Antiqua (16th century) Collection
The Antiqua Collection contains the foreign language books printed outside Hungary between 1501 and 1600. The collection consists of 10.352 prints in 7.503 volumes written mainly in Latin, German and Ancient Greek. The difference between the number of prints and that of the volumes comes from the custom of former possessors that they bound together some of their thematically connected books.
The most precious part of the collection is the ’core collection’, that is the group of books that already belonged to the library in its earliest history.
Among the possessors of these books we can find church superiors (e.g. Zakariás Mossóczy, bishop of Nyitra), magnates (e.g. Miklós Istvánffy), and also humanists from Hungary (e.g. János Zsámboky) and abroad (e.g. Nicasius Ellebodius). On a thematic scale the 16th century material has a great diversity: we can find Bibles, works from the field of church history, ecclesiastical law, editions of ancient Latin and Greek texts, and all kinds of works of natural philosophy (e.g. botany, astronomy.)
The collection can be searched in the OPAC by author and title. The detailed description of the copies is in progress.
Baroque (17th century) Book Collection
The Baroque Collection includes the books printed abroad between 1601 and 1700, and are written in foreign languages (mostly in Latin and German, but also in French, Ancient Greek and Hebrew). The collection consists of 11.107 volumes and 15.027 titles – the difference comes from the custom of binding thematically similar books together.
The whole collection is available in the OPAC.
18th Century Book Collection
The collection includes cca 80.000 books, the majority of them were printed outside Hungary, and are written in foreign languages (especially German, Latin and French). A smaller part of this collection consists of Hungarian books printed after 1711.
The whole collection is accessible in the CIPAC – Card Image Public Access Catalogue. The entering the titles into the online catalogue is in progress, at this time cca 3000 books are described in the OPAC.