Byzantine-Rite Liturgical Books Printed by Cyrillic Letters at the Sancta Barbara Chapel (Newly Discovered Archival Sources)

Empress Maria Theresa established a seminary for the education of Byzantine-rite clergy in the Habsburg Empire. Founded in the 1750s at the Chapel of St Barbara (Sancta Barbara), the institution became known as the Barbareum. One of the major challenges facing the seminary was the provision of instruction in the Byzantine liturgy and Church Slavonic. During research conducted in Vienna in 1996, I discovered three inventories of the library of the Chapel of St Barbara dating from three different periods. These inventories had been collected and preserved by Julian Pelesz in the 1870s. On the basis of these documents, I am able to reconstruct the holdings of the library of the St Barbara seminary.