Notitia hungáriae novae historico geographica (Budapest, 2012)
Zala vármegye
444 ZALA COUNTY Meanwhile Bél wrote a pressing letter to the Locotenential Council around 20th January 1738 in which he urged the return of Zala county’s description amongst others.28 The Council however disregarded this letter since it was waiting for the relpy of the county authority concerning the whereabouts of the lost manuscript. As it seems however Bél was not notified about the situation later on because he again mentioned Zala county in his pressing letter dating of 2nd September 1738 as one of the descriptions being still in course of county revision.29 6: Based on the above the manuscript was prepared in 1736. C 1: EFK Hist. I. hhh. 2: Comitatus Szaladiensis. 3:188 pp., 345x235 mm. 4: Description of Zala county. 5: “Archiepiscopal transcript”, meaning that it was made on order of József Batthyány from the damaged original in the 1770’s.30 Supposedly the scribe copied the document sent to the Chancellary (a), since the later copy that was sent to the county authorities (b), as we have mentioned, got lost at the post office of Körmend or even before arriving there, at the end of 1737 and there is no evidence that Bél substituted the lost copy for the county authorities. Therefore the scribe could only find the copy for the Chancellary (a) amongst Bél’s subsisting documents. The scribe was with all probability Ferenc Szarka. The proof is that the present manuscript’s handwriting is identical with the one of Veszprém county’s only remaining copy at the beginning of which it can be read that it was prepared by Ferenc Szarka. The same authorship is supported by the fact that both manuscripts contain late interpolations, e.g. relating to the Batthyány estates.31 Also the present manuscript contains a telltale interpolation where the “falsifier” shows wide knowledge regarding the family Szarka.32 The text is rather incomplete, it contains none (!) of village descriptions. The copyist - imitating surely the original manuscript - copied Bél’s message to the “revising gentlemen” (Domini Revisores) on a separate sheet of paper in which he asked them to supply the lacks (see a, b).33 These demands were already intended to the members of the committee of the “official” county revision in 1736 (see b). The manuscript however could be the transcription of an earlier copy (a) - or a copy made thereof: this is the version Bél had corrected and attached his demands to, that his scribe later transcripted in order to be sent to the Locotenential Council (b). The copyist - obviously following the original manuscript - left several pages empty when encountering lacks.34 6: Beginning of the 1770’s. 28 See Bél 1993. nr. 699. 29 See Bél 1993. nr. 730a. 30 As proved by the usual archivist’s note in the letter inserted in the volume: „Copia per suam Eminentiam procurata.” See C p. i. See also our general introduction in the present volume. 31 See in the present volume the review of manuscript D in the introduction of Veszprém county’s description and also the review of the county description (513, 514). 32 See the part about the Szarka family in C p. 65., in the present edition p. 474. 33 The two texts are published by László Szelestei N. See Bél 1993. nr. 918. See the text in our edition p. 479, note ii., p. 498, note i. 34 See C pp. 80-90,135-143,145-152, 154-162, 164-180.
