A 17th-Century Armenian Catholic (Uniate) Breviary at Eastern Collection in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Generally, the libraries have keeping very few old-published Armenian books or codices in Hungary. The small-sized-17th Armenian Catholic Breviary (Cisaran, Kargaworut’iwn) is an exception, which has proved the rule. At present, this Breviary is being kept at the Oriental Collection in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary. According to the contemporaneous Armenian land Latin handwritings in this Breviary, the scholarship was able to follow closely behind its real fate. This ecclesiastical book was published at about the mid-17th century at the-called Polyglotta’s press in the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide), the Institute of the Roman Catholic Missions at the Holy Apostolic See in Rome. At the last third of the 17th century, the Breviary was brought by Polish-born Armenian Uniate priests from Rome to Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine) in Poland. The Breviary in the 1720’s or in 1730’s got to the hand of Stefan Stefanowicz Roszka (1670−1739), Armenian Uniate Prelate in Stanisławów, when he was sent to Transylvania as an Apostolic Visitor in order to the control the Armenians’ daily religious life in Transylvania at the behest of the Holy Apostolic See in 1728. The Unaite Prelate brought this Breviary to the Armenian Uniate Holy Trinity Parish in Szamosújvár (Gherla, Armenopolis) as a gift. In this manner, this Breviary was kept at the Library of the Armenian Catholic Parish in Szamosújvár till the end of the Wold War II. Later on, the Breviary arrived at the National Library of Széchényi in Budapest in the late 1940’s, but, as some decades passed, it was delivered to the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the 1960’s or in 1970’s. Therefore, in this brief article, we have attempted to investigate the past of this Breviary from church-historical point of view. Further on, this writing has aimed at summarising the historical backgrounds of the Armenian colonies in Poland and Transylvania in the late 17th and the early 18th centuries. Finally, this study has been focused upon the implementation of the church-unions with Rome and the birth of the Armenian Catholic Church, resting upon the partly discovered and entirely undiscovered sources as well as analysing critically secondary literature.