Provenance of the old Printed Cyrillic Books Being Held in
Church Libraries of the Former Hungarian Kingdom: Anton
Hodinka's Conception Evaluated on the Base of the Latest
Researches
The territory of the Former Hungarian Kingdom was remarkably
larger than it is now and a great part of it was settled by
inhabitants of non-Hungarian origin perhaps of Slavic. The
Sub-Carpathian Rusyns (a special branch of The Ukrainian,
settled in Uzhorod, Mukachevo and Marmarosh regions) and a
part of the Rumanians belonged to the Greek Catholic (i. e.
Uniate) Church and another part of the Rumanians and all the
Serbs, too, were of the Orthodox Church. Therefore the Rusyn,
the Rumanian and Jhe Serb parishes needed far more liturgical
books than the Roman Catholic ones since the Byzantine
liturgy is far more complicated than the Roman Catholic one.
Anton Hodinka was the first author who studied in 1909 the
activity of the Russian booksellers those had been travelled
to the former Hungarian Kingdom before 1770, when the import
of the Cyrillic books had forbidden by Queen Maria Theresa.
A. Hodinka's conclusion was criticized by E. Ojtozi and S.
Foldvari for the majority of the books could not been
imported from the territory of Russia. Descriptions and
analysis on provenance of materials being held in Greek and
Roman Catholic Church libraries of present Hungary has been
published by S. Foldvari. Of special interest may be the
former ones, because nobody has still done researches for
Church Slavic liturgical book in Roman Catholic collections
before Foldvari has done it. Since the country covers less
territory than the former Hungarian Kingdom did, it could not
be done enough investigations in the archives and book
collections being now abroad. Evidences were documented by E.
Ojtozi showed that the majority of the books had been
imported by the Greek Catholic parishes were printed in
typographies of Potchajev, Lvov, Unev etc. Thus hardly less
books had been imported from Russia than it was maintained by
A. Hodinka. This new statement was strongly undertaken by the
further researches made by S . Földvári on the marginalia in
old printed Cyrillic booksh held in Roman Catholic libraries,
were investigated firstly by him.
Another point of interest is that numerous old-printed
Cyrillic books are supposed to be evaluated as very rarities
that are being held also in Roman Catholic collections have
investigated by Foldvari. It has been demonstrated in his
publications that the Serb parishes had been importing the
books printed in typographies of Potchajev or Lvov instead of
buying the ones printed by J. Kurzböck in Vienna. Since the
books issued by Kurzböck had not accepted by the Serbs with
much pleasure.
A detailed survey of the findings of Hungarian authors, made
on old-printed Cyrillic books, is given in the paper, too
