"Késő maradékainknak tétessen jegyzésben!" Írásos emlékek Vác város múltjából, 1074 -1990 - Váci Történelmi Tár 1. (Vác, 1996)

Bevezetés

Preface There may not be another small town in our country with such abundant literature of its local history like Vác. However, we would find it difficult if we wanted to get some knowledge of the past of the town on a more profound level than that of a traveller's guide. The series of source publications of the Vác Historical Storehouse wants to present the historical memories of the town: this first volume is about the written documents, the subsequent ones will be about archeological and architectural relics, illustrated representations (maps, prints, photographs, picture postcards, etc.), and also some everyday articles and the objects of fine and applied arts. And of course it is not everything. We were fortified to start our present undertaking by the notable anniversaries of 1996 - and they also meant providing financial background - the 1100th anniversary of the Hungarian Conquest, the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of the first Hungarian school, and the 40th anniversary of the revolution in 1956. It was another inspiring motive that the earlier elaborations are hardly available, often out-ofdate, while the works written in the recent decades are mostly one-sided both in their aspects and their interpretation of facts. This is why we found it important to present the historical past, and especially the last four or five decades by the means of publishing the written documents in an objective, matter-of-fact way. We were made to do it by the works of our respected predecessors. Ferenc Toldy, who compiled the Hungarian Historical Storehouse in 25 volumes, and Sándor Szilágyi, who edited the Historical Storehouse. In the course of collecting the documents (the compilers of the volume went through about 60 running-meters of files) and publishing them we could not strive for completeness; for this reason, anybody who takes this book in hand with the expectation of getting a full description of the past of the town, will get disappointed - for this aim not one. but perhaps even several volumes would have been too few. On the other hand, in some cases we had to disregard the publication of some documents - e.g. the laws enacted at the parliament in 1485 (in Vác?), or Görgei's proclamation of Vac - which would have exceeded the bounds of this volume because of their nation-wide character. In many other cases we could not stand this demand because of the lack of adequate sources. However, our aim was to give a broad outline of the important phases of the past of the town by means of the published sources, and of course we also paid attention to presenting not only the determining features of the historical development of Central Europe and Hungary, but the local characteristics as well. By making use of some concrete cases, another intention of ours was to give a cross-cut of the events in the lives of the people who used to live or are living here, from birth to death, which can happen again and again in the course of several generations. That is, to show how we have lived our everyday lives for 11 centuries now. here in the Carpathian basin we. the inhabitants of a country, of a town; we. the citizens of Vác. who grew up to attend school, learned skills, joined the army and fought, got married, gave birth to and brought up children, worked, had fun, were raised to noble rank and were deprived of it, died a hero's death and were mourned for. were slandered because of our views, changed social systems. - in a word, as our ancestors lived and as we have lived until recently. About the sources and how to use the book The texts of the sources are mostly published in chronological order; however, in some cases we departed from this principle. The texts are usually given in a shortened, letter-perfect form, because we had in our mind that it is the original language which can reflect the age. while re-writing or ..modernizing" the texts would have infringed their authenticity. We corrected only the obvious spelling and typing mistakes, but in the former case we did not do so if it would have meant the damaging of a characteristic feature of the source, e.g. a reference to the educational level of its writer. As a general rule, we used the original punctuation and dots, but for the sake of better understanding we completed them if needed. Presenting the texts we tried to reproduce the ..sight" and the ..atmosphere" of the documents by typographical means, hoping that it would not break up the harmony of the book too much.