There are serious arguments that the New Testament of 1648, the „Psaltirea” of 1651 and other works of these years were printed at the princely printing house in Alba Iulia and not in the typography of the Orthodox Metropolitan, where the first volume printed was „Ceaslovețul” in 1687, but only after the princely printing ceased to function.Īfter the Habsburgs took Transylvania and encouraged the union with the Church of Rome (Greek Catholicism), the Orthodox Metropolitan of Alba Iulia turned into a Greek Catholic Church. But, the newer historians are skeptical about the functioning of this printing house in the mid-seventeenth century. In those years, the metropolitan archdiocese was St. Another well-known volume that would have been printed here was „Psaltirea” back in 1651. Among other things, it is generally considered that here, the New Testament from Balgrad was printed in 1648, for the first time in Romanian. In the 17th century the metropolitan complex included: the cathedral built on the initiative of Michael the Brave, an older church, as well as the printing house building. Alba Iulia became the capital of Orthodoxy through the existence of this metropolitan of Transylvania, a status that it maintained throughout the seventeenth century.

According to some sources, the body of Michael the Brave was buried in his metropolitan church Alba Iulia, after being exhumed from Campia Turzii sometime after August 1601.įor the Orthodox Romanians in Transylvania, the existence of the Metropolitan was a great step forward. Having the Holy Trinity and Saint „Silvan the Athonite” as the patron of the church, „Michael the Brave” Memorial Church was built on the site of the old metropolitan cathedral, which was founded by Michael the Brave in 1597.

Brave church trinity