The object of the month – Zacharias Traber: Nervus opticus sive Tractatus theoricus. Vienna, 1675.
The founding of the historical library of the Baron József Eötvös Collegium (1896–1950) is linked to the name of Baron Dénes Mednyánszky, who enriched the institution, established in 1895, with his father's valuable library in 1896. By the end of World War II, the library had grown to contain tens of thousands of items, until 1950, when the elite college was converted into a student dormitory. and the library collection was transferred to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Library, which was established in the building. In 1956, this became the Eötvös Library of the Institute of Literary Studies (now known as the Eötvös Library of the ELTE HTK Institute of Literary Studies).
Based on the original inventory logs, Zacharias Traber: His volume entitled Nervus opticus sive Tractatus theoricus, published in Vienna in 1675, was added to the collection in 1903, but then disappeared from the former library of Eötvös Collegium during the turmoil of World War II, only to reappear decades later on the American art market. The particular value of Nervus Opticus lies in the fact that, in addition to summarizing the theoretical foundations of optics, Traber supplemented his work with a wealth of engravings. The plates containing illustrative figures are not merely illustrations, but didactic tools that aid in the interpretation of the text. The volume is also an irreplaceable source for reconstructing the former appearance of the archbishop's garden in Pozsony: Traber played a decisive role in the design of the garden on behalf of Archbishop György Lippay.
The volume appeared in the online catalog of a New York antiquarian bookshop in the spring of 2022. Literary historian Gábor Kiss Farkas noticed the copy, primarily because of the owner's note in the description, which referred to the Jesuit college in Nagyszombat. This information led him to the staff of the ELTE University Library and Archives, as at the end of the 18th century, a significant part of the Jesuit library in Nagyszombat was incorporated into the library collection of the university, which had been moved to Buda.
Following this observation, the ELTE University Library and Archives launched an internal investigation and contacted the antiquarian bookshop. The title page of the volume bore a barely visible, blurred stamp mark, which was identified using modern imaging techniques and multispectral analysis. The technology revealed an unexpected result: the stamp did not belong to the University Library, but to the former library of the Baron Eötvös József Collegium.
The restitution process began in 2022 and was completed in 2025 as a result of cooperation between several institutions, contributing to the preservation of a piece of the collection heritage linked to ELTE. The historical library of the Eötvös Collegium is preserved and maintained by the Eötvös Library of the Institute for Literary Research, so the work has been returned to exactly where it disappeared from some eighty years earlier.
Written by Attila Boda.
Source: Markó Veronika: A visszatért Nervus opticus. ELTE HTK Irodalomtudományi Kutatóintézet, Ismerettár blog / https://www.abtk.hu/ismerettar/blog/a-visszatert-nervus-opticus [Viewing date: 2026.01.18.]