Badea Cârţan

Who was Badea Cârţan?

Badea Cârțan was a self-taught ethnic Romanian shepherd who fought for the independence of the Romanians of Transylvania, distributing Romanian-language books that he secretly brought from Romania to their villages. In all he smuggled some 200,000 books for pupils, priests, teachers and peasants; he used several routes to pass through the Făgăraş Mountains.

He was born in Cârțișoara, present-day Sibiu County, the second child of poor peasants who were former serfs, and he spent his childhood tending sheep at the edge of his village. In between his later brushes with fame, he would always return to this activity. He became the head of his family on 2 October 1865 with the death of his father.

Cârţan first crossed the mountains into the Romanian Old Kingdom with his sheep and a friend at the age of 18, and it was at that time that his interest in Romanian national unity became powerful. In 1877 he enrolled as a volunteer in the Romanian War of Independence, serving until 1881. In 1895 he travelled to Vác and Szeged to visit imprisoned Romanians, including the signatories of the Transylvanian Memorandum. Badea Cârțan himself was arrested twice: once because he asked the Emperor-King Franz Joseph at Vienna for Tranylvania's self-determination, and once because he asked the authorities for permission to sell Romanian books.