«Հայերը Տրանսիլվանիայում» - Յուդիտ ՊԱԼ

Judit Pál's article "Armenians in Transylvania" is devoted to the history of the formation and demographic dynamics of the Armenian community of the Transylvanian Principality from the 14th to the 19th century, as well as to an analysis of the causes of its migration, legal status, and ecclesiastical organization.

Introduction and Methodology
The author draws on a broad range of sources — taxpayer censuses, parliamentary decrees, church documents, and reports of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith — which makes it possible to critically test established historiographical myths about the scale of Armenian resettlement.

Causes of Migration
Pál examines the complex of factors that brought Armenians from Moldavia to Transylvania:

religious persecution (the destruction of Armenian churches by Ștefan Rareș, forced conversion to Orthodoxy under later hospodars);
political instability and tax oppression, which led to Armenian participation in the Hâncu uprising of 1671 and the subsequent repressions of Gheorghe Duca;
the shift of trade routes between the Black and Baltic Seas from war-ravaged Moldavia to Transylvania.

The author emphasizes that the mass resettlement of 1672 was merely the peak of a long process that had begun well before that date — Armenian merchants are already recorded in the region as early as the 14th–16th centuries.

Legal and Ecclesiastical Status
Particular attention is paid to the legal conflicts of the Armenian community: the decrees of the Transylvanian parliament of 1600 and 1632, which regulated the trading activities of "outsiders"; the privileges granted by princes of the Apafi dynasty; and the expulsion of Armenians from Bistrița in 1712 under the pretext of an epidemic. A significant portion of the material is devoted to the Catholicization of the community under Bishop Oxendios Virziresco and the subsequent crisis of the Armenian Catholic Church following his death in 1715.

Demographic Evolution
The article's key thesis is a revision of the traditional figure of "3,000 families" said to have arrived in 1672. Pál demonstrates that this figure is a historiographical myth, analogous to the legend of the Hunnic origin of the Székelys, and, on the basis of the censuses of 1696 and 1715–1716, establishes the real Armenian population of Transylvania at 1,600–2,000, at most 3,000 persons (not families). The article goes on to trace the gradual growth of the community throughout the 18th century, driven by natural increase and continuing immigration from Moldavia, Wallachia, and Poland, as recorded in the censuses of Dumbrăveni, Gherla, and Gheorgheni.

Conclusion
The article's key conclusion is that the settlement of Transylvania by Armenians was not a one-time mass resettlement but a long, gradual process stretching from the 14th to the 18th century, whose real scale was considerably more modest than the historical tradition assumes — a finding confirmed by systematic analysis of the fiscal censuses of the period.