Mikó Árpád szerk.: Reneissance year 2008 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/1)

EDIT MADAS, FERENC FÖLDESI: Star in The Raven's Shadow. János Vitéz and the Beginnings of Humanism in Hungary

episcopal palace, the venue of the scholarly debates. He acquired his codices from Italy, and according to testimony by the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, he "fitted out a very handsome library and wished there to be 111 it books on all branches of learning. He sought these from Italy and elsewhere. He had many books which he could not otherwise acquire copied in Florence, and was concerned only that these be handsome and their texts verified, without regard to the cost. He enriched his homeland by having every book brought there that could be found, both original works and translations. There were few books in Latin which he did not have." There are, however, surviving books from Vitéz' library which were made in Hungary. A work by Tertullianus, father of the Latin Church, was copied for him in Várad by Bereck Polánkai (Briccius de Polauca) in 1455. Bisticci gives a precise account of the composition and high standards of the library: every branch of learning was represented there, above all works by the ancient authors, historians, comedists and poets, the works of the fathers of the Church — also belonging to the ancient Tertullian Codex from the library of János Vitéz, 1455 Salzburg, Stifisbibliothek St. Peter, A. VII. 39. chancellery clerk in Buda. They may be regarded as the first Hungarian academy. This scholarly nexus developed further when Vitéz — after an unsuccessful attempt to go to Italy to study — went to Várad in the middle of the decade. A valuable account of how the company, the contubemium, operated, has survived in the biography of the Polish humanist Gregorius Sanoceus , who lived for a short time in Várad and in close contact with Vitéz. There were oratorical and poetic contests in which the Bishop was sometimes judge and sometimes competitor, and scholarly debates, most often on the subject of virtue. The purpose of the academy's members, according to the biography, was that they should become more scholarly, and better, day by day. The episcopal seat of Várad had been a major cultural centre since the 12th century, and book-learning there had developed through a large number of ecclesiastical scholars. The cathedral library came into being from the legacies of chapter members, and was being run as an ordered, separate collection — indicating its worth — by the second decade of the century. It was under the care of the priest in charge of the St Catherine Chapel. Vitéz, however, set up his own library, and although hardly anything is known about the buildings he erected, it may be supposed that there was a library room in the [.ivy Codex ofjános Vitéz. 1450-1470 München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 15.731.