Notitia hungáriae novae historico geographica (Budapest, 2012)
Vas vármegye
258 VAS COUNTY into chapters by districts; the villages are numbered as long as any information is added regarding them;20 some castles and domains belongig to them are signed with letters;21 and finally, there are marginal notes beside the text. However, we are of the opinion that all of these editorial corrections are made by the copyist, who wanted to format the additions of the Chancellary this way. It is proved by the fact, that the title of “District I.” is inserted by him posteriorly,22 which means he decided to divide the text this way while copying. Furthermore, Bél did not use letters in the descriptions to sign castles or anything else, and the marginal notes we mentioned are far from his style, and they are obviously just taken out from the text.23 The manuscript made this way is deceptive: on the surface it seems to be an extensive and solid description, but in fact a significant part of it (which part can be the most important for the research), more than 60 pages is not written by Bél. 6: The first half of 1770s. D 1: Föl. Lat. 3778. 2: Mathiae Belii Notitia Comitatus Castriferrei a Georgio Gyurikovits ex exemplari Biblioth. Prim. Titt. I. s. descripta. 3: 96 ff. 390x240 mm. 4: Description of Vas county. 5: As revealed by the above title, György Gyurikovits prepared this transcript based on the previous manuscript (C). 6: In the 1820’s. IV. Short review of the county description and the principles of the text edition The description of Vas county is rather uneven in its content and at many places can be characterised as incomplete or unclosed. The first big unit, the nature-geographical section of the general part contains the usual topics: it includes the etymology of the county’s name, boundaries, mountains and rivers etc. (see C pp. 1-17.), with interesting data on mineral waters, fishery, hunting, pig-farming and swineherds, vineyards, mines etc. The political segment starts off like in other descriptions. The early history of the county continues with the description of the contemporary inhabitants - including also the county’s German population called ’Hienc’ - which is not particularly rich, followed by the presentation of the authorities. Yet coming to the review of the county’s aristocratic families Bél discusses through almost two hundred pages (!) the region’s noble families’ history (landowners, former and contemporary to Bél), namely the Kőszegis,24 Batthyánys, Erdődys and Nádasdys, mainly based on narrative sources (see pp. 28-216.). From historiographic point of view it is an extraordinary achievement, especially the conception of the history of the Kőszegis that Bél prepared using and colliding several foreign and Hungarian resources. This excursus is not spontaneous, nor is unique in the Notitia, since it was Bél’s intention to give a comprehensive description of the noble families of the country.25 To be noted 20 See e.g. C 322-326, in our edition 410-412. But the villages without information are not given numbers (see ibid. 333-334.) 21 See ibid. 329-349, in our edition 412-419. 22 See ibid. 320, in our edition 409. 23 E.g. in page 350. this marginal note can be read: “Ad dominium Szent-Gothard appertinentes vici”, in which one can observe “appertinentes” above all. The problem with it is that Bél never used this verb, but even if he had used it, he would have written “adpertinentes”, because he never noted the assimilation of the verbal prefix ,,ad”. 24 Along with the old historians Bél also calls them “Güssingenses”, that is “Németújvár’s people”. Cf. p. 28. etc. 25 See Bél’s genealogical researches in Tóth 2010.
