MAIOR, PETRU. - Romanian Catholic (United) priest, b. in 1754, the third of the 3 great masters and luminaries (Lucifers) who founded the Latinist “school” of Transylvania. He studied 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 Romanian books printed in Budapest, where he remained until his death (1821).
He wrote: Istoria pentru inceputul Românilor în Dacia, in which he maintains the complete disappearance of the Dacian element in that country after Trajan’s wars of conquest, 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 seeks to prove the descent of the Romanian language from Vulgar Latin and contributes to the adoption of Latin orthography for Romanian. He also collaborated on the Romanian-Latin-Hungarian-German lexicon published at Buda in 1825.
BIRL.: N. Iorga, Istoria literaturii românești, I, III, part 1ᵃ, 2ᵃ ed., Bucarest 1933, V. indice; P. V. PHARES, Histoire de la littérature romaine, Parigi 1934, V. indice. Petre Vălimăreanu