MAIOR, PETRU. - Romanian Catholic (Uniate) priest, b. in 1754, the third of the 3 great masters and luminaries (Lucéferi) founders of the Latinist "school" of Transylvania. He did his studies at Blaj and at the Jesuit College of Cluj, then in Rome from 1774 to 1779 and finally in Vienna. Having returned to Transylvania, he was a professor at Blaj and, from 1785, protopope at Reghin. From 1809 he was censor of the Romanian books that were printed in Budapest, where he remained until his death (1821).
He wrote: Istoria pentru inceputul Românilor în Dacia, in which he maintains the total disappearance of the Dacian element of that country after the wars of conquest waged by Trajan, and the continuity in Dacia, during the invasions, of a pure Roman element; in the Istoria bisericii Românilor he demonstrates the Latin origin of Romanian Christianity both north and south of the Danube; with the Ortografia română sau latină valachică, written in Latin, he proves the descent of the Romanian language from Vulgar Latin and contributes to the adoption of the Latin orthography for Romanian. He also collaborated on the Romanian-Latin-Hungarian-German lexicon that appeared in Buda in 1825.
BIRL.: N. Iorga, Istoria literaturii românești, I, III, parte 1ᵃ, 2ᵃ ed., Bucharest 1933, see index; P. V. Hanes, Histoire de la littérature romaine, Paris 1934, see index.
Petre Vălimăreanu