Medieval Charters from the Batthyány Family Archives enter the National Archives

Charter of King Béla IV, 1256

On August 2, 2021, it was announced at a press conference that the collection of the Hungarian National Archives had been enriched with 520 original charters, which the Hungarian state had purchased from the Batthyány family for a price of 5,6 million EUR.

This collection consists of the most important documents in the Batthyány family archives originally held at Körmend. Members of the family took these charters with them in 1945 and preserved them in Austria until now. The remainder of the archives was badly damaged when the Soviet army plundered the Batthyány mansion at Körmend. Anything saved after that event was nationalized in 1949 and has been preserved at the National Archives since (it is estimated that about 15 percent of the medieval charters were destroyed in 1945).

Görgy Rácz, deputy director of the National Archives, explained at the press conference that the newly purchased collection contains the historically most important part of the family archives and is filled with irreplaceable documents of medieval Hungarian history, as the members of the Batthyány family held high government positions for centuries.

One box of the Batthyány-charters

Most of the charters are from the three series of the old archives of the Batthyány family preserved at Körmend castle until 1945: the Memorabilia (297 diplomas) series is the most valuable historical material of the Batthyány archives from the national point of view. The new acquisition makes this former series almost complete. Here the earliest piece is King Louis the Great's charter of 1352 on the nobility of the Pechenegs in Fejér County. There are also letters from King Louis II from 1526, calling Ferenc Batthyány to battle against the Turks - dating from just a couple of weeks before the catastrophic Battle of Mohács. The other outstanding part of the collection is the so-called Heimiana or “Himfiana” series, which was the family archive of the Himfis of Döbrente, one of the most influential baronial families of the Anjou era. Their charters went to the Batthyánys, who preserved them. The documents purchased now contain 141 pieces of this series, including 11 charters from the Árpádian period and 125 from the Anjou period. The third series is Acta Antiqua (48 charters), which contains the oldest documents concerning property in the family’s ancient estate. The earliest piece in this series is the 1355 charter of King Louis the Great.

Charter with the seal of King Sigismund, 1411

The documents will now join the other part of the Batthyány family archives in the National Archives as part of the nation's cultural heritage, where they will be available for scientific research after their inventory, processing, and digitization. All the medieval charters of the Batthyány family archives already in the National Archives can be consulted in the Hungaricana database.

Source of text and photos: Hungarian National Archives, Budapest

Monument Protection Archives Reopen in Budapest

Viktor Myskovszky's drawing of the Saint Michael chapel
 at Kassa (Košice, SK)

The national system of monument protection has been through many changes in Hungary during the last few years: have a look at the diagram on the website of the institution to get an idea. I did not report on every step of this process (the most recent overview dates from almost three years ago)  - which led to the complete closing of Hungary's National Office for Cultural Heritage. While day-to-day tasks of heritage protection are carried out by various ministries and government offices, the care of the rich archives of the national office was uncertain for some time.
Finally in 2017, the Archives were handed over to the Hungarian Academy of Arts. This institution is now called Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Centre. The Academy took care of moving the collections to a new, temporary location, where now they have been made accessible again. As indicated by the name, part of this collection is that of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture, which is also supervised by the Hungarian Academy of Arts.

The Monument Protection Document Service represents the most significant collection of archival material for the study of the historic Kingdom of Hungary. Material accumulated at the archives since 1872, the foundation of the Temporary Committee for Historic Monuments, and it covers the entire territory of the Carpathian basin. All the documentation of the major restorations carried in Hungary during the last decades of the 19th century can be found there, along with documents surveying monuments of the land. During the 20th century, material continued to accumulate there.

The Document Service consists of the following parts:

• Historical archives - this is where all the documentation is kept, along with correspondence
• Collection of plans - plans and drawings are kept here, along with a super-important collection of watercolor copies of medieval wall paintings
• Photo repository - the largest collection of historic photographs of Hungarian monuments
• Library - Hungary's most important library specialized in monument protection, restoration, etc.

Copy of wall painting at Mártonhely (Martjanci, SLO) by István Gróh

The English page of the website of the institution provides more information on the holdings. The reason for this post is to announce that as of December 2, 2019, the Monument Protection Documentation Services are once again accessible for researchers. This at least is good news. This might be a good point to mention that all of the earlier publications of the National Office of Monuments Protection are available online in the hungaricana.hu database. 

Romanesque stone carvings from Pécs cathedral, photo by Péter Gerecze

Hungarian Medieval Charters Digitized

Patrohi armorial, 1437
Hungarian National Archives, Dl 50.529

As of Spring 2010, over 100.000 Hungarian medieval charters have been fully digitized and made available by the Hungarian National Archives. This means that they are fully digitized, with high resolution photos of the charters, with additional photos of seals, and all this material is incorporated into a fully searchable database.
LINK: http://mol.arcanum.hu/dldf/opt/a100516htm?v=pdf&a=start

In addition to their varied content and sometimes beautifully preserved seals, a number of these documents are true masterpieces of manuscript illumination. This is especially true of armorial letters, which usually include a depiction of the family's newly given coat of arms. The series of illuminated armorials started in the period of King Sigismund, and stretches right to the end of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary (later as well - but the coverage of this database goes up to 1526).

You can check out a few beautiful examples, if you carry out a search by serial numbers. You will be asked to install a small image-viewing software, and you'll have to click around until you get to the images. For example, check out these armorials: (Dl) 13.000; 50.521; 104.871; 105.029.

If you would like to see more, enter the search term "címereslevél" in the search box as "document type". This gave me 149 hits - many more armorials are preserved in various other archives not covered by this database.
I wouldn't call this a very user-friendly system, but with a bit of patience, the database can give you all the information these charters hold.