Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1773, Pope Clement XIII dissolved the Jesuit order, accelerating the process of the university's transfer to the state. Between 1635 and 1773, many distinguished Jesuits of great knowledge taught at our university, leaving a lasting mark on the history of the institution. In August our feature is on the first chronicler of the university’s history, Ferenc Kazy.

Ferenc Kazy was born in 1695 in Léva, Bars county. He entered the Jesuit order at the age of eighteen, following his older brother, János Kazy. Among other things, he taught theology and rhetoric at the University of Nagyszombat. Later, he was head of house in Trencsén, Pozsony and Sopron, and then between 1748 and 1749 he was the director of the Collegium Rubrorum in Nagyszombat. As a student of Márton Szentiványi, he studied the collection of sources of Gábor Hevenesi and began writing historiography. His first historical work was the biography of the judge István Koháry in 1732. As a continuation of Miklós Istvánffy’s Historia, he wrote the 17th century history of the Kingdom of Hungary. He compiled his work on the history of the university for the centenary of the founding of the University of Nagyszombat (Historia Universitatis Tyrnaviensis Societatis Jesu). He died in Pozsony in 1759.

Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713) was born in Senj in 1652, as the son of a frontier soldier. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Zagreb and later at the Illyrian College of Rome. His first work appeared in print in 1681 (Apographum ex Joanne Lucio), and from then on until the end of his life he published regularly on a wide variety of subjects.

Pavao Ritter Vitezović served under the command of Miklós Erdődy in the Međimurje garrison in the Ottoman wars, and took part in the siege of Lendva (Lendava) and Szigetvár at the beginning of the Great Turkish War in 1683. After the war he became an officer at the court of Miklós Erdődy, in 1687 he was knighted with a gold bracelet, in 1691 he was elected podžupan of Lika and Krbava, and later became a royal councillor and baron. He returned to Croatia in the 1690s and ran a printing press in Zagreb between 1695 and 1706. In 1706, a fire destroyed his printing press, his wife died two years later, and Vitezović moved to Vienna at the end of his life in 1710. A true polymath, he worked as a cartographer, linguist and poet, among other things, in addition to his printing and historical works. 

Stemmatographia is one of Vitezović's most important works. It was first published in 1701, probably in Vienna (no printing place is present), followed a year later by a second edition in Zagreb. According to the preface to the second edition, the reprint was necessary because of the popularity of the first edition. A work of heraldry, the dedication consisting of four leaves is followed by 56 coats of arms on 56 pages, each accompanied by a four-line poem describing the coat of arms of the area in question. After the first two engravings (Illyricum, Imperium a Nemanide institutum), the author has arranged the coats of arms in alphabetical order, from Albania to Hungary. The images are followed by a list of 11 leaves, which gives a precise description and brief interpretation of each coat of arms. Vitezović also indicates here how the stripes used in the monochrome printing correspond to the colours used in reality, thus helping the illuminators (the copy of the University Library is not coloured). The volume concludes with a greeting to the readers, a list of errors and a poem by Nicolaus Garzia de Londono. The Stemmatographia was translated into Serbian and published in 1741 by Hristofor Žefarović. According to the ownership note on the title page, the copy of the University Library was in the possession of the Pauline monastery of Svetice in the 17th-18th centuries. 

The book is part of the book adoption program of the Foundation for the University Library. Save a book, adopt a book! For more information visit our website: https://konyvtar.elte.hu/en/support-us/adopt-a-book

RMK III 608

Vitezović, Pavao Ritter

Stemmatographia, sive Armorum Illyricorum delienatio, descriptio, et restitutio / authore equite Paulo Ritter

[Wien] : [s. n.], [1701]

The architectural history exhibition "The Window to Rodostó", which was presented last year in Rodostó, Turkey (today in Turkish: Tekirdağ), can also be seen in Hungary from July to the end of the year expectedly and can be visited free of charge in the area of the Gül Baba Cultural Center and Exhibition Hall (Budapest, Mecset utca 14.).

The exhibition presents the beginnings of the research of II. Ferenc Rákóczi's former dining house in Rodostó, then the purchase of the building by the Hungarian state and its transformation into a museum, with the help of rarely or never seen plans, blueprints, photos and drawings, also with a view to the city surrounding the building.

More information about the exhibition can be found here.

The exhibition also includes copies of the drawings of painter and draftsman Kálmán Beszédes made in Rodosto in 1891-92, which were included in our library as part of his legacy. This rich, multifaceted legacy is the carefully guarded material of our special museum collection (its shelfmark: G 691), the most valuable of which are the drawings that capture the memories of the Rákóczi emigration in Rodostó. He traveled a lot, after studying painting at home and abroad, he lived in Turkey from 1878 and did a lot to save the Hungarian memories of Rodostó.

His drawings from Rodostó can be viewed here in ELTE Digital Institutional Repository.

A digitized version of the entire legacy is available here.

The object of the month - World’s Fair award winner Nummulites preparations made by Miksa Hantken

Miksa Hantken (1821-1893) was the first head of the Department of Palaeontology in Budapest. His immense oeuvre related to several fields of geology and palaeontology is considered of outstanding importance even nowadays. His studies on the palaeobiology of the unicellular animals known as foraminifers (briefly forams), along with his results achieved in the utilization of them in search for the coal-seams of Eocene age – a highly valuated raw material at Hantken’s time – proved to be especially influential. Hantken recognized as first that the test of agglutinated forams (i. e. those that build their test via gluing together the grains available at the bottom where they live) is perforated, and that the tests of consecutive sexual and asexual generations of Nummulites – also known as “the coin of St. Ladislaus or St. Stephan” – are different in structure.

Tests of the fore-mentioned genus are emblematic fossils of marine sedimentary rocks deposited during the 22 million years of the Eocene epoch that began approx. 56 million years ago. The test of Nummulites is either lens- or disc-shaped, consists of several whorls divided into chambers and reaches 10 cm in diameter in some cases. Sound identification of Nummulites species requires the knowledge of internal characters. Usually two sections, oriented perpendicular to each other, are studied. One of them corresponds to the plane of symmetry of the test while the other one contains the imaginary axis of coiling. Beside complete specimens, such Nummulites sections are displayed in more than 2000 “green cassettes”, prepared for demonstrational and commercial purposes by Hantken and Zsigmond Ede Madarász (1822-1884) between 1862 and 1881 and housed in several private and public collections nowadays. 171 “green cassettes” were exhibited at the Vienna World’s Fair held in 1873 and Hantken was awarded gold medal for them.

Nummulites preparations made by Miksa Hantken and currently displayed at the temporary exhibition titled “Hungarian EXPO successes”, opened in the Hungarian National Museum

Size of cassettes is 3x5 cm.

Written by István Szente, ELTE Tata Geological Garden

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1773, Pope Clement XIII dissolved the Jesuit order, accelerating the process of the university's transfer to the state. Between 1635 and 1773, many distinguished Jesuits of great knowledge taught at our university, leaving a lasting mark on the history of the institution. In July our feature is on the owner of the collection, that forms the basis of the university’s mineral and rock collection, Matthias Piller. 

Matthias Piller was born in Graz in 1733 and entered the Jesuit order in 1750. From 1763 until the dissolution of the order in 1773, he led the Theresianum in Vienna, where he taught theology and natural history. From 1774, he became the first teacher of natural history (zoology and mineralogy) at the University of Nagyszombat. The following year, he wrote his textbook, which later appeared in several editions. In 1782, together with Lajos Mitterpacher, he took part in a trip to Slavonia, during which he made several natural history and ethnographic observations, as well as described new plant species. A separate volume was published about the trip. Matthias Piller’s huge collection of minerals, plants and paleontology was bought by the state for the university in 1800. This collection became the basis of the university’s mineral and rock collection. 

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The ELTE University Library and Archives will be carrying out database maintenance on the 15th and 16th of July 2023, therefore the online catalogue and library system of the University Library Service will be temporarily unavailable during this period.

From the 17th of July 2023, all our services will be available again as usual.

Thank you for your understanding.

The ELTE University Library and Archives will be temporarily closed on the 13th and the 15th of July 2023 for technical reasons.

On Friday (14 July 2023) and from Monday next week (17 July 2023) our library we will be open as usual.

Thank you in advance for your understanding.

A delegation of international professional guests visited the ELTE University Library and Archives on the 7th of July 2023 in the frame of the cultural programmes at the LIBER 2023 conference.

This year's event, organised by the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest between the 5th and the 7th of July 2023, under the title Open and trusted – Reassessing research library values, focused on the preservation and development of collections, open access, research support, research data management, service development and future challenges. Several members of our library staff represented our institution at the conference.

The group, which was hosted by our institution, had the opportunity to take part in a guided tour of our library, our exhibition entitled Buda Chronicle 550 and a book presentation of some of the special museum treasures in our collection.