Transilvania ca societate de frontieră din perspectiva colecționarilor de carte
Transylvania as Border Nation from the Perspective of Book Owners

Summary/Abstract: The history of libraries from Transylvania can also be investigated from the perspective of Transylvania as a border nation. If we examine over time, Transylvania was a border nation, and this frontier attempted to meet the civilisation degree of the centre. This research tackles some book collections that entered Transylvania due to the collector activity of Transylvania’s bishop, Ignác Batthyány. It is the book collection that formed what currently is known as “library of Johannes Henckel”, “library of cardinal Christophor Migazzi”. The two collections reached the current holdings of the Batthyaneum Library in the ‘80s of the XVIIIth century. We do not know exactly how the bishop came to know about the first library, that of Johannes Henckel. The second, well known in the capital of the Empire, was bought after a series of negotiations that brought Imre Dániel, the future librarian of the Transylvanian prelate, to the fore. Both libraries hold essential holdings of works purchased for the library to be established in Alba Iulia, a small town like the region it was part of, on the outskirts of the Hapsburg Empire. We also draw attention to a possible acquisition, probably partial, of some books that belonged to the Slovak scholar Adám František Kollár. This question mark regarding Kollár's books hovers until the book holdings of the Batthyaneum Library are processed in a catalogue also containing the owners of the books.

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