inventory

As has been the case in both earlier and later periods in history, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one's valuables were at certain occasions, such as deaths, surveyed and listed. The resulting inventories of family and ecclesiastical treasuries or furnishings of buildings give an accurate description of the objects used at the time. A rich series of such inventories is conserved in the Urbaria et conscriptiones collection of the National Archives in Budapest. In the case of a few outstanding collections, such as the cathedral treasury of Esztergom or the Esterházy treasury in Fraknó (Forchtenau, Austria), the fate of the surviving pieces can be traced on the basis of the various inventories.

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