Cărțile Școlii Ardelene din biblioteca Mănăstirii Sinaia
The Books of the Transylvanian School Currently at Sinaia Monastery Library

Summary/Abstract: The Sinaia Monastery, which Spatharus Mihai Cantacuzino built in the Bucegi Mountains, has an old library enriched with printings from the monasteries that became parishes in Prahova, Dâmbovița and Vâlcea Counties, in the 19th century. The Board of Civil Hospitals, which managed the assets of the Sinaia Monastery and many other monasteries and churches, had founded a museum in Sinaia, in 1892, which then merged with the monastery library. We currently hold over 340 old books, of which 202 are Romanian, 104 Greek, 30 Slavonic and Slavo-Romanian, 10 French and a few are Germano-Latin, Italo-Latin and Greco-German (dictionaries and grammars). The oldest book in the library is a Greek New Testament printed in Leipzig in 1564. The oldest Romanian printed book is Îndreptarea Legii (The Amendment of the Law), 1652, and the Greek books are mostly from Venice, many of them from the 17th century. There also are 58 manuscripts dating only from the 18th century onwards (because the Board of Civil Hospitals gave the older ones to the Academy in 1887), described by Protos Mihail Harbuzaru and Dragoș Șesan in Catalogul manuscriselor Mănăstirii Sinaia (Catalogue of Sinaia Monastery Manuscripts), Bucharest, Basilica, 2017. Among the old books existing here, there are quite a few printed by the coryphaei of the Transylvanian School: two copies of the Bible of Blaj in 1795, translated by Hieromonk Samuil Micu; Retorica (Rhetoric), Buda, 1798, by Ioan Piuariu-Molnar; Istoria pentru începutul românilor în Dachia (History of the Beginnings of Romanians in Dacia), by Petru Maior, Buda, 1812, and so on.

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