Hungarian catholic lexicon

Regarding its history, the editors note the following in the preface to the first volumeː

“In 1980, Szent István Társulat Könyvkiadó undertook to publish the Hungarian Catholic Lexicon. At first, it seemed a solution to shorten the 10-volume material of the famous Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, made in 1957-65, and to supplement it with Hungarian material. However, examination of the glossary prepared as a first step revealed that this path was impassable. The Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche was born in a German cultural circle (and in schools), was made for people raised in the traditions of this cultural circle, and its approach, references, attachments and examples are untranslatable by simple translation. Coordinating the work of translators of different qualifications, proofreading, discussions arising from misunderstandings ... etc."

The editors wanted to put a lot of emphasis on the presentation of the topics related to the Hungarian church, so in the end, in fact, an independent work was created by dr. István Diós and dr. Edited by János Viczián, which, in addition to the above, includes many historical, local history, ethnographic, botanical, music historical, etc. also covers the subject.

The work, which was published in 15 volumes between 1993 and 2010 and lasted about 15,000 printed pages, was carried out under the auspices of the St. Stephen's Society, which has traditionally published ecclesiastical literature. The two-column text is decorated with many black and white and some color photographs and illustrations. In 2013, an additional volume (A – Zs) was published as the 16th, and then in 2014 the series was closed by an index volume: I-XVI. volume index A – Zs (volume 17).

The most important of his topics are the followingː

• persons (popes, kings, bishops, writers, personalities)
• events (Hungarian ecclesiastical and secular history, universal church history)
• places (countries, dioceses, Hungarian dioceses, parishes, pilgrimage sites, monastic houses)
• institutions (monastic orders, associations)
• concepts (philosophy, scripture, dogmatics, ecclesiastical law, liturgy, arts, natural sciences)

In addition to the printed edition, the Hungarian Catholic Lexicon has also been available in electronic form since recently. András Rácz, a student of the Faculty of Information Technology of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, took part in the creation of the Internet version, under the supervision of Miklós Pásztor.

• Magyar katolikus lexikon I–XV. Főszerk. Diós István; szerk. Viczián János. Budapest: Szent István Társulat. 1993–2010.