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Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library

by Marcus Tanner

Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary from 1443-90 enjoyed one of the most dazzling careers of the fifteenth century. The son of the great general and statesman John Hunyadi, and thus non-Royal, he nonetheless ascended to the crown and made Hungary a real player on the European stage, successfully enlarging the country's territories with conquests in Austria, Moravia and Silesia, and acting as a balwark against the expanding Ottoman Empire. It is as a lover of learning, however, that he is principally remembered, assembling one of the largest libraries in Europe, and it is on this aspect of his kingship which this biographical account particularly focuses, looking at the status conferred by knowledge, and the role of the entourage of his Italian wife Beatrice in promoting the library's acquisition. The library itself lasted no longer than his conquests, and the final chapters look at its semi-mythical afterlife among book collectors and antiqurians. 265p b/w pls (Yale UP 2008, Pb 2009)

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