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Királyi könyvek by Magyar Országos Levéltár Review by: Martyn Rady The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 554-556 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213763 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 20:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic and East European Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.73.34 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:15:51 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Királyi könyvekby Magyar Országos Levéltár

Királyi könyvek by Magyar Országos LevéltárReview by: Martyn RadyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 554-556Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213763 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 20:15

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.34 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:15:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Királyi könyvekby Magyar Országos Levéltár

554 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003

expulsion of 20,000 Czech state employees in addition to the 'exclusion of the Jewish population from the Slovak economy' (p. I26). Moreover, whilst the wartime resistance and the Slovak National Uprising are treated in some depth, there is no attempt to romanticize an iconic period in Slovak history. It was not just the Nazis, but also Slovak resistance fighters who committed 'inhumane acts of brutality and murder' during the Second World War (P. 146).

Two criticisms, however, deserve to be levelled at the book. Firstly, the sub- title is badly chosen. As the authors themselves point out, Samo was neither a Slovak (he was a Frankish merchant), nor did he unify the Slovaks, but rather 'created the first historically known tribal union of Slavs' in the seventh century (p. 4). To put both Samo and current Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's names in the subtitle smacks more of the need for a catchy subtitle than good history. Secondly, the book lacks a bibliography or at least a guide for further reading. The inquisitive reader is left, therefore, to follow up the authors' notes. Although these are on the whole helpful, the omission of references to the two best books on the Prague Spring, Gordon Skilling's Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ, I976) and Kieran Willi- ams s The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath (Cambridge, 199 7), was striking.

A single volume which attempts to span a period longer than a millennium is inevitably forced to lean more towards brevity than detail when discussing historical events. No doubt specialists on particular periods will be frustrated by the lack of depth and the glossing over of particular events, but Toma and Kovac should be commended for their book. Those with a reading knowledge of Slovak would be best advised to go straight to the work of Lubomir Liptak; whereas those who want a better introduction to contemporary Slovak politics should turn to Karen Henderson's Slovakia: The Escapefrom Invisibility (London, 2002). Nevertheless, for the reader of the Slavonic and East European Review who feels his/her knowledge of Slovak history is patchy and in need of reinforce- ment, I would recommend they read Toma and Kova's book.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies T. HAUGHTON University College London

Magyar Orszagos Leveltar. Kiraiyi kdnyvek. On CD-ROM. 4 disks: Vols I-9, 1527-I647; Vols IO-I7, I647-I683; Vols I8-26, I682-I703; Vols 27-38, I703-1740. Distributed by Arcanum Digiteka (www.arcan- um.hu). Budapest, 2000-2002. HFT i o,ooo per disk.

THE Hungarian 'Royal Books' (Libri regii, Kirayi kdnyvek) were originally held in the royal chancellery and consisted of copies of charters, bound chronologic- ally together in thick volumes. The copies were either made because the originals were considered at the time of their issue to be of unusual importance or, more usually, commissioned at the behest of the owner or recipient of a deed because he thought it worthwhile to have a transcript made of its contents. For this service, he had to pay, and the price itself determined whether a full transcription was made or just a short summary of the deed's contents. The Royal Books contain a medley of material relating, among

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.34 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:15:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Királyi könyvekby Magyar Országos Levéltár

REVIEWS 555

much else, to royal grants of rights to markets and tolls, ennoblements, pardons, divorces, gifts of land and other transactions affecting property, treaties with the Turk and articles of the estates. Prudent landowners might even choose to have copied letters adjourning suits which involved their property as well as the written assurance of the ruler that he had no claim on their land. Later, the Royal Books also included copies of patents of invention.

The institution of the Royal Books goes back to the Middle Ages and, most probably, to the fourteenth century. The medieval volumes, including those compiled during the reign of John I Zapolya (1526-40) were lost as a consequence of the naufragium, which claimed the bulk of the royal archive in 1 526, and of the Turkish occupation of Buda which began in I 54 I. The extant series thus commences only in I 527, following upon the Habsburg succession. Altogether, seventy-three volumes survive from this year up until I 914 when the institution fell into desuetude (to be formally abolished in 1920). By this time the purpose of the Royal Books was almost solely to record ennoblements. A separate series of books was compiled in Transylvania during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after which, in i 690, they were removed to Vienna. By I 848 these had reached fifteen volumes.

In their original form, the Royal Books are almost entirely unusable as a source. The indiscriminate nature of their contents, together with their strictly chronological arrangement, makes it hard to establish the location of materials relevant to any specific avenue of historical enquiry. Hitherto, all that historians have been able to do is to peruse and to collect facts in a manner almost as random as the Royal Books' own contents. Certainly, we can establish fairly easily that many properties changed hands in the 1520S and 30s and, again, in the I 68os, but it has hitherto proved altogether impossible to go beyond this and to track, for instance, the fortunes of individual estates and families. This problem was apprehended early on and, during the eighteenth century, several attempts were made to remedy the situation. In the I 68os, therefore, an index particularis was prepared which sought to itemize the contents of the books. Regrettably, however, the index was badly done anid left out altogether volumes 20 and 2 1. Subsequently, the royal treasury (kamara) took over the burden of reorganization, after which it prepared an entirely new series of Royal Books which were arranged in four parts according to matters ecclesiastical, divorce and legitimacy of children, grants of nobility, and everything else. Separate compilations listed ecclesiastical appointments and the names of those who still owed money on account of the cost of their ennoblement.

The four CD-ROMs under review reproduce the contents of the original series of Royal Books from the accession of Ferdinand I to that of Maria Theresa almost forty volumes in all and, altogether, many tens of thousand of densely-written pages. The reproductions and every page of the Royal Books is reproduced (several, regrettably, upside-down) are digitized from existing microfilm copy and are thus given in black-and-white frames. (A change in technique will shortly be required as, after I754, charters of ennoblement usually had the coats-of-arms awarded by the ruler brightly painted in). What is remarkable, however, is that the editors of the disks have examined each page and have singled out keywords which are given for

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Page 4: Királyi könyvekby Magyar Országos Levéltár

556 SEER, 8 i, 3, 2003

purposes of guidance on a pop-up. By keying in any one of the many hundreds of keywords given on the pop-up, the user can come up with a list of all charters relevant to his or her line of interrogation. Upon further enquiry, the user is also given a very brief description of each relevant document and, with the press of a key, its thumbnail. A single sweep of the mouse transforms the thumbnail into an almost real document, on your very own computer screen, which can be enlarged and even printed out.

This is not only tremendous fun but also makes the Royal Books an unexpectedly important source. By using the pop-up index as a guide to personal names, one can, for instance, find a huge number of sixteenth- century and later references to families which are thought to have expired in the Middle Ages. Likewise, it is possible to track, decade by decade, the history of individual properties, or to read the full texts of treaties and of hitherto unpublished negotiations with provincial diets. In short, what was previously an almost useless source has by the ingenuity and diligence of its engineers, programmers and historical consultants been transformed into an object of easy plunder and information. Of course, in order to use these disks one has to have some grasp of Hungarian 'computer-speak'. One also has to know Latin and to be ready to have a go at reading older calligraphic styles, not all of which are immediately penetrable.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies MARTYN RADY University College London

Engel, David (ed.). Gal-Ed. On the History of the jews in Poland. Gal Ed Society for Historical Research on Polish Jewry, i 7. School of Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, 2000. 212 pp. + I 78 pp. Notes. Biblio- graphy. Index. Price unknown.

A distinct aura of generational shift surrounds the yearbook Gal-Ed for the year 2000. With this issue, a long-serving member of the editorial board, Emanuel Melzer steps down, and a whole section is devoted to the memory of the late founding editor, Moshe Mishkinsky, the renowned historian of the Jewish labour movement in Eastern Europe. Most of the members of the passing generation were natives of the region that they studied, and deeply imbued with its cultural ethos. There is clear concern among the senior generation that their successors retain their commitment 'to underscore the great variety and multilinguality of Polish Jewish culture, in the hope that doing so will encourage the scholars who are assuming centre stage today to broaden their familiarity with many different topics and types of sources'. Consequently, and in contrast to its friendly rival Polin, Gal-Ed eschews issues devoted to a single topic, publishes documentary materials in their original language, and retains its bi-lingual English-Hebrew format.

It is difficult to review a scholarly m6lange, but a few general observations on the contents of the current volume are in order. The exploration of radical Jewish politics in Eastern Europe remains a special emphasis, with articles devoted to the Bund and the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hazair (by Roni Gechtman, Mitityahu Minc and Eli Tzur). Polish-Jewish relations are

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.34 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:15:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions