, one of the most representative authors of this decade, are analysed via the conceptual lenses of Austrian economic theory. This methodological approach is quite fertile, since it generates clear explanations why Marxist theory and the communist state incarnating its teachings could not and cannot implement their claims. The samples of Romanian Marxist discourse under scrutiny are a showcase of philosophy invaded by rhetorics and converted into ideology. The author concludes that Romanian Marxism in the designated period represents a long line of contradictions resulting from the attempt to adapt a cruel reality to a generous and humane self-construction of a political programme.
Our study, as we intend it, upon the vulnerability when confronted with death and death rate is structured as a research which is closed to classical historical demography but without neglecting the particularities and individualities of this phenomenon. We are interested both in the general tendencies and in the specific ones. This being our intention, we will try to catch both the phenomenon of regional mortality and the event of death in the many families we have studied during this research work. The profound economic crisis of this period in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy together with the epidemics (we have in view especially the 1872-1873 cholera and its prolongation) exercise a strong demographic pressure that brings to our attention mainly the vulnerability of these communities. Towards the end of the analyzed period we can notice a certain decrease in the rate of mortality in the two counties, values that are close to the average ones in the counties of Transylvania. These tendencies may be caused by the remarkable progress in the field of medical assistance, progress that indicates more and more rare strong zones of high mortality. The diminishing of the death rate in the two counties was due to a clear progress recorded by the urban communities of Oradea and Satu Mare.
The historical-demographic approach of family in their relationship with society with different transitory societal or community typologies is a complex initiative that needs a methodological approach including peripheral elements as well, besides a deep analysis on the central defining elements. The historical demography and other sciences, such as anthropology or history of mentalities, by directly or collaterally approaching the family, often make references to the three important moments in the individual's life: birth, marriage and death. We have used several categories of documentary sources in our survey. We have the information on the population in north-western Romania due to the ecclesiastic notes (in the parish records or reports and the bishopric notes); on the other hand, we have the information provided by the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian state. Methodologically, the first phase of our research consisted of the preparation of the documents investigation strategy, as expected. In our research, we consider the fact that we approach the area of ecclesiastic entities, as most of our sources for the 19th century belong to the church. This imposes a stress on the confession and its importance. Besides confession, an aspect that we wish to underline is ethnicity. In our investigation on the family the main stress was laid on the survey and analysis of different marital behaviours. Through different constraints and determinisms entailed by the possibility to choose, marriage is highly relevant in establishing behavioural laws (if they ever existed!?). The dimension of the marital market corroborated with the ethno-confessional and socio-professional realities provided the particularities of the marital phenomenon. Referring to the lay and ecclesiastic legal framework, we support the need for a flexible approach of the topic. The logic of this foray consists of the visualisation of the legal framework – rigid and impregnated with an obvious moralising discourse – on the one hand, and the image of conformism and means of adaptation of the individual, on the other hand. The starting point of the family is marriage. If we approach marriage from the point of view of the confessional and ethnic conditioning, we get to an analysis of the mixed marriages phenomenon. In fact, the analysis of the ethno-confessional and socio-professional determinisms and of other types of community or individual conditions can be easily carried out in the case of mixed marriages. The central point of our research is the analysis of Romanians', Hungarians', and Germans' marital behaviours without ignoring the image of this phenomenon at other populations in the area. An analysis on birth and death rate, or natural growth, is able to provide information on the impact demographic phenomena had upon family. A world where death rate was very high and where family would react through a high birth rate was undoubtedly influenced by the demographic flow. Irrespective of the society typology, divorce, concubinage, and illegitimacy (no matter their way of manifestation) were forms of social deviance leading to the dilution of family image and precepts. We do not discuss here a dilution of the traditional precepts on the family, as someone might misunderstand; it is an erosion of the idea of family in general. The "family" began to acquire other forms than the "official" ones. From the relationship of the family with the community were born mentalities, roles and social statuses. The family, its formation, the relationships between man, woman, children and relatives, as well as the relationships with the rest of the community were filtered by the "village gossip". The need for a strong solidarity that was necessary in the unfriendly conditions at the time compelled the individuals to accept the cohabitation with other members of the family (including the extended one) and with the rest of the community.
