The deacon who printed a language

Years

1557 – 1558

Road on the map

100 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature book

The Little Octoechos (1557)

On 12 June 1557, in a Brașov workshop, the first sheet of an Orthodox book goes under a Transylvanian press: the Little Octoechos, the eight tones of the Resurrection chants, set in the worn type Dimitrie Ljubavić had cast at Târgoviște. Coresi prints it beside Oprea the logothete, on the order of the town judge, Johannes Benkner.

The run takes seven months: begun on 12 June, finished on 14 January, in the year 7065 from the Creation. The great initials go down in red, the body in black, on paper made in Brașov town, watermarked crown and root. Four arabesque frontispieces, each crowned with a cross, open the tones.

The epilogue names three thrones, Isabella and her young son in Transylvania, Pătrașcu in Wallachia, Alexandru in Moldavia, because the book is meant for Romanians in all three lands. Then the prince calls, and Coresi goes back to Târgoviște, where with ten apprentices he prints a Triodion-Pentecostarion rich in woodcuts, finished in 1558.

Why Brașov at all? The town has the better presses, Honterus has run the first Transylvanian press since 1533, a paper mill that makes enough paper for print, and Saxon money willing to pay for books. Benkner himself will order from Coresi, in Slavonic and in Romanian, until his death in 1565.

“S-au început aceste cărţi în luna lui iunie în 12 zile; s-au sfârşit în luna lui ianuarie 14 zile, în oraşul Braşov.”

Epilogue of the 1557 Octoechos, via Oltean 2013

Meanwhile: Meanwhile: in 1556 the Transylvanian Diet dissolves the Catholic bishopric of Alba, and a Romanian bishopric rises at Geoagiu.

Years

1559 – 1570

Road on the map

set in one town

Signature book

The Four Gospels (1561)

Two years later the press pulls a wet sheet no one has seen before: the Four Gospels in Romanian, Brașov, 1561. The colophon says at whose word it was written, “cu zisa jupânului Haneşă Bégneru”, and by whose hands: “eu diaconu Coresi ot Trăgovişte şi Tudor diiacu”. Bibliographers number it BRV I, 10: 246 leaves, 24 lines to the page.

It is not the first Romanian book. That honour belongs to a lost book: the Sibiu Catechism of 1544, entered in the town protocols under Magister Philippus Pictor and never seen since. Coresi's own Question, the Întrebare creștinească of 11 thin leaves, 1559 by the old bibliography and 1560 by the new, is the oldest Romanian printing you can still open.

The shelf fills through the 1560s: the Apostol of 1563, 308 leaves; the Gloss on the Gospels with its prayer book, 1564, ordered in Romanian by the Hungarian nobleman Forró Miklós; each signed, dated, and argued over ever since. Benkner dies in 1565; after 1569 Coresi prints at his own choice, a printer turned publisher.

Then 1570, the pair: the Psalter and the Missal, both in Romanian, both done by 1 September, the Missal set between 1 June and 15 July. The prince himself takes “un livret”; the priests are summoned to Cluj for 18 January 1571 to buy it at 32 deniers, against the Psalter's florin. One copy of the Missal survives, found in the Șchei church, kept at Sibiu since 1953.

The Psalter's preface states the whole program in a single breath: seeing that nearly every tongue has God's word in its own language, and the Romanians have it not, “numai noi Rumânii n'avămu”, he wrote them these Psalters. Print it side by side with the Slavonic, as the 1577 Psalter does, and no priest can call the Romanian book heretical.

“Cu mila lu Dumnezeu eu diaconu Coresi, déca văzuiu că mai toate limbile au cuvântulu lu Dumnezeu în limba lor, numai noi Rumânii n'avămu...”

Preface of the 1570 Psalter, BRV I, 16, via CIMEC

Meanwhile: Meanwhile: at Zabludov, in 1569, the homiliary comes off the press that will model his own of 1581.

Years

1577 – 1583

Road on the map

300 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature book

The Sebeș Sbornic (1580)

In 1580 the press travels: at Sebeș, by order of Metropolitan Ghenadie of Transylvania, Coresi the deacon sets the bulkiest book of his life, the Sbornic, 467 leaves in folio, woodcuts and all. No thicker Coresi book exists; four copies are recorded, two at the Academy, one at the National Library, one at the Brukenthal.

Home at Brașov, the judge Lucas Hirscher pays for the last great Romanian book: the Teaching Gospel of 1581, 317 leaves in folio, translated with the priests Iane and Mihai of St Nicholas in Șchei from the Slavonic copy Hirscher had begged from Metropolitan Serafim. Nine copies are recorded, the best kept of all his books.

The last dated book is a Slavonic Gospel Book of 1583, set with Mănăilă; no copy is recorded at home, only a defective one at Hilandar, on Mount Athos. The deacon dies at Brașov the same year.

What remains can be counted, and the count is honest only if it says what it counts: the figures below are copies described in the collective catalogue around 2000, 60 in the catalogue of the books, not every survival, and never the print runs, which no source records. Open the shelves:

“Din porunca prea sfinţitului mitropolit al Ardealului Kir Ghenadie, m'am ostenit cu acéstă scriere eu păcătosul şi ticălosul ce me numesc între omeni Coresi diaconul.”

Colophon of the 1580 Sbornic, BRV I, 28, via CIMEC

Meanwhile: Meanwhile: at Orăștie, in 1582, the Palia appears, five recorded copies of another Romanian Old Testament, from another press.