012012 - Prešovská univerzita v Prešove

Baán István
From the perspective of religious affiliation the town of Miskolc
constituted a Protestant bloc in northeastern Hungary at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. The number of Catholics only increased near the end of
the century, and even then their membership barely amounted to a small
religious minority. During the course of the century the religious panorama
of the town came to be expanded by two groups, the “Greek Orthodox”
and the “Greek Catholics”, whose members had originated in the same
faith but by this time formed separate religious communities. Their role in
the life of the town was a function of their social and economic situation,
which also sharply separated the Greeks and the Ruthenians from each
other. Both of their names, “Greek” and “Ruthenian,” reflect eighteenthcentury
usage. The Greeks were of Macedo-Romanian, Wallachian-
Romanian, or Romanian origins, who used their mother tongue at home
but employed the Greek language in their religious services and schools.
Meanwhile the Ruthenians conversed with each other in their own dialect
and used Church Slavonic in their liturgy. From the beginning the Greeks
engaged in significant economic and commercial activities; and their capital
played a significant part in the urbanization of Miskolc’s inhabitants. The
Ruthenians occupied a much lower rank on the social scale. Above all they
earned a their living as servants, day laborers and handworkers.
The Emergence of the Non-Uniate Greek Parish
We still do not know exactly when Greeks first appeared at Miskolc.
Some have placed the beginning of their settlement at the end of the
seventeenth century, while others argue for the early years of the eighteenth
century. 1 As a religious group they were a mere curiosity in the town; and
up to now hardly anyone has examined their congregation. 2 This relative
neglect has also resulted from the circumstance that their documents
were written in Macedonian Greek, which has made the research rather
difficult. The registers of their births contain many interesting details, and
by employing this source we can begin to draw up the development of this
1 L. Marjalaki Kiss, „Görög kolónia Miskolcon a 18. században” [A Greek Colony at Miskolc
during the Eighteenth Century] Borsodi Szemle (1960): 548-551; P. Holopcev,
“A miskolci görögkeleti népesség számának változásai” [Changes in the Numbers of
Eastern Orthodox Greeks at Miskolc], in Miskolc a millecentenárium évében [Miskolc in
the Year of the Millecentenary], ed. I. Dobrossy (Miskolc, 1997), vol. 1, 212-218.
2 L. Sasvári, “Ortodoxok és görög katolikusok együttélése Észak-Magyarországon
a 18-19. században” [The Coexistence of the Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Northern
Hungary during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries], in Interetnikus kapcsolatok
Északkelet-Magyarországon [Interethnic Contacts in Northeastern Hungary], eds. E.
Kunt, J. Szabadfalvi and Gy. Viga (Miskolc, 1984), 147-155.
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