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7"ADPARATVS "
AD; ez
‚HISTORIAM
‚HVNGARIAE.
SIVE
COLLECTIO MISCELLA,
Monumentorum ineditorum partim ,
. partim editorum , fed fugientium.
‘ Conguifinit , in Decades partitus ef},
& Prefationibus ‚.atque Notis illuftrauit ,
MATTHIAS BEL.
Cum Cenfira Ampliff: Senarus Pofinienge
Sumtu Philohiftorum Patriæ.
Poson1r, Typis Joannis Paulli Royer,
e A. MDCCXXXV.
09. Olah, De Hungaria Occidentali (ed. Bel), 1735
‘The history of the Corvina library in the 16th and 17th centuries are divided
into four periods by both Zolnai and Csapodi:
(1) the period of destruction after the occupation of Buda,
(2) an era of annotations mentioning the presence of a large number of printed
books in Buda in the last third of the 16th century, to which we now add the para¬
textus of later 16th and 17th century editions of classical and medieval texts that
refer to manuscripts that were once in Buda;
(3) the “reclaiming” efforts of the 17th century, and
(4) the age of confrontation with the revised book collection after the expulsion
of the Ottomans.
Zolnai and Csapodi did not associate the historical presentation aspects with
the cultic or national consciousness elements linked to the history of the library in
each period, thus, this aspect was not addressed in their work. Also, because Klara
Zolnai and the Csapodi couple wanted to reconstruct the former library’s holdings,
the texts that merely praised Matthias for his work in building the Corvina were
of little interest to them. However, we are interested in how the collection shaped
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