Notitia hungáriae novae historico geographica (Budapest, 2012)

Előszó

PREFACE

The second volume of our text edition contains four Transdanubian counties - Sopron, Vas, Zala, Veszprém - meaning that we continue the edition of the county descriptions with the Transdanubian part (Pars Transdanubiana) according to Bél’s plans.1 Relating to these four descriptions however it might occur to the reader - at least to the Hungarian ones -, if their publishing is necessary? Can their edition bring something new when all of them have already had their Hungarian translation?1 2 The answer is yes and yes. First of all the purpose of our series is to publish all those county descriptions that Bél could not in his time, with the authentic text and respecting the same principles, thus accomplishing finally the giant undertaking of the Notitia - after nearly 300 years if we take its first draft of 1718. Obviously our objective does not allow us to select amongst the county descriptions according to the needs of Hungarian speakers. Especially because with the exception of the editors of Sopron county’s descriptions, all the editors of the different translations did not publish the original Latin text, although for a work of the importance of Bél’s Notitia the original text should be accessible, so the translation can be verifiable; not to mention that this is the only way to make it comprehensible and usable for the other nations of the former Hungária as well. Notitia is not for the Hungarians only.

Our arguments for the necessity and for the prospective use of the critical edition could be long listed. The translation of Vas county’s description was published only excerpted; there was not index prepared for the translation of Vas and Zala. Furthermore the editors - with the exception of the bilingual edition of Sopron county - did not clarify even the most elemental questions of textual criticism, bibliography and authorship about the descriptions, or at least those kind of remarks are scarce in the feeble notes, prefaces. However critical vigilance would have been strongly needed, because the descriptions of Vas, Zala and Veszprém are not “authentic” manuscripts (meaning that they were not written or checked and corrected by Bél himself) but they are “late” copies (that I call “archiepiscopal” copies) that were made transcripted by József Batthyány, archbishop of Kalocsa, after a consideral part of the original copies, previously bought from the widow of Bél, had been seriously water damaged during the transportation on the Danube.3 The original copies of the previously mentioned three descriptions must have been amongst the damaged ones, because they remained only in archiepiscopal copies (only Veszprém had another early working draft remained in another collection that I will deal with later). The archiepiscopal copies contain typically a lot of errors and miswritings - partly because the soaked originals were barely readable, furthermore the scribes (mostly Ferenc Szarka of Lukafalva) were incompetent. These errors sneaked into the translations, because the translators did not attempt to correct even the most obvious corruptions, but tried to translate the corrupted version, often with startling results. The corruptions state a good example that it is not possible to translate any part of the Notitia, without studying Bél’s complicated and unique style, for example by reading several of his works.4

1 On the division of Bél’s work into volumes see the first volume of our edition (Bél 2011. 14-15.).

2 Bél 2001-2006. (Sopron), Bél 1976-1977. (Vas), Bél 1999. (Zala), Bél 1989. (Veszprém), and some parts of the desriptions of Zala and Veszprém: Bél 1943.

3 About that see Szelestei 1984. 11-12., Tóth 2007a I. 153.

4 We could mention as an example for those kinds of translation errors the description of Vas county, the only remaining manuscript of which contains a great number of corruptions and miswritings and obviously the translator could not cope with those. One sentence containing two errors reads as follows: “Pronum ergo fuerit opinari, usisse [!] eos, quod cum tota hac ora, late iam minarentur [!], montem Güssen, validissimo arci opportunum futurum, a monachis, ultra modum coenobii praemunitum teneri.” The word usisse should be corrected undoubtedly to ussisse: Bél often uses the verb uro (3 ussi ussum) in that sense, e.g. in the county description of Győr in a very similar situation where he treats Németújvár as well (“urebat haec arcis possessio Demetrium quendam huius orae comitem...” see EFK Hist. I. aa. p. 448.). The word minarentur is also obviously erroneous, because the threat does not have an object (in dativus) in the sentence.