Contribuții la istoria unei biblioteci din Oradea. Carte veche din fondul bibliotecii Seminarului Romano-Catolic
Contributions to the History of a Library in Oradea. Old Books from the Library Holdings of the Roman Catholic Seminary

Summary/Abstract: The study of the history of the libraries of church institutions in Romania is a subject that has already entered the broader theme of cultural history for some time. But this segment is still on the thorny road of "deciphering" because, with the establishment of the communist regime, the Romanian state has nationalised the vast majority of archives and libraries that belonged to religious denominations, especially those of the Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church; this nationalisation made these archives and libraries to be destroyed or scattered, in various cultural institutions of the state. In this case, the old library of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oradea was nationalised, copies of these holdings entering the holdings of the Bihor County Library.This study brings an addition to the history of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oradea, more precisely to the history of the library of the Roman Catholic Seminary, an institution that has functioned in Oradea since 1741. The seven copies of old books presented here, kept in the old book holdings of the Bihor County Library, have ownership marks regarding their belonging to this school library. They were used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as teaching manuals by Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic theological students who were preparing to become priests. These books, printed in the first half of the eighteenth century, are theology textbooks and came out in Catholic centres such as Kosice, Trnava, Stuttgart and Augsburg. These works represent a micro-library, which were a part of the library of the Latin Seminary in Oradea, an institution whose book holdings contributed to raising the intellectual and spiritual level of the students. The novelty elements brought to the history of the old book from the north-western area of Romania lie precisely in the discovery of these copies, which through the notes left, bear the "seal" of the library of the Roman Catholic Seminary in Oradea. We are dealing with seven works of theology, in the fields of spiritual theology, biblical theology, church history, saints' lives, canon law and homiletic theology, volumes that, through the manuscript notes on their pages, show their usefulness as textbooks in the formation of Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic alumni in the Latin Seminary in Oradea. Famous authors such as St. Albert the Great (1193-1280) or Johann Bollandi (1596-1665), as well as the titles of the Canons of the Tridentine Council, the New Testament in Greek and the Lives of the Saints in Hungary, reveal the informational wealth assumed by the superiors of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oradea so that the library of its Seminary would have the best tools to form its clergy.

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