Bibliotheca Corviniana

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Renaissance Library of Mathias Corvinus - Biblioteka Corviniana
World document heritage UNESCO World Document Heritage emblem
Corvina Cod Guelf 43.jpg
Title page of Cod. Guelf. 43 Aug 2 ° (Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel)
State (s): BelgiumBelgium Belgium Germany France Italy Austria Hungary
GermanyGermany 
FranceFrance 
ItalyItaly 
AustriaAustria 
HungaryHungary 
Duration: 216 volumes
Period: 15th century
Storage: Széchényi National Library , Budapest
Austrian National Library , Vienna
other libraries and collections
Register link: The Bibliotheca Corviniana Collection
Admission: 2005 ( session 7 )

The Bibliotheca Corviniana ( Corvina for short ) is the world-famous book collection of the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490). It formed one of the largest and most valuable libraries of the Renaissance and was included in the World Document Heritage in 2005. It is largely lost or scattered, the proven specimens are called Corvinen .

Library

The library's heyday began with the marriage of King Matthias to the art-loving Beatrix of Aragón (1476). Matthias Corvinus put together a library with great effort, for which he had magnificently decorated manuscripts produced in Italy. Messengers were sent through Italy , Greece and Asia Minor to buy up the manuscripts of classical authors as well as Syrian and Hebrew writers. 33,000 ducats were available. It is estimated that it was 2,000 volumes at the time, making the Bibliotheca Corviniana the second largest of its time after the Vatican library.

The most magnificent illuminations of the manuscripts with the king's coat of arms drawn in, the leather bindings adorned with gold, and the velvet and silk bindings are characteristic of the Bibliotheca Corviniana .

Post-history

Housed in the Palace of Buda , the library was scattered around the world after the king's death in 1490 and the Turkish conquest of Buda in 1526 and 1541 respectively. On the one hand, the successors of King Matthias were no longer as bibliophile as he was, on the other hand, the library was drastically dismantled by the Turkish Sultan Suleyman I. Parts were kept in the Seraglio of Constantinople and returned to Budapest as gifts from the Sultan in 1869 and 1877 . Individual volumes came to Vienna in 1666 and after the conquest of Buda by Habsburg troops in 1686.

Today's Corvines

So far there are 216 Corvines known.
Hungary has the most important collection in the Széchényi National Library in Budapest with 53 copies, and the Austrian National Library with 39 volumes. Various museums in Italy hold 49 copies, a large part of them the Biblioteca Estense in Modena. The rest of the known holdings are from Germany (8 pieces Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, 9 pieces Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, 2 pieces Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden , ThULB Jena), France (7 pieces), Belgium, England, the Turkey and the USA scattered.

A Hungarian project endeavors in accordance with the Charter for the preservation of Digital Heritage (2003), the sequel to the Memory of the World -Programms of UNESCO , to the retro-digitization of manuscripts and early printed books. Reuniting the library as a digital collection would adequately document this pan-European heritage.

literature

  • Christian host: On the trail of the Bibliotheca Corviniana: Peter Lambeck's travel report to Buda from 1666 . In: Biblos . tape 54 , 2005, ISSN  0006-2022 , p. 43-64 .

Web links

Commons : Bibliotheca Corviniana  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pal Engel, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In: The Realm of St. Stephen , IBTauris Publishers, London, 2002, p. 154. Information from UNESCO: Full list of Registered Heritage , accessed May 8, 2012
  2. ↑ Anna Forstenheim: Returned to the Fatherland . In: The Gazebo . Issue 23, 1877, pp. 383–384 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  3. ↑ Csaba Csapodi / Klara Csapodi-Gardonyi: Bibliotheca Corvina. The library of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Budapest 1978, pp. 29–32
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Information according to UNESCO: Full list of Registered Heritage , accessed May 8, 2012
  5. ^ Renaissance library of King Mathias Corvinus . German UNESCO Commission V.
  6. ↑ Münchner Corvinen , muenchener-digitalisierungszentrum.de
  7. ↑ Wolfenbütteler Corvinen , hab.de
  8. ↑ Two Corvins from the library of King Matthias Corvinus came to the Electoral Library in Dresden in the 18th century. They were severely damaged in 1945 as a result of the bombing of the library building. Dresden Corvinen . slub-dresden.de
  9. ↑ ThULB Jena - Object of the Month: September 2017. Accessed on September 10, 2017 .