Chapter 6 Just Stewardship – A Self-Affirmative Inquiry into the Legacy of the Hungarian Ecclesiastical Libraries

In: Theological Libraries and Library Associations in Europe
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Ágnes Bálint
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Abstract

During the 20th century, the ownership and subsistence of ecclesiastical libraries in Hungary were highly affected by large scale historical events. Under the communist regime, ecclesiastical bodies once active in education, medical and social care were deprived of their property and either restricted in their autonomy in their former undertakings, or completely banned. The Hungarian Association of Ecclesiastical Libraries has been fighting for more than 25 years for recognition of its member libraries and for a professional re-engagement into the national system of Hungarian libraries. Striving to ensure optimal development for all members, its recent achievements and regained authority in the educational and research setting suggest that the effort is worthwhile.

Résumé

Au cours du 20e siècle, la propriété et la préservation des bibliothèques ecclésiastiques en Hongrie ont grandement été affectées par tout un ensemble d’événements historiques se déroulant à grande échelle. Sous la dictature communiste, les organismes ecclésiastiques, jadis actifs dans le domaine éducatif et dans celui des soins médicaux et sociaux, ont tantôt vu leurs biens confisqués et leur autonomie se réduire, ou ont tantôt littéralement disparu en raison de leur interdiction. L’Association Hongroise des Bibliothèques Ecclésiastiques se bat depuis plus de 25 ans pour la reconnaissance de ses bibliothèques membres et pour un réengagement professionnel dans le système national des bibliothèques hongroises. S’efforçant d’assurer un développement optimal à tous ses membres, ses réalisations récentes et son autorité retrouvée dans le milieu de l’enseignement et de la recherche suggèrent que l’effort en vaut la peine.

Zusammenfassung

Im 20. Jahrhundert wurden die Eigentumsverhältnisse und der Fortbestand kirchlicher Bibliotheken in Ungarn durch einschneidende historische Ereignisse stark beeinflusst. Unter dem kommunistischen Regime wurden kirchliche Einrichtungen, die einst in den Bereichen der Bildung, Medizin und Sozialfürsorge tätig waren, entweder ihres Eigentums enteignet oder in ihrer Autonomie bezüglich ihren früheren Aufgabenbereichen stark eingeschränkt oder ganz verboten. Der Ungarische Verband der Kirchlichen Bibliotheken kämpft seit mehr als 25 Jahren für die Anerkennung seiner Mitgliedsbibliotheken und für eine professionelle Wiedereingliederung in das nationale System der ungarischen Bibliotheken. Die jüngsten Erfolge und die wiedergewonnene Autorität im Bildungs- und Forschungsbereich zeigen, dass sich die Bemühungen lohnen, um eine optimale Entwicklung für alle Mitglieder zu gewährleisten.

1 Identity and Power Play

Just as living beings change, so too do institutions. The majority of the Hungarian ecclesiastical libraries1 have a long history, with some libraries even dating back to medieval times. But even though their lengthy existence would strongly suggest a considerable degree of stability as regards their identity, these libraries have undergone many changes. Many of them originated during the Protestant and Catholic reformations since both movements produced new religious centres and institutions, often seeking to self-affirm or educate with missionary fervour. The status, the inner structure, the external reputation and the social weight of ecclesiastical libraries have always been dynamic realities, needing to be reconsidered from time to time in order to maintain the continuity of their institutional identity. Political and social science theories concerned with the mechanisms of institutional change usually distinguish between two major types of change: firstly, the inevitable change following a huge shock, and secondly, all kinds of internal circumstantial changes that are hardly visible most of the time.

Beginning with the disintegration of the medieval Hungarian kingdom by the Ottoman Empire in 1526, one is tempted to evoke losses of historical scale – such as political upheavals, religious enmities, wars of independence, and retaliations of world-powers along with other damaging vis maior events – as examples of shocks that inevitably caused institutional changes in ecclesiastical libraries. Resisting that urge, I here confine myself to alluding to various symptomatic phenomena during the two World Wars and the socialist-communist regime, with focus on the direction and scale of hardships confronted by Hungarian ecclesiastical libraries. These phenomena eventually affected all their basic functions as institutions, such as acquisition, preservation and all dissemination services.

As both intellectual and institutional leader in the Hungarian librarianship, István Monok emphasises that the library is always part of any actual power play as it is an institution that both literally and symbolically represents the heritage of a community – be that a cultural community, a country, a political state, or a whole nation2 – the ever-changing limits of which are hard to define or grasp. Libraries take the decision whose remembrance they preserve and make available. By these acts they confirm and justify the very existence of those communities they represent. The history of ecclesiastical libraries exemplifies this rule and it also reveals libraries’ vulnerability and fragility as institutions dependent on the political, economic and power factors of the day. They have experienced being both supported by national policy and being deprived of support. They have experimented with unpolitical functioning, or even anti-political resistance. “Dissecting century by century, our collections mirror the fate of the country through their content, nevertheless they reveal certain tendencies through their deficiencies as well.”3 Revealing in advance the main conclusion of my essay, I need to emphasise that the main success of the Hungarian ecclesiastical libraries – in fact, something to be grateful for since most of the time it fell outside the realm of human control – is that despite harsh historical events they managed to save a considerable heritage on the basis of which scientific, religious and cultural activities could have been rebuilt. The efforts made in maintaining the personal and institutional integrity of these libraries are an example to be followed in serving the public good, enriching the scientific understanding and treatment of the past in order to serve further reconciliation and renewal. Our heritage is not to be considered our own possession; while we acknowledge it as genuinely and fundamentally our own in the spirit of “as if” of 1 Cor. 7:29–31, as faithful stewards at most, we aim at augmenting and entailing it to the coming generations.

2 Effects of World War I on Churches and Their Collections

The enrolment and active military service of librarians in World War I lead to the death or captivity of many erudite professionals.4 World War I resulted notoriously in a territorial loss of two-thirds of the Hungarian Kingdom,5 which affected the historically established ecclesiastical structures as some dioceses fell partially or entirely outside the new political borders of Hungary. The division left the country bereft of much of its valuable ecclesiastical heritage. In order to suggest the proportions of the change I quote only a few illustrative examples regarding the main historical Christian churches.6 For instance, the Catholic diocese of Csanád (with its episcopal seat in Timișoara, Romania) was split in three: 153 parishes and 452,000 church members became part of Romania, 67 parishes and 240,000 church members became part of Yugoslavia, and 33 parishes and 200,000 church members remained in Hungary.7 The remains of two of the four Lutheran dioceses of the Hungarian Lutheran Church (namely the Cis-Danubian District in western Upper Hungary and the Cistibiscan District in eastern Upper Hungary) diminished so much that their further functionality could hardly be maintained within the borders of post-war Hungary. Four out of the five districts of the Hungarian Reformed Church were also split, while the fifth one, the Transylvanian District, became in its entirety part of the newly enlarged Romanian Kingdom. Jurisdictional ranks of truncated Catholic dioceses were reduced, and the status of bishopric of the Transylvanian District was preserved but subordinated to the archbishop in the Romanian capital. In political terms, after the new borders were created, it was hoped that the Catholic church would be in a strong position, since its large, international body and the diplomatic potential of the Holy See were expected to support the autonomy and the continuation of all religious, cultural and educational activities. To fulfil this aim, the Holy See mainly incorporated apostolic governorates through which it could wield direct power not least because it was difficult to harmonise opposing national demands and endeavours. In actuality, the newly established political powers firmly opposed the maintenance of any kind of relationships among the split ecclesiastical bodies and institutions, which made ecclesiastical institutions unmanageable and unsustainable8 (I will discuss the situation of educational institutions later). Moreover, in establishing and stabilising the new societal and political structures they acted according to their nationalistic objectives. For instance, while declaring freedom of conscience as absolute and stating that the Romanian Constitution (1923) guarantees liberty and protection for all religious creeds, this basic foundational legislative document differentiated between churches according to ethnicity. The Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic Church were classified as ‘Romanian’, effectively recognising the dominance of the Orthodox Church and the primacy of the Greek Catholic Church above all the other creeds.9 Therefore, split church denominations have found themselves doubly in a minority – both ethnic and religious.

Church leaders were also expected to take a loyalty oath and provide proof of their command of the new official languages in order to remain in position, and the new states proclaimed their rights to approve of any aspiring new church officials. Catholic bishops of dioceses that fell entirely outside the boundaries of Hungary were expatriated from Czechoslovakia (for example, Count Vilmos Batthány, Bishop of Nyitra and Farkas Radnai, Bishop of Besztercebánya) and Slovakian speaking bishops were appointed to their seats. Even though the Catholic Bishop of Alba Iulia in Romania, Gusztáv Károly Mailáth, gave his loyalty oath, he was made to leave the residence and relocate to a small rural town where Hungarian ethnics were in the majority. Moreover, liturgical and pastoral church activities were often hindered by local regulations: “Our holy religion has been persecuted for months by the Romanian authorities: they interfere with our religious practice, they decree worships opposing to our conscience and the ordinations of our church, they imprison my priests without any reason, and they are either let free after a few days or weeks, or detained for more time without hearing. The authorities have constantly been aiming at hindering the activities of our cultural institutions to the utmost disadvantage of my believers and educational institutions.”10 Under these circumstances the concordats of the Holy See with the political powers of the different successor states took quite a few years: 1927 with Czechoslovakia; 1927 with Romania (ratified in 1929); 1935 with Yugoslavia (not ratified).

Even though attempts have been made to rescue unique pieces from collections by moving them into institutions remaining within the political boundaries of the country, these were sporadic and unable to ameliorate the sense of loss.11 Again, higher educational institutions suffered the greatest loss: when resettled in new locations, their collections were left behind, and they had to re-establish their libraries from scratch. Concerns have been raised as to the faithful preservation and public availability of collections overtaken by the beneficiary authorities in the context of power plays already mentioned, as one-sided victorious nationalist history was soon decreed in the neighbouring countries.12 These concerns recently reappeared in the digitisation of the Central European heritage as one may witness processes of appropriation. As István Monok notes, “it is not indifferent that the heritage of Hungaria (= Kingdom of Hungary) is represented as a common heritage or a Slovakian, Romanian, or Serbian heritage.”13

3 World War II and Its Aftermath

Compared to the first, the Second World War aggravated damage and loss. The persecution and extermination of Jews lead to the destruction of a considerable published Jewish heritage. The Jewish Theological Seminary was appropriated by the Nazis in 1944 to serve as a collection site for citizens sent to concentration camps. Adolf Eichmann himself visited the library, and gave orders for the transportation of parts of the collection. Until the books were returned in 1989, it was thought that only volumes on the history of the Hungarian Jews (most completely acquired there) had been taken to the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main. The transport did not, in fact, reach further than Prague, and the books were gradually returned by the National Jewish Museum of Prague.14 Further damage was caused by severe bombardments in 1945, when a whole tract of the building was hit. Soaked in rain and snow, the library collection had to be rescued from the blasts. The collection of manuscripts and incunabula was successfully preserved in the cellars of a beer company – indeed, many libraries resorted to this preventive procedure right at the beginning of the war. Yet it was not uncommon for library collections to fall prey to wartime needs. Many printed materials belonging to the library of the synagogue of Pest and to the library of the Jewish Boys’ High School heated operating rooms or military headquarters. Sándor Scheiber evokes his own memories about rescuing the confiscated private library of Mihály Guttman, former director of the Jewish Theological Seminary under the ruins of the bombed local agency of the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question. Unfortunately, the destruction of the collections and records of rural Jewish synagogues were more complete and with a few exceptions, impossible to assess.

The persecution of Jews extended to non-Jewish institutions’ library shelves as well. Books by Jewish authors had to be withdrawn and destroyed in 1944. Some of the ecclesiastical libraries solicited exemptions, based on the special theological bond between Christianity and Judaism. After the annihilation of Jewish religious communities and heritage, peace treaties following World War II brought further enmity and tension with the presence and ideological pressure of the Soviets. After the war these forces also reduced the weight of library shelves by extracting German authors from library collections as part of antifascist purges. As Hungarian academic theology was connected to the theological thinking of the world through the mediation of German theologians, their (over)zealous endeavour which inconsiderately labelled all German authors as Nazi, produced distressing results.

The unfortunate experience of systematic looting by Soviet troops in Europe during World War II affected Hungary as well. Ironically, 172 volumes of the Reformed College Library of Sárospatak fell prey to plunder while deposited into two bank safes in Budapest.15 It was only after 1990 that the search for the missing property (containing 1,373 works in collated volumes) could be initiated. Bibliographic threads, e.g. the description of a 1473 edition of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, led to the Nizhny Novgorod County Library.

Russian sources denied having directly raided the bank, claiming that the documents were found near Berlin in a railway carriage. After several attempts by Hungarian diplomats to reacquire the volumes in captivity in the 1990s, 146 volumes (1 codex, 22 incunabula, several rarities and manuscripts) were obtained through an international agreement on mutual restitution. The Russians renounced further retention and included the collection in the law of restitution in 2006. In two rounds, the documents were sent back and exhibited in several parts of the country. A small fly in the ointment was that Hungary had to pay 12 million roubles (more than 400,000 USD) to the Lenin Library of Nizhny Novgorod for stacking and preserving the volumes in accordance with the Russian law of restitution.

The new power boundaries following World War II prolonged the afflictions and destructive measures concerning cultural heritage. Ideological warfare and ideological cleansing of personnel had a great impact – for example, Soviet screening committees removed employees according to their pre-war political views and their wartime activities. The decisions, often exaggerating positions or opinions they held, sealed the fate of many erudite librarians nationwide. Monastic orders were banned and their collections were nationalised, which almost certainly led to a considerable or total destruction of their collections, even as some were subsumed into larger research or higher education state libraries.

Figure 6.1
Figure 6.1

A member of the local Reformed church surveys the remains of the ecclesiastical library right after the Russians withdrew their forces from the college building used as headquarters and hospital during World War II.

Library and Ar chives of the Calvinist Church in Kecskemét, KREL VIII/26. Manuscripts of B álint Kovács. Photos

The case of the most valuable real estate and library collection of the Batthyaneum of Gyulafehérvár (‘Biblioteca Batthyaniana’, at present Alba Iulia, Romania) has been under dispute until recently. The library was founded in 1798 by Count Ignác Batthány, Bishop of the Hungarian Catholic Diocese of Transylvania, on the site of the previously dissolved Trinitarian Order. A church building and a cloister were renovated and rebuilt for scientific and cultural purposes, e.g. an observatory was established for astronomical research and meteorological observations were conducted. It was the third ecclesiastical library to be opened to the public with the initial 10,000 items right from the beginning. In 1912 it acquired the status of public collection, which ensured further allocation for acquisitions. The carefully enlarged collection consisted of 65,000 items by the time the Romanian state officials closed it in 1949 and deprived the Catholic church of its belongings through force by use of the Stocktake Act of 1949.16 The library also contains 1,650 medieval manuscripts, and its significance is attested by the fact that it holds three quarters of all the codices and incunabula of Romania. The coin, shell, gem and mineral collections of the founder are also part of the collection.

The dispute and litigation over the ownership of the collection and the building have continued ever since, and even reached the European Commission of Human Rights without sensible results.17 Even though, in 1998, the decision of the Government over the restitution of the observatory and museum building was published in the Official Records (addressing the ownership of the building but not of the collections), its execution was hindered by local administration through further juridic procedures.

A precise assessment of the magnitude of the damage caused during and after World War II is not available, moreover, it is hardly possible to determine because of the scarcity of original documents and resources. Monok argues that the history of libraries, especially of private libraries until the 19th century, are more precise, while the recent history of the 19th and especially the 20th century is under-researched, as the era itself was affected by the constraints of ideological approach, and the danger of treading on delicate ground concerning current political issues. One difficulty in itself comes from the fact that only an insignificant part of private collections can be found in their original locations, with their content more or less close to original.18 A long overdue research has just been started regarding the history of ecclesiastical libraries after the war with special interest in the effective orders and measures of the newly established Communist regime. So far, only the national statistics handed in for the Ministry of Religion and Education on April 15th, 1947 are available. As regards special libraries, there were 10 totally destroyed and 9 almost totally destroyed libraries out of 400, which equals 4.7%. 38 libraries (9.5%) reported a loss of more than 50% of their collections, and only 86 libraries did not suffer any damage. In total, 80% of special libraries suffered some kind of war damage. The most important large libraries (the National Library, university libraries) faced only minor losses, but out of 3,500 public libraries only 1,222 survived the war, with an average collection of 100 books.19 A National Collections Committee was appointed in 1945 to assess the state and safeguard private collections of archival documents, library items and objects of art, among which ecclesiastical valuables were counted as well by transferring them to state-owned institutions. The overall outcomes show that an 80% loss of the national heritage in private ownership can be estimated. The distrainable of the abandoned aristocratic castles and mansion houses were carried away by quartered Nazi, Hungarian and Russian troops, local residents, or later installed new institutions; alternately, libraries and archival documents were burnt up, plundered, or simply negligently dealt with. Missing windows and doors damaged what had remained in place after the war. Some of the more outstanding ecclesiastical libraries (Pannonhalma, Veszprém, Eger, Debrecen, Kecskemét) successfully demanded relief grants from the state to ameliorate their loss and re-establish their functioning.

4 Impingement and Release of Societal Impact

The intangible loss is always greater than the sum of lost unique pieces, because private libraries represented a source of cultural history as well as and in addition to the public good they served. Mainly ecclesiastical libraries attached to educational institutions prove this, as before World War II the educational system had rested heavily on the activity of schools run by churches. A statistical datum concerning the societal weight and impact of libraries show that in 1931, the annals of the Hungarian museums, libraries and archives enumerate data of 1,008 libraries (scientific and special libraries, town and school libraries) from 112 localities. There were 238 ecclesiastical libraries – that is approximately one quarter of the total – in 94 out of these 112 localities, and in 42 localities there were solely ecclesiastical libraries, while only 15 localities had exclusively non-ecclesiastical libraries.20 According to another source, alongside these 1,008 libraries there were 1,629 folks’ libraries and 1,227 farmers’ libraries – substandard libraries mainly with entertaining or ‘socially adjusted’ items.21 These latter became the main channel of communist brainwashing ideological activity, mocked as ‘Russian-style political soup(book)kitchens’ in the 1950s.

In general, the presence and weight of historical churches in the educational22 and cultural life of the country were far more prominent than in Western Europe, where the separation of state and church had already been completed during the Enlightenment. When Hungary fell into the Soviet power zone, and the control of church activities was overtaken by state departments, the separation was keenly felt. The programme of the monolithic Marxist ideology represented an atheist worldview, aimed at a worldwide installation of Communist power, it opposed to the religious mind, and persecuted belief in God. All historical churches and denominations were considered as undesirable agents of society, representatives of the Western bourgeois class. Small groups and communities were also considered hostile to the political objectives of the creation of the ‘new man’ and his scientific worldview. Formally, atheism could be understood as the religion of the Communist regime, violently spread through administrative and legislative means against all forms of religious beliefs and religious communities. Harsh suppression of church activities and representatives were experienced if any resistance or opposition to the new class ideology was detected. Adherents to creeds with international links were peculiarly irritating to the regime, such as Catholics or Jews.

Historians and church historians refer to more or less the same periods of the Communist era regarding the relationship of State and churches. The first period between 1945–1956 is characterised by the oppressive politics of a totalitarian dictatorship, which churches consider to be a temporal situation and they aim at surviving the trials of time. The main events are the signing of the agreements between the state and the churches, which not only represent an act of separation, but a declaration of control on the part of the state. It was also expected that churches would be extinct shortly as their intimidated membership inevitably grew older, and a shortage of member supply could be engineered. In the second period, from after 1956 to the end of the 1960s, the grasp of the totalitarian regime is lighter, but still aims at isolating or ghettoing churches. From the late 1960s to the second half of the 1980s an instrumentalisation of the churches evolved in the form of the Christian-Marxist dialogue, and it was only in the second half of the 1980s, when the crisis of the Communist block emerged, that churches were able to perform their activities more openly and effectively.

As regards the history of ecclesiastical libraries during this period, the main events fall in line with the history of private libraries of the aristocracy. After 1948, the year of nationalisation, and 1950, the year of the dissolution of religious orders, all institutions and agents representing the past were considered and declared enemies to be annihilated together with all of their cultural heritage. Interestingly, the leaders or effectors of this aim happened to be the uneducated, representatives of the peasantry, or opportunists of the new regime, who either did not attribute any value to books or other belongings, or effectuated their annihilation or appropriation as an act of justice in favour of the inferior classes. A National Committee of Public Collections was formed as early as 1945 so as to rescue museal, archival and printed heritage from the ad hoc management of abandoned or confiscated goods, which could easily lead to their scattering, recycling, or destruction. Their efforts were limited by the general post-war scarcity of transportation means and financial resources. Thus whilst part of the libraries of the religious orders and monasteries were integrated into state-run public collections, their preservation as well-defined collections was not considered an important issue, and at best the individual content and value of the items were taken into account rather than the maintenance of the collection as a whole. Therefore collections might have been split between several libraries, even where works were saved. Many items originating from ecclesiastical collections waited for decades to be re-catalogued, and a political extenuation was needed for them to be introduced into service. Interestingly, there is only one library collection of the whole aristocracy that remained intact during the 20th century in Hungary, namely the Festetich Library in Keszthely, near Lake Balaton. So it was of utmost importance that some ecclesiastical centres could preserve part of their collections onsite until the Communist regime collapsed. As the political pressure on churches diminished, ten of the larger ecclesiastical libraries were able to demand an acknowledgement of their collections as ‘scientific libraries’, based on the statutory rule of 1976 classifying the status of libraries, and accordingly they functioned as semi-public private libraries open to researchers on demand.

However, major change of political regime was needed for ecclesiastical libraries to gain the spotlight and be visible within the national network of libraries in the country. It was not only the foundation of EKE, the National Association mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, that contributed to this. The individual libraries had to redefine themselves alongside their owner church bodies as they started acting as initiators and sustainers of educational, social, and cultural institutions once more. Not only could the old, formerly longstanding and renowned, educational institutions restart, but new institutions have been founded on all levels of education, from the Kindergarten to the university level, with varying pace but a continuous increase in number since 1990. The re-establishment of old institutions was facilitated by the law of restitution of naturalised properties. Smaller rural city councils where the maintenance of public schools (an obligation by law at the time) proved to be financially more and more difficult offered their institutions to be taken over and run by different historical churches. A series of changes in the legal context of public education led to the harmonisation of interests of all parties involved, such as state, churches, and local inhabitants. For the school year of 2011–2012 the numbers of educational institutions in the two largest churches in Hungary are as follows:23

In the same school year, in just one district (albeit the largest of the four districts of the Hungarian Reformed Church) the following types of institutions were to be found (the number of institutions are contrasted with the numbers characterising the whole Reformed Church):24

As serving bodies attached to the owner institutions, the ecclesiastical libraries faced challenges after the change of regime such as transforming and enlivening their collections through plugging them into the national circuit of information flux. From being closed museal collections of old and rare documents with preservation as the only role and goal, through to their recognition as scientific libraries with a narrow, though highly professional readership, they reached the identity of special libraries open to the wide public with a variety of professional services and an ever-growing collection.25 They are specialised on a range of topics, from theology, religious studies, the history of theological education, cultural history in general, history of book publishing and libraries in particular, to church history, history of natural and social sciences, and so on. As such they are able to serve the newly formed educational institutions, orders and ecclesiastical bodies in such a way as to bring new meaning even into their old function of preservation, and, moreover, to perform research activities and have a scientific output. Metadata management, digitisation projects and collection building are all basic activities shared by most ecclesiastical libraries, on top of which the libraries of larger ecclesiastical centres with theological faculties may serve and carry out their own scientific research in the fields mentioned above. Ecclesiastical librarians are privileged or have certain advantages compared to outsiders because they are embedded into their collections, and consequently, they know their collections’ inner proportions, the context of their evolution, the underlying values and influences that have determined their development, and thus they may explain more thoroughly complex historiographic phenomena.

5 A Vision of Bridging the Past to the Future through Branding

Future plans of the Hungarian Association of Ecclesiastical Libraries can be focused around the idea of positioning the association as a brand. Although there are differences in the size, location, financial possibilities and facilities, and professional skills of member libraries, the main unifying component is their ownership, and that highly determines all questions of legacy, identity and calling. What do libraries have to offer that the association can represent?

Ecclesiastical libraries may open gates to realities hidden for decades from the public eye. Their sites have already proved to be inviting touristic destination points irrespective of their urban or rural location. Their parent institutions were historically important ecclesiastical centres that may have restarted or even enlarged their traditional activities, adding entrepreneurship to education in a variety of fields.26 Similarly, since the differentiation of museums, libraries and archives is a modern phenomenon, most ecclesiastical libraries are not only exceptional architectural sites, but are also part of a larger institutional operation that includes museal and archival collections (once collected and preserved together), consisting of manuscripts, paintings and other graphical branches of art, statutes, atlases, maps, globes, coins, or other relics. During the Communist era people were denied access to explore, cherish and avail themselves of these resources. Through guided tours in these thesauri, the past is made a perfect present.

Efforts have already been made to include remote or rural sites into larger religious routes and destinations by offering guided thematic journeys. As a result, hundreds of kilometres of thematic pilgrimage itineraries cross the country, connected to Catholic saints (Elisabeth, Jacob) or stylishly decorated medieval now-Protestant churches. The first complete Hungarian translation of the Bible, with a cultural impact similar to the King James Bible, was printed in Vizsoly, a village with less than a thousand inhabitants today, but providing an entry point to the Protestant cultural heritage through its visitor centre. Inclusion of visits to the special collections of ecclesiastical libraries into the curricula on all education levels is manifested in many forms, i.e. extraordinary history, literature, anthropology, arts and science classes, library and museum education workshops, building on gamification, and independent or small group exploration, such as treasure hunts, contests and quizzes, or project work. Educational or scientific exploration and utilisation connect ecclesiastical libraries to both public educational curricula and to higher educational research programmes.

The association also represents ecclesiastical libraries in the Hungarian national network of libraries. The numerous special collections and an accentuated presence of theology and church history in the larger ecclesiastical libraries pair these institutions with special libraries. Some of these are academic and research libraries as well. The union catalogue of the association (UNITAS) serves as a starting point for acquiring information about member libraries and items of their collections as well. Workflows and patrons’ profiles are also similar, thus enabling cooperation and exchange of expertise with special libraries. The association may also foster and reinforce a sense of community for librarians inside and outside the association. It is an identified and confirmed strength of the community of ecclesiastical librarians that during the conferences and professional workshops organised by the association, they display attitudes of collegiality and friendship, honest interest and attention, respect and love towards all attendants.

This sense of community is felt during work as well among patrons and staff. The number of employees is generally low in ecclesiastical libraries; the interests of patrons are less stratified compared to large public libraries, or our patrons already belong to the small or medium-sized community of the parent institution, and consequently strong human connections and personalised services can grow and be grown easily, and that can be turned into faithful brand membership. For example, quick and effective help from members of the association is the basis for the operation of a second interlibrary loan system apart from the national one of which ecclesiastical libraries are also part.

The experience of patrons is only one part of the equation. Strong products and services are needed to maintain constant satisfaction. The association may play a role in achieving this end by continuously providing opportunities for personal and professional development. Workshops are intended to provide an effective and optimal opportunity to develop on a practical level, to equip attendees with easily implementable knowledge on issues of urgency such as compliance with new legal requirements and regulations, or issues of complexity requiring thorough and careful planning. These day-long meetings also serve as publicity at the end of longer projects. Their duration and style is tailored to the less than optimal possibilities of staff in libraries run by a personnel of one or two people.

The association must equalise differences in the levels of products and services of member libraries, if it aims at forming a brand. Understaffed libraries can obtain help, guidance and support from the better-equipped libraries. In order to maximise member libraries’ visibility, the association runs and develops its union catalogue and circulates its newsletter quarterly to inform the wider professional public of the work, events and publications of member libraries.

Building a brand also presumes the provision of an unparalleled experience with the customer. How can the association, or rather its member libraries, respond to this? They may not be among the most modern and pioneering libraries of the country in terms of architecture or facilities, nevertheless their adherence to their traditional appearance is not a burdensome legacy, but rather a free choice. The refurbishment of the Library of the Theological College of Esztergom on a location used, or perhaps truly misused, as a gym by the Russian forces stationed for more decades in the building complex can demonstrate this choice and faithfulness to ageless and fashion-free style.

However, what all libraries strive for is not excellence as a matter of bricks and mortar but of personnel. The special collections have always required erudite attendance for their growth and augmentation. Today, for advancing the reputation of ecclesiastical libraries through their own research and the support of others’ research, a large range of degrees and specialisations are sought for and accepted, in addition to modern digital library science, in ecclesiastical libraries, to match the requirements of both the collections and the patrons.

Figure 6.2
Figure 6.2

Reading hall of the Library of the Theological College of Esztergom

Photo János Tóth

The strengths of the association are based on the strengths of the member institutions. Unofficial subgroups add to the structural diversity of the association. An intermediate level of organisation within the association is represented at the denominational level. A special territory of services based on digitisation projects is better represented on a denominational level. Scattered collections may be better represented and disseminated in a uniform way through virtual heritage centres. For instance, the Lutheran ecclesiastical written legacy is brought together via digitisation in different locations, adding up to one collection offered through multiple search interfaces.27 The denominational level may facilitate the amelioration of professional differences of member libraries. Or monastic libraries may more easily work together as they face the same challenges on many levels.

“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Eccl. 4:12). What are these three in the context of ecclesiastical libraries? As I have suggested throughout my essay, the awareness of the past with its results, strengths and misfortunes is indispensable for understanding the challenges of the present and the underlying tensions and constraints. The present may truly be overpowered if one does not take into account all power plays that determined the present status quo. But the two of these are only enough for a defensive functioning, always looking for explanations and excuses for achievements, or failures. A vision of the future is needed to form the cord of three strands: all hardships may be well endured and controlled if one has a vision how to bridge the tumultuous past into a well-performing future in which ecclesiastical libraries have erased at least the fallbacks of the second part of the 20th century. Our vision is to serve God, our churches, and our society with all our knowledge and our intellectual and factual heritage.

Bibliography

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1

For clarity, by ‘ecclesiastical libraries’, I mean primarily libraries that are founded, owned, maintained and run by ecclesiastical bodies. It is their ownership that qualifies them to be members of the Hungarian association (EKE), although there may have been huge differences as regards their function, their abilities and facilities, and their collections and their accessibility.

2

István Monok, Könyvtári (?) problémák (Budapest: MTAK, 2020), 7.

3

Botond Gáborjáni Szabó, “Az egyházi könyvtárak változásai, sikerei és kudarcai az elmúlt másfél évtizedben,” Könyvtári Levelezőlap 15, no. 12 (2003): 11 (our translation).

4

Péter Sas, “Kelemen Lajos és történeti publicisztikai munkája, a naplója,” in Lajos Kelemen, Napló. Vol. I: 1890–1920 (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2017), 13.

5

It is a bon-mot and an odd historical fact that the territory of the medieval Hungary lost in 1526 constitutes the state of Hungary post-World War I, and where Hungarian statehood existed on after 1526 was eventually lost in the peace treaties of 1920.

6

Maps of church organisation structures showcasing the affected territories are online avail- able in the following publications: András Fejérdy, “A katolikus egyház Trianon után,” Jel, June 4, 2020, http://www.jelujsag.keesz.hu/a-katolikus-egyhaz-trianon-utan; Rudolf Zoltán Kovács, “Kényszerpályák mentén – az 1952-es evangélikus egyházszervezeti átalakítás története,” Újkor, July 27, 2018, https://ujkor.hu/content/kenyszerpalyak-menten-az-1952-es-evangelikus-egyhazszervezeti-atalakitas-tortenete; Bálint Ablonczy, Reformátusok és Trianon (Budapest: Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem Egyház és Társadalom Kutatóintézet Reformáció Öröksége Műhely, 2020), 2:05, 4:18, https://youtu.be/iYg_lhxagUE.

7

László Fritz and István Sulyok, ed., Erdélyi Magyar Évkönyv, I (Kolozsvár: Juventus, 1930), 38, quoted by József Marton, “A trianoni békeszerződés hatása az Erdélyi Egyházmegye igazgatására,” Iustum Aequum Salutare 6, no. 1 (2010): 80.

8

Csaba Máté Sarnyai, “Changes in the Economic Situation of the Transylvanian Catholic Community after the Trianon Treaty, with Special Regard to the Estates Managed by the ‘Erdélyi Katolikus Státus’ (Transylvanian Catholic Státus),” Central European Papers 2, no. 1 (2014): 39–51.

9

Later on Romanian Catholics were also persecuted (both of Latin and Greek liturgy) and by large joined the Orthodox Church.

10

Gábor Salacz, A magyar katolikus egyház a szomszédos államok uralma alatt (Munich: Aurora, 1975), 56 (our translation). Written on October 11, 1919 and sent to Budapest to be forwarded to members of the peace conference.

11

Monok, Könyvtári, 16; – e. g. valuable volumes of the Batthyáneum were repatriated in 1914, some of its manuscripts in 1940, András Juhász, “Batthyáneum, Gyulafehérvár,” Könyv, könyvtár, könyvtáros 24, no. 1 (2015): 36–45, http://ki2.oszk.hu/3k/2015/04/batthyaneum-gyulafehervar/. – Special attention had already been paid to rarities and valuable editions during the war. For safety reasons 63 books dating from the 16th–18th centuries from the college library were packed into boxes, sealed, and handed over to preservation to the board of directors of the Reformed College of Kolozsvár. József Kolozsvári, Litteris et pietati sacrum: Adalékok a Kolozsvári Református Kollégium történetéhez, Vol. I (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Református Egyházkerület, 2007), 296. In spite of these endeavours, successful rescuing of collections was mainly exception to the rule. Not even repatriating institutions could move their libraries; e.g. the University of Pozsony (Bratislava) left behind its library of 65,000 items when it relocated to Pécs in 1923. We may understand the diminishment of trust on the part of the public if we are aware that family documents had also been deposited into these institutions. Note the hesitancy in the thoughts of Farkas Gyalui, eminent librarian-archivist of the University Library of Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) right after the Hungarian capitulation and long before the peace treaties were signed, as authoritarianism and opportunists had to be expected: “The books I had taken to him Erdélyi sent back from Budapest, now they must be transported again if a hostile invasion occurs. I had already made a suggestion to the rector, but he ordered me to wait. I had also written to Pál Erdélyi to intervene in the Ministry of Culture to obtain a mode for transportation. But will they not be safer in Kolozsvár, rather than in Budapest where a socialist revolution may annihilate such a collection whereas here even the enemy may respect them, and even if they may take hold of them, at least they will not have them burnt, and the volumes will exist, as the Corvinas do, scattered,” Farkas Gyalui, Emlékirataim 1914–1921 (Kolozsvár: Művelődés Egyesület, 2013), 264 (our translation).

12

Sas, “Kelemen Lajos és történeti publicisztikai munkája, a naplója,” 16.

13

Monok, Könyvtári, 27 (our translation).

14

Sándor Schreiber, “Zsidó könyvek sorsa Magyarországon a német megszállás idején,” Magyar Könyvszemle 86, no. 3 (1970): 233; László Remete, “Egy visszahozott hadizsákmány,” Magyar Könyvszemle 109, no. 4 (1993): 420.

15

Áron Kovács and Éva Kusnyír, Reformed College in Sárospatak, Curator’s Choice (London: Scala, 2020), 66.

16

Juhász, “Batthyáneum, Gyulafehérvár.”

17

In 2012 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stated that Romania had violated Protocol No. 1. of the European Convention on Human Rights by delaying the restitution of the building for 14 years. Though the state paid the fine in 2015, it never returned the property. Instead, in 2021 the Supreme Court of Romania legally rejected the return of the collection to the Catholic diocese, though legislation concerning restitution of private properties included existing movable properties as well. (Catholic Archdiocese of Alba Iulia v. Romania, no. 33003/03, ECHR 2012, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre?i=001-113434, accessed December 14, 2021.) In his overview of the nationalisation and reclaim of the Reformed College libraries of Transylvania, József Kurta emphasises that their restitution is systematically hindered of present owners either by legal procedures or by effectual hinderance of editing exact lists of confiscated library items. This means that not even all confiscated collections could be reclaimed thus far. József Kurta, “Az erdélyi református kollégiumi könyvtárak államosítása és visszaigénylése,” in Studia Doctorum Theologiae Protestantis (Kolozsvár: Kolozsvári Protestáns Teológiai Intézet, 2010), vol. I, 332. The Hungarian Human Rights Foundation sums a total of 59.3 percent of claims decided against minority religious denominations by the official Romanian restitution body at July 8, 2021; https://hhrf.org/on-our-radar/property-restitution-in-romania/ [accessed December 14, 2021].

18

István Monok, A magyar bibliofília képeskönyve (Budapest: Korona: OSZK, 2006), 10.

19

György Pogány, “Háborús károk a könyvtárakban és felmérésük 1945 és 1953 között,” Könyv, könyvtár, könyvtáros 24, no. 12 (2014): 24.

20

Magyar Minerva: a magyarországi múzeumok, könyvtárak, levéltárak évkönyve. Vol. 6: 1930–31. Budapest, 1932, quoted by Botond Gáborjáni Szabó, “Az egyházi könyvtárak helyzete (1944–1956),” Lecture at the conference “Könyvtártörténet-írásunk a Rákosi-korszakról: újabb kutatási eredmények,” Budapest, 16 November 2016.

21

Máté Kovács, “Könyvtáraink másfél évtizede,” Könyvtáros 11, no. 5 (May 1961): 257.

22

Through nationalisation the Romanian state illegally confiscated over 2,140 real estate properties of the four Hungarian historical churches, 1,041 of which hosted educational institutions. Kurta, “Az erdélyi református kollégiumi könyvtárak államosítása és visszaigénylése,” vol. I, 326.

23

Bertalan Veress, “A Magyar Református Egyház közoktatási rendszere” (Thesis manuscipt, Budapest: BME GTK Műszaki Pedagógia Tanszék, 2014), 42.

24

Veress, “A Magyar Református Egyház közoktatási rendszere,” V.

25

Ilona Ásványi, “Egyházi könyvtár: muzeális gyűjtemény? Tudományos könyvtár? Szakkönyvtár?,” Tudományos és Műszaki Tájékoztatás 63, no. 5 (2016): 198–204.

26

Pannonhalma Archabbey may be an excellent example. Belonging to the Benedictine order, the monastery is known as the first school of Hungary dating back to the turn of the millennium. Today their religious presence and activities have an undeniably effective cultural output. Alongside their outstandingly achieving all male high school, Pannonhalma is a well-known cultural and heritage centre as well: it runs a gallery, a publishing house, a winery, a botanical garden, and it is specialised in religious and rural tourism.

27

“Magyar Evangélikus Digitális Tár,” https://medit.lutheran.hu/. One entry point to the Hungarian Lutheran written heritage, an ongoing digitisation project of Lutheran libraries.

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Theological Libraries and Library Associations in Europe

A Festschrift on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of BETH

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