1. Literature on the founding of the new schools is fairly abundant in Serbian, less so in German and Magyar. I have used, among others, Dimitrije Kirilović, Srpske osnovne skole u Vojvodini u 18. veku (Sremski Karlovci, 1929) ; Vasa Stajić, Grada sa kultumu istoriju Novog Soda (Novi Sad, 1951) ; Andrija Ognjanović, Graničarske narodne škole i njihovi ucitelji na teritoriji Vojvodine od 1774 do 1872 godine (Novi Sad, 1964); Mita Kostic, Grof Koler kao kulturtwprosvetni reformator kod Srba u Ugarskoj u XVIII veku (Belgrade, 1932) ; and Petar, Despotovic, Istorija pedagogike (Belgrade, 1926)Google Scholar. See also Helfert, J. A. von, Die osterreichische Volksschule, vol. 1 (Prague, 1860)Google Scholar ; Strakosch-Grassmann, Gustav, Geschichte des österreichischen Unterrichtswesens (Vienna, 1905)Google Scholar ; Hans Wolf, Das Schulwesen des Temesvarer Banats im 18. Jahrhundert (Baden bei Wien, 1935) ; Felix Milleker, Geschichte des Schulwesens in der Banater Militar-Grense 1764-1878 (Vrsac, 1939); Gerson, Wolf, Das Unterrichtswesen in Osterreich unter Kaiser Joseph II (Vienna, 1880)Google Scholar ; and Gunther, Rothenberg, The Military Border in Croatia, 1740-1881 (Chicago, 1966)Google Scholar. There is a great mass of periodical literature in the various annals and journals of the Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, and the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade. Archives used in preparing this article were the Finanz-Archiv (formerly Hofkammer- archiv) in Vienna (hereafter HKA), the Voivodina Arhiv in Sremski Karlovci (hereafter VA), and the Patriarsija Arhiv, also in Sremski Karlovci (hereafter MPA). Extensive use was made of the libraries of the Matica Srpska in Novi Sad and the University in Belgrade, as well as the collections of the Pedagoski Musej of Serbia. I am indebted to numerous persons in these institutions for their assistance, particularly Professor Mita Kostic, member of the Serbian Academy and formerly director of the Historical Institute in Belgrade.

2. Descriptions of these schools are found in Kirilović, Despotović, and the various works of Radoslav Grujid and Dimitrije Ruvarac, among others.

3. Both the Serbian and Rumanian populations in Hungary preceded the Habsburg era. The Serbs in the mid-eighteenth century were concentrated in the southern and south-central segments, being divided among three political administrations : the Grenzen (Confines) under direct military control of the Hofkriegsrat; the counties of Hungary; and the province of the Banat under the Hofkammer (Imperial Treasury). The majority were located in the Banat and in the Croatian-Slavonian and Banat Military Confines. In the latter they constituted an absolute majority of the population, whereas they were outnumbered by the Rumanians, Germans, and others in the Banat province, and were a small minority in the counties. By the terms of the Leopoldine Privileges granted the Serbian immigrants in 1690-91, the metropolitan's authority extended over all Orthodox inhabitants of Hungary regardless of nationality; his seven suffragan bishops (located in Buda, Pacrac, Karlovac, Temesvar, Vrsac, Novi Sad, and Arad) were always Serb nationals.

4. A sort of way station between the written language and the vernacular, called Slavoserb (slavenosrpski), was generally used in daily correspondence and business among the Serbs, employing a great many individual variants and practically without grammatical or orthographical rules. The rare examples of secular Rumanian were in even more confused shape. A major result—not entirely intended—of the institution of a school system was a gradual reformation of both languages to make them approximate more closely the oral usage.

5. See Kosta, Petrovic, Istorija karlovacke gimnasije (Novi Sad, 1951), pp. 3–24 Google Scholar.

6. See Radonid, Jovan and Kostid, Mita, Srpske privilegije od 1690 to 1792 (Belgrade, 1954)Google Scholar.

7. Unlike the Rumanians, of whom perhaps as much as one-fifth were Uniats in the later eighteenth century, the Serbs had proved nearly invulnerable to the Court's efforts, and had sometimes violently resisted proselytization. For a contemporary view see the informative and balanced report of the Serbian Hofdeputation's secretary, Taube, Friedrich Wilhelm von, Historische und geographische Beschreibung des Konigreiches Slavonien und des Hersogthumes Syrmien, vols. 1 and 2 (Leipzig, 1777)Google Scholar.

8. The best analysis of the Hofdeputation's creation and activity remains the work of Johann, Schwicker, Politische Geschichte der Serben in Ungarn (Buda, 1880)Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., pp. 277 ff., for an analysis with extensive summary of the ten chapters of the Regulation.

10. The Cyrillic press was installed during 1770-71 in the already existing German and Latin printing house of the Kurzbeck family. A summary of its early activity can be found in Aleksa Ivic, “Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte des serbischen Volkes : Josef Kurzbeck und die Errichtung einer serbischen Buchdruckerei,” in Archiv filr Slavische Philologie, 29, no. 4 (1908). The first Cyrillic book was published in 1771.

11. Lazarini's proposals for the needs of the Banat schools are given in HKA, Banat Akten, fasc. 79, no. 44 (July 1769).

12. Through the first years of the school reforms, and on occasion later, the affairs of the Orthodox population required the review of a special Gemischte-Hofkommission, composed of delegates from the Hofstellen named above. Its vota were then taken to the empress, who made the final decisions. Opposing points of view between the Serbian Hofdeputation and the Hungarian Hofkanzlei were frequent, with the monarch generally supporting the Hofdeputation until 1777.

13. Roller's role in Serbian affairs is described in Kostic, Grof Koler.

14. Lazarini seems to have overplayed his hand in asking repeatedly for permanent appointment and a higher salary. HKA, Banat, fasc. 32 (1770-71), nos. 48, 59.

15. The definitive prohibition on book imports seems to have been issued in September 1770. Hofkriegsrats Akten, nos. 38, 116/1770.

16. A complete account of Felbiger's work in the Monarchy through 1780 can be found in Helfert, , Die osterreichische Volksschule, vol. 1 Google Scholar, passim.

17. Teodor Jankovic von Mirievski (Sremski Kamenici, 1740-St. Petersburg, 1814) completed the Novi Sad “Latin School” (i.e., gymnasium) and the Vienna university course in Staatswissenschaft and law. He was the most distinguished Serbian educator of the later eighteenth century. In 1782, at the invitation of Catherine II, he left the Austrian Monarchy to begin work at the Russian Court on Catherine's abortive school reforms of the mid-eighties. He stayed in Russia for the rest of his life, promoting education there until the French Wars put an end to his official activity.

18. The Regulae were the result of an extensive inquiry into the state of the Orthodox schools initiated in 1770 by the Hofdeputation and carried out by the Temesvar authorities during 1771. HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 112/1771. They were drafted in 1773 and issued in early 1774. HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 15/1774.

19. Extensive material on the instructions to the imperial commissar, Baron Mathesen, and the deliberations of the Synod are found in HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 17/1774, and especially in the 1774 documents of the MPA in Sremski Karlovci, under the rubric “Synod.“

20. The question of the application of the Felbiger pedagogy in its entirety to the Serbs is well treated in Wolf, , Das Schulwesen, pp. 74 ffGoogle Scholar.

21. Jankovid reported 183 existing Orthodox schools in the Banat as of 1776, which would indicate almost a doubling of their number since 1771. HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 41/1776.

22. Ratio educationis totiusque Rei Litterariae per Regnum Hungarian et Provincias eidetn adnexas, drafted by members of the Hungarian Hofkanzlei from Felbiger's work, was issued in 1777 and served, with alterations in the nineties, as the general ordinance for all schools in the kingdom until 1806.

23. “Schul-Ordnung fur die illyrische, nicht-unierte Trivialschulen in dem Temescher Banat,” HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 47/1776.

24. Wolf, , Das Schulwesen, p. 99 Google Scholar, believes that the Court was not interested in enforcing the administrative regulations calling for Orthodox clerical participation in the Temesvar School Commission and the bishops’ rights of visitation (“es liegt keine einzige Nachricht vor, dass ein Administrationsrat jemals eine Reise zu Schulbesuche gemacht hatte“).

25. Vujanovski (?1743-Osijek, 1825) made his seat in Osijek and from there directed the activities of from one to two hundred schools located in the Croatian- Slavonian Military Confines and Civil Croatia. Mrazovid (Sombor, 1756-Sombor, 1826) worked mainly from his birthplace supervising an almost equal number of schools, most of them attended by Rumanians. Both men continued in service until their forced retirement in 1810, after the reorganization of Orthodox schooling carried out by Uros Nestorovid. They both contributed substantially to the texts being turned out on the Kurzbeck press, and Mrazovid was considered a scholar of some repute during his lifetime.

26. The difficulties between the school directors and the Orthodox clergy are frequently reflected in the MPA documents, under the rubrics “Schulsachen” and “Schulwesen.“ Vujanovski particularly was often under fire from the clergy for insufficient attention to Orthodox interests during the eighties and nineties. (Examples are found in MPA, fund A, nos. 65/1790 and 94/1809.)

27. The numbers of extant schools at various times from 1771 to the end of the century are given by Wolf, , Das Schulwesen, p. 40 Google Scholar and passim. These are based on the annual report filed by the Orthodox school directors from 1776 onward, and on the statistical surveys of Demian and others in the first decade of the nineteenth century. In 1781 Jankovid reported a total of 452 Orthodox Trivialschulen in the former Banat, a very large increase over the 183 of 1776. In the district supervised by Vujanovski and Mrazovic at this time the figures are less easily determinable, but certainly numbered in the 300-odd range by 1780, also a very substantial increase over four years earlier. In the Military Confines almost all of the primary schools were “Simultanschulen, “ that is, open to all confessions, with separate religious instruction by the Pfarrer or the pop.

28. The original was entitled “Nothwendiges Handbuch fur den Gebrauch der Schullehrer in den deutschen Trivial-Schulen” (Vienna, 1774). It was based on a series of other publications by the abbot relevant to his experiences in training teachers for the Catholic schools of Prussia.

29. An interesting and clear description of this methodology will be found in Ognjanovic, Granicarske narodne skole, pp. 17 ff. Uniformity in instruction and texts was considered of very great importance for success by both Felbiger and the Study Commission.

30. Wolf, , Das Schulwesen, pp. 93 ffGoogle Scholar. Keess felt that the Buchstobenmethode might have some use as a mnemonic device, but that it “neither sharpens the reasoning faculty, nor makes the curriculum more comprehensible, nor widens the students’ horizons.” The tables were useless, because they were meant for a logical analysis of knowledge, but the courses of the Orthodox primary schools “contain no such logically analytical material.“

31. HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 41/1776, contains Jankovic's “Bemerkungen” on the Felbiger system.

32. Staatsrat Akten, no. 2570/1776, cited by Wolf, , Das Schulwesen, p. 226 Google Scholar.

33. A critique of the tables, remarking that they were already obsolete in German schools where the system had been introduced by Friedrich Hahn in the 1750s, is given in the final chapter of Helfert, , Die osterreichische Volksschule, vol. 1 Google Scholar.

34. Among the early graduates of the Normal Courses in Sombor were the distinguished Serbian playwright Joakim Vujid, the poet and translator Aleksije Vezelid, and the later bishop of Buda, Platon Atanaskovic. Kostantin Kostid, Is istorije ucitelj'ske skole u Somboru (Novi Sad, 1938), gives the history and development of the Serbian normal institutions in Hungary.

35. The bishop of Tetnesvar and later (1781-90) metropolitan, Moises Putnik, was an exception to this general rule. Most of the Serbian hierarchs, notably in Pacrac, Vrsac, and Karlovac dioceses where Catholic pressures were particularly strong because of the mixed-confessional population, were not very enthusiastic about the new schools, and did little to encourage them of their own volition.

36. Cases are on record in which the annual cash remuneration was under 20 florins. As a comparison, School Director Jankovic's salary in the early eighties was 600 florins (plus expenses), and the lower ranks of the civil bureaucracy received anywhere from 200 to 350 florins annually.

37. Again, the documents of the MPA contain complaints of both schoolmasters and parishes about the laziness and poor moral character of some village schoolteachers, on the one hand, and the long delays or refusal to fulfill salary contracts by the communities, on the other. Teachers who had not been able to obtain certification were often able to find refuge in a particularly low-paying community, for want of a better alternative on both sides.

38. The handling of these funds was the subject of some dispute between the Metropolitanate and the Court agencies. Parts of the Regulations of 1770 and 1777 were aimed at obtaining a more exact accounting of the source and disposal of the church monies, as it had been the habit of various metropolitans and bishops to make loans for their own ends out of the National Fund, often without security.

39. Ungarische Hofkanzlei, no. 4424/1786.

40. Wolf, , Das Schuhvesen, p. 111 Google Scholar.

41. A complete listing of the Kurzbeck (and other) works is found in Georgije, Mihailovid, Srpska bibliografija XVIII veka (Belgrade, 1964)Google Scholar. The Russian catechisms were eventually replaced with one by Jovan Rajic, commissioned by the Hofdeputation in 1774 and printed in 1776.

42. Sekeres (Gy6r, 1740-Vienna, 1794) later converted to Catholicism, which damaged his standing among the Serbs, as did his role in substituting certain passages in the German-language version of the Rajic catechism to conform more to the Catholic theology. On him, see Mita, Kostic, Grof Koler, pp. 66 ffGoogle Scholar., and also his “Dositejev prijatelj i savetnik Sekeres,” in the Glas of the Serbian Academy, 256 (1963) : 25.

43. The relevant regulation is contained in HKA, Banat, fasc. 32, no. 41/1778.

44. The immediate occasion for the empress's decision was the riotous disturbances which had taken place in Vrsac and Novi Sad against some of the announced provisions of the Regulation of 1777. There existed a long history of conflict between the Hofdeputation and the Hungarian Hofkanzlei regarding the best means of dealing with the Serbs’ demands for a freer hand in educational and church affairs. When the optimistic prognoses of the Hofdeputation concerning the salutary effect of the Regulation proved false, the monarch decided that Serbian affairs would best be handled by the Hofkanzlei and the Hofkriegsrat. On this see Schwicker, , Politische Geschichte, pp. 324–32Google Scholar.

45. Ungarische Hofkanzlei Akten, no. 5830/1781, cited by Wolf, , Das Schulwesen, p. 147 Google Scholar.

46. Ibid, pp. 185 ff.

47. A documentary account of Mrazovic's difficulties in receiving his salary for the previous five years of service in the Banat is given in Aleksa, Ivic, Grada o jugoslovenskim knjisevnim i kulturnim radnicima (Belgrade, 1956), 5 : 141 Google Scholar ff.

48. Report on arithmetic in Serb schools : Ungarische Hofkanzlei Akten, no. 10, 465/1786. Mrazovid's Bericht to the Hofkanzlei in 1789 shows fewer schools operating in the Banat than in 1778. A good deal of the blame for this decline can be given to the wartime conditions in southern Hungary.