 The Bulgarians received royal privileges of the Austrian crown along with their permission to settle and their acquisition of land and property.The construction of Deva's Franciscan friary commenced in 1724 with the funding and efforts of its Bulgarian population, so that the monastery was commonly known as the Bulgarian Monastery.However, the Great Plague of 1738 and the gradual assimilation of the Deva Bulgarians into other ethnicities of Transylvania prevented the colony from growing and by the late 19th century the Bulgarian ethnic element in the town had disappeared completely.