Lakos János: A Magyar Országos Levéltár története (Budapest, 2006)
A képek jegyzéke
took place no sooner than in 1756 due to the activity of Count Lajos Batthyány, being elected the new palatine in 1751. He must have been inspired by the initiatives directed to create archives within the Habsburg Monarchy: the king appointed an archivist of the Treasury in 1738; the Croatian Estates acted likewise in Zagreb in 1744; and the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv was also established in Vienna in 1749. The Archivum Regni was homed in the building of the old Parliament in Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia). Only a vice-archivist, Imre Csintó was appointed to be in charge of the archival material at that time. Councillor László Balogh became the first general archivist in 1765. The birth of the institutionalized archives is dated from that period. The third part deals with the first decade of the archives operating under moderate circumstances. During that period its archival material was divided into three main emits: the exact Archivum Regni (records of the Diet and other national records), the Archives of the Palatine (Archivum Palatinale) placed in the archives by the palatine requiring special treatment, and the so-called Records of the Lord Chief Justice (Acta judicatus curiae regiae). The Archivum Regni consisted of 260 bundles and more than 100 volumes - not including the records treated separately -, the Archives of the Palatine contained approximately 420 bundles and volumes, and the Records of the Lord Chief Justice involved only 4 volumes and 24 bundles. Imre Csintó and his employees carried out classification and systematical arrangement of records, and they also prepared finding aids for the archival material growing gradually (since the institution frequently received records from the Diet and the palatine), which became well arranged and fit for use. Being an institution of the Estates, the Archivum Regni was not public, because it served the palatine and the Diet; therefore scientific researchers were allowed to enter only in special cases. As a result, it did not serve science, but rather legal security - like all the other feudal archives -. When King Joseph II went on the offensive against the Estates, the existence of the Archivum Regni was threatened as well. The government organs and the archives were moved to Buda in 1785 and placed in the building of the old Parliament, i.e. the cloister building of the Clarissa sisters' order. At that time, from the end of 1783, András Rudnyák, former vice-archivist, became the general archivist (the first one among the staff of the Archivum Regni). He held his office until his death in 1813. Perhaps his greatest merit was sabotaging the royal measures to dissolve the Archivum Regni. Even during his period, the number of the staff 521
