Dénesi Tamás (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 8. (Pannonhalma, 2020)
IV. Forrás
290 Takács Melinda Melinda Takács „I would like to make it a point of honour to carry on the work of the predecessors.” Elemér Lovas’s journal of the archaeological collection A few months ago, while turning the leaves of the journal of the Archaeological Collection of Pannonhalma, I gave heed to a peculiar note. The Chronica Collec tio num was started by Mór Czinár in 1830, and the last record – known so far – was entered in 1884. In the 20th century, none of the monks otherwise being interested in archaeology laid claim to keep on registering the collection’s history, thus the journal including the Chronica was used to register the events related to the library of the Archabbey after 1922. It is owing to this that some of the short journal entries published here had remained unknown to the possible researchers of the archaeological collection, which were put down by Elemér Lovas, the Benedictine curator of the archaeological collection of Pannonhalma in 1940 and 1943, respectively. Elemér Lovas (1889–1949) is primarily known as the curator of the collection of the Flóris Rómer Museum in Győr and the researcher of the archaeological findings of Győr County, respectively. Both his progressive illness and his conflicts in Győr might have contributed to his disposition as a college professor, assistant librarian, and curator of the archaeological collection in Pannonhalma in 1940. In July 1940, having arrived in Pannonhalma, the exhausted and broken monk might have faced an almost similar scene as the one he met in 1922 when he started controlling the archaeological collection in the Benedictine secondary school in Győr. By that time, the archaeological collection in Pannonhalma had been neglected for decades. His predecessors did nothing either to classify the findings or improve the ollection systematically. Thus, all in all, Lovas could only rely on the information available in the Chronica Collectionum at the start of his work. Most of his notes were entered between August and December 1940 in this initial period. According to the evidence of these, the newcomer monk assessed the state of the archaeological collection in a short time, outlined its earlier history, worked out effective plans to classify and introduce the findings as early as possible, contacted the colleagues and monks competent in this respect, he asked the monks to help him several times, however, it was rarely realised. The special value of his entries in the journal is that he documented the archaeological findings excavated during the construction of the present secondary school with drawings, photographs and descriptions – however, in this way he could unfortunately only
