Hungarian Compiled Poem written in Székely (Szekler) Script from the florilegium of August, duke of Wolfenbüttel

Abstract

A In a childhood florilegium composed by duke August of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel after 1592 (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 22 Noviss. 8o, p. 438.), there is a series of curious characters following the Rumanian version of the Cyrillic alphabet. They can be decoded as a text written in old Hungarian alphabet, also called rovásírás or Székely Script after the Székelys, a Hungarian ethnographical group living in Transylvania. Whereas the duke’s Hungarian contacts are most unclear in this regard, it is a well known fact that from the second half of the 16th century many Hungarian men of letter cherished this alphabet for its presumed relationship with the Hebrew letters, and some of them used it as a secret writing. August became later an eminent cryptographer of his age and the author of the book called Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae libri IX. While he was aware of the fact that monoalphabetical codes, like the Székely Script, enabled only an easily breakable script, it is obvious that the duke was interested, beside the professional secret scripts, in rare alphabets (German runes or Hebrew letters) because of their historical value and various (poetical, cabbalistic or magical) uses, and he did not lack some curiosity for oriental scriptures. In the text, the fragments of two Protestant religious songs can be identified: the first verse comes from Minden állat dicsér, Úristen, tégedet (Every creature praises You, Lord; RPHA 170), while the rest of the poems is from Dicsérem az Istent az én életemben (I praise the Lord in my life, RPHA 253). The modifications and the errors suggest that there was a first compilation written in Latin letters which was followed by a version written in Székely Script. This latter was copied in August’s florilegium by someone who probably was not very good at reading these characters, perhaps by August himself.