Books: Library of Legend
July 2008
The Raven King
By Marcus Tanner
Yale, $35
The legendary library of Matthias Corvinus, 15th-century king of Hungary, was the foremost in the world. Said to comprise 30,000 volumes, or perhaps 50,000, his collection was many times the size of the Vatican’s and of far superior quality. Masterfully illuminated, the manuscripts were all perfect copies of the classics, in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, making the capital city of Buda a Renaissance-era Alexandria over which Matthias presided as benevolentphilosopher-king. And in the years following his death, when the empire he’d built was dismantled and his books strewn across the continent, loyal Hungarians maintained that their glorious past would return only after Matthias’s library was assembled again.
As scholars learned in their painstaking attempt to locate Matthias’s books, neither the library nor the king bore much resemblance to legend. Rather than 50,000 perfect texts, its holdings were likely just 2,500 poorly transcribed volumes. Yet even today, the remnants of the Bibliotheca Corviniana are revered in Hungary with near-religious fervor. As journalist Marcus Tanner explains in The Raven King, "The scale of the calamities visited on his kingdom after his death encouraged men to recollect his reign in epic and mystical terms…. The library, which in his lifetime was only one of his grand passions, achieved fabulous dimensions as the pre-eminent symbol of this lost world."
Tanner’s research is impressive, given the near-total obliteration of historical records.Using Corvinus’s library as a foundation, The Raven King provides a thorough, though somewhat muddled, account of the life and legacy of one of the Renaissance’s most storied figures.
That the Bibliotheca Corviniana should become Matthias’s posthumous surrogate is appropriate. As Tanner argues, the king always saw the library as a reflection of himself, "a lasting monument to his wisdom, liberality and magnificence, proof that he rivaled the emperors of Rome in stature. This was his passport to immortality."
Given his past, the library was both an unlikely choice of passport and an understandable one. Born in 1443, he became king at the age of 15 due to intrigues over which he had no sway. Nevertheless, he took to the position with alacrity, becoming a warrior whose crusading against the Ottoman Empire positioned him as a savior of Christendom. In truth, however, he preferred waging war against his European neighbors, whose territory he saw as a more realistic source of empire. After arranging a truce with his Muslim enemies he attempted to conquer Bohemia. A decade of expensive fighting made Austria an increasingly attractive alternative, one that ended successfully with the capture of Vienna in 1485.
In other words, Matthias had firsthand experience with the give-and-take of territorial expansion and cannot have believed that his greater Hungary would stand forever. Knowledge, on the other hand, was cumulative, Latin resting upon Greek. The ancient world endured in the form of literature; more remained of Plato than of Alexander. Matthias was already quite infirm when he began actively collecting books in around 1486; he died four years later at the age of 47. While books were nearly as expensive as warfare, vellum was more lasting than territory.
Moreover, the books were part of a larger project, the broad patronage of humanist scholarship. Together with his Neapolitan queen, Beatrice, Matthias sought to make Buda the improbable capital of the Italian Renaissance. As 18th-century biographer Ireneo Affo noted, "It would have been no use gathering so many scholars in Buda and not providing them with books." Neither a royal bauble nor a time capsule, the library was intended to bestow immortality upon Matthias by virtue of the works it produced.
Had Matthias Corvinus survived another decade, Buda might have become a Florence of the East. Tanner argues, "Matthias was principally an enabler. His genius lay in his willingness to let others express their genius." But his death and the demise of independent Hungary gave his books a very different purpose.
Over the following five centuries, 216 volumes have been found, identifiable by the symbol of a blue raven, one of his royal insignias and the source of the Latin name Corvinus. (In Hungarian, his name is Mátyás Hunyadi.) In recent history, the state has recovered small hoards of books—notably, 35 manuscripts from Turkey in 1877—bolstering a sense of national identity: The Turkish donation coincided with a rare period of home rule, evocatively referred to as Hungary’s "noon hour" by the historian John Lukacs. And the sense that there were more tomes out there in the world provided some slim hope for Hungarians in the grim 20th century. Indeed, the very lack of books—the discrepancy between 216 codices and 2,500 (or 50,000)—provides a sense of purpose even as Hungary struggles for post-Communist prosperity. Through the legend of the Bibliotheca Corviniana, King Matthias still leads his country.
By Marcus Tanner
Yale, $35
The legendary library of Matthias Corvinus, 15th-century king of Hungary, was the foremost in the world. Said to comprise 30,000 volumes, or perhaps 50,000, his collection was many times the size of the Vatican’s and of far superior quality. Masterfully illuminated, the manuscripts were all perfect copies of the classics, in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, making the capital city of Buda a Renaissance-era Alexandria over which Matthias presided as benevolentphilosopher-king. And in the years following his death, when the empire he’d built was dismantled and his books strewn across the continent, loyal Hungarians maintained that their glorious past would return only after Matthias’s library was assembled again.
As scholars learned in their painstaking attempt to locate Matthias’s books, neither the library nor the king bore much resemblance to legend. Rather than 50,000 perfect texts, its holdings were likely just 2,500 poorly transcribed volumes. Yet even today, the remnants of the Bibliotheca Corviniana are revered in Hungary with near-religious fervor. As journalist Marcus Tanner explains in The Raven King, "The scale of the calamities visited on his kingdom after his death encouraged men to recollect his reign in epic and mystical terms…. The library, which in his lifetime was only one of his grand passions, achieved fabulous dimensions as the pre-eminent symbol of this lost world."
Tanner’s research is impressive, given the near-total obliteration of historical records.Using Corvinus’s library as a foundation, The Raven King provides a thorough, though somewhat muddled, account of the life and legacy of one of the Renaissance’s most storied figures.
That the Bibliotheca Corviniana should become Matthias’s posthumous surrogate is appropriate. As Tanner argues, the king always saw the library as a reflection of himself, "a lasting monument to his wisdom, liberality and magnificence, proof that he rivaled the emperors of Rome in stature. This was his passport to immortality."
Given his past, the library was both an unlikely choice of passport and an understandable one. Born in 1443, he became king at the age of 15 due to intrigues over which he had no sway. Nevertheless, he took to the position with alacrity, becoming a warrior whose crusading against the Ottoman Empire positioned him as a savior of Christendom. In truth, however, he preferred waging war against his European neighbors, whose territory he saw as a more realistic source of empire. After arranging a truce with his Muslim enemies he attempted to conquer Bohemia. A decade of expensive fighting made Austria an increasingly attractive alternative, one that ended successfully with the capture of Vienna in 1485.
In other words, Matthias had firsthand experience with the give-and-take of territorial expansion and cannot have believed that his greater Hungary would stand forever. Knowledge, on the other hand, was cumulative, Latin resting upon Greek. The ancient world endured in the form of literature; more remained of Plato than of Alexander. Matthias was already quite infirm when he began actively collecting books in around 1486; he died four years later at the age of 47. While books were nearly as expensive as warfare, vellum was more lasting than territory.
Moreover, the books were part of a larger project, the broad patronage of humanist scholarship. Together with his Neapolitan queen, Beatrice, Matthias sought to make Buda the improbable capital of the Italian Renaissance. As 18th-century biographer Ireneo Affo noted, "It would have been no use gathering so many scholars in Buda and not providing them with books." Neither a royal bauble nor a time capsule, the library was intended to bestow immortality upon Matthias by virtue of the works it produced.
Had Matthias Corvinus survived another decade, Buda might have become a Florence of the East. Tanner argues, "Matthias was principally an enabler. His genius lay in his willingness to let others express their genius." But his death and the demise of independent Hungary gave his books a very different purpose.
Over the following five centuries, 216 volumes have been found, identifiable by the symbol of a blue raven, one of his royal insignias and the source of the Latin name Corvinus. (In Hungarian, his name is Mátyás Hunyadi.) In recent history, the state has recovered small hoards of books—notably, 35 manuscripts from Turkey in 1877—bolstering a sense of national identity: The Turkish donation coincided with a rare period of home rule, evocatively referred to as Hungary’s "noon hour" by the historian John Lukacs. And the sense that there were more tomes out there in the world provided some slim hope for Hungarians in the grim 20th century. Indeed, the very lack of books—the discrepancy between 216 codices and 2,500 (or 50,000)—provides a sense of purpose even as Hungary struggles for post-Communist prosperity. Through the legend of the Bibliotheca Corviniana, King Matthias still leads his country.
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