Horvat, Irina Liuba: Icoane din colecţia Muzeului Judeţean Satu Mare (Satu Mare, 2014)
Introduction
In this period the Greek Catholic Church goes through difficult times. First she is not equal rights (only formal) as the other churches (Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran), not having the same privileges (doc. 7). Churches have a hard time getting the lands that they are entitled by law, and only through the courtesy of the owners, important nobles, towns and cities. For example on September 3, 1751 the townfolks of Viskovoand Tiacevo donate land to the Greek Catholic churches in the two cities for the church and cemeteries, (doc. 23). The abusive collecting continues against the revenue of Greek Catholic churches, failure to respect the Greek Catholic religious holidays, resulting in the issuance of a document, on March 16, 1752, by the Locumtenential Board, an order on liberty of Greek Catholic religion, respecting the religious holidays and agreement of right revenues, (doc. 30) In this decade the bishop Olsavszky M. continued his efforts to strengthen its authority by the subordination of the monks basiliteni from the monastery of St. Nicholas in Mukachevo (doc. 2 and 6) and alos by strating the process of canonization of the Diocese of Mukachevo, although the official responses, following the intervention of the Bishop of Eger, they were always negative (doc. 13 and 14). To be noted that Olsavszky acted for this purpose including in Rome, where he had an paid agent in the person of Charles Coeuelines, a distinguished author of a papal documents collection relating to the period 1450 - 1746 (doc. 12, 15, 19). Many of the documents prove the concern of M. Olsavszky for the establishment of schools (doc. 63 and 118), supporting the establishment of publishing office at Carei and Mukacevo (doc. 40, 60, 63, 96), the Bishop contributing with 400 florins for the publishing office of Carei. There is a concern of both the bishop and the central authorities to stop the entry of the Orthodox book in the Diocese of Mukachevo. Several documents mention the entry of the books in Russia (doc. 57, 96). There is an extremely important document, namely a canonical visitation of the district Slovenske in October 13, 1754 which record books from the parishes (doc. 39). One can easily notice that the vast majority of religious books came from the publishers of Lvov, Vilna, Pociaev and Uniev, where publishing offices were operating under the influence of Greek Catholics of the Kingdom of Poland, not missing any books from the Orthodox environment: Kiev (most) Moscow and even Novgorod10 . There haven’t been found documents for this period about books coming from the Romanian countries, for the Romanian parishes of Satmar, Ugocea, Maramureş and Szabolcs. Probably because of the fact that the publishment office of Blaj had begun a reach production full and the book of Blaj arrived at Satmar and Maramureş: The Amazing of 1753 has been preserved in 5 copies, the Liturgikon of 1756 (4 copies) etc.100 101 Extremely many documents refer to the appointment of priests, at deanery gatherings districts, in tax collection due to the bishop (cathedraticum), the division of subsidies, the appointment of deans or vicars etc. (doc., 16, 41, 46, 52, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 82, 83, 87, 90, 92, 100). There are also documents relating to the Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania, such as Inochentie Micu Klein's letter from 1752 (doc.32), the oath of allegiance to the Pope Benedict XIV by Bishop Petre Paul Aron in 1754 (doc. 38). But the largest amount of documents refer to the action of Sophronie from Cioara, there are at least 100 documents related to this matter, largely unique. This movement, called by 100One by one publishing offices appear in Moscow (1564), Vilnius (1525), Lvov (1574), Novgorod (1675), Uniev. In Polond in the sixteenth century cf. Russkoe Knigo peciatnie do 1917 Goda 1564 - 1917, Moskova, 1964, p. 18, 33,66,85,221. 101Elena Bărnuţiu, Cartea românească veche în colecţii sătmărene, Satu Mare, 1998, p. 328-330. 24
