Specimina Nova Pars Prima Sectio Medaevalis
Dissertationes historicae collectae per Cathedram Historiae Medii Aevi Modernorumque Temporum Universitatis Quinqueecclesiensis A Pécsi Tudományegyetem Középkori és Koraújkori Történeti Tanszékének Történeti közleményei
A Pécsi Tudományegyetem Középkori és Koraújkori Történeti Tanszék
The Database Studium and the Beginnings of the Schools in Paris
The database starts with some names (8 at the moment) of eleventh century scholars: only two of them have studied or taught certainly at Paris. This is both one of the limitations and advantages for the database: on the 2519 individuals it contains for the period 1160–1300, only 1135 have been attested Parisian scholars. But the other people are also interesting: of these, 853 are classified as „uncertain”. Most of them are “masters”; but is it a title or a grade? And where have they obtained it? There is no doubt that some of them got it in Paris. This study will try to explore these unsatisfactory data, and their interpretation could be made more satisfactory. These statistics will also throw light how, before the development of the college movement, the developments of the schools issued from the growth of the school of Notre-Dame after they had started to spread on the Mount Sainte-Geneviève combined with the monastic schools, especially those of the regular canons of Saint-Victor to make Paris an essential intellectual centre, as it is demonstrated by the wide circulation of the works of some of its masters.
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The Studium Parisiense database contains the prosopographical records of more than 20,000 members of the schools and the University of Paris between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. It thus enables us to carry out a wide-ranging analysis of relations between masters and students within the Parisian studium. The network of relationships thus reconstituted provides a considerable amount of information: 1,969 individuals, 2,743 links, and 2,750 nodes. The hierarchical approach, using simple indicators of centrality (degree, betweenness, PageRank), enabled us to qualify the social prestige of individuals by highlighting lesser known but socially central figures. By combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study offers a more nuanced view of academic filiations at the University of Paris, while providing statistical validation for the empirical hypotheses that had been formulated by historiography.
Papal Representatives in Hungary in the Eleventh–Fourteenth Centuries
Traditionally, research on Papal-Hungarian relations has been dominated by a diplomatic approach. Until the early 2000s, Hungarian historiography was traditionally characterised by a relatively schematic concept of papal representation, i.e. papal representatives were mostly understood as legates or nuncios. The last two decades have seen major changes in this area: the prosopographical research of papal representatives has begun, which has shed light on the various forms of representation (legates, nuncios, papal delegated judges, conservators, executors, administrators, papal collectors), and the thematic analysis of the relationships has become dominant. This paper presents the results of the DeLegatOnline research projects that bring together these studies.
The Digital History Project Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (RAG) and Its Knowledge-Driven Approach to Prosopography
This article aims to offer an overview of the research project Repertorium Academicum Germanicum (RAG), focusing both on its methodological and technical aspects and demonstrating data analysis methods using the example of Hungarian students listed in the RAG database. The RAG is a digital historical research project focusing on scholars and students from the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) between 1250 and 1550, initiated in 2001. It stands as a pioneering project in digital history and prosopography, relying on meticulous data collection from university registers and supplementary sources. The RAG explores research questions concerning the medieval roots and foundations of modern knowledge societies, focusing on the work of scholars and the development of knowledge, particularly in relation to the academisation of European society. While primarily focused on the HRE, the RAG also serves as a valuable resource for studying Hungarian students. Compiling the group of Hungarian scholars within the RAG involves identifying scholars based on their geographical origin, yielding around 1045 scholars up to 1550, with almost a thousand within the timeframe of 1526. Alternative methods, such as examining source texts or Hungarian nation affiliations at the University of Vienna, supplement this process. Despite being smaller in scope compared to databases like the Repertorium Academicum Hungariae (RAH), the RAG provides valuable insights.
“Onomasticon, Prosopografia dell’Università degli Studi di Perugia”
The paper aims to illustrate the “Onomasticon” database – Onomasticon (unipg.it) –, delving into both its scientific underpinnings and technical intricacies. Initially, a brief overview of the project's genesis, its scientific rationale, and its envisioned applications will be provided. Subsequently, attention will be directed towards the technical aspects of the database, tracing its evolution from an informatics perspective. Lastly, perspectives between the historical investigation and computational resources will be offered. The "Onomasticon" database, started in 2008 for the occasion of the 700th anniversary ceremony of the University of Perugia, serves as a repository of research findings pertaining to the institution's history of the University of Perugia and the students and professors who studied and taught there. With a focus on prosopographical studies, the database encompasses data on professors, students, courses, and the university's evolution between the Middle Ages and the modern age. From a technical point of view, the essay will explain the transition from Onomasticon 1.0 to Onomasticon 2.0, which involved the transition from a relational data model to a graph structure, which improves flexibility and performance and offers the possibility of integrating historical data with external resources like authority files and online databases enriches its utility. Challenges for the future include ensuring data reliability, addressing interpretative aspects, and enhancing the linkage with external resources. In the current research context that increasingly focuses on interdisciplinarity, the Onomasticon project stands as a testament to the fruitful collaboration between historical research and computational resources, offering valuable insights into the longstanding history of the University.
Possibilities and Results in Medieval Hungarian University History Research – with A Prosopographical Focus
In my paper, I will demonstrate, what kind of literature and contemporary sources are available to explore the medieval Hungarian Peregrination. In the current state, we know about 12800 enrolments between 1100 and 1526, and we were able to clarify their career prospects after their studies by nearly 20%. Thanks to systematic research, this number will certainly increase. Although most graduate students did not use their degrees after their studies, prosopographical research has many other ways to reveal their identities and postgraduate career. Various inscriptions in university sources make it possible to identify the students, in connection with the reviving ecclesiastical and secular archontology research in the previous decades. Charters of the Hungarian National Archives before 1526 (more than 200 thousand pieces) are available online for every researcher. Short extracts were also prepared for a significant part of them, which makes easier the research in the beginning. On the other hand, a considerable part of manuscripts and early printed books from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary (around 90%) are lost or perished due to the Ottoman-Hungarian wars in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries, however, several catalogues were made of the remaining sources, such as in Hungary (Csaba Csapodi-Klára Gárdonyi Csapodiné: Bibliotheca Hungarica I-III) or in Slovakia (Julius Sopko: Codices latini medii aevi Bibliothecarum Slovakiae; Codices medii aevi, qui olim in bibliotheca Slovaciae asservabantur et nunc in Hungaria et Romania asservantur). There are remarkable notes in these kinds of sources which can be related to medieval universities and students, which also makes it easier to follow their postgraduate life as well. The research of individual social groups, especially the nobility, is greatly aided by the genealogical research conducted by Pál Engel in connection with the Hungarian noble families of the Middle Ages. In this regard, we are constantly mapping and expanding the number of students of noble origin. At the end of my paper, it becomes visible through a few examples how these sources and the literature complement each other and how students’ careers can be reconstructed from them.
Pécs University Almanac: Goals and Results
Studying in the social history of the citizens – either students or professors – of universities has a significant tradition and has produced serious results both within Hungary and abroad. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this research: university instructors themselves are decisive members of the knowledge elite and through higher education, they have the greatest influence in determining who gains access to this elite group. The University of Pécs’s Almanac has a twofold purpose: on one hand, it presents the academic achievement of higher education in Pécs, and on the other, it provides help for the researchers of the various professions and social history. The first volume, which covers the period from the beginning until the 1950s, was published in 2015, and the second volume, which contains data until 2000, was released in 2017. The third is under preparation, covering the heads of departments, faculties and the university between 2000 and 2020 and it is due to be published in 2023. The database containing these volumes can be accessed online with a multi-criteria query. The database only collects data on scientific work, specifically, on scientific work carried out at today’s university and its legal predecessors, so it does not include data regarding religion, the parent’s/ guardian’s name, or social status, for example. Who was included in the database? The requirement for inclusion was the existence of an academic title (nowadays, the title of PhD). Only full-time employees of the university were admitted into the database, not only from the faculties, but also from the library, or the offices if the person in question had an academic title. In summary: the Almanac project can assist in historical research but only in conjunction with the use of data gathered from archival documents and texts of recollections, correspondence, and other sources. In order to gain data about social mobility, for instance, researchers need to carry out additional gathering work, but our database can serve as a solid ground. It also helps non-historians of the university construct their departments’ or faculties’ past.
Pécs University Almanac: Aims and Results – Technical implementation of the Pécs University Almanac
The Almanac project aimed to create a book and database of teachers with an academic degree from the University of Pécs and its predecessors. To enable data collecting, we first designed and constructed a database system with a web-based client. Then a group of researchers collected the information that was obtainable about the teachers and entered it into the database. The following phase involved data unification and revision. It took two steps to create a book using the database. It was first exported using a thorough script into Word files, which the editors then looked over and reviewed. After that, a desktop publishing program was used to add the photographs and various appendices to the raw text, creating the final book.
The Authority of the Church in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Catholic Literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to extensive religious and cultural activity among Catholics in Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina. The initiators of these actions were the clergy, primarily the Franciscans of the Bosna Srebrena province. A significant aspect of their work was the publication of religious literature, with the issue of Church authority being one of its central themes. The first part of this paper aims to examine the representation of the Church and its authority in literature derived from Latin and Italian sources. The second part addresses the distinct characteristics of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Catholicism in the early modern period. Given that these particularities are especially evident in the way Church authority functioned, this raises the question of coherence between the concept of Church authority as articulated in religious literature and its practical implementation.
Master P. and Dares the Phrygian: Is Prince Álmos The Hungarian Equivalent of Aeneas?
This study examines Master P.’s use of two Latin Troy-romances: the “De Excidio Troiae Historia” attributed to the fictious Dares the Phrygian, and the so-called “Excidium Troiae”. Our purpose is to understand better the Notary’s attitude towards the Troy-romances. We make our observations via an analysis of certain quotations from these romances. We begin our paper with an introduction, which describes the context of these two romances, in the contemporary historical literature, and discusses their place and role, among the known written sources of the Anonymous Notary. Then, in the first chapter, we examine two citations in the Notary’s Prologus, which are adopted from the Prologus of the work of “Dares”. Their role is primarily to emphasize the Notary’s definition of the place of his work in the context of historiography of his age, but they also increase the credibility of his Gesta, as they call upon the authority of the prestigious Dares. In our second chapter, we analyse two textual borrowings from the Excidium Troiae. The first one takes place in the description of the election of Prince (“dux”) Álmos. The Notary quotes verbatim the text of the proclamation of Aeneas as a leader (“dux”), to describe the proclamation of Álmos. The use of this citation clearly alludes to the similarity of the two elections. Moreover, it supposes a parallel between the foundation of the Hungarian and Roman polities. It alludes also to the ancient Hungarians’ equality to the Trojans, and to the contemporary Hungarians’ equality to the Latin Christian peoples (for example the Franks), who had prestigious Trojan ancestry. The second borrowing from the Excidium Troiae is an allusion, in which little textual analogy can be observed. It draws parallel between the siege of the castle of Bihar [Bihor, RO], which concludes the Hungarians’ conquest of Pannonia, and the siege of Laurentina, which concludes Aeneas’ conquest of Latium. Its role is clearly to draw parallel between the conquests of the Hungarians and that of the Trojans. It supposes the same allusions as the quotation in the story of Álmos’ election. We make remarks on the fact, that Master P. uses allusions to, and quotations from the Excidium Troiae only up to a certain limit. We suppose that its cause is his deliberation to preserve the autonomy of his story, and emphasize the Hungarians’ own, independent values. Our main conclusion, is, that the Notary’s aim may have been to create a Hungarian prehistory, appropriate to the standards of “national” prehistories of his time. The use of the allusions to the Trojans and to Troy-romances was part of his efforts to reach this purpose. However, he wanted to create a history of the ancient Hungarians, who had had their own values in his eyes. So, he did not allow his story to become a Troy-romance of Hungarian subject.
The Social Structure of the Transylvanian Rural Society at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century
The history of the Principality of Transylvania is one of the most popular topics in Hungarian historiography and is also of great international interest. Although our understanding of the principality has significantly improved in recent decades, the overall perception of the subject has not fundamentally changed. The studies aimed at achieving a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the nations and communities of Transylvania have a long history; however, our knowledge remains incomplete in many respects. While we have detailed descriptions of the social structure of Transylvanian society and its unique self-organizing communities during the Middle Ages, there is a notable lack of analysis concerning social relationships in the centuries following the Battle of Mohács. This is particularly true regarding the structural composition of rural society. This paper aims to analyse the structural characteristics of rural society and conduct a comparative examination of its composition in Cluj and Turda Counties during the early decades of the eighteenth century. By analysing the relevant data, we can gain a detailed understanding of the social relations within the rural communities of the period, while also providing a terminological framework for examining the conceptual development of given social categories.