Transylvanian Prints in the Collections of the Bucharest Metropolitan Library (16th-17th Centuries)

Abstract

There are several hundred old Romanian and foreign books in the Bucharest Metropolitan Library collections, especially in “Nicolaus Olahus” heritage repository of “Octavian Goga” Cultural Centre. Among the copies of old books, there are also ten volumes of the so-called Transylvanian book - transylvanica -, works printed in Transylvania or abroad yet having Transylvanian authors and/or about Transylvania. The ten identified volumes in the collection were printed in four typographical centres, Zürich, Amsterdam [Rouen], Venice and Sibiu, between 1546 and 1793. The list of works includes Johannes Honterus, Rudimenta cosmographica (Tiguri [Zürich], 1546) and Wolfgang Bethlen, Historia de rebus Transsylvanicis, vol. I-VI (Sibiu, 1782-1793). Even if the number of Transylvanian volumes is small in comparison with the foreign and Romanian prints, interest in them is justified by the novelty of the collection, the copies in the Metropolitan Library being unknown in specialised bibliographies.