Between Lwów and Rome: Armenians in Transylvania and Armenian Catholic Archeparchy of Lwów (1681-1691)

Abstract

In 1988, the renowned Polish-Armenian church historian Gregorio (Grzegorz) Petrowicz published a book in Italian about the history of the Armenian Catholic Archbishopric (1686-1954) in Lwów (Lemberg; now Lviv, Ukraine). In his book, he dedicated a subchapter to the church-union of Armenians in Transylvania in the late 17th century, principally based on the documents kept at the Historical Archive of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) in Rome. At the same time, the scholarship has analyzed this book critically during the past two decades, and unfortunately, his subchapter proved to be very sketchy and poorly elaborated. His argumentations, however, regarding the history of the Armenians in Transylvania were based upon old, obsolete books published in the 19th and 20th centuries. Therefore, my article also deals with this problem from an ecclesiastical-historical perspective concerning the church-union of the Armenians in Transylvania. Furthermore, my study also aims primarily at analyzing the role of the Armenian Catholic Archiepiscopacy in Lwów in creating the process of the church-union of the Armenians in Transylvania in the years 1681- 1691. With regards to the methodology of my article, it is mere critical analysis focusing upon the incomplete as well as newly discovered manuscript sources kept in archives in Armenia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the Vatican.

Keywords

• Lwów
• Rome
• Apostolic Holy See
• Transylvania
• Church-Union
• Catholicism