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
280 The Cathedral Chapter of Esztergom in the Pifteenth Century. Illrd Part So, what can we say about the canonical visitation of the cathedral chapter of Esztergom after all? The source preserving the text of the so-called 1397 Esztergom visitation is - to quote the words of László Solymosi about the Esztergom synodal decrees contained in the codex of Brassó - „in fact a fictive charter, all the words of which are authentic, but which never existed in reality. Its compiler, or copyist, put it together from charters containing various synodal materials" - or, adapted to the present work, from registers and charters. „Since it was not outright forgery, he did not even try to conceal his method..."1355 Nor did the copyist of the canonical visitation conceal the aim of his work, for he launched the text with the phrase „Modus et ordo visitationis capituli ecclesie Strigoniensis". This intro, however, must have made it obvious for anyone that the text was not a source from 1397, but something we could perhaps call a sample, put together on the basis of several visitations of various dates, written records and personal recollections, with the possible aim of demonstrating the way in which the register of a canonical visitation should be prepared. What confused the modern users - alongside the absence of anyone taking the effort to explore it from close - was the fact that its editor, Ferenc Kollányi or his commissionary forgot to copy the title which headed the text, and the so-called 1397 canonical visitation register was consequently published without it, admittedly with almost impeccable occuracy. 1355 Solymosi L.: Az esztergomi egyházmegye ünneplajstroma 92. For the modern researchers, the chief implication of all this is that all data offerred by the visitation can only be used after a thorough analysis and with the utmost caution; thus, in itself it is unable either to date architectural monuments (chapels, altars) or to present a given state of the chapter's landed wealth. Nor can the establishment of the position of divisor can be linked to the year 1397. Building statistics upon its evidence, for instance, of canons who lacked breviaries, or of those who did not take the major ecclesiastical orders, is misleading. It is the same unfit for characterising the erudition of canons, or their compliance with the obligation to attend mass, and the list could easily be continued. To sum up, since, with a bit of an exaggeration, there are as many years as there are responses, any given piece of information can only be built into an analysis of the period in question or a description of the chapter's working in case it is underpinned by evidence distilled from other sources. Moreover, citing and analysing the chapter statutes in the hitherto familiar way, that is, inserting them chronologically into the series of the codifications of the statutes of the other Hungarian chapters, is no more feasible. Their comparison is likewise discouragerd - at least for the time being. As mentioned above, it does include statutes which were surely made in the fifteenth century, yet the time at which the major part of them was adopted and written down cannot be determined with any precision. This latter task, if possible at all, needs to be addressed by future research.
