In 1988, the renowned Polish-Armenian church historian Gregorio (Grzegorz) Petrowicz
published a book in Italian about the history of the Armenian Catholic Archbishopric
(1686-1954) in Lwów (Lemberg; now Lviv, Ukraine). In his book, he dedicated a subchapter
to the church-union of Armenians in Transylvania in the late 17th century, principally
based on the documents kept at the Historical Archive of the Sacred Congregation for
the Propagation of Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) in Rome. At the same
time, the scholarship has analyzed this book critically during the past two decades,
and unfortunately, his subchapter proved to be very sketchy and poorly elaborated.
His argumentations, however, regarding the history of the Armenians in Transylvania
were based upon old, obsolete books published in the 19th and 20th centuries. Therefore,
my article also deals with this problem from an ecclesiastical-historical perspective
concerning the church- -union of the Armenians in Transylvania. Furthermore, my study
also aims primarily at analyzing the role of the Armenian Catholic Archiepiscopacy
in Lwów in creating the process of the church-union of the Armenians in Transylvania
in the years 1681- 1691. With regards to the methodology of my article, it is mere
critical analysis focusing upon the incomplete as well as newly discovered manuscript
sources kept in archives in Armenia, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the Vatican.
