Repere bibliofile din colecția protopopilor greco-catolici din Orăștie
Bibliophile Landmarks in the Collection of the Greek-Catholic Deans from Orăștie

Summary/Abstract: A number of 2397 of old and modern books are preserved at the Centre for the Conservation of the Cultural-Ecclesiastical Heritage of the Diocese of Deva and Hunedoara from Orăștie, most of them being Romanian books. Among these, some foreign prints have kept our attention, being the starting point of the current investigation. The samples come from the Romanian Orthodox Parish „Orăștie III”, founded on the core of the ex-residence of the Romanian Deanery United with Rome, Greek-Catholic, Orăștie, disbanded following the decree no. 358/1948. The Register of inventory reveals that, alongside the foreign books, three old Romanian books and two books from Transylvania have been taken from the same collection. The volumes have been printed starting with the 16th century and until the 19th century in the western printing houses of Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Halle, Milan, Paris, Rome, Venice, and Wien, but also in the central and eastern ones, such as Buda, Košice, Pest, Blaj, and Cluj, being written in Latin, Hungarian and Romanian. Concerning the themes, the religious papers are predominant, but we have to highlight the presence of some works on lexicography, ancient history, universal history and Romanians’ history. The investigation of the specimens in the deposit has led to the identification of bookplates, annotations, notes, which bring into attention names of Greek-Catholic clerics and ecclesiastical institutions which once had sheltered a part of those books. We are mentioning the signatures left by Petru Rațiu (1805-1875) and Ioan Bercean (1818-1890), canons of Lugoj, Vasile Erdely (1796-1862), bishop of Oradea, Iuliu Rațiu (1864-1904), dean of Orăștie, Ioan Săbăduș, priest of Pănade, and Petru Paveloniu, cantor at Densuș, as well as the stamp from 1856 of the Greek-Catholic Diocese of Lugoj. By drawing the attention to this bibliophile fund, we intend to restore the 79 foreign and Romanian old and modern books to the scientific circuit, aiming to reconstruct, even if only partially, a still unknown library.

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