Könyv és presztízs. Kazinczy János szóládi prédikátor könyvtára
Book and Prestige: The Library or Pastor János Kazinczy

Summary/Abstract: The study is a comparative analysis of the selected book list of János Kazinczy, the Protestant vicar of Szólád, written in 1812, based on the comprehensive catalogue of the full library from ten years earlier. The 1812 list is unique as it is a selection of the most valuable books in the collection, which Kazinczy compiled as an offer for sale for the most prominent supporter of arts and owner of a library of outstanding importance: György Festetics, a member of the aristocracy living in Keszthely. The list contains works on philosophy of government, medicine, philosophy, pedagogy and a large number of volumes on moral theology. The list contains several references that allow the partial reconstruction of the loaning practice, as well as the price of books, the majority of which were purchased abroad. These provide important details for the scholarship of both social history in general, and the Hungarian history of reading in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The majority of the volumes are German and French, some are in Latin. Compared to the library of the widely travelled contemporary, József Péczeli, Protestant pastor of Révkomárom, Kazinczy’s collection is relatively humble and did not contain any works by the most important philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. Nevertheless, his library suggests that in terms of linguistic skills, as well as theological and exegetic training, the Szólád clergyman was not lagging behind his contemporaries studying at the most famous Western European Protestant universities of the age.

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