«Հերալդիկական ալբոմ Տրանսիլվանիայից» - Յոան ԿԻՆԴՐԻՇ, Անկա Էլիզաբեթա ՏԱՏԱՅ

The article by Ioan Kindriș and Anca Elisabeta Tatay is devoted to the little-studied manuscript of the heraldic album of Zacharia Gabrușan (Zacharias Gabrus) — an Armenian cultural figure of nineteenth-century Transylvania — as well as to the history of his life and legacy in the context of the Armenian community of the town of Gherla (Armenopolis).

Introduction and Historical Context

The authors recall the history of the Armenian presence in Transylvania: the resettlement of Armenians from Moldavia and Bistrița, based on the permission of Prince Mihai Apafi, and the subsequent formation of two centers of the community — Gherla and Dumbrăveni — which received the status of free royal towns with extensive rights of self-governance. Particular emphasis is placed on the uniqueness of Gherla as the only town in seventeenth-century Romania built according to a pre-drawn plan and which has preserved its historical appearance.

The Personality of Zacharia Gabrușan

A separate section of the article is devoted to the biography and multifaceted activity of Gabrușan:

a teacher who over 42 years instructed more than 2,500 children;
a writer, historian, painter, and self-taught sculptor;
the author of the altar of the Church of St. Solomon and a donor for a number of buildings in Gherla;
the creator of the town’s first private library, which included his own manuscripts, among them the treatise «Ագրիք Աստուածային Նախախնամութեան» (“Book of Divine Providence”);
a collector of Armenian books, who contributed to the formation of the next generation of Armenian intellectuals in Transylvania.

The Heraldic Album «Scuta heraldica totius mundi…»

The article’s key contribution concerns the description of a previously unstudied manuscript held in the National Archives of Cluj-Napoca. The authors note:

the manuscript, comprising approximately 300 pages, represents the second issue of the second volume of a work conceived as a four-part edition containing a total of about 2,500 illustrations;
it contains 299 coats of arms and 147 flags of various state entities, both real and imaginary;
the images are executed with high artistic skill, using traditional heraldic hatching to denote the “tinctures” (colors) of the shields;
a number of the coats of arms are accompanied by Latin descriptive inscriptions, demonstrating the author’s professional knowledge of heraldry.

Particular attention is devoted to the coats of arms of Armenia (in four historical variants — Greater, Lesser, New Armenia, and simply Armenia) and of Poland, as well as to the flag of Transylvania, which testifies to the breadth of the compiler’s historical and political horizons.

Conclusion

The authors conclude that, although the album of Zacharia Gabrușan was never printed, it should be regarded as a significant monument of the early Romanian heraldic tradition, placing its author alongside such figures as Francisc Pariz Papai, Gheorghe Asachi, and other students of heraldry active in the territory of present-day Romania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.