C. Tóth Norbert: Az esztergomi székeskáptalan a 15. században III. rész. Az ún. 1397. évi esztergomi székeskáptalani egyházlátogatási jegyzőkönyv - Subsidia ad historiam medii aevi Hungariae inquirendam 13. (Budapest, 2021)
The Cathedral Chapter of Esztergom in the Fifteenth Century. Illrd Part
The Cathedral Chapter of Esztergom in the Fifteenth Century. Illrd Part 279 lector of Esztergom from 1469 to 1499.1353 Consequently, the manuscript that we present here in a copy, must have been prepared during that time."1354 1353 As far as we now know, he is attested between 1483 and 1499. 1354 Kollányi F.: Visitatio 73. The key term in relation to the so-called 1397 visitation is that of „manuscript". For, contrary to Kollányi's assumption, what we are dealing with is not simply a „modernised" and complemented copy of the register of the canonical visitation ordered by the archbishop of Esztergom, János Kanizsai, but a compilation made around the time indicated by Kollányi from several texts originally composed at various points in time. More precisely, in the late fifteenth century it was not the original 1397 register that was copied and supplemented by the recording of changes which had occured over the past century. Examination of the copy - in fact, a fair copy - has proved beyond doubt that the text of the visitation as it is known today cannot have been made in the way so far supposed. After the analysis of the innumerable personal names and historical events it can safely be stated that it was not simply the text of the original 1397 register that was modernised and completed. The canons who feature together in the introduction and any given response frequently belonged to the chapter at different times, their respective periods of office-holding being separated by several decades, and frequently were not even in touch with each other. Moreover, an unbelievable and unexplicable fact should also be stressed here, namely the complete absence from the text of that emblematic figure of the chapter, Matthew de Vicedominis, albeit he had been member of the cathedral chapter for more than three decades from 1395. Someone in the late fifteenth century, at a - for the time being - unknown date, commissioned by an unknown person, installed himself in the cathedral „archives", where - presumably - taking in his hands the text of one or more real canonical visitations, and following its structure as a model and at the same time extending it with fictional elements, prepared a kind of „inventory" of the cathedral church and, for that matter, of the archbishopric. He surely put to use the registers of the 1397 and 1407/1408 visitations, which have disappeared in the meantime, as well as other registers made in the subsequent years; he also used charters recording chapel and rectorate foundations, and the pious donations made in their favour, as well documents related to the landed wealth of the chapter. He likewise built into his work oral information and recollections gathered from canons then holding prebends in the chapter. He picked up a little from everything, so as to have at least one piece of information for every single issue that might emerge during a visitation. Having completed his work, he copied the text into an early (medieval) volume (col ligatum) that probably he had compiled and started himself, and it is this fair copy that is known and referred to - erroneously - as the register of the 1397 canonical visitation.
