In the Pannonhalma letters-patent, Saint Stephen granted the licences of Montre Cassino – Saint Benedict’s abbey in Italy – to the first monastery in Hungary. Due to this, in the past millennium, a manifold relationship was formed between the two monastic communities whose two important documents are a charter of 1180 and another one of 1212. The first document issued by Peter, the Abbot of Cassino recorded the Italian journey of a monk from the community of Abbot Similis of Pannonhalma.

Máté Vincze, Deputy State Secretary for Public Collections and Cultural Development of the Ministry of Culture and Innovation visited Pannonhalma on 27 July. He got acquainted with the treasures, representative rooms and storerooms of our Library, Archives and Museum. His visit also gave occasion to have a talk about our collections’ plans and opportunities of development. The Deputy State Secretary also covers his visit on his social website.

The three great associations of church collections have their annual three-day itinerary congress at the beginning of summer. The Association of Ecclesiastical Libraries, the Association of Hungarian Church Archivists and the Museologists’ Association of Christian Churches held this year’s congress together in Kecskemét. Their last joint itinerary congress was held in Gyulafehérvár in 2009. The programme of 150 participants was hosted by the Kecskemét Reformed Church Congregation’s Library and Archives between 3 and 5 July.

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth, on 9 June, we – together with the Ambassador of Switzerland accredited to Hungary and the International Committee of the Red Cross – commemorated Friedrich Born, the rescuer of humans. Thanks to the Swiss diplomat, the Archabbey became protected by the International Red Cross in October 1944, thus many thousands of refugees and a hoard of art treasures could tide over those hard times within its walls. Among others, our Archives kept safe the coronation robe for three months.

The temporary exhibition entitled The Tihany Deed of Foundation Personally was opened in the Museum of the Tihany Benedictine Abbey on 17 June. Visitors can see the Deed of Foundation of 1055, which is the first record extant of the Hungarian language, since its Latin text contains many dozens of Hungarian words. The document left Tihany in the 1530s together with the monks fleeing from the Ottoman occupation, and it got to Pannonhalma. It is one of the most carefully kept treasure of the Archabbey’s Archives in Pannonhalma.

On June 15 and 16, the 9th National Congress of Church Historians was held at the Saint Athanasius Greek Catholic Theological Institute in Nyíregyháza. The panel discussions concentrated on “presentable church history”, namely on the role of memorial places, museums, and collections, and on the significance of museum pedagogy. The discussions were preceded by the presentations of the participants.

On June 11, ten teachers having been rewarded with the Diploma of Merit for Benedictine Education were introduced to the riches of our Archives after the prize-giving ceremony. On the following day, teachers and PhD-students of language history – headed by Rudolf Szentgyörgyi – from the Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös Loránt University visited us. During the irregular class, the doctoral candidates also made presentations.

On 7 June, the colleagues of the cultural section (library, archives, museum, cultural office) of Pannonhalma went on a day excursion in Veszprém, where they visited the castle district under reconstruction. In the cathedral, the organist Attila Dankos talked about and played the organ, then Veronika Nagy, the Director of the Blessed Gizella Archiepiscopal Collection showed us around in the cathedral.

In May, many groups visited our archives. On 23 May, the group of the Benedictine School of Meschede – in connection with the Benedictine Boarding School of Pannonhalma for about four decades – were hosted in the form of an irregular class of history.

During spring, within the framework of the multi-disciplinary research-programme entitled “Kings, Saints, Monasteries”, a planned excavation took place in the Archabbey’s area. The excavation was headed by Ágoston Takács, a doctoral candidate of Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Archaeological Sciences.