Culoarea în lumea clerului unit transilvănean în secolul al XVIII-lea
The colour in the world of the Transylvanian Greek-Catholic clergy of the 18th century

Summary/Abstract: Within this study we attempt to offer an answer to the question: how coloured was the world of the Transylvanian Greek-Catholic clergy during the 18th century? The world of the clergy elite was not one without colour, whether we refer to the inner space (habitat) or to the public one (the church), to the daily time or to the liturgical one. The parsimony of the sources makes it difficult to establish an evolution or certain hierarchies of the colours specific to the liturgical vestments and to the Episcopal clothing along the century. Even less we can now the nuances and the combinations between them. However, through their material and colour, the vestments expressed the opinion of their bearers with respect to their status and their Christian/religious life models which they intended to impose to those who they were shepherding. The daily and liturgical clothes of the hierarchs had the power of example in a world of priests who, because of their poverty or negligence, omitted to wear the distinctive proper vestments. Not even in the eighth decade, a decade when liturgical vestments were missing in many churches, the long priestly coat was widespread. Through the materials they wore and the shining of the liturgical vestments, the bishops not only expressed their hierarchic position, but they could also be pictured as an example for the shepherded ones regarding their presentation within the public, secular, and ecclesiastical spaces.

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