The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHIVES - An Overview of Catholic Ecclesiastical Archives by Andor Lakatos

Only a few of the revived monastic orders after 1990 made use of right of establishing archives as a result, only three new monastic archives were formed. One-time archives material cannot be collected in the case of monastic orders, therefore, it cannot be objective. The largest collection was made in the Archives of Hungarian Franciscans. The orders often made a contract of agreement with the public archives maintaining their old archival materials and with archives of county self-governments. In May 1993, by the edict of Pope John Paul II, new diocese classification came into being in Hungary. The territorial change influenced all the dioceses and even new dioceses were created. In 1995, according to the Act LXVI, new archives law- the former professional ecclesiastical archives became open private archives. WHAT CAN BE FOUND IN CATHOLIC ARCHIVES? (SOURCES - GUIDE) Apart from the institutional frameworks researchers can find four substantial groups: that are 'archival types': 1) The most important document issuers of archbishop's and bishop's archives are the bishop's offices, the courts of Holy See, the judicial forum of dioceses governing the work of dioceses and school inspectorate, inspecting ecclesiastical schools and managing them. Although the agricultural archives belong to the archbishop's archives, they form a larger separate unity. They were formed from the documents of ecclesiastical lands from before 1945 and of bailiff. Very often they can be found in different buildings. As a result of different treatment the agricultural documents are often imperfect and are damaged when compared with the more protected materials kept in bishop's archives. Besides the mentioned ones 'the documents of other bodies' can be found in the bishop's archives e.g. the documents of religious assemblies, associations, seminaries, dissolved monastic institutions. The estates of priests and prelates belong to the bishop's archives. 2) The order of cathedral chapter and chapter archives were formed by chapter notaries, solicitors paid by the chapter. They have two main parts: private, individual archives and authentic place archives. The private archives include besides the documents of internal affairs of the body their consultations. They also held valuable documents about cathedrals and of liturgical services of chapters. There was a separate treatment of documents of different offices of foundations handling the capital of 'holy sacred, foundation,' serving ecclesiastical, public educational and charitable purposes. Since each chapter