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same time, thanks to the military successes (the Italian wars: 1499—1513) of the French king, Louis XII (1498-1515) a considerable share of the Pavia collection ended up in Paris, significantly expanding the collection of Francis I (1515-1547), who established the French royal library. During the reign of Matthias Hunyadi, the main household of the Este family was in Ferrara. At the time of Ercole d’Este, in 1495, the library included 512 volumes, unusually (for us) mainly Italian codices.*8 Ihe overview of European court libraries contemporary with Matthias must include a separate chapter for the Medici family. Cosimo Medici in 1428 only owned a 63-volume library, which, however, did contain Dante and Boccaccio works in Italian. In 1444 the family library was made public (Biblioteca Medicea Pubblica)** and situated at the Dominican convent of San Marco. The codices of the humanist Niccolé Niccoli, which were placed at his death in 1437 at the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, were also moved here.” Afterwards the Medici family built another library (Biblioteca Medicea Privata), which, by the end of Lorenzo Medici’s life, totalled 1019 volumes. In 1494 these books were also placed at the San Marco convent, so, according to its catalogue from 1499, it had 1232 volumes. Today’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana was formed in the 16th century by combining the family’s new books and the libraries of the San Marco and the Santa Maria de Fiore churches.*° The Bibliotheca Latina and the Bibliotheca Graeca halls in the San Marco convent were formed as they can be seen today by the 1450s. It is difficult to believe that this humanist model-library did not have an inspiring force on the humanists arriving to Buda and guiding the development of Matthias’s library. In truth, the size of the papal library could be comparable to the Bibliotheca Corvina. At the death of Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455),*” who was the founder of a papal library institution, it had 1200 codices (a third was in Greek and the rest was in Latin). The official library was formally established by the bull of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) beginning with ,ad decorem militantis Ecclesiae” (15th June 1475).% In 1480 the catalogue arranged by Bartolomeo Platina had 2527 registered volumes.” Analysing the linguistic composition of the library shows us that besides the predominance of Latin and Greek, very few works written (or printed) in Italian and other national languages can be found. Thematically the largest proportion of works are theological, although the classical authors and contemporary humanists are present in considerable number. 33 BerTONI 1903; the catalogue of the year 1495: 235—-252.; Mitano E. 1997. 34 ULLMANN-STADLER 1972. 355 Garin 2000. 36 Moranpin1 1986; Lenzuni, a cura di, All’ombra del lauro, 1992; FagBri-Tacconi, a cura di, / libri del Duomo di Firenze, 1997. 37 Cantatore 2010. 38 MANFREDI 2010. 39 "Tocci, a cura di, Quinto Centenario della BAV, 1975. The latest monumental library history: MANFREDI, acura di, Storia della BAV, 1, 2010; on this: Di SANTE 2010. 17
