Bulletin 2009 [antikvár]

BIBLIA SACRA HUNGARICA: THE BOOK THAT "GIVES ETERNAL LIFE" The Biblia Sacra Hungarica exhibition was held in our library's three display halls from 21st November 2008 to 29th March 2009. The exhibition about the book "that gives eternal life", which in retrospect we may confidently label as a great success, was held in the cooperation of the National Széchényi Library, the Hungarian Bible Society and the Association of Ecclesiastical Libraries to celebrate the Year of the Bible. The exhibition followed the process of the Holy Script gradually entering the life of Hungarians, becoming known in wider and wider circles, initially in its excerpts and later in ever more complete versions. The process started from two directions. On the one hand, in the mandatory daily prayers and also in the oral and dramatic liturgies several excerpts from the Holy Script were heard in Latin, taken mostly from psalms, gospels and apostolic letters. The solemn quality of the liturgy already suggested that the sacred text was special and commanded deep respect. Many parts of the Bible are likely to have received their permanent form at this oral stage. Later, for the sake of non-Latin speaking nuns and monks of the second or third order, more and more of this oral tradition was committed to writing. The first stage of the reception history was documented in the first exhibition hall by the Esztergom Capitulare dating from around 1370, the most important sections of which are the one-sentence Biblical sections (capitulum) and the supplication (collecta) intoned in the chant. The Capitulare was used for centuries at the Esztergom chapter. Among the most remarkable Hungarian pieces of the age, special attention is due to the mid-15th century Vienna Codex, one part of the so-called Hussite Bible, which has survived in three codices. It had mostly the texts of prophetic books recorded in it. The some seventy years younger Jordánszky Codex contains a large amount of text both from the Old and the New Testaments. In the introduction to the Érdy Codex (1526-1527), we read the first clearly formulated Hungarian literary program from the pen of the Anonymous Carthausian. The volume incorporates evangelical and apostolic letter excerpts to be read on Sundays and other holidays, as well as sermons to explain them. The same hall featured richly decorated Latin Bibles originating from abroad but used in Hungary, The cover page of the Psalterium by Orban Nagylucsei, King Matthias's treasurer as well as small codices with tiny letters intended for university education in Paris, the main medieval Bible commentaries, the works of Petrus Lombardus and Nicolaus de Lyra, the fragments of the Guttenberg Bible, and finally the very beautiful Gyöngyös copy of Petrus Schöffer's 1462 Mainz Bible, which had not been analyzed in the literature before. All this demonstrates that at the end of the Middle Ages both the clergy and laymen had a growing need for getting a deeper and more truthful understanding of the Bible. It also demonstrates that the emergence of university education, the development of the science of theology, the appearance of textual analysis and the discovery of book printing led to an articulated intellectual space and infrastructure that in the 16^ century made it possible to meet these demands and to print the Bible in large numbers.