Authors

Anca Elisabeta Tatay¹; Cornel Tatai-Baltă²;  ¹ Romanian Academy Library, Cluj-Napoca, Romania;  ² "1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia, Romania

Discussion

At the end of the 17^th century, Transylvania (nowadays in Romania) came under the administration of the Habsburg Empire, with governors appointed from Vienna. In this new context, around 1700, some of the Orthodox Transylvanian Romanians united with the Church of Rome in the hope of obtaining social, political, economic and cultural rights. The newly-established Greek Catholic Church (something similar had happened in the Ukrainians more than 100 years earlier) needed institutions to support it. There was an acute shortage of books, and the Greek Catholics initially used Orthodox worship books printed behind the Carpathians (Wallachia and Moldovia). Dissatisfied with this aspect, because it jeopardized the religious union, Empress Maria Theresa established a printing house for the Greek-Catholic Romanians in Blaj in 1747, (the town where Inochentie Micu had established his bishopric residence in 1737). By the end of the 18^th century in Blaj there were about 100 titles, ecclesiastical books and ritual ones, school textbooks, most of them adorned with wood engravings. The gifted engravers Vlaicu, Ioanitiu Endreti, Sandul Tipograf, Petru Papavici Râmniceanu, Dimitrie Finta, and others who remained anonymous are the ones to whom we owe the iconographic program of these books. The themes dealt with are exclusively religious, some are inspired by reality (Blaj Cathedral, the Panorama of Blaj with the Cathedral), and others illustrate the context of the book (John Damaschin for the Octoih, David for the Psaltire, scenes from the Week of the Passion for the Penticoastar, etc). A careful examination of these woodcuts, as well as of those engravings from the neighbouring or Western European areas, has revealed certain German influences via Ukrainian channels. Thus, one may notice the influence of the Baroque, but also of the Renaissance and even of late Gothic. The opening of systematic schools in Blaj in 1754, together with the activity of the printing press, contributed to the promotion of the Enlightenment ideas of the time in Transylvania. In the years that followed, thanks to its institutions, Blaj formed people who were able to contribute to the creation of the modern Romanian state (that occurred in 1918).