JEDNA KNIŽNICA – VIACERO MÝTOV: KULTOVÁ KNIŽNICA BIBLIOTHECA CORVINA

During the reign of the legendary King Matthias Hunyadi (1458–1490) a book copying workshop was working and book printing started in 1473. At the royal court, just like in the court of nobles and higher clergy numerous Italian, German, Bohemian and Croatian humanist artists competed to get a chance to create, or to get an invitation to a symposium and to have the opportunity to get into to the greatest library of the area, the library established in the Buda royal court: the Bibliotheca Corvina. This library became one of the most frequently mentioned symbols of Hungarian culture. We shall see that in the 16th and 17th centuries this library was a part of the Hungarian consciousness, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Austrian court and its cultural policy building a common imperial culture for itself, and the Transylvanian princely centre also took the library into account as a symbol of the common culture. So did the Universitas Saxonum, if only to consider their own cultural achievements equal to the Great King’s. Later, from the last third of the 18th century and from the beginning of the 19th century it became a firm element of Hungarian consciousness.