Notitia hungáriae novae historico geographica (Budapest, 2012)

Zala vármegye

446

ZALA COUNTY

(pp. 135-180.). The meticulous copyist prepared even the header for the indexes, but the pages were left equally empty

(pp. 181-186.).

Zala county’s description remains incomplete due to the previously mentioned circumstances, therefore it can by no means be regarded as a full description. Its value for local history is minimal - maybe certain chapters of the general part and the description of Muraköz district stand out a little. It is suprising how Bél could gather so little information about a county situated relatively close. It seems likely that János Matolai, Bél’s commissioned collaborator did not get to Zala during his data collecting trip in Transdanubia,35 and Bél could not find anybody else to get help from. He was much dependent on the county authority, but the description and corrections attached to the reply letter from Zala got lost at the post office and it was apparently not substituted by a new one. Therefore Zala is the weakest description among the Transdanubian counties, it is similar in its poverty of data to the descriptions of the recovering counties recently seized back from the Turks (Arad, Csanád, Zaránd).

We had to face several difficulties during the edition. First of all the multitude of errors, miswritings in the manuscript that is presumably due to the poor quality of the original manuscript (the archiepiscopal copies were transcripted from the soaked and thus barely readable original manuscripts). We corrected those when being sure that the scribe was responsible. As previously mentioned the scribe (undoubtedly Ferenc Szarka, see C) wrote new parts into the text. The most detailed of the additions is relating to the Batthyány family, especially palatine Lajos Batthyány whom the writer mentions as deceased (see e.g. C p. 61.). This recurrence of mentioning the Batthyánys is obviously related to the fact that the possessor of the Bél manuscripts and the person who ordered the transcripts was archbishop József Batthyány, the palatine’s son (there are several similar insertions in the county description of Veszprém as well). The insertion about the Szarka family originates undoubtedly from the scribe, with all certainty Ferenc Szarka (C p. 65.), furthermore there are two other about the Festetics family (p. 75, 77.). Those inserts are typeset with stretched letters. Finally there is a well-made drawing of the county’s coat of arms, that must have featured in the original manuscript since Bél used to place the county crest at the beginning of the county descriptions.36 Therefore we decided to publish the drawing.

V. Summary

Data providers: Sámuel Rotarides [R]; unknown [0]

Revision: county authority and the Chancellary (a); county authority (see b; lost copy)

Manuscript to publish: C Translation:

Bél 1943. 201-216. (partial, however it publishes excerpts from manuscript [0] as well); Bél 1999.; Bél 2008a (description of Alsólendva based on Bél 1999.; Hungarian and Slovene translation)

Literature: Káli 1999.

35 He was surely the data collector in Veszprém county. See 511.

36 See our note relating to the county crest p. 457.