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ficile impetratu fore video. Quod attinet ad literas a Sua Sanctitate ad ipsum Comitem,
eae difficulter impetrabuntur. Quod si sine illis meae literae ipsi gratae futurae putentur,
libenter eas ad ipsum prime occasione transmittam.”
Ihe next letter was also written by Vitelleschi to Caspar Gratiani, the Sultan’s
envoy to Vienna on 19 June 1618. In it he informs the envoy that he has tried to
intervene with the Pope, but the Pope is reluctant to get involved. He knows of the
Grand Duke’s fondness for antiques, and it would be uncomfortable for both of
them if he refused the Holy Father’s request. On the other hand, on 29 September
1618, he reported to the envoy that the Pope had changed his position and was
trying to advance the case of the Turkish books.
The altempts of the Transylvanian princes
All the authors dealing with the cultural history of the Transylvanian court of
Gabor Bethlen cite sources that specify that the walls of Bethlen’s reception hall
were decorated with tapestries showing the life events of Alexander the Great and
Matthias Hunyadi; thus the cult of Matthias was prominent in his cultural poli¬
tics and representation of power. In the Hungarian literature it is known that Ga¬
bor Bethlen (1613-1629) and Gyorgy Rakéczi I (1630-1648) also tried to obtain
the book collection from Buda, with no success." However, among the books
of Mihäly Apafı I (1661-1690), a corvina manuscript was discovered, containing
poems by Tibullus, Catullus, and Propertius. It is now in the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek. In 1663, Apafı himself visited Buda to see the former loca¬
tion of the famous library. Some believe that this was when the Pasha of Buda
presented the texts of the Latin poets to his military ally. Zsigmond Jakó tends to
think that the volume was taken to Transylvania when the Buda court moved to
Gyulafehérvár."
Zsigmond Jakó, in his classic study "Transylvania and the Corvina" (Erdély és a
Corvina) distinguishes two different approaches in the Transylvanian Saxon
historiographical tradition. One of them firmly states that the royal court, which
moved from Buda to Transylvania, took a number of codices with them and placed
several in the library of the school founded by Johann Honter (Christian Schesaeus
(1535?-1585), Daniel Reipchius (f1612)), a statement that also appears by the
Hungarian Elek Bethlen and by Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (Marsili, 1658-1730),
305 BaLÂzs M.-Fricsy-LukÂcs-Monok, ADATTAR 26, 1990, 322-323.
306 BatAzs M.—Fricsy—LuxAcs—Monok, ApaTTAR 26, 1990, 330.
507 For a summary of the data published in several places, see: HarsAnyt 1917, 6., Csapopı 1961.; Csa¬
PoDi 1971.; JAK6 1976b.
308 Jak6 1976b, 169-170.
309 Jako 1966. Enlarged: Jak6 1976b.
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