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Arts and Humanities
Abstract
Guild migration in Hungary in the 16th to 18th centuries can be best captured by exploring the migration of young artisans. Peregrination and the migration of young artisans were a process of learning and making contacts in a foreign environment over several years. We will be looking at the life, tasks, objectives and, not least, knowledge acquisition and career strategy of one age group, young men roughly between the ages of 16–20, who in the early modern period were the main depositories of local economic and political power in Europe, including the territories of the former Kingdom of Hungary – especially in the towns – and who were entering local economic and political power after half a decade or so of studying.
This highly mobile way of acquiring knowledge abroad through university and guild migration provided an experience of leaving the familiar home base. What these young men had in common was that their learning process took place in a foreign territory, far away from their home, in the unfamiliar environment of another country, using a different language. In the case of both groups of learners, the existence of a network of family ties, which can be traversed in several directions, proved to be a key organising factor. This link between the – mainly German-speaking – urban and rural citizens in Western Europe and the Hungarian (and Transylvanian) citizens in the early modern period was always evident in the guild organisation, both economically and culturally.
Abstract
Although studies on the pagan past existed in Slovenia prior to the publications of Pavel Medvešček, his writings on pre-Christian religious practices (Staroverstvo) in the Western part of Slovenia caused some disruption within the Slovenian academic sphere. Medvešček allegedly collected the material (oral narratives on spiritual and healing practices and objects) from the 1950s to the 1980s and published it as uninterpreted material. Although some academics were often criticized for their perceived indifference towards Medvešček's works and lack of interest in the topic of this one-of-a-kind discovery of local spiritual practices, others later initiated intriguing debates. The article outlines the life and work of Pavel Medvešček as well as the broader reception of his works among Slovenian academics and the general public. Due to the frequent questioning of the research methods of Pavel Medvešček, the article highlights the longstanding question of what makes a material credible, and tries to show how this is unveiled in Medvešček's “discoveries.” The article focuses on the different approaches to studying Medvešček's materials employed by two ethnologists, Katja Hrobat Virloget and Miha Kozorog.
Abstract
Diachronic changes in phrase or clause structure are vectored rather than oscillating. A century ago, E. Sapir identified a drift towards fixed word order and another one towards the invariant word (including the levelling of the forms for subject and object marking). What is still missing is a theory that predicts such drifts. As will be argued, the theory that explains Sapir's observations and, in passing, makes the concept of Universal Grammar dispensable is the theory that grammars are targets and products of cognitive evolution. Sapir's drifts are shifts from systems based primarily on the consciously accessible declarative network to systems based on the consciously inaccessible procedural network. This also explains why the [S[VO]] clause-structure is a point of no return and why languages do not change in the reverse direction, starting from a grammar like English and eventually moving to a grammar like Sanskrit.
Adalékok Marczibányi István (1752–1810) műgyűjteményének történetéhez
Addenda to the history of István Marczibányi’s art collection
The art collection of István Marczibányi (1752–1810), remembered as the benefactor of the Hungarian nation, who devoted a great part of his fortune to religious, educational, scientific and social goals, is generally known as a collection of ‘national Antiquities’ of Hungary. This opinion was already widespread in Hungarian publicity at the beginning of the 19th century, when Marczibányi pledged that he would enrich the collection of the prospective Hungarian national Museum with his artworks. But the description of his collection in Pál Wallaszky’s book Conspectus reipublicae litterariae in Hungaria published in 1808 testifies to the diversity and international character of the collection. In the Marczibányi “treasury”, divided into fourteen units, in addition to a rich cabinet for coins and medals there were mosaics, sculptures, drinking vessels, filigree-adorned goldsmiths’ works, weapons, Chinese art objects, gemstones and objects carved from them (buttons, cameos, caskets and vases), diverse marble monuments and copper engravings. Picking, for example, the set of sculptures, we find ancient Egyptian, Greek and Ro man pieces as well as mediaeval and modern masterpieces arranged by materials.
After the collector’s death, his younger brother Imre Marczibányi (1755–1826) and his nephews Márton (1784–1834), János (1786–1830), and Antal (1793–1872) jointly inherited the collection housed in a palace in dísz tér (Parade Square) in Buda. In 1811, acting on the promise of the deceased, the family donated a selection of artworks to the national Museum: 276 cut gems, 9 Roman and Byzantine imperial gold coins, 35 silver coins and more than fifty antiquities and rarities including 17th and 18th-century goldsmiths’ works, Chinese soap-stone statuettes, ivory carvings, weapons and a South Italian red-figure vase, too. However, this donation did not remain intact as one entity. With the emergence of various specialized museums in the last third of the 19th century, a lot of artworks had been transferred to the new institutions, where the original provenance fell mostly into oblivion.
In the research more than a third of the artworks now in the Hungarian national Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest could be identified, relying on the first printed catalogue of the Hungarian national Museum (1825) titled Cimeliotheca Musei Nationalis Hungarici, and the handwritten acquisition registers. The entries have revealed that fictitious provenances were attached to several items, since the alleged or real association with prominent historical figures played an important role in the acquisition strategies of private collectors and museums alike at the time. For example, an ivory carving interpreted in the Cimeliotheca as the reliquary of St Margaret of Hungary could be identified with an object in the Metalwork Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (inv. no. 18843), whose stylistic analogies and parallels invalidate the legendary origin: the bone plates subsequently assembled as a front of a casket were presumably made in a Venetian workshop at the end of the 14th century.
There are merely sporadic data about the network of István Marczibányi’s connections as a collector, and about the history of his former collection remaining in the possession of his heirs. It is known that collector Miklós Jankovich (1772–1846) purchased painted and carved marble portraits around 1816 from the Marczi bányi collection, together with goldsmiths’ works including a coconut cup newly identified in the Metalwork Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (inv. no. 19041). The group of exquisite Italian Cinquecento bronze statuettes published by art historian Géza Entz (1913–1993), was last owned as a whole by Antal Marczibányi (nephew of István) who died in 1872. These collection of small bronzes could have also been collected by István Marczibányi, then it got scattered through inheritance, and certain pieces of it landed in north American and European museums as of the second third of the 20th century. Although according to Entz’s hypothesis the small bronzes were purchased by István’s brother Imre through the mediation of sculptor and art collector István Ferenczy (1792–1956) studying in Rome, there is no written data to verify it. By contrast, it is known that the posthumous estate of István Marczibányi included a large but not detailed collection of classical Roman statues in 1811, which the heirs did not donate to the national Museum. It may be presumed that some of the renaissance small bronzes of mythological themes following classical prototypes were believed to be classical antiquities at the beginning of the 19th century. Further research will hopefully reveal more information about the circumstances of their acquisition.
Az esztergomi főszékesegyház és egyházkormányzati központ építészeti koncepciójának kialakulása és változásai •
I. rész: Az esztergomi Várhegy a 18. század második felében
Evolution of and changes in the architectural conception of a cathedral and church administration centre in esztergom. Part I: Esztergom’s castle hill in the second half of the 18th century
With the advance of the Ottoman Empire the Archiepiscopate of Esztergom was forced to leave its seat and move to Nagyszombat. The buildings of mediaeval origin on Castle Hill, first housing royalties and later the archbishop, were appropriated by the military forces and suffered considerable damage from sieges and the Ottoman domination. The rule of the Turks ceased in Esztergom in 1683, but the archbishopric did not return before 1820. Nonetheless, the archbishops of the 18th century were also preoccupied with the fate and future of the buildings on Castle Hill.
Archbishop Ferenc Barkóczy (1761–1765, fig. 4) commissioned the Vienna-based architect of French origin, Isidore Ganneval (1730–1786) to plan a centre of ecclesiastical management on Castle Hill. Unfortunately, it is hard to glean from the fragmentary archival sources what exactly Ganneval was asked to design. His extant survey drawings are only about the renaissance Bakócz chapel which survived the vicissitudes of the centuries relatively intact. Ganneval’s fairly modest fee and his stay of a few months only permit the assumption that he was contracted only to draw up a sketchy proposal. The wooden model (fig. 5) only known from a photograph and possibly perished by now, which can hardly be fitted among the subsequent plan variants, might as well reflect the ideas inspired by his planning work in Esztergom. The conception documented by the wooden mock-up does not take into account the existing, mostly ramshackle buildings and fortifications. The “Navis Ecclesiae” idea represented by the model shows the cathedral flanked by wings of the archiepiscopal palace, the buildings of the theological college are situated lower, and the main road to Visegrád is lined by the canons’ houses. The sanctuary of the cathedral faces west breaking with the tradition of the eastern apse. The groundplan is a fusion of centralized and longitudinal plans, its basic element is the Bakócz Chapel (fig. 6) the mass of which is reiterated and enlarged in it.
This proposal ignored the possibility of preserving the mostly mediaeval buildings and fortifications on Castle Hill. In December 1761, however, Archbishop Barkóczy was compelled to sign the obligation by the War Council to undertake the maintenance of the Castle Hill fortifications and in case of enemy attacks to accommodate imperial troops there. It was only through the intervention of the Queen, Maria Theresa, that Barkóczy could be exempted from this obligation in 1763.
The next plan of a church administration centre was elaborated by Franz Anton Hillebrandt (1719–1797) whose first plan series was made during the validity of the military obligation from December 1761 to March 1763. It is quite possible that the style of the architect of the Hungarian royal chamber was closer to the taste of the baroque art patron Barkóczy than that of Canneval twenty years his junior, representing the progressivity of revolutionary architecture. The latter was also commissioned by Anton Christoph Migazzi to design the cathedral of Vác, whose style did not attract followers in Hungary.
Apart from the principal plan known in the copy by Anton Hartmann (fig. 7) only four pieces of the first plan series survive, including the first floor plan of the seminary building (fig. 8). This baroque conception keeps the fortified walls and bastions around Castle Hill but demolishes the military buildings on the plateau (barracks, hospital, stalls, etc.). It is like an architectural counter-proposal to Ganneval’s wooden model, taking into greater consideration the relief features than the perfunctory mock-up. Hillebrandt delivered these plans to Archbishop Barkóczy on 10 March 1763 and forwarded the queen’s message at the same time: the financial obligation to maintain the military defences of Castle Hill had been abrogated. It immediately invalidated the plans just presented, and obstacles from the path of planning were removed. That was probably the stimulus behind the free-handed amateur linear drawing of a groundplan made perhaps by the archbishop or his representative for the architect in 1763 (fig. 9) in which the functions of the buildings are defined. In a sense it returns to Ganneval’s model which handled Castle Hill without any restrictions.
Only few – a mere six sheets – of Hillebrandt’s plans are known from after the sketch. (A part of the plans were probably taken by architect István Möller to Budapest in the first decades of the 20th century and possibly perished during the siege of the capital in 1945 or during the reconstruction.) Anyway, it must have been on the basis of this second series of plans that the demolition of mediaeval remains, soil levelling and the laying of foundations began in 1763. In 1764, the collapse of an Ottoman minaret built using a mediaeval stair-tower caused the crushing of Porta Speciosa, the main portal of the mediaeval St Adalbert cathedral. Mainly preparatory construction went on until the death of Archbishop Barkóczy in 1765. That interrupted the building of a baroque church administration centre for good.
Building commissioner János Máthes (1785–1848) summed up in his work published in 1827 how far the construction had arrived and what was built later. Maria Theresa requested Hillebrandt to plan a church dedicated to King Saint Stephen for the garrison reinstated on Castle Hill, which was constructed in 1767–1770. It was – on a smaller scale – on the site of the planned baroque cathedral, certainly not using its foundation walls. About the situation a layout drawing (fig. 12), groundplan and design plan (fig. 13) are included in Máthes’s book. In addition, a now latent or extinct, mock-up (fig. 14) made by Máthes also reflects the situation on Castle Hill in the last quarter of the 18th century. In the lower part of the model made in the early 1820s groundplans of the buildings on Castle Hill could be seen (fig. 16). One of the specialties of the church was the copy of the Hungarian royal crown placed on the spire as the crowning ornament. On the façade on top of the stairs adjacent to the broad ramp leading to the basilica of today the statues of Saints Stephen and Ladislaus carved by the Pest sculptor József Hebenstreit were erected. Surviving items include side altar pictures painted by Anton Karl Rosier of Pozsony which are today in the Esztergom church of the Sisters of Mercy of Szatmár. The later rebuilt garrison church was pulled down in 1821 to make room for today’s cathedral. One of the first moves of the new construction was the transfer of the Bakócz Chapel to its present place. The cathedral, the construction of which started on plans by Pál Kühnel (1765–1824) and János Packh (1796–1839) fitted into a conception of a church government centre the model for which might have been provided by Ganneval’s plan of nearly sixty years before.
Barabás Miklós első Széchenyi István-képmása 1836-ból
Miklós Barabás’s first portrait of István Széchenyi from 1836
In the study I explore the relationship between the popular reformist politician of the first half of the 19th century István Széchenyi (1791–1860) and the painter Miklós Barabás (1810–1898). Miklós Barabás of Márkusfalva returned to Pest from a study tour of Italy in late 1835. He had an immense amount of sketches from his travels, and hardly any clients to sell to, so he tried to make acquaintances through the prominent figures of literature. His first commission was to paint the portrait of the poet Mihály Vörösmarty. During this commission he got acquainted with Antal Tasner, Count István Széchenyi’s secretary, who directed the count’s attention to the young painter. In this period several important institutions were associated with Széchenyi: he made a donation for the establishment of the Scholarly Society (the later Academy of Sciences), he took part in founding the National Casino in Pest, and had an active role in the work of the First Danubian Steam Shipping Company. From the end of the 1820s he wrote and published four books: Lovakrul [On Horses], Hitel [Credit], Világ [World/ Light], Stádium [State/stage of development]. His portrait was popular and in high demand. In 1835 eight different drawings and paintings were made of the politician. The aldermen of four counties – Hont, Bihar, Nógrád and Sopron – wished to acquire a portrait of him each. In response to the request by Bihar county, Széchenyi recommended Miklós Barabás to paint the portrait and guaranteed that the painting would be a success.
Széchenyi and Barabás met in person in February 1836 when the portrait in the focus of research was made with the count sitting for it. This half-length portrait of the count in Hungarian gala costume was extended to full length portraits several times and sold to different clients.At the present stage of research the painting ordered by Hont county (in the Mining Museum, Selmecbánya) is the only original portrait in addition to the half-figure prototype, and the work for Sopron county is known in reproduction. The two depictions are iconographically connected by the black Hungarian gala costume and the motifs alluding to Széchenyi’s political activity (books on the table, steamboat in the background). After Széchenyi’s death in 1860 Pest county also commissioned Barabás to paint a full-length portrait of him. In the background of the painting of 1867 the construction of Chain-bridge is shown. The posture of the figure is, however, not so excellently set as in the earlier pictures. Barabás kept the first-painted half-length portrait with him to the end of his life. His heirs later sold it to Dénes Széchenyi, the grandson of István Széchenyi’s brother Lajos and it survived the vicissitudes of the 20th century in family ownership.
A gróf, a festő és a bécsi ágens: Széchényi Antal képmása Michael Christoph Emanuel Hagelganstól (1762)
The count, the painter and the viennese agent: Portrait of Antal Széchényi by Michael Christoph Emanuel Hagelgans (1762)
The half-length portrait of cavalry general Count Antal Széchényi (1714–1767) is kept in the Rómer Flóris Museum of Győr. During its restoration the painter’s signature came to light: Hagelgans pinxit / Wien 1762, and in the Széchényi family archives the correspondence about the picture can be found. Between the painter and the client, the count’s agent in Vienna, Johann Edler von Hermann was the liaison, who claimed that Hagelgans regarded the painting so good that he kept it for himself and made a replica for Antal Széchényi. In the early 20th century the first picture was kept at the Ludovika military academy in Budapest, and the copy ended up in the museum from the family. The Darmstadt painter signed a representative portrait in the Historical Picture Gallery of the Hungarian National Museum in 1758. Later the portrait – including the face – was overpainted and the coat of arms of chief justice Baron Ferenc Koller as well as the middle cross of the Order of St Stephen Koller received in 1765 were added.
Agent Hermann also tried to find a fresco painter for Antal Széchényi and consulted Gregorio Guglielmi, who was working on Schönbrunn at that time. He failed to get advice, but he did send a master to Nagycenk, who may have been Johann Ignaz Cimbal. Although no baroque fresco was painted in the Széchenyi mansion, but on the basis of the style of the altar picture of the chapel (Christ on the Cross) and the praedella showing the Virgin Mary suggests that they might hypothetically be attributed to the fertile altarpiece and fresco painter who had settled from Wagstadt (Bílovec) to Vienna.
Several Vienna-based agents of Hungarian aristocrats pursued artistic activity and art brokering. Stefan Fabsich and Antal Pruszkay worked for the bishop of Eger Károly Eszterházy, the mentioned Knight Hermann and a certain Heinrich Schwarzenberger and later his widow acquired art works for István Esterházy of Zólyom (Zvolen), who also employed the court agent Johann Stifftel. Between 1758 and 1762 Stifftel was the secretary of the princes Esterházy in Kismarton (Eisenstadt): he arranged for the first contract with the composer Joseph Haydn.
Kállai Ernő német nyelven megjelent írásainak könyvészeti jegyzéke (1938-1944) •
Közreadja Bardoly István
List of ernő kállai’s writings in german. compiled by árpád tímár, edited by István Bardoly
A collection of Ernő Kállai’s writings was published forty years ago, in 1981, by Corvina publisher. The pieces were selected, prefaced and the bibliography compiled by Éva Forgács. (Kállai Ernő: Művészet veszélyes csillagzat alatt. Válogatott cikkek, tanulmányok [art under a perilous constellation. Selected articles, studies]. Ed. and pref. Éva Forgács. Budapest 1981). Kállai’s last – published – writing appeared about lászló Mednynászky in the paper Politika on 9 July 1949. He was excommunicated from the profession, silenced, he lived in misery. He made ends meet by translating, selling items of his library, or pawning. “Old chum, i learnt yesterday that the ‘Breton Calvaries’ was only worth 35 forints. That’s the price then i want for them. Segers, Hausenstein – Klee are absolute rarities or amateur values, so i can wholeheartedly recommend them to your Excellency’s attention. Can we strike a bargain?” “By the way, i must return the typewriter to doctor Kővári. That means, until i can redeem mine, i must obtrude myself on you. and type on the small remington. – i’m sorry,” he wrote to his friend Miklós Szentkuthy in 1949. (Szentkuthy Miklós válogatott levelezése [Selected correspondence of M.Sz.] Ed. Hernád imre. Budapest 2008, 150–151.) Sporadically one or another Kállai writing appeared in anthologies before 1981 (Kortársak szemével. Írások a Magyar művészetről [Through the eyes of contemporaries. Writings about Hungarian art]. Ed. and pref. Perneczky Géza. Budapest 1967; Kritikák és képek. Válogatás a Magyar képzőművészet dokumentumaiból 1945–1975 [reviews and pictures. Selection from the documents of Hungarian arts 1945–1975] Compiled: art Historical research Group, HaS. Budapest 1976.). His books – cherished treasures of their owners – passed from hand to hand among the interested.
Already Éva Forgács stressed that “the precondition for restoring him to his deserved place in the history of Hungarian art which he lost thirty years ago is, apart from the collection and publication of his works, a change in attitude: not least, the still viable convention must be superseded which values and ranks a mediocre aesthete or art philosopher higher, takes him more seriously than an outstanding critic, saying that after all, he is only a critic.” (Forgács Éva: Bevezető [introduction]. in Kállai op.cit. 9). This work was accomplished by árpád Tímár, who edited the works of Ernő Kállai in eight volumes.
He knew best the history of art criticism in Hungary whose foundations he laid with several decades of research into the “cemetery of dailies”, publishing writings by imre Henszlmann, lajos Fülep, György lukács, leó Popper, artúr Elek. The Kállai collection fits in this series. He termed the “possibly complete” bibliography in the volume edited by Éva Forgács a “till now unavoidable” starting point (Kállai Ernő: Összegyűjtött írások = Ernst Kállai: Gesammelte Werke i. articles, studies in Hungarian 1912–1925. Ed., after-word: Tímár árpád. Budapest 1999, 236), but during his researches he corrected and extended her list. He worked alone elaborating the Hungarian articles, and with Csilla Markója and Monika Wucher in libraries of Munich, Berlin, Pozsony and Vienna to scan the majority of German-language papers inaccessible then (and today) in Hungary, exploring several so-far unknown writings. The collected material appeared in eight elegant tomes between 1999 and 2010 (Kállai Ernő: Összegyűjtött írások = Ernst Kállai: Gesammelte Werke. i–Vi, Viii, X. Budapest 1999–2012), except volumes 7 and 9, which ought to have contained the articles published in german in 1938–1944 (in Forum, Pester Lloyd). árpád Tímár prepared the bibliography of this material – which differs in volume and the accuracy of the items from the list presented in 1981 – but he had no drive or energy to type the text of hundreds of pages; he wished to work on more important engagements. Was he right to think others could also finish this project? Well, as long as it remains a project for the future, we offer some help for those interested with the bibliography of articles written in German between 1938 and 1944
„Megbízottam szoborral hétfőn este indul…” Az egervári Straub-szobrok múzeumba kerülésének és másoltatásának története dokumentumok tükrében
“My agent starts with the statue late on monday…”The museum acquisition and replication of the straub statues of egervár as revealed by the documents
The rococo wooden statues of St Sebastian and St Roch were purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts in 1916. Earlier they had adorned the high altar of the church of St Catherine of Alexandria in Egervár (Zala county) flanking the tabernacle. Their first researcher, Mária Aggházy attributed them to the Graz sculptor Philipp Jakob Straub (Wiesensteig 1706–Graz 1774). The Egervár church of mediaeval origin belonged after the Ottoman era to the advowson of the Széchényi family who had trade and art relations with Styria, too; they had the church rebuilt and furnished in baroque style in the mid-18th century.
As part of the contract of sale, the museum undertook and financed the making of exact copies of the statues to replace the original ones on the high altar, where they still are. It can be reconstructed from the correspondence of 1912–’22 preserved in and Museum of Fine Arts Archives and the Archives of the Diocesan Archives in Szombathely that probably little before 1912 the statues were transferred to the Szombathely episcopacy for conservation. Bishop János Mikes had them restored and maybe also exhibited. Their sale became necessary for the parish to be able to renovate the deteriorating Egervár church. The deal was concluded with an ordinary procedure, but World War I and the inflation it entailed greatly protracted the making of the copies and boosted the costs. Eventually, the replicas were completed in two phases by teachers of the National Royal Hungarian School of Applied Arts, sculptor Sándor Matéka (St Sebastian) and decorator and furniture designer Béla Kajdy (St Roch).
A pomázi szerb templom berendezésének kialakulása a 18. század végén
Evolution of the furnishing of the serbian church in pomáz by the late 18th century
Commission to build an Orthodox church in Pomáz was given around 1720 by the Serbian population demonstrably present in the settlement from the 1660s. The church dedicated to the megalomartyr Saint George was consecrated by the bishop of Buda Mihailo Milošević (1716–1728) in 1722, exactly 300 years ago. The orthodox church of Pomáz is one of the earliest surviving monuments of the Serbian Church after the great Serbian immigration (Seoba). Its history and artistic values have been dealt with by Pál Voit, Sztoján D. Vujicsics, Iván Jaksity sr., Dinko Davidov and Márta Nagy earlier. The church books of birth marriage and death survive as of 1752, the documents of the parish as of 1783. The scrutiny of the accounts books for the period from 1783 and 1800 has revealed a lot of new data about the construction of the church, its furnishing and even of the masters involved. The presentation of the new information is the main aim of the paper.
The explored archival data reveal that the church built around 1720 was already in need of reconstruction by the 1770s. In the western end of the nave a gallery was erected in 1783 and by 1794 the old tower was replaced by a new taller one. The still extant furniture is documented from the 1780s. in 1789 two painters were contracted to decorate the existing canons’ seats and the bishop’s throne. The identity of the master named Georgije in a source is unsettled. The other can be identified as painter Arsenije Teodorović (1767–1826) who was in the first year of his studies at Vienna’s Academy. He was to become one of the most outstanding figures of Serbian painting in the age whose many prestigious commissions in the Serbian Orthodox diocese of Buda included the painted decoration of the furnishing of St Nicholas’s church in Baja at the beginning of his career (1793–1794), and already as a mature painter he decorated the iconostasis, cantors’ benches and the throne of the Theotokos in the orthodox cathedral of Buda (Tabán) (1818–1820). From his works in Pomáz only the pictorial representation on the bishop’s seat survives partly overpainted. It shows Saint John Chrysostom in a fairly unusual composition.
The wooden framework of the classicizing late baroque iconostasis (1793–1794) was made by wood carver Avram Manojlović of zombor; his most exquisite work in Hungary is the iconostasis in Baja (1788–1790). The iconostasis of Pomáz – a far more modest work than the one in Baja – was a commission for the Baja-born Pavel Ðurković (1772–1830?) as the recently explored documents verify. So far, the first iconostasis by Ðurković – who was to become the decisive artist of the Serbs in the first quarter of the 19th century – was believed to be the one in Dunaföldvár dated to 1799–1801, but the new source confirms that his first known ecclesiastic commission was the pomáz iconostasis. regrettably, owing to layers of overpainting only certain segments have preserved Ðurković’s brushstrokes.
A few separate icons in the Pomáz church verify the active presence of another two 18th century Serbian painters in Pomáz. The icon of Christ Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist is attributable to Hristofor Žefarović’s workshop. It probably belonged to the earlier iconostasis painted a little before 1740. Today there is only a single icon in the Pomáz church that preserves the memory of the sojourn in the village in 1770–1775 of Teodor Simeonov gruntović from Moscopolis, who with his workshop was very active in the territory of the Hungarian kingdom. His best-known works are the rich ensembles of icons in the churches of ráckeve and Székesfehérvár.
Abstract
In this paper, I present a novel corpus investigation of quantified and negated objects in the Middle English and Early Modern English period, which is embedded within the wider language change scenario from linear OV to linear VO in the history of English. It will be shown that evidence for preverbal positioning of such objects is mostly limited to translated texts in Middle English in the PPCME2 corpus, and that by late Middle English, most of the hits consist of negated elements, as shown in the PCEEC corpus, which consists of native texts. The different constraints governing spell out of positive objects in Old English and Middle English are discussed and compared to the licensing of negated and quantified objects. The data provided in this paper constitute further evidence for Ingham's (2000, 2002, 2007) analysis of preposed negated objects in late ME and their correlation with the Negative Cycle, and complement previous investigations on negated and quantified objects in Middle English and Early Modern English.
Among the Tangut Buddhist texts discovered from Khara-Khoto, there emerges a text entitled Gu tśja ɣiej tsji̱r tśhji kjịj, which means ‘Analysis of the Essence of Madhyamaka.’ Intriguingly, a Tibetan treatise composed by Rgya dmar ba Byang chub grags (fl. 12th century) bears the same title. A comparison between the texts in both languages shows that about 50% of their contents are the same. Although the Tangut text cannot be regarded as a translation of the Tibetan text we see today, the complex relationship between both texts and the history of the transmission of the Tibetan treatise is worth investigating.
Abstract
Over many decades, the library of Radvány castle has developed into a valuable and organized collection. The founders and owners of the library were members of the Radvánszky family from Radvány right until the time when it finally became state property. The collection has been described on several occasions, and the state of the library has been explored several times in the literature; however, to date, its holdings have not been described and published in detail. However, the specialist would be in an easy position, since catalogs have survived and, in addition, a significant part of the collection still exists, so there is a good chance that the library's stock can be reconstructed. The real and the supposed processes of building the collection may be traced back quite clearly over a period of more than a century and a half.
This article examines the figure of the passive hero first in the Korean literature of origins, and then in classical Korean literature of the Koryŏ and Chosŏn periods. After a general introductory section, in which the worldwide literary archetype of the hero and its evolution over time are examined, the author, specifically examining Korean literature, analyzes in part one the passive heroes of four short historical/mythological stories variously set in an era between the second and eighth centuries, and then part two of the article analyzes three passive hero figures as protagonists of one 14th-century tale and two 18th-century classic novels. The author thus shows how the narrative of the passive hero has undergone a significant transformation in Korea, passing from a mythical/spiritual state (which often does not even admit the figure of an antagonist) to a decidedly secular, materialist and politicized condition where the protagonists find themselves facing cultural superstructures which, in addition to generating antagonists, push passive heroes towards true forms of defensive fundamentalism.
The concept of the ‘Japanization of Confucianism’ took shape during the Meiji 明治 period (1868–1912 C.E.), reached its highest point of development in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868), and is epitomized by the rise of the Kyoto faction (Kyō-gakuha 京學派) of Zhu Xi studies (Shushi-gaku 朱子學). However, due to the underestimation of Japanese Zhu Xi studies by scholars like Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 from the early twentieth century onward, the Kyoto faction ipso facto has been largely eclipsed in the history of the study of Japanese Confucianism. In light of this, the present article investigates the representative scholars in the Kyoto faction to uncover the dynamic process of Confucianism’s penetration into Japanese society. A multiple-dimension study is conducted to dissect varied approaches to promoting the Japanization of Confucianism, including the vernacularization and sanctification of Confucianism in Japan. This article seeks to redefine the role of the Kyoto faction in the transmission of Confucianism across East Asia.
Abstract
This paper offers a preliminary linguistic analysis of votive texts with particular reference to their use of and variation in Latin. The aim of the linguistic analysis is to identify variation in the context of votive texts. In those votive inscriptions which contained a request, precise wording was considered crucial for the request to reach the gods. Therefore, schematic, formulaic wording is common. The epigraphic corpus under study shows various Vulgar Latin traits. The incorporation of ‘non-Roman’ or pre-Roman cults into Latin caused the greatest problems, with most variations occurring in the names of such gods. Since the names of these gods are not included in literary sources, our primary sources for these cults are inscriptions and they show characteristics of Vulgar Latin.
Abstract
This paper offers an updated and current picture of the history of research carried out by scholars affiliated with Austrian universities and institutions on late antique caskets found in the territories of the provinces of Noricum and Pannonia. The central figure in this research was Helmut Buschhausen who, notably in his monograph on the subject, collected a large number of casket mounts found particularly in the Pannonian provinces. Starting with Buschhausen's research, this paper focuses on the evolution of studies carried out in Austria on late Roman caskets to define the status quaestionis, also in consideration of the research carried out in this area by Hungarian scholars. The description of an interesting case study concerning the casket mounts found at the Austrian site of Traismauer (Augustianis) allows us to take stock of current studies of late antique caskets.
Abstract
The Kingdom of Hungary and the Grand Duchy of Transylvania were integrated into the Holy Roman Empire during the 18th century and accordingly, this shaped its institutional system. There were many obstacles to the creation of the “Empire-conform” library system. After 150 years of Ottoman rule, the country had to be rebuilt physically. It also had to build new Church and state centers, while the wars against the Turks continued, until the end of the 18th century. Public life was burdened by the anti-Protestantism of the Habsburg emperors, since, at the end of the 17th century, two-thirds of the country's population were Protestants. By the end of the 18th century this proportion had dropped to one-third. (At the same time, the Protestant institutional system was also dismantled.) In other words, the library system was built twice in a century and a half and demolished again to create a new system. In summary, however, it can be concluded that a library system conforming to that of the Habsburg Empire was established in the Kingdom of Hungary and Transylvania during the century following the end of the Ottoman rule.
Abstract
In this paper, the principle of semantic redundancy is examined as evidenced in the corpus of the Moesia Superior inscriptions (Inscriptions de la Mésie supérieure – IMS). The objective is to identify pleonastic phrases within the epigraphic material and to distinguish instances of unmotivated redundancy. The starting point is the observation made by Hofmann, Löfstedt, Herman, and others that this type of redundancy, contrary to the pragmatically motivated or “rhetoric” one, could reflect the ongoing semantic change in Vulgar Latin. Given the scarcity of semantic redundancy findings in the IMS corpus, this paper also serves as an introduction to this linguistically important topic.
Abstract
In late antiquity, there has been a public opinion that African Latin is specific and different from the Latin spoken in other regions of the Roman Empire. Several grammarians also mention – in comparison with the so-called classical Latin – incorrect (linguistic) phenomena, which are associated with the Latin speakers of the African provinces. In my paper, I will examine one of these (perceived?) Africanisms, the wrong use of the l sound/letter (labdacism) through a selection of texts available in the grammatical tradition, and finally, with the inclusion of African epigraphical material, I will discuss the phenomenon of wrong gemination and degemination in African provinces, which might closely be related to the phenomenon called labdacism by grammarians.
Abstract
In 2019 a tiny gold tablet, once folded several times, turned up in a private collection in Hungary. Due to its physical appearance and the layout of the text, the tablet originally had been identified as a ‘foil with a Greek magical inscription’ in an auction catalogue. At first glance, however, it becomes obvious that the text was written with Latin letters. Although parts of the text recall Greek and Latin Christian apologists' works, the pagan apotropaic language of the amulet is evident throughout. The text itself proposes a major impact of Greek. This paper offers a preliminary report on establishing the text and gives approaches for interpreting the gold lamella.
Abstract
This paper aims to discuss the linguistic data provided by over 400 ostraca from the praesidium of Didymoi in the Eastern Desert, with a focus on Latin texts and phenomena of interference with Greek. After providing an overview of the socio-historical context of Eastern Egypt, this research conducts a general quantitative analysis of the linguistic features of the Latin ostraca and compares them to other corpora which are similar in terms of chronology and geographic provenance. Our analysis reveals peculiarities of the Latin ostraca from Didymoi, which are further investigated through a qualitative analysis to identify potential levels of variation.
The results of the analysis aim to demonstrate two main points. Firstly, it is not to be ruled out that the Latin language had a greater presence in Roman Egypt than commonly believed, extending beyond the coram imperio public sphere. Secondly, the Latin language emerging from these ostraca is to be considered as a bundle of varieties reflecting in most cases interlanguage stages among learners who have Substandard Latin, variously tending toward Neo-Standard, as their target language.
Abstract
The interjection was recognised as a part of speech by the Latin grammarians, replacing the lack of the article class in the Greek system and maintaining the eight parts of speech. However, it is noteworthy that the definition of interjection among the different scholars and grammarians is not stable and wavers between the need to identify its role as a part of speech – whether it was an adverb or not – and its pragmatic function, identifying to what extent it was connected to emotions. The scholarly discussion over the interjection entangled and disentangled itself during the centuries, and its theoretical status has been verified in the present paper, which shows how the classical and non-classical evidence reconnects this part of speech to its most rhetorical function. This paper delves into this debate, focusing on the interjection heu and providing a history of the interjection, covering the classical period and the Middle Ages, according to the linguistic perspective and highlighting how Latin grammarians considered it in their linguistic framework.
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to study the continuity of musical thinking professionalization on examples of piano works by Transcarpathian composers, which are very significant for the formation of the Transcarpathian compositional tradition as a historical phenomenon of mastery development by Transcarpathian composers (Zsigmond Lengyel, Dezső Zádor, István Márton, Emil Kobulei, Mykola Popenko, Volodymir Volontyr, Anatoly Zatin, Viktor Telychko) regarding their compliance with the academic norms of musical thinking and with historically composed stylistic invariants. The approach to the research phenomenon is monadological, which means the intention to diagnose a mentally peculiar discourse of the stylistic design, combining the assimilation of historically relevant thought forms and the intonational stock of a multiethnic folklore of the Transcarpathian region. We come to the conclusion that the piano works of Transcarpathian composers reflect a historically determined manoeuvre of “catching up” with the stylistic initiatives of the whole twentieth century with its idea of a global cultural synthesis and reinterpretation/neo-restoration of traditions. It has been found that the starting point for the professionalization of music composition in Transcarpathia was the modern modality of style – a position that is usually characterized as a “post-Romantic reaction” to all the traditional and total renewal of musical thinking in order to innovate. At the same time, for the style-forming initiatives of Transcarpathian composers the discourse of stylization became most relevant – a special type of musical thinking that created the newest representation of the “intonation image of the world” and found its rather original embodiment in the postmodern phase under the guise of “intellectual performance.”
La Vie de Sabas le Jeune et la Vie de Christophe et Macaire par Oreste de Jérusalem •
Hagiographies ‘transméditerranéennes’ entre Palestine, Constantinople, Rome et l’Italie du Sud byzantine
Abstract
Based on the stratigraphic analysis of MS Vat. Gr. 2072, the oldest manuscript of the hagiographical works of the Jerusalem patriarch Orestes (the Life of Sabas the Younger and the Lives of Christopher and Macarius), this article focuses on the complex genesis of these hagiographies in the context of Orestes' biography, as well as in the broader framework of the relationship between Constantinople, the Caliphate, the Papacy, and Ottonian Rome in the 10th and 11th centuries.
This paper offers a systematic reinterpretation of the Gārgya controversy, a remarkable episode in the history of early India’s reflections on language. Recorded in Yāska’s Nirukta, this controversy centers on the issue whether all or only certain nouns are ‘born from’ (i.e., derived from) verbs. While Śākaṭāyana and the etymologists, including Yāska, believe that all nouns are derivable, Gārgya and the grammarians maintain that only morphologically regular nouns are derivable. This paper examines the arguments developed in this controversy and argues that Yāska’s belief that all nouns are derivable is not only a linguistic axiom but also reflects non-linguistic concerns pertaining to the raison d’être assigned to the discipline of etymology and to the belief that the Veda transcends history.
Abraham with his son Ishmael •
The iconography of Rembrandt etching B 33
The titles previously given to Rembrandt etching B 33 are not convincing: it is problematic to identify the boy as “Isaac” or even as “Benjamin”, and the use of the verb “caress” is also imprecise.
For all their shared intimacy, the two protagonists in the etching were depicted by the artist in different physical and emotional states: the old man is tense while the child is calm; the feet of the former, turning to the right, suggest preparing to depart, while the posture of the latter hints that he is going nowhere. With regard to their close physical proximity, because of the gesture Abraham makes with his left hand, and owing to the telling positions of their feet, the two figures are closely connected to the “banishment of Hagar and Ishmael”. The work depicts Abraham and Ishmael immediately prior to their parting and after the feast celebrating Isaac’s weaning. Ishmael’s supercilious smile and the apple in his hand allude to the argument with his half-brother and also to the Old Testament. It is at this moment that Abraham hears the voice of God, instructing him to send his loved ones away; the tension in his eyes is directed towards God. Every sinew of his body and soul is strained by the ambivalence of the situation: what he has to accept is the unacceptable. It could well be that just an instant earlier he was caressing Ishmael’s chin without a care in the world, but now he gently starts to turn the child’s head in the direction of the voice, while at the same time, the blessing he is about to bestow on his son is already present in his left hand. Ishmael’s position nestled in Abraham’s lap may also refer to his legitimate descent, to the fact that he too is regarded by Abraham as his heir, as the firstborn “of his flesh”.
The work is a nuanced pictorial exegesis of Genesis 21:8–13; it may have been made in the same year, 1637, in which Rembrandt produced etching B 30, depicting the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael.
Luca Giordano also painted Abraham with his firstborn son, Ishmael, in a canvas that once adorned San Juan del Buen Retiro in Madrid.
After the Treaty of Trianon (1920) the long-destroyed medieval royal centres of Hungary could be used as sites to replace the “lost historic monuments” on the areas separated from Hungary.
In 1934, the art historian Tibor Gerevich, a famed person in Italian-Hungarian cultural diplomacy became the Chairman of the National Committee of Historic Monuments. The Committee lead three iconic works among others during this era: the excavation of the medieval royal palace of Visegrád, the rehabilitation of the ruins of the medieval provostal church in Székesfehérvár, and the renovation of the medieval royal palace of Esztergom. The reconstructions of two of them could have been fulfilled, using the modernist style of the Italian restaurations. Until these works, the reconstructions happened only with additions in historicistic styles. The study examines the transformation as a phenomenon which did not happen so sharply. During the planning processes, the attitude of historicistic way of seeing can be also observed in the architectural renovation practices.
Abstract
This study is a representative text written as part of the project “Hungarian Literary Culture in a Transcultural Perspective”. It aims to convey to readers versed in other cultures the effects of the first complete text in the Hungarian language, the “Funeral Oration and Prayer” (Halotti Beszéd és Könyörgés), as an element of the living literary tradition manifesting in writing and reading. The study consists in a commented and annotated version of the basic text that will serve as a basis for the chapters adapted to the specificities of the different language versions of the book. The text gives a brief overview of 12th century Hungarian texts, and then introduces several 20th century Hungarian poems that share as their precursor the “Funeral Oration and Prayer”.
The castle of Borosjenő (Ineu, Romania), which is largely Renaissance in form, also displays important architectural phases from before and after this period. During the on-site art historical research of 2016 and 2019 it was an especially important task removing numerous Romanesque, pre-1200 carvings in secondary use as building material. The (majority of) carvings we have identified most likely originated in the monastery of Dénesmonostora (Dienesmonostora), which once stood near Borosjenõ. Probably by the end of the fourteenth century, when it had disappeared from the written sources, and certainly by the sixteenth century, the monastery had been abandoned, and its remains have since disappeared. Proof of the high artistic value of these carvings was the capital depicting a siren, removed during the reconstruction of the castle in the 1870s. The owner of the castle at that time donated it to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, where today it is a part of the permanent collection. Some of the newly-founded capitals and other decorative architectural elements have very rare analogies in the Hungarian Romanesque architecture, but show artistic connections with the Alsace region (e.g. Sainte foy church in Sélestat). Several other medieval fragments can be dated to a period later than the twelfth century. The paper contains also a catalogue of about thirty-eight carved stone-fragments.
Abstract
This study examines the Millennium exhibition held in Budapest in 1896, highlighting the constructed nature of the celebration which put an end to the debates of historians by a legislative decision, as well as the functioning of the commemoration, the role of visual components and certain other aspects of the exhibition regarded as a central event. It also brings together undertakings from the fields of literary studies and fiction which relate to or capitalise on the period, and which are interesting from the point of view of functionality and popularity.
