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arly attempts, such as those of Mátyás Bél" or Martin Schmeizel,"? but also by the book-collecting high priests and nobles, who aimed to create a separate Hungaricum section in their collections.“*’ The nobles also linked this to the establishment of shared libraries in the Hungarian Kingdom and Transylvania, and to the creation of a scholarly society.*** We do not know what the main motivation of Xystus Schier (1727-1772) was when he decided to write the history of the Bibliotheca Corvina, which will be described in detail below. Was he following an intellectual trend in library studies developing in his own time, leading from Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), through Gabriel Naudé (1600-1653), Joachim Johann Mader (1626-1680) and Johann Andreas Schmidt (1652-1726), to him, and then truly emerging as a discipline through the pen of Michael Denis (1729-1800)? Was he simply interested in the past of a kingdom where he spent his youth? Or it is possible that, as Michael Denis suspected, he saw the research as a part of the unity of the Empire, a subject that would contribute to building a common culture. “1 He published, for example, Miklös Oläh’s work Hungaria (including a description of the Corvina — B£r, Adparatus, 1735, 8-9), and dealt with the history of Székely (Szekler) writing (BEL, De vetere, 1718). At his request Franz Ernest Briickmann compiled a list of Hungarian-related materials of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolffenbuettel for him in 1741: SZELESTEI NAGY-GRÜLL, kiad., Bé/ Mátyás levelezese, 1993, 481-487. 42 VERÖK 2009. 443 Monok 2018a, 123-129. 44 Cr. SZELESTEI NacY 1989., LengyEL R.-Tüsk£s G., eds., Learned Societies..., 2017. 97
