Zrinka Nikolic: Structure of power of Dalmatian protopatricians in the tenth and the eleventh centuries

3. Andrej Komac: Certain aspects related to the landed estates of Carniolan nobility: the example of the Auersperg/Turjak family.

4. Nada Zečevič: Marriage stratég}⁷ i n the Albanian nobility (case study of three kindreds).

5. Jan Wroniszewski: Umstände des Erb- und Eigentumsrecht der Frauen i n Polen: Ihre praktische Anwendung und ihre gesellschaftlichen Kontext. (As a second project.)

6. Emilia Jamroziak: intends to submit a proposal i n the near future.

These projects, similarly to the already running ones, have to be completed before the end of 1998.

Excursion to Visegrád.

I E A Y E A R I N T H E V I S U A L L A B O R A T O R Y Tamás Sajó

The Visual Laboratory of the Medieval Studies Department has three functions: It organizes various research projects i n the field of medieval studies involving students and staff of the Department, i t supports education by making students familiar with computerized methods i n their respective fields, and it provides library services as the largest local collection of relevant material on CD-s, microfiches and laser disks.

Since its foundation i n 1994, the Visual Laboratory has organized a project entitled "Visual Resources i n East Central Europe." The first three-year period of this project was completed this academic year, and produced, among other things, an extensive catalogue of those institutions and collections i n the region that possess a significant number of photographs concerning the medieval cultural heritage of the region. This list, compiled by several assistants, was edited by Béla Zsolt

Szakács, and will soon be published both on the Internet and i n booklet form.

Another impressive product of this project was the release of the Hungarian Angevin Legendary CD, the first electronic publication of a complete medieval illuminated manuscript. This fourteenth-century codex, one of the most precious treasures of medieval Hungarian art, whose 549 surviving illustrations represent the lives of 58 saints, has been scattered over the centuries, and the existing pages are kept i n six different collections all over the world, from the Vatican to St.

Petersburg, and from Berkeley to Paris. This CD, prepared by Béla Zsolt Szakács and Tamás Sajó, was not only the first virtual unification of the former codex, but it also included a scholarly apparatus, ranging from the complete text of the legends on which the illustrations were based to the detailed iconographie descriptions of the same, and including the biographies of the saints represented, as well as the various reconstruction hypotheses of the original manuscript. The Angevin CD, the fruit of three years of research and technical work, was officially presented to the public on 13 March 1998 in the Széchényi Library, where the Rector of the CEU, Dr. Josef Jařab also offered to the Library a precious donation: the complete facsimile of the pages kept in the Vatican Library, purchased by this project for the purposes of comparative research.

The Angevin CD was prepared i n the ORBIS program, a scholarly database program developed at the Department since 1992. The software was originally developed for and used by museums, libraries and archives throughout Hungary and in the region for cataloging and publishing their materials. Due to the support of the

Soros Open Society Institute, a three-year project was launched i n 1994 to support the cataloguing of eight important Hungarian collections. The technological assistance for this work-installing the software i n the institutions, providing technical advice, working out standards on the basis of similar international projects, scanning slides and photographs, composing the databases and the final catalogues, and so forth-was also largely provided by the personnel and equipment of the Visual Laboratory. On 13 December a one-day Orbis workshop was organized by the Department with the participation of the relatived institutions and external experts, and on this occasion the completed catalogues were also presented to the public. These w i l l be published on CDs, beginning this year with the manuscript collection of the Kalocsa Cathedral Library and the old print library of the Ráday Collection.

The Visual Resources Project also continued during this academic year, due to a generous donation from the HESP. This time, i n addition to apart from the devel­

opment of the equipment and collections of the Visual Laboratory, support was given to four part-time projects. Gerhard Jaritz, professor of our department and senior researcher of the Krems Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit of the Austrian Academy of Sciences aims at the completion and electronic processing of thousands of high quality photographs of the region's medieval heritage-mostly tableaux and fresco paintings-collected during several seasons of fieldwork from Austria to Romania. The scanned photos are described in minutiae i n the pioneering KLEIO historical database program. Béla Zsolt Szakács, assisted by two of our Ph.D. students, Judit Majorossy and Zsolt Hunyadi, collected and processed the material kept in various photo archives relating to the art of the reigns of King Louis I of Hungary (1342-1382) and Emperor Sigismund (1390-1437). The respective image databases are also developed i n the Orbis system. Beatrix Romhányi (ELTE University) developed an exceptionally extensive Orbis database on all the monasteries of medieval Hungary. With the assistance of our Ph.D. students, the same work has been extended to Croatia and Bulgaria.

Finally, Sergey Sazonov from the Rostov Kremlin Museum processed the rich icon collection of the museum, focusing his work on hagiographie principles.

Students of the Department have always been encouraged to do and present their research with the help of computer technology, as is proved by several databases the Visual Lab produced during the recent years. This year Biljana Bogatinoska (M.A.) prepared her database on ""Macedonian Churches A.D.

800-1200", an extensive catalogue of the sites and remains of this fertile period and region of Late Byzantine art, and Adrian Bara (Ph.D.) gave an impressive presenta­

tion of his image database on Transylvanian medieval castles. The assistance of the

Visual Laboratory is also appreciated by students from other departments, as is evidenced by the spectacular presentation of the urban development of Skopje prepared by Sofija Maneva (M.A.) from the History Department; this material can be also seen on the Internet. The Summer University program of the Department (Restoration and Documentation of Cultural Heritage) was, as i n the two previous years, heavily based on the Visual Laboratory's equipment and work.

The extensive CD, photograph and microfiche collection of the Visual Lab was enriched this year by two important sets of material. On the one hand, with the purchase of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae that complemented the formerly acquired CDs of ancient and medieval texts, we are able to provide our students with a complete library of all ancient texts, whether in Greek, Latin or Hebrew. On the other hand, we have managed to purchase the complete microfiche edition of the Bibliotheca Palatina, the largest late medieval/early Renaissance library, once set up in Heidelberg and now kept i n the Vatican Library. This huge collection of more than a hundred thousand medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and early prints is now available for the first time in our region, and will certainly serve as a unique re­

source for the research of our students, staff as well as the scholars outside the CEU.

V I S U A L R E S O U R C E S O F M E D I E V A L H U N G A R Y F O U R T E E N T H AND F I F T E E N T H C E N T U R Y

Béla Zsolt Szakács

The aim of this part-project is to build up computer-based documentation of different types of visual resources of late medieval Hungary, including panel paintings frescoes, books illuminations, sculptures, and minor arts. The project is co-ordinated by Béla Zsolt Szakács.

As a first result, the new Windows/Netscape-based version of the CD-ROM edition of the Hungarian Angevin Legendary was published i n early 1998. The CD contains all the 545 images of the codex, now kept i n different collections of the world. A detailed textual description and commentary as well as two iconographical indexes (ICONCLASS and Thésaurus des images médiévales), related sources in Latin and English, and information on the lives of the saints are attached to the CD.

The introduction serves as a guide to the CD as well as the first summary of recent research on the history and iconographical features of the codex.

A presentation of the CD was given within the framework of a conference organized by the CEU Medieval Studies Department and held i n the lecture room of the Széchényi National Library on March 11, 1998. The program was the following:

SÄ Josef Jařab, the President and Rector of the CEU donated the precious facsimile edition of the codex to the National Library {"Ungarisches Legendárium", Vat Jat.8541. Kommentar v. G. Morello, H. Stamm, G. Betz.

Stuttgart: Belser, 1990)

SÄ Gyöngyi Török gave a lecture on " A new unknown page from the Angevin Legendary i n the Louvre."

SÄ Tamás Sajó and Béla Zsolt Szakács presented the CD-ROM and an ORBIS database as well as the results of recent research on the codex.

SÄ The Medieval Studies Department participated i n the multimedia exhibition

"Digital Stones from the Hungarian Cultural Heritage" with the new CD-ROM edition of the codex (March 13-18, 1998).

Three other ORBIS databases are under preparation documenting various periods and aspects of visual resources of late medieval Hungary.

a) Art under King Louis I of Hungary 1342-1382 (prepared by Ágnes Berecz, Ph.D. candidate i n Art History). This database is the documentation of an important exhibition organised by the Art History Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Székesfehérvár i n 1982.

b) Art under King Sigismund of Hungary 1387-1437 (prepared by Judit Majorossy, Ph.D. candidate i n Medieval Studies). This database is the documentation of the continuation of the previous exhibition organised by the Art History Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at the Historical Museum of Budapest in

1987.

c) Early Hungarian Panel Paintings, from the beginning up to 1470 (prepared by Zsolt Hunyadi, Ph.D. candidate i n Medieval Studies). This database comprises the first full iconographical documentation of the early panel paintings, based on previous and more recent research (especially Dénes Radocsay, A középkori Magyarország táblaképei (Panel paintings of Medieval Hungary), Budapest,

Akadémiai, 1955. and Magyarországi művészet 1300-1470 körül (Art and architecture i n Hungary), ed. by Ernő Marosi, Budapest, Akadémiai, 1987)

The textual parts of these databases are completed in the DOS version of ORBIS database manager software. The Windows version is under preparation together with the collecting and scanning of the illustrations.

As a new field of research, medieval fresco painting was introduced into the project with the help of our two assistants, Judit Majorossy and Zsolt Hunyadi. First, a general overview of late medieval Hungarian murals was prepared in the form of a

checklist. We have chosen two regions with rich material. Three research trips were organized:

a) Frescoes of Johannes Aquila and his workshop: Velemér in Hungary, and Martjanci (Mártonhely), Turnisce (Bántornya), Selo (Nagytótlak), and Murska Sobota (Muraszombat) in Slovenia, 1st campaign, September 15-16, 1997 b) Frescoes in County Baranya (Pécs-Málom, Siklós: castle and church of the

Augustinians, Mecseknádasd, Cserkút), October 12-14, 1997

c) Frescoes of Johannes Aquila and his workshop, 2nd campaign, August 12-13, 1998

As a result of these campaigns, we have prepared a complete photographic documentation of the present condition of the murals. New iconographical identification was necessary in several cases and a full transcription of medieval inscriptions was made for the first time. Photos have been digitised and are now available on CD-ROMs, while the preparation of the databases has been started. The CD documenting the frescos of Johannes Aquila's circle will be completed presumably in the academic year 1998-1999.

I I I . R E S E A R C H G R O U P I N M E D I E V A L P L A T O N I S M György Geréby and István Perczel

I) Introduction

From 1998, a new research center was founded at the CEU, the aim of which was to contribute to a better understanding of what Platonism and anti-Platonism meant i n the Middle Ages, by analysing certain issues considered as essential i n the development of alternative theological and philosophical strategies between ca. 300 and 1300, both i n Byzantium and beyond, that is to say, in the Eastern part of the oikumene, and in the Latin West.

Our aim is to build up an international reserch team (partly based on our former students) integrated into the international scholarly network. Since we have already been in contact for some years with the Centre de I 'Etude des Religions du Livre (CERL) in Paris, a research group associated to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, directed by Prof. Alain Le Boulluec, as well as with the De Wulf-Mansion Centre, at the Institute of Philosophy of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, directed by Prof.

Carlos Steel, we wanted to give these co-operations a more institutional form. We also wanted to establish a similar co-operation with Italian centers, like the research groups "Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition" and La diffusione dell'eredità classica nell'età tardoantica e altomedievale. Forme e modi di transmissione. Our new center also intends to function as a meeting point for East-Central European and Western European scholars in our field and a connecting link between the already existing Western European networks and their Eastern European counter­

parts which we considered as needing to be created.

U) Report on Recent Activity