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the cultic foundations of the future Habsburg Empire. Just as the empire-wide cult of the Virgin Mary" was one such element of it, or the emphasis on honouring St John of Nepomuk, °* the Bibliotheca Corvina would not have been of interest to them merely for the material value of the individual codices. The monarch who can unite the country can even collect the pieces of the great king’s revered library. Even if this fails, writing the history of the great library is still a significant feat. It is no coincidence that from the second half of the 17" century, various cultural groups from the Hungarian Kingdom and Transylvania emphasise their own culture and traditions by comparing themselves to the Corvina. Specific examples from the 17th and 18th centuries only appear in the internal historiography of the Saxons, but in the national culture-building movements of the 19"-21* centuries, numerous groups have already been using items from the former collection of Matthias Hunyadi as an etalon, a standard for achieving high culture. Another look at this story, with repetitions, with a focus on a premis that perhaps justifies why we organise exhibitions of the Corvina’s surviving pieces in Hungary Austria, and elsewhere in Europe. The permanent and changing purposes of Bibliotheca Corvina exhibitions and albums ‘The reputation of the library of King Matthias Hunyadi, King of Hungary, was well known among his contemporaries. In Buda, the slowly developing capital of the Hungarian Kingdom, he achieved the dream of the Italian, Bavarian, Czech, Polish, Croatian, and Hungarian humanists who had travelled to Italy: to collect Greek and Latin antiquity texts in his court, with the aim to complete the collection as much as possible. He had the individual codices copied and decorated in the renowned workshops of the period, but he also arranged for a scriptorium of similar quality to be established in Buda. The establishment of a library, which also served as a representation of the monarchy, was part of a cultural and scientific policy advocated by the Hungarian and (especially) Italian humanists who lived in the king’s orbit. The aim was to set an example for the high priestly and noble courts in the Kingdom, to establish universities, scholarly circles, to found a printing house, and to spread book culture and erudition. Matthias spent the last years of his life (1485-1490) mainly in Vienna, with imperial ambitions, and therefore aimed to establish a similar library there." 548 I mention some from the vast literature: Varca Cs. I. 1994.; EsterHAzy 1690, 1994.; EsrerHAzy 1691, 1995., Tüsk£s G.-Knapp 1995., Tüsk£s G.—Knapp 2002, 106-149. 59 In summary: Kıs T. N. 2022. 550 NEHRING 1989. 118
