AMBIENTUM BIOETHICA BIOLOGIA CHEMIA DIGITALIA DRAMATICA EDUCATIO ARTIS GYMNAST. ENGINEERING EPHEMERIDES EUROPAEA GEOGRAPHIA GEOLOGIA HISTORIA HISTORIA ARTIUM INFORMATICA IURISPRUDENTIA MATHEMATICA MUSICA NEGOTIA OECONOMICA PHILOLOGIA PHILOSOPHIA PHYSICA POLITICA PSYCHOLOGIA-PAEDAGOGIA SOCIOLOGIA THEOLOGIA CATHOLICA THEOLOGIA CATHOLICA LATIN THEOLOGIA GR.-CATH. VARAD THEOLOGIA ORTHODOXA THEOLOGIA REF. TRANSYLVAN
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Authors: ŞTEFAN S. GOROVEI.
DOI: 10.24193/subbhist.2019.1.04
Published Online: 2019-06-30
Published Print: 2019-06-30
pp. 87-122
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The same family name – Gorovei – was common in the principality of Moldavia (Neamţ county, then Dorohoi and others), from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and in the principality of Transylvania (at Gherla / Armenopolis / Szamosújvár, then also in other locales in Banat and in Hungary), from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Those who carried the name in Moldavia (then Romania) were Orthodox Romanians. Those from Transylvania (then Hungary) – whose name took the form Gorove – were Catholic Armenian (united with the Church in Rome). From among these, the best known are Gorove László (1780–1839) and his son Gorove István (1819–1881, minister in 1867–1871), members of the Hungarian Academy, as well as Gorove Antal (1822–1881), a military man and lawyer. Artur Gorovei (1864–1951) – writer and folklorist, member of the Romanian Academy, and passionate genealogist – initiated research on his family history, trying to find an answer to the question of whether the bearers of the same patronym could, somehow, share a common distant ancestor. Due to the lack of documentary evidence, but also due to how the issue was understood as a whole, he did not reach a firm conclusion, oscillating instead between a hypothetical assertion and an uncertain denial. Continuing this research into family history, the author of the present study also reached the same “enigma” relative to which he initially maintained a reluctant position. He then proposed to address the issue within a wider context with an emphasis on the name (patronym) itself. On the one hand, this led to the formation of a program of researches focused on the bearers of the name Gorovei. On the other hand, a recent discovery has guided the research in a more reliable direction. A document found in the Vienna archives mentions a group of Armenians from Gherla in 1759, including senator Abagarus Gorovei and senator Christophorus Gorovei (the ancestors of the two family branches knighted by Empress Maria Theresia in 1760-1761). These Armenians declare that they belong to those who came to Transylvania from Moldavia (nos aeque e numero illorum Armenorum esse, qui […] e Moldavia in Transylvaniam venerunt). The author believes that this testimony is decisive in establishing an answer to the “enigma”: he advances the hypothesis that the bearers of the name Gorovei from Moldavia and Transylvania (Hungary) are two branches that descend from a common ancestor of Armenian origin. Given the genealogical and chronological correlations between the two branches, this hypothetical common ancestor had to live in Moldavia in the middle of the sixteenth century. This period coincides with the great persecution of the Armenians ordered by the prince Ştefan VI Rareş (1551–1552). In the author’s hypothesis, an Armenian Gorovei accepted to convert, under those circumstances, to Orthodoxy. He would have been the ancestor of the Gorovei whose history unfolded in the principality of Moldavia. At the same time, one of those who resisted the pressures and preserved the faith would be the ancestor of whose who crossed the Carpathians and established in Gherla, either toward the end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth century. The second part of the study (Addenda) is devoted to the clarification of several controversial genealogical connections – the family branch of Gorove Antal and that of Gorove Viktor, both closely interwoven in the history of Transylvania during the nineteenth century.
Keywords: family history, genealogy, Armenians, Moldavia, Transylvania, Gorovei/Gorove, common ancestor
