Notitia hungáriae novae historico geographica (Budapest, 2012)
Vas vármegye
INTRODUCTION 259 however that the part concerning the Batthyánys - especially the exaltation of Lajos Batthyány - shows some captatio benevolentiae meaning flattery for the leader of the Chancellary who had an influential role from the point of view of the publication of the Notitia.26 Bél himself assured Lajos Batthyány of the respectful laudation of the family in a letter.27 Unfortunately the monumental genealogical panorama remained unfinished: it breaks at the end of a chapter when describing the Nádasdys, especially the career of Ferenc Nádasdy II (1555-1604). In the special part (pp. 217-320.) Bél initially intended to categorise the settlements of the county by districts. He put the district of Kőszeg at first place but he only prepared the description of the city of this name (pp. 219-272). The narration of the seige of Kőszeg in 1532 takes a major part in it. Miklós Jurisics’ two letters are worth the attention: Bél publishes them in Latin translation (only one of those Latin translations was known previously). The presentation of the contemporary state of the city is rather poor, however the review of the citizens (the ’hienc’ amongst them), of the Kőszeg vineyards and also of the peach cultivation is of some interest. Afterwards he abandonned the categorisation by district, because in the next chapter he reviewed the castles and residences, then the market towns and populous villages of the county uniformly. The description of castles and residences does not include any interesting data, excepting the note of an inscription at the castle of Szakinak. Amongst the market towns the description of Szombathely is undoubtedly the most elaborate chapter of the special part. Bél writes a thourough discourse on the ancient Sabaria that he correctly identifies with Szombathely; he then details that in his time what kind of Roman relics the inhabitants used to find (stone columns, inscripted bricks, tombs, paved canals, coins). It is noteworthy that he publishes the drawing of some ancient inscriptions and reliefs. He also recorded several later inscripted memorials, e.g. the previously unidentified inscription of Márton Pethe of Hetés, administrator of the episcopate of Győr, that proves a fact previously unknown: the prelate had the city wall fortified between 159 9-1602.28 The inscription of the Holy Trinity Column is also of interest. On the other market towns he did not have any reportable informaiton. The section between pp. 320-381. as we have stated many times afore, is not authored by Bél but is the work of persons assigned by the Chancellary, more precisely by Lajos Batthyány - who were most certainly county officials - and Bél probably did not effect any changes on their work afterwards (cf. b, [Cane], C). The text distinctively differs from Bél’s text with its official, “clerk-like” style of Latin, nevertheless it provides a relatively rich pool of data on the given territory. The settlements are enumerated according to districts and domains within them; each domain is briefly described by the quality of its land, vineyrads, nationality of its populace and their lifestyle (generally agriculture, vine cultivation, in some cases mining are mentioned). The most characteristic data are the settlement’s landlord(s): this piece of information is nearly never missing. Beside that they write relatively plenty on residences, castles just as well as they always account precisely of mills situated in the settlements. The scribe of the late 18th century tried to integrate this part into the text by adding margin notes, proportioning the text and numbering the settlements in certain cases - but the addition by the Chancellary remained intact (cf. C). We wished to emphasise by marking it distinctively that the above detailed data collection is not Bél’s work: therefore we typeset it with smaller fonts thus distinguishing it from the text body written by Bél. Since it is an alien text we did not apply the uniform orthographic principles that we usually do with Bél’s texts (the elimination of j and other characteristics not typical in Bél’s style - e.g. the correction of hystoria etc.).29 The data collection’s transcripted version in manuscript C was collated with the draft preserved in the Chancellary material ([Cane]); we made notes of the differences of the two texts and we also corrected or at many points completed the text of C with the help of the draft, 26 See Lajos Batthyány’s panegyric in C pp. 133-134, in our edition: 331. 27 See Mátyás Bel’s letter to Lajos Batthyány. Pozsony, 29'1' November 1735. In: Bél 1993. nr. 543. About their relationship see also Tóth 2007a I. 106-107. 28 See p. 401. in the present volume. See also our note relating to the inscription! 29 About these see Bél 2011. 18-19. See also the introduction of the present volume.
