The Raven king : Matthias Corvinus and the fate of his lost library
"Seizing the Hungarian throne at the age of fifteen, Matthias Corvinus, the 'Raven King', was an effervescent presence on the fifteenth-century stage. A successful warrior and munificent art patron, he sought to leave as symbols of his strategic and humanist ambitions a strong, unified country, splendid palaces, and the most magnificent library in Christendom. But Hungary, invaded by Turkey after Matthias's death in 1490, yielded its treasures, and the Raven King's exquisite library of two thousand volumes, witness to a golden cultural age, was dispersed first across Europe and then the world. The quest to recover this collection of sumptuously illuminated scripts provoked and tantalized generations of princes, cardinals, collectors, and scholars and imbued Hungarians with the mythical conviction that the restoration of the lost library would seal their country's rebirth. In this ... account, drawing on a wealth of original sources in several languages, Marcus Tanner tracks the destiny of the Raven King and his magnificent bequest, uncovering the remarkable story of a life and library almost lost to history."--Publisher description
Print Book, English, 2009
Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2009
Biography
xx, 265 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 20 cm
9780300158281, 0300158289
317471883
'Deep inside the palace'
Beyond the forest
'I delight in everything that's new'
'Ceaselessly entangled in warfare'
Beatrice
'The Emperor has fled'
The librarian Ugoleto
'A glutton for books'
Collapse
'Who can restrain their tears?'
The walls of the Seraglio
Epilogue: 'Matjaz will ride out'
Originally published: 2008