The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

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

The number of publications on the Catholic Ecclesiastical Archives is altogether 50. Two-thirds of which is independent publication, book and notice-book and one third is study typed publications. If we classify them according to their publishing dates, we can see that the total number of publications before 1950 was 11 and between 1950 and 1990, 13. This is smaller than the sum of the publications after 1990, 24 - 26. After the political changes the amount of published material substantially accelerated. But their topics and structures changed. The number of 'useful' publications increased; as subjects that can be applicable to archival work such as history, archontology the number of source publications has grown in the last decade. But there has been no appreciable development in the field of finding aids for making the archives material known, mainly at middle level. The available study-aids are still from the years between 1950 and 1980and are obsolete. Positive exceptions are for the finding aids at basic level- only some useful information and finding aids can allow for the making of only one document at a time. These were made about archival maps and Church visiting records that are necessary for writing local history But these are owing to central initiation as all of the archives were published as a part of different series. The source publications are related to medieval certificates, records of observing the Church (so called canonical visitation) and introduced frequented parts e.g. documents patent of nobility with coat-of-arms, the material of old seals and so on. In the future, further source publishing, perhaps some common, thematic source publications together with other archives. Finding aids publishing at middle level and piece level archives could accelerate progress for both researchers and archives. Document of Francis I. (The Archives of Győr Diocese)