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own publication,’” could only report on a new manuscript volume in the Aca¬
demic Archives in Zagreb,*” and provided new details on the history of the li¬
brary. With perfectly sound logic, he also suggested that the Hilarius corvina may
have come to the Draskovich family through the Istvanffy family, and thus to its
present location. This momentum is very important for the present book, because
if what we claim about the after-history of the Bibliotheca Corvina is true, then we
have found another element of the conscious cultural policy of Päl Istvänffy or
his son Miklés. The powerful king, the key in the struggle against the Ottomans,
was an ideal model for the Hungarian nobility, as well as for the Transylvanian
princes of the time. At the same time it cannot be said that the strengthening of
the Croatian national consciousness was in any way linked to the pieces of this
renowned collection.
‘The records of Istvan Szamoskézy (1565/1570-1612?), which Csaba Csapodi
could not have been familiar with, are also connected to this collection of docu¬
ments. A more detailed explanation of this source is also important for the re¬
search methodology.
We wrote a short paper on the Transylvanian sources of Istvan Szamoskézy and
the Bibliotheca Corvina when we discovered Szamosk6zy’s previously unknown
work on the philosophy of history.””* In this ars historica, the author compares
the Hungarian historical works of Antonio Bonfini (1434-1503) and Giovanni
Michele Bruto (1517-1592) based on methodology.*” Szamoskézy wrote this
work in order to point out to Prince Zsigmond Bathory (1572-1613) that Bruto’s
manuscript history work must be published in print, otherwise it would be easily
lost, destroyed, and posterity would not learn from it." Thus, this ars historica
from Istvan Szamosk6zy’s pen, which has not been acknowledged in the history of
the Corvina thus far, argues for the publication of Brutus’s historical work, among
other things, as follows:
“Multa inopinata accidere possunt, quae imbecillo librorum generi cladem ab omni
aevo intulerunt, et nunc inferre possunt incendia, vastitates, blaltae, incuria, rapinae,
ac in summa punctum temporum quodlibet, quo vel maximarum rerum momenta
vertuntur. Sic perierunt clarissimi librorum thesauri Philadelphi et Pergamenorum
Regum: sic interiit nobilis illa et memoratissima Matthiae Regis bibliotheca Budae, mul¬
tis millbus voluminum referta, ex culus clade Heliodorus Aethiopicae historiae author,
Stephanus Geographus, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Titus Alexander Cortesius de
272 BERLÁSZ 1974.
25 On the interpretation of the texts of the Zagreb Codex, see BaLAzs M.-Monok 1987.
274 BatAzs M.—Monox 1986.
275 BatAzs M.-Monox-Tar 1992.
26 In regards to the Corvina, it is irrelevant that he obviously made this suggestion to put the historian
Brutus, who changed sides from the Bathory family to the Habsburgs, in an uncomfortable position,
since Brutus wrote his historical work with a pro-Bathory perspective. The work was finally published
in the second half of the 19th century. The manuscript, which was once in Transylvania, was found by
Péter Kasza and Gabor Petnehazi in 2019 in the Jesuit collection of Trento (Kasza—PETNEHAZI 2022).
62