Muzeul bisericesc din Sărmaş: Cartea veche românească – arma românilor ardeleni
Sărmaş Church Museum: The old Romanian book - the weapon of the Transylvanian Romanians

The old book

Summary/Abstract: The religious museum from Sărmaş was opened in 15th of August 1997 and it contains a lot of ancient books and icons. Unfortunatelly, in June 2002 some of those „jewells” have been stolen, only some of them being recovered. However, it stores a lot of national goods which are very important for our culture.Haşdeu used to say that the book was the most important weapon of Transylvanian people, the sword and the gun being on the second place. Indeed, the book was the only way of keping the ancient traditions, ancient culture and, more than that, for keeping the national language. Romanian ancient books could be found during centuries in almost all churches; they were used as base for religious services, but also as textbooks for priests.The diffusion of books was encouraged by the heads of orthodox church and by voivodes. With their moral and financial support, a lot of religious books have been published and send in almost all places. More than that, they succeded sometimes in convincing the young priests to buy at least a book for their personal use.The inscriptions from the books are very interesting; in almost all cases we find out who has sold the book, who bought it and why, and the price. More than that, we may fiind informations about the book has traveled through. Sometimes, those inscriptions give us informations about the priests that own them or even about the curses, who’s purpose was to prevent the books loss or disappearance.

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