Old Hungarian Glosses and Texts in an Early 16th-century Pauline Missal

Abstract

One of the few copies of a Pauline missal printed in 1514 (National Széchényi Library, shelfmark: RMK III, 196/2) has preserved mixed Hungarian and Latin inscriptions entered above the pericopes (approx. 400 Hungarian words). The paper discusses the publication history and the binding of the missal, as well as the corrections made on the Latin text. However, first of all, it presents the newly discovered Hungarian-language texts. This finding is an important source for the history of the Hungarian language on due to the great number of words and phrases and to the age of the notes, which can be dated to the first half of the 16th century. Its importance is enhanced by the fact that it furnishes new data on the process of translating the Bible into Hungarian. This is only the first stage of the research, but we can already state that the writer of the glosses probably followed that branch of the textual tradition (presumably shaped in orality) which was recorded in the Döbrentei Codex. The two translation are closely related. Our hypothesis is that they follow the Pauline tradition. According to the owner’s note, the book belonged to a cleric named Albert, who entered his name into it backwards (mutrebla). It is probably that this denomination hid Albert of Csanád, the famous Pauline preacher. As the interlinear glosses may have served as an aid to preaching, it can be inferred that it was he who glossed the biblical passages to help him with his sermons. This hypothesis has to be confirmed or contradicted by future analyses of the texts’ forma and content.