What should an “S” entry supplementing RMNy be about, and how should it be written?

Additions to the publication history of the Divine songs (Istenes énekek) and the Heidelberg Catechism

Abstract

The national retrospective bibliography RMNy, or Régi Magyarországi Nyomtatványok (Old Printed Works in Hungary), strives for completeness in cataloguing all printed works in Hungary and in the Hungarian language from before 1700. To this end, it collects and critically evaluates data on books that are no longer preserved in copies, and also records newly appearing or newly discovered works. The colleagues of RMNy regularly review the catalogues, bibliographies, and domestic publications on literature and cultural history that are continuously published in print or digital form. The question therefore arises as to what a new, supplementary “S” entry for the supplement volume currently in preparation should be about, and how it should be written. This study provides an answer to this question, in theory and in practice as well, with a bibliographic evaluation of Vadai István’s publication from 2015, titled Balassi, Rimay, and Szenci Kertész Ábrahám: A new model for the publication history of the Divine songs, I (Balassi, Rimay és Szenci Kertész Ábrahám: Az „Istenes énekek” kiadástörténetének új modellje, I.). Vadai gave a very profound analysis, primarily from a textual history perspective, of the 11 printed Balassi–Rimay editions, known to be from 1632 to 1699. During his work, he made numerous discoveries relating to publication and printing history. However, he did not record his relevant findings in a bibliographic manner. The present work accomplishes that task by bibliographically organising Vadai’s scattered observations for research purposes. As a result, it describes three previously unknown or incorrectly recorded editions of Balassi–Rimay and two previously unrecorded editions of the Heidelberg Catechism, in a form that aligns with the practice of RMNy, and it also deletes an item from the handbook that has been proven to be incorrect in light of the new data. In this way, it greatly helps further research into the publication and textual history of these two representative works of Hungarian culture.