'Sede Vacante Episcopi Armenorum Transsylvaniae.' : The Question of the Armenian Catholic (Uniate) Episcopate in Transylvania in the First Half of the 18th Century

Nagy, Kornél (2025) 'Sede Vacante Episcopi Armenorum Transsylvaniae.' : The Question of the Armenian Catholic (Uniate) Episcopate in Transylvania in the First Half of the 18th Century. In: Polytropos. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (326). Peeters Publishers, Leuven, pp. 71-79. ISBN 9789042953161

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Abstract

The first half of the 18th century is one of the most exciting periods in the history of Transylvania. The wars of liberation to terminate the Ottoman Turkish rule (1686– 1718), the integration of the Transylvanian Principality into the Habsburg Empire, after 150 years of relative independence, brought about significant political and social changes. Prior to these changes, the process of Counter-Reformation in the Hungarian Kingdom’s eastern and north-eastern provinces (like Transylvania) was getting increasingly underway. This paper argues that the problem of the Armenian Catholic (Uniate) Episcopacy in Transylvania should be, in fact, analysed and researched in this churchhistorical context. Because of the religious and political persecutions of secular authorities, Apostolic Armenians escaped from Moldavia and Poland to Transylvania between 1668 and 1672. Their church union with Rome, declared in 1689, was closely related to Bishop Oxendio Virziresco’s (1654–1715) pastoral activity in Transylvania. However, after Bishop Oxendio Virziresco’s death in 1715, the Armenian Catholic Episcopacy remained vacant. Therefore, serious conflicts broke out regarding the vacancy of the Armenians’ Episcopacy and its ecclesiastical jurisdictions between the Armenians and Roman Catholic Bishops in Transylvania. The renovating Roman-Catholic Episcopacy in Transylvania left no stone unturned to integrate the Armenian Catholic Episcopacy into the Roman Catholic Church in dogmatic as well as canonical aspects. Therefore, the main point of this brief study is to shed light on the church-historical background of this conflict, relying upon newly discovered and studied archival sources kept in Budapest, Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Romania), Rome and Vatican City, as well as critically analysing a handful of secondary literature.

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