The story of printing in Alba Iulia began with the arrival of the Polish printer Raphael Hoffhalter/Skrzetuski in the year 1567, when the city was capital of the Principality of Transylvania. In 1677, eight years after Hoffhalter’s press had closed, a scribe called Lorinț, who had worked as a Romanian printer with Coresi in Brașov, opened a short-lived printing press. The golden age of Alba Iulia book printing activity was in the seventeenth century, when two printing shops were active: those of the prince and the Orthodox metropolitan. The last episode of local printing shops ended with the printing activity of Bishop Batthyáni, at the end of the eighteenth century.
Alba Iulia became capital of the Transylvanian Principality and underwent a period of economic and urban development in the age of European Renaissance. The princely court imported European models of living and organisation and supported them for a century and a half. The princes and their councillors invited various European academics, artists, literati, doctors, architects and professors to the region. They and others made Alba Iulia a lively and multicultural city.
Europe in that age was suffering many upheavals due to the Catholic Reformation and then to the Counterreformation. These movements nurtured religious polemics which were mediated by the written and printed word. In 1567, Raphael Hoffhalter found a favourable place for his business in Alba Iulia and opened the city’s first printing press. By that time, printing was no longer a novelty in Western Europe: it had been around for more than one hundred years (having first appeared in Germany around 1445, and then spread rapidly throughout Europe).
The story of the first printer in Alba Iulia began with an invitation from Prince John Sigismund, around 1566. Raphael Hoffhalter/Skrzetuski was a Pole who had worked in Vienna, Zürich (his wife was Swiss), Debrecen and Oradea. He was a Calvinist, and under the direction of the Calvinist superintendents, he became John Sigismund’s court printer. Arriving in Alba Iulia, Hoffhalter added the city’s name to the growing network of printing presses, making it the fifth printing centre in the areas inhabited by Romanians, after Târgoviște (1508), Sibiu (1525), Brașov (1539) and Cluj (1550). Hoffhalter was unable to develop his business further in Alba Iulia, as he died in 1568.
He was a supporter of Reformation and a friend of the Protestant printer Gál Huszár and the printer and writer Peter Bornemisza, whose works were published in on his press. The first book Hoffhalter published in Alba Iulia was Refutatio Scripti Petri Melii (1567), by the Unitarian Francis David. He subsequently published several other books, mostly of religious polemics.
As was common in European printing at the time, his business was continued by his widow. We know this from the title page of a book produced after his death, where the text “Albae Iuliae, vidua Raphaelis Hoffhalteri” appears, indicating that his widow now ran the press. Later, it was taken over by Master Gregorius Wagner, the factor of the printing office. In 1569, the printing shop in Alba Iulia ceased doing business, marking the start of more than half a century’s hiatus in the Latin alphabet. In the two years it was active, from 1567 to 1569, the press produced twenty books in the Latin alphabet, in the Latin and Hungarian languages.
As printing was a liberal profession, in the second half of sixteenth century the scribe Lorinț, who appears to have lived in Alba Iulia from 1577 to 1580, attempted to develop a business in this city. He had learned printing with Romanian printers in Brașov led by Deacon Coresi, and had printed several books for Romanians in Slavonic, of which only a couple are still extant today. Lorinț acquired a privilege from Prince Stephen Báthory which allowed him to print in Alba Iulia for thirty years. However, after three years, there is no evidence of his presence in the city.
In 1623, 55 years after Hoffhalter’s press closed, and when Alba Iulia was at its height as a cosmopolitan capital, the cultivated and ambitious Prince Gabriel Bethlen (who ruled from 1613 to 1629), founder of the university rank academy, personally ordered the necessary equipment for a printing press from the territory of today’s Slovakia. The prince’s press began printing in 1623, under the formula “Typis Principis”, serving the needs of professors and producing handbooks for students. It supported economic, political and cultural developments in the region until 1655, by printing regulations, laws and various handbooks – more than 140 titles in total. Professors Basirius, Alstedius, and Bisterfeld, who had been invited to teach in Alba Iulia’s academy, brought the spirit of pre-Enlightenment Europe to the Principality’s capital through their books, which contributed to the education of many generations of students. Publications originating from Alba Iulia include Catechisms for Children written by Fogarasi and Medgyesi, and Jan Amos Comenius’ Janua linguae Latinae reserata.
The cultural advancement of Romanians was administered by the Orthodox Metropolitan Seat from Alba Iulia, assisted by the princes of Transylvania. The princely printing press was endowed with sets of Cyrillic letters necessary for printing Romanian language books. To provide the books needed by the Romanian Church, the first Romanian translation of the New Testament (1648) was printed in Alba Iulia. Its translation and publication were authorised by the Transylvanian Princes George Rákoczi I (reigned 1630-1648) and George Rákoczi II (reigned 1648-1660), along with an edition of the Psalms (1651). The Orthodox Metropolitan of Bălgrad (Alba Iulia), Simion Ștefan, contributed to both volumes. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Alba Iulia’s press published several prayer books, including Molitvenicul (1689) (for prayers used in the Orthodox Church); Chiriacodromion (1699) (a book of Sunday gospels), and the first Romanian primer Bucoavna (1699). This was achieved with the assistance of Constantin Brâncoveanu, Prince of Wallachia (1688-1714), who sent Mihai Iștvanovici – an apprentice of Antim Ivireanul (a printer of Georgian origin and later prelate of the Orthodox Church in Wallachia) – to Alba Iulia to work at the press.
With the installation of Habsburg domination in Transylvania in 1690s, printing activity in Alba Iulia ended. The last publication printed here was a catechism for children, Pâinea pruncilor [Children’s bread] (1792), a book influenced by the Catholic confession of the Habsburgs. The historiography debates the hypothesis of a continuation of this printing press after 1747, in the Uniate Greek Catholic Bishopric in Blaj.
The final episode of printing in Alba Iulia unfolded at the end of eighteenth century, with the foundation of Bishop Ignatius Batthyáni’s printing press. He printed cultic books, some authored by himself, under the formula “Typis Episcopalibus”, and there are also some hints that he intended to print Bibles
At least four printing presses operated in Alba Iulia over the period of about two-and-a-half centuries. They all served the needs of the four confessions in Transylvania: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Greek Catholic. The printing presses operated for political, educational and religious purposes, mirroring the elevated status of the city as the capital of the Principality of Transylvania. (E.M.)
