This year’s edition of the International Scientific Symposium “Bibliophile Values” will be dedicated to the priest and scholar Paul Mihail, 30 years after his death. The event will be held on June 13 at the National Library of the Republic of Moldova, where experts from both banks of the Prut River will highlight the priest’s contribution to faith, science, culture and the unity of the Romanian nation, IPN reports.
The National Library of the Republic of Moldova noted that the distinguished priest and historian Paul Mihail is part of the generation of Bessarabian scholars who suffered for the fate of Bessarabia. He is the first Romanian to make a fact-finding trip to Southeast European countries, as a result of which he made known 1,300 charters, royal acts and other documents, especially in Romanian. Paul Mihail made a substantial contribution to the evacuation to Romania of the cultural heritage from the collections of the first church museum in Bessarabia during World War II.
The documents from the personal collection “Paul Mihail” and the collection of the Scientific Society of Bibliophile and Ex-libris “Paul Mihail”, as well as from the personal archive of archpriest Petru Buburuz and priest Viorel Cojocaru, will be presented at an exhibition entitled “Memory of Priest Paul Mihail in the Conscience of Contemporaries”, hosted by the National Library. For the first time, there will be exhibited four unpublished letters of Paul Mihail addressed to Petru Buburuz, the content of which reflects the concerns and work of the priest. From the series of works presented for the first time, a prayer book published in Iasi in 1754, a very rare edition preserved from Paul Mihail’s great-grandfather, attracts attention.
The exhibition will be open to the public between June 13 and July 4, in the central block of the National Library.
