Baia Mare - locul unde n-a mai ajuns să rezideze un episcop greco-catolic acum 150 de ani
Baia Mare-the place where a Greek-Catholic bishop did not come to reside 150 years ago

Summary/Abstract: Summary: Baia Mare-the place where a Greek-Catholic bishop did not come to reside 150 years ago In the history of the creation of the Greek-Catholic Bishopric of Gherla (Armenopolis), one comes across threads which link the founding moment to the events taking place in the Carpathian regions of the Habsburg Monarchy, in mid nineteenth century, but also to the entire prehistory of the efforts meant to achieve the ecclesiastical organization of the Romanians of Transylvania and Hungary. From the possible avenues of approach to this complicated subject, I have chosen here the one which has led finally to a failure, although this has not made it a secondary one, for the simple fact that, up to a certain point, it could be identified with the series of attempts to found a Uniate Bishopric in the northern parts of the episcopate of Alba Iulia and Făgăraş and, respectively in the southern regions of the Eparchy of Muncaci. Following the story of how the town of Baia Mare did not come to be a diocesan residence in the middle of the nineteenth century, the present study insists, first on the idea that the territories which would become the Greek-Catholic Bishopric of Cluj-Gherla have had, starting with the Middle Ages a distinctive physiognomy and destiny, from the point of view of the ecclesiastical organization of the Romanians from the Hungarian kingdom. The article goes on to inventory and analyze the projects which have aimed to establish a Uniate diocese on the border between Transylvania and Hungary, beginning with the one advanced by the Basilian Josaphat Bastasic in 1775. Supported, for more than half a century by the Greek-Catholic environment of Oradea (for the first time in 1790), the idea of creating a Uniate diocese, with a residence at Baia Mare has to be attributed to the programmatic efforts of the local bishops, promoted through an ideological discourse, with national overtones, attempting to withdraw the Romanians from the diocese of Muncaci from foreign jurisdiction and to place them under the supervision of their own higher clergy. They have initiated this policy, besides other possible reasons, also from a desire to witness the creation of a new Romanian Greek-Catholic diocese in that part of the Habsburg Monarchy in which their eparchy functioned: Hungary. The plan had to contend with the sensitivities of the Romanian Greek-Catholic clergy of Transylvania and the careful strategies deployed at bureaucratic level. After the development of events until the autumn of 1850 (when the “Gherla solution” was suggested for the first time) the Romanian Uniate Metropolitan province was meant to be composed of three dioceses having their residence outside Transylvania (Oradea, Lugoj and Baia Mare) and just one (Alba Iulia-Făgăraş) situated in the principality itself.

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