Ioan Halmaghi and the “wondrous craft” of the Păscălie. Bibliomancy and the calculation systems of eastern chronology at the end of the eighteenth century

Abstract

Along with 19th-century folklore material, church documents from the 18th and 19th centuries emphasize the Păscălia as a book used in bibliomancy. In this study, I aim to explore the originally allowed and designated functions of this writing, and to provide an explanation for why this book was associated with the world of bibliomancy in both folklore and in the offi cially sanctioned culture of the Uniate clergy from Transylvania. Furthermore, by focusing on the specifi c case of the Uniate vicar Ioan Halmaghi, who was educated in Roman-Catholic institutions, I set out to explore the attitude of the elite clergy toward this text, and to highlight how a corpus of pre-modern and un-Western knowledge was simply ejected into the sphere of magic and superstition.