20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

54 Elena Chiaburushipping of the books. The books were transported and sold through the oldtrade house’s own people and means 4 .Hagi Constantin Pop had contacted Iosif, the Bishop of Argeş, backin 1793 to persuade him to reprint the Minee of Rîmnic, either in Sibiu,or in some other press outside Wallachia. The trader asked the Bishop tointervene on his behalf, so that Wallachia’s Metropolitan would allow theMinee to also be sold on the other side of the mountains. Even back then,Bishop Iosif had one condition – the edition would have two versions: oneset of books was to be sold in Transylvania and other regions, while acertain number of copies, with the title page stating that they were printedby Wallachia’s Mitropoly and “bearing the Mitropoly’s seal”, were tobe sold in Wallachia 5 . This matter reemerged in July 1795, when BishopIosif promised to offer a reviewed edition of the Minee of Rîmnic to beprinted in Ioan Barth’s press, on the condition that “the name of Sibiu’spress should not be printed, as the Romanians might suspect that these areGerman books” 6 . In November 1801, Iosif advised Constantin Pop thatprinting the Minee in Sibiu could prove to be difficult, and that editingsome Antologhioane (shortened Minee) might be a more plausible idea. Inthe end, Iosif gave up printing the Antologhioane (that were printed in Iaşiby Veniamin Costachi in 1806), and Constantin Pop established an estimatefor the Minee lunovnice. According to this estimate, the printing costs for1000 copies of 1120 pages each would have risen to 1 centime per sheet,meaning 18 florins or 40 lei, not including the Orlat paper, which cost 9.20florins or 14 lei for 2½ quires, taking the total cost of a copy to 28 florinsor 57 lei 7 . Iosif was not able to reprint the Minee until 1804-1805, in Buda,under the conditions he had agreed upon with Hagi Constantin Pop: twosets of copies – one for Transylvania and another for Wallachia.The Minee were distributed according to the contract that Ioan PiuariuMolnar and Procopie Vasile Canusi, a trader from Wallachia, establishedin Sibiu, on July 27 th 1807: "meaning that I, who signs bellow, give myletter to him, chir Procopie Vasilie Canusi, to prove that on this day I havesold him one hundred and fifty 12-month Minee, of which fifty copies areunbound and one hundred copies are bound. The price we have settled forthe fifty unbound ones is of eighty German florins per copy , which4Constantin A. Stoide, Comerţul cu cărţi dintre Transilvania, Moldova şi ŢaraRomânească între 1750 şi 1830, Iaşi: "Demiurg" Press, 75.5Ibidem, 37.6N. Iorga 1906, Contribuţii la istoria literaturii române în veacul al XVIII-lea. I:Scriitori bisericeşti, in Anal. Acad. Rom., Mem. Secţ. Lit., Seria II, tom. XXVIII, 206-207.7Constantin A. Stoide, Comerţul cu cărţi, 72.