Peter Vaczy

* Ruttka, March 17, 1904 – † Budapest, September 28, 1994 / medieval historian, art collector, university professor, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ; ; He began his elementary school studies in his birthplace, and completed high school in Košice. He studied history and art history at the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, and earned a doctorate in humanities in 1928. He studied in Vienna in 1927–1929, in Paris and Rome in 1932–1933, and then in London and Zurich. From 1929 he was a member of the archives department of the Hungarian National Archives, and from 1934–1940 he was the deputy archivist of the Hungarian National Archives. From 1937 he taught early medieval Western European history as a private teacher at the University of Budapest, and from 1940 to 1942 he was a public lecturer on medieval history at the University of Cluj. From 1942 to 1949 he taught universal medieval history at the University of Budapest. After the communist takeover, he was unable to teach history for a long time, so he lectured to art history students from 1949 to 1961. From 1961 to 1968 he was a staff member of the University Library in Budapest. From 1940 he was a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but in 1949 he was reclassified as a deliberative member. In 1989 his corresponding membership was reinstated, and in May 1990 he became a full member. He dealt with the universal European history of the early Middle Ages, the history of the Huns, the prehistory of the Hungarians, the early history of the Hungarian state, and the auxiliary sciences of history. He proved that Stephen I (Saint) did not receive the crown from the Pope, but only the head of the church officially recognized the Kingdom of Vajk as valid. He was also a collaborator on the four-volume summary Magyar õlvedéstörténet (1939), edited by Sándor Domanovszky. He also published ethnographic studies, but he was also interested in music theory. He was also interested in the material culture of the Middle Ages, and published in French about Flemish looms and the Flemish weaving industry. He also collected objects of fine and applied arts. After his death, he left his collection to the Győr Museum. ; ; His main works: ; The royal servients and the patrimonial kingdom, 1928, ; The era of the symbolic state concept in Hungary, 1932, ; The history of the Middle Ages, 1936, ; Christianity in Hungary during the age of the conquest (In: Memorial Book on the Death of King Stephen; on the Nine Hundredth Anniversary I.), 1938, ; The Vazul Tradition in Our Medieval Fountainheads, 1941, ; From the Early Centuries of Hungarian History, 1994.