On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of György Pray, the father of Hungarian critical historiography and former director of our library, and the 250th anniversary of the abolition of the Jesuit order, we invite you to an exhibition of documents related to the missions of the Hungarian Jesuits in South America.

The exhibition offers visitors a special selection of manuscripts and printed documents. The South American continent was one of the main scenes of the Jesuit Order's flourishing in the 18th century. It was one of the most important places where the most enthusiastic and adventurous members of the Jesuit Order, including Jesuits of Hungarian origin, carried out their missionary work. If you want to know what adventures the friars had in the depths of the jungle, how they canoed down the Amazon or what experiences they had among the Indians, visit our exhibition! 

The exhibition is available on weekdays between 10.00 and 15.00. Registration is possible at titkarsag@lib.elte.hu.

Venue:

ELTE University Library and Archives

1053 Budapest, Ferenciek tere 6.

The object of the month – A textbook in Latin

The coursebook of the Czech educator Jan Amos Komenský (in Latin: Johannes Comenius, 1592–1670), the so called ’Orbis pictus’, was originally made to help pupils to learn Latin the easiest way. However, it also contains materials from almost every scientific field, hence becoming a simplified encyclopaedia of the 17-th century knowledge.

The work was printed first in 1658, and until 1917 it was published for almost 300 times. The first four-language edition was issued in 1666 in Latin, German, French and Italian – this particular book was also written in these languages. In the beginning, the work was illustrated with woodcuts, but later on the pictures were printed with copperplates. The coursebook contains 150 topics, each illustrated with a picture and complemented with word-lists as tools to help the pupils in the process of studying. Among the topics one can find nature, flora and fauna, religion and the aspects of human life, e. g. the human body, craftsmanship and children’s games.

This book once belonged to historian János Mircse of Barátos, who left his book collection to the University Library. (This catalogue can be find under the call number J 147/d I-II.)

The book is part of the book adoption program of the Foundation for the University Library. Save a book, adopt a book! For more information visit our website: https://konyvtar.elte.hu/en/support-us/adopt-a-book

RMK III 623/a

Komenský, Jan Amos (1592–1670): Joh. Amos Comenii Orbis sensualium pictus quadrilinvis emendatus, hoc est: omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum et vita actionum pictura et nomenclatura Germanica, Latina, Italica et Gallica. Cum titulorum indicibus atque vocabulorum dictionariolis accurante Matthia Cramero, lingv. exotic. professore. Cum gratia et privil. sac. caes. majestatis. regis Poloniae et sereniss. electoris Saxonici.

Noribergae : sumptibus Martini Endteri, MDCCVII.

The minutes of Eötvös Loránd University and its predecessor institutions are now available not only on the hungaricana.hu portal, but also in the database of the Hungarian National Archives, on the adatbazisokonline.mnl.gov.hu portal.

Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL) offered trial access to EISZ member institutions. The database can be tested by connected to the university's internet network until 17. 09. 2023. Remote access to the database is possible using a VPN service.

The Central and Eastern European Online Library (www.ceeol.com) is the leading repository offering highly specialized and comprehensive collection of full text indexed documents in the fields of Humanities and Social Science publications from and about Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

As of March 2023, CEEOL has covered more than 2,662 SSH journal titles with over 875.000 indexed full-text articles. The coverage is growing monthly by 5,000 newly included journal articles. Significant number of the included journals are represented with complete archival collection.

Between the 17th and 20th of July 2023, three staff members of the ELTE University Library and Archives participated in a study trip at Humboldt University in Berlin as part of the Erasmus+ Programme. The program was implemented at the invitation of the organization that coordinates scientific university collections in Germany.

During the visit, our staff had the opportunity to get to know the details of collection coordination activities at the national level as well as at the university level. In addition to the workshops, where they discussed each other's results and problems, the colleagues from Berlin presented their collections located in the various faculties of the university, which can therefore be visited on a limited basis, i.e. the replicas of statues and the objects found during the excavations at the Institute of Archeology; the exhibitions located in the classrooms and corridors of the zoology and human anatomy departments of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, as well as the art collection in the closed warehouse, accessible only to employees.

The university has several natural science exhibitions, which our colleagues could visit as part of a guided tour. In addition to the permanent exhibition, the TAT - Animal Anatomy Theater building located on the Nord Campus also houses a number of temporary exhibitions, during the visit there was an exhibition on the tradition of Chinese foot binding and the issue of feminism. In the Humboldt Forum (the building opened in 2021), the university also got a smaller exhibition room, called the Humboldt Laboratory, which explores contemporary social, ethical and scientific issues. In addition, the Museum of Natural History, which has not been maintained by the university since 2009, but its collection and results linked to the institution in the past.

The study trip was a great opportunity to gain a lot of useful experience and valuable professional contacts, which will be used in the future throughout our university heritage coordination work.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1773, Pope Clement XIII dissolved the Jesuit order, accelerating the process of the university's transfer to the state. Between 1635 and 1773, many distinguished Jesuits of great knowledge taught at our university, leaving a lasting mark on the history of the institution. In August our feature is on the first chronicler of the university’s history, Ferenc Kazy.

Ferenc Kazy was born in 1695 in Léva, Bars county. He entered the Jesuit order at the age of eighteen, following his older brother, János Kazy. Among other things, he taught theology and rhetoric at the University of Nagyszombat. Later, he was head of house in Trencsén, Pozsony and Sopron, and then between 1748 and 1749 he was the director of the Collegium Rubrorum in Nagyszombat. As a student of Márton Szentiványi, he studied the collection of sources of Gábor Hevenesi and began writing historiography. His first historical work was the biography of the judge István Koháry in 1732. As a continuation of Miklós Istvánffy’s Historia, he wrote the 17th century history of the Kingdom of Hungary. He compiled his work on the history of the university for the centenary of the founding of the University of Nagyszombat (Historia Universitatis Tyrnaviensis Societatis Jesu). He died in Pozsony in 1759.

Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713) was born in Senj in 1652, as the son of a frontier soldier. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Zagreb and later at the Illyrian College of Rome. His first work appeared in print in 1681 (Apographum ex Joanne Lucio), and from then on until the end of his life he published regularly on a wide variety of subjects.

Pavao Ritter Vitezović served under the command of Miklós Erdődy in the Međimurje garrison in the Ottoman wars, and took part in the siege of Lendva (Lendava) and Szigetvár at the beginning of the Great Turkish War in 1683. After the war he became an officer at the court of Miklós Erdődy, in 1687 he was knighted with a gold bracelet, in 1691 he was elected podžupan of Lika and Krbava, and later became a royal councillor and baron. He returned to Croatia in the 1690s and ran a printing press in Zagreb between 1695 and 1706. In 1706, a fire destroyed his printing press, his wife died two years later, and Vitezović moved to Vienna at the end of his life in 1710. A true polymath, he worked as a cartographer, linguist and poet, among other things, in addition to his printing and historical works. 

Stemmatographia is one of Vitezović's most important works. It was first published in 1701, probably in Vienna (no printing place is present), followed a year later by a second edition in Zagreb. According to the preface to the second edition, the reprint was necessary because of the popularity of the first edition. A work of heraldry, the dedication consisting of four leaves is followed by 56 coats of arms on 56 pages, each accompanied by a four-line poem describing the coat of arms of the area in question. After the first two engravings (Illyricum, Imperium a Nemanide institutum), the author has arranged the coats of arms in alphabetical order, from Albania to Hungary. The images are followed by a list of 11 leaves, which gives a precise description and brief interpretation of each coat of arms. Vitezović also indicates here how the stripes used in the monochrome printing correspond to the colours used in reality, thus helping the illuminators (the copy of the University Library is not coloured). The volume concludes with a greeting to the readers, a list of errors and a poem by Nicolaus Garzia de Londono. The Stemmatographia was translated into Serbian and published in 1741 by Hristofor Žefarović. According to the ownership note on the title page, the copy of the University Library was in the possession of the Pauline monastery of Svetice in the 17th-18th centuries. 

The book is part of the book adoption program of the Foundation for the University Library. Save a book, adopt a book! For more information visit our website: https://konyvtar.elte.hu/en/support-us/adopt-a-book

RMK III 608

Vitezović, Pavao Ritter

Stemmatographia, sive Armorum Illyricorum delienatio, descriptio, et restitutio / authore equite Paulo Ritter

[Wien] : [s. n.], [1701]

The architectural history exhibition "The Window to Rodostó", which was presented last year in Rodostó, Turkey (today in Turkish: Tekirdağ), can also be seen in Hungary from July to the end of the year expectedly and can be visited free of charge in the area of the Gül Baba Cultural Center and Exhibition Hall (Budapest, Mecset utca 14.).

The exhibition presents the beginnings of the research of II. Ferenc Rákóczi's former dining house in Rodostó, then the purchase of the building by the Hungarian state and its transformation into a museum, with the help of rarely or never seen plans, blueprints, photos and drawings, also with a view to the city surrounding the building.

More information about the exhibition can be found here.

The exhibition also includes copies of the drawings of painter and draftsman Kálmán Beszédes made in Rodosto in 1891-92, which were included in our library as part of his legacy. This rich, multifaceted legacy is the carefully guarded material of our special museum collection (its shelfmark: G 691), the most valuable of which are the drawings that capture the memories of the Rákóczi emigration in Rodostó. He traveled a lot, after studying painting at home and abroad, he lived in Turkey from 1878 and did a lot to save the Hungarian memories of Rodostó.

His drawings from Rodostó can be viewed here in ELTE Digital Institutional Repository.

A digitized version of the entire legacy is available here.

The object of the month - World’s Fair award winner Nummulites preparations made by Miksa Hantken

Miksa Hantken (1821-1893) was the first head of the Department of Palaeontology in Budapest. His immense oeuvre related to several fields of geology and palaeontology is considered of outstanding importance even nowadays. His studies on the palaeobiology of the unicellular animals known as foraminifers (briefly forams), along with his results achieved in the utilization of them in search for the coal-seams of Eocene age – a highly valuated raw material at Hantken’s time – proved to be especially influential. Hantken recognized as first that the test of agglutinated forams (i. e. those that build their test via gluing together the grains available at the bottom where they live) is perforated, and that the tests of consecutive sexual and asexual generations of Nummulites – also known as “the coin of St. Ladislaus or St. Stephan” – are different in structure.

Tests of the fore-mentioned genus are emblematic fossils of marine sedimentary rocks deposited during the 22 million years of the Eocene epoch that began approx. 56 million years ago. The test of Nummulites is either lens- or disc-shaped, consists of several whorls divided into chambers and reaches 10 cm in diameter in some cases. Sound identification of Nummulites species requires the knowledge of internal characters. Usually two sections, oriented perpendicular to each other, are studied. One of them corresponds to the plane of symmetry of the test while the other one contains the imaginary axis of coiling. Beside complete specimens, such Nummulites sections are displayed in more than 2000 “green cassettes”, prepared for demonstrational and commercial purposes by Hantken and Zsigmond Ede Madarász (1822-1884) between 1862 and 1881 and housed in several private and public collections nowadays. 171 “green cassettes” were exhibited at the Vienna World’s Fair held in 1873 and Hantken was awarded gold medal for them.

Nummulites preparations made by Miksa Hantken and currently displayed at the temporary exhibition titled “Hungarian EXPO successes”, opened in the Hungarian National Museum

Size of cassettes is 3x5 cm.

Written by István Szente, ELTE Tata Geological Garden