{"id":166,"date":"2025-09-15T16:50:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/?p=166"},"modified":"2025-09-15T16:50:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:50:05","slug":"early-printing-in-the-three-romanian-principalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/abstracts\/early-printing-in-the-three-romanian-principalities\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Printing in the Three Romanian Principalities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hermina G.B. Anghelescu (School of Information Sciences, Wayne State University Detroit, United States of America)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Romania\u2019s current territory consists of three major historical regions\u2014Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania\u2014with unique and, at the same time, intertwined social, political, economic, and cultural development.\u00a0 The unification of the historical provinces occurred only after World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles (1919) recognized the union under the name of Romania.\u00a0 Beginning in the late 15th century, Wallachia and Moldavia gradually came under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, while Transylvania fell under the occupation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.\u00a0 The two dominant powers have left significant marks on each region\u2019s culture, education, religion, and language.<\/p>\n

Early printing in Wallachia began in T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te, the province\u2019s capital, around 1508, with Hieromonk Makarije as a leading figure.\u00a0 The first books printed were in Church Slavonic, like the Liturgy Book (Liturghierul) and the Oktoih (1510).\u00a0 Wallachia became a significant center for printing Orthodox books, particularly in the context of the Ottoman Empire rule.<\/p>\n

In Transylvania, the first printing house was established in Sibiu (called Hermannstadt at the time) in 1525, with Lucas Trapoldner’s typography.\u00a0 This is the first printing press in Transylvania and the second one in Romania\u2019s present territory.\u00a0 The first book printed in Sibiu was the Latin Grammar by Thomas Gemmarius, in 1529.\u00a0 The first Romanian language book, the Romanian Catechism, was printed in Sibiu in 1544 by Filip Moldoveanu.\u00a0 In 1534, Johannes Honterus established his printing press in Bra\u0219ov, the county seat in Transylvania, called Kronstadt at the time.\u00a0 Around 1550, the current Cluj-Napoca (Klauseburg at the time) became another important printing center in Transylvania.<\/p>\n

In the province of Moldavia there has been a large number of manuscripts (the schools of calligraphy from monasteries such as Neam\u021b, Putna and Dragomirna are to be noted), hence the necessity of typography occurred later than in the other two Romanian provinces.\u00a0 In the beginning, the printed book imitated the manuscripts both in the shape of letters and illustrations, frontispieces, initials, and vignettes.\u00a0 The foundation of the first typography in Ia\u0219i, Moldavia\u2019s capital, at the Three Hierarchs Monastery (1642), was the work of ruler Vasile Lupu and of Metropolitan priest Petru Movil\u0103.\u00a0 The first book printed in Ia\u0219i in 1643 was the Romanian Book of Teachings (Cazania sau Carte rom\u00e2neasc\u0103 de \u00eenv\u0103\u021b\u0103tur\u0103), written by Metropolitan Varlaam, also known as Varlaam\u2019s Book (Cazania lui Varlaam).<\/p>\n

The printing press was introduced in the Wallachia and Moldavia at a time when Church Slavonic served as the liturgical and administrative language.\u00a0 Both Slavonic and the vernacular language, Romanian, employed the Cyrillic script.\u00a0 Slavonic was the language of the first printed books, especially liturgical books, which formed the majority of printed works during the first two centuries of printing.\u00a0 Much of the print output in Transylvania was in Hungarian and Latin, but there was also significant printing in German, mostly for the German-speaking Saxon population of urban Transylvania.<\/p>\n

The paper will feature significant printers and their works and will compare and contrast the evolution of printing in the three territories that later constituted modern Romania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hermina G.B. Anghelescu (School of Information Sciences, Wayne State University Detroit, United States of America) Romania\u2019s current territory consists of three major historical regions\u2014Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania\u2014with unique and, at the same time, intertwined social, political, economic, and cultural development.\u00a0 The unification of the historical provinces occurred only after World War I, when the Treaty…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abstracts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/konferencijos.lnb.lt\/acutus-et-argutus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}