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an Italian military engineer in the imperial service, who was instructed by Elek
Bethlen. The other traditional avenue in the formation of the national cultural
consciousness is based on less information but is more definitive. Especially, it
emphasises the school library founded by Johann Honter (1498-1549), which was
founded from the library of the medieval convents of Brass6 (Kronstadt, Brasov)*"”,
as the equal counterpart of the Bibliotheca Corvina in the history of libraries, which
also included some corvinas. Jaké used the church history manuscript written in
1739 by Johann Filstich, the rector of Brassé, who was apparently familiar with
the dissertation on the major library fires by Thomas Bartolini (1616-1680), pub¬
lished in 1709 by Andreas Westphal (1685-1747) in Jena.*"’ Westphal, not the
author, writes the following in the introduction:
(fol. Tiv-12r] ,Nonnullarum quoque Bibliothecarum, ab igne consumtarum, mentionem
injicit Julius Pflugk in Epistola, ad magni nominis virum Seckendorffium directa de
Bibliotheca Budensi, ex qua sequentia transfere liceat.”
[fol. 14r-v] ‚Ita ille. annus ejusdem seculi 89. valde fatalis fuit Bibliothecae Cronstadtiens,
dum eam flammae vehementia omnino destruxit et abstulit. Cujus casus eo durior
atque acerbior fuit, quo magis instructa atque ornata eadem exsistit, quippe cum
ea ex Bibliotheca Budensi egregio manuscriptorum thesauro locupletata maximam
partem libris majoris ordinis superbiret."
Referring to Bartholin’s text, Johann Georg Schelhorn (1694-1773), a Lutheran
pastor and historian from Jena, repeats this statement," later I will discuss his
work on the history of the Corvina in more detail. We published the Brassó li¬
brarys collected catalogues prior to 1800, compiling the earlier editions one by
one with the originals, and supplementing them in the series Adattar published by
the Szeged University." Zsigmond Jakó, also referring to these records, indicated
that even before the 1689 fire there are no volumes in them that would refer to
corvinas, especially in large naumbers. Despite this, the two strands of the Corvina
tradition lived on together in Saxon historical writing, even after the 1848 Revo¬
lution and War of Independence in Transylvania. The literary history summary
(Friedrich Schuler von Libloy) of the view of Saxony as an independent territorial,
economic, and cultural entity states the same"
„Der Kronstädter Stedtrichter Benkner vermehrte die dortige Bibliothek namentlich
durch sehr werthvolle Bücher und Handschriften, welche er nach dem Falle von Kon¬
stantinopel aus den verwüsteten und preisgegebenen Griechischen Bibliotheken an¬
kaufen liess; eben so vermehrte sich die Bibliothek durch Werke, welche in dem 1553
von Türken eroberten Ofen verschleppt und verhandelt worden waren. So konnte in
der That Thomas Bartholinus in seiner „dissertatio de bibliothecae incendio” (Jena 1709
XXXII pag 27 ) sagen: „... bibliotheca Cronstadtiensis ... quo magis instructa atque or¬
310. Mono 2018, 411-426.; Mono 2020a, 131-146.
311 BARTHOLIN-WESTPHAL 1709, fol.11v-12r, 14r-v.
312 SCHELHORN 1764, 837.
33 Monok-Orvôs P-Ver6ox, ApaTTArR 16/4, 2004, 526-693; BAnpI-Monox-VEROK, ADATTAR 16/6,
2021, 3-110.
34 SCHULER von Lisloy 1857, 103-104. (Kronstadt, von Johannes Honterus errichtete „Schulliberie”)
69