Kovács Petronella (szerk.): Isis - Erdélyi magyar restaurátor füzetek 6. (Székelyudvarhely, 2007)
Kiss Hédy: A Székely Nemzeti Múzeumban őrzött zászlók állapotfelmérése
(Alba Iulia). A large part of the collections got dispersed and perished. The bishopric and its chapter, the seminary and the Jesuit monastery, which settled back at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, once again became the centres of book collection. Imre Csáky and the subsequent bishops founded the bases of an episcopal library of a baroque mentality and a modest stock. Adám Patachich developed a representative library of an imposing collection of 8.000 volumes in the library hall of the episcopal palace. However, he took it with him when he was nominated to the post of the archbishop of Kalocsa. The libraries rapidly grew from the 18th century: the bishopric had nearly 40 thousand, the capitular and the diocesan seminary each 15 thousand volumes, while thousands of volumes could be found in the libraries of the Premonstratensian Secondary School and the Capuchin Order. In 1948, the bishopric was forced to leave the episcopal palace in a single day. The majority of the stock of the episcopal library and the library of the seminary that had been moved there perished, the books were stolen and the Greek political refugees housed in the building used them as fuel. The smaller portion was transported to the cellar of the county library, where they were significantly deteriorated in the moist environment. A fragment of the collection was rescued to the gallery of the cathedral in 1948. In 1962, the authorities confiscated the more valuable books from the book collection the seminary preserved in the home chapel of the episcopal palace controlled by the state and the Church, while the Church had the remaining books transported to the cathedral and added them to the rescued episcopal books. The books of the chapter kept in the upstairs libraries above the chapel escaped the attention of the authorities and survived the post-war period. The remains of the Premonstratensian Secondary School were nationalised and only 2-3000 books survived until the reactivation of the Order. The library of the Capuchin Order, at the same time, survived the decades of communism practically without loss. Thus by the beginning of the 60’s, the remains of the book episcopal, the capitular and the seminary collections had been transported into the building of the cathedral, where their perishing continued due to inappropriate handling. Later, the book collection was stuffed into the rooms of the nationalised capitular archives, where it waited for a better fate in a bulk. Another severe loss was when 11 incunabula and 98 antiquities were moved to the National Library of Bucureşti during a forced registering between 1978 and 1982. At the start of the rehabilitation of the library in 1988, we had to decide the fate of the book collection of about 25000 volumes, which had suffered the above calamities and was stored in complete disarray. The freshly founded collection got the name Diocesan Monument Library. The Transylvanian Museum Society was asked to accept the duty of professional supervision. After the removal of the junk, the archival material was put into boxes and placed in closed cases. The separation of the three main groups seemed simple since the volumes of the chapter contained the stamps of the owner, which was not the case regarding the volumes of the bishopric and the seminary, and the identification after the labels on the spines did not bring the expected results. The RMK (Régi Magyar Könyvtár [Old Hungarian Library]: Hungarian prints from before 1711) volumes, the foreign prints from the 15th-17th centuries and the Hungarian and foreign prints from the 18th century. By June 2000, three rooms of the former capitular library in the building of the cathedral were renovated and furnished with 700 running metres of wooden shelves, copies of contemporary ones, with the significant financial support of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage Protection of Hungary. The volumes of museum values of the three main groups, 6 incunabula, 126 RMK, 266 antiquities and about 800 17th century foreign prints, about 10000 prints from the 18lh and the beginning of the 19lh centuries were placed in these rooms furnished with security equipments. The six former archives rooms will serve as library stacks and archives after the renovation as well. The once national Catholic schematism collection and the 10000 volumes of books and periodicals, mostly from the 19th century will be kept here. The collection of the complete parish libraries of parishes that were closed or abandoned and the more valuable volumes from the majority of the parishes including 2 incunabula, 93 RMK, 108 antiquities and about 1000 volumes from before 1800 significantly enriched the collection of the library. The library is open to scientific research. In 2000, we started taking into inventory the collection parts and joined the national retrospective bibliographical data collection work. We have made the scientific elaboration of the book collection of the former chapter, composed the monograph and the catalogue of the products of the former seminary press of Nagyvárad (Oradea) and started the publication of the old collection of the library according to chronological aspects in co-operation with the National Széchényi Library of Hungary. There are no urgent tasks regarding the protection of the collection. We could not find traces of active mould or insect activity either in the main body or among the books collected from the parishes. In a longer term, however, the book bindings will need conservation and the many physically damaged volumes have to be conserved. András Emődi Oradea 86
