page_title: Matthias Corvinus
section_title: Royal library
hierarchical_section_title: Matthias Corvinus / Patronage / Royal library
caption_attribution_description: English: Visegrád around 1480, contemporary woodcut Visegrád Mátyás király korában (1480 körül). Korabeli metszet az Országos Képtárból.
context_page_description: Matthias Corvinus, also called Matthias I, was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490. After conducting several military campaigns, he was elected King of Bohemia in 1469 and adopted the title Duke of Austria in 1487. He was the son of John Hunyadi, Regent of Hungary, who died in 1456. In 1457, Matthias was imprisoned along with his older brother, Ladislaus Hunyadi, on the orders of King Ladislaus the Posthumous. Ladislaus Hunyadi was executed, causing a rebellion that forced King Ladislaus to flee Hungary. After the King died unexpectedly, Matthias's uncle Michael Szilágyi persuaded the Estates to unanimously proclaim Matthias king on 24 January 1458. He began his rule under his uncle's guardianship, but he took effective control of government within two weeks.
  As king, Matthias waged wars against the Czech mercenaries who dominated Upper Hungary and against Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, who claimed Hungary for himself. In this period, the Ottoman Empire conquered Serbia and Bosnia, terminating the zone of buffer states along the southern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary.
context_section_description: Matthias started the systematic collection of books after the arrival of his first librarian, Galeotto Marzio, a friend of Janus Pannonius from Ferrara in around 1465. The exchange of letters between Taddeo Ugoleto, who succeeded Marzio in 1471, and Francesco Bandini contributed to the development of the royal library because the latter regularly informed his friend of new manuscripts. Matthias also employed scriptors, illuminators, and book-binders. Although the exact number of his books is unknown, his Bibliotheca Corviniana was one of Europe's largest collections of books when he died.
  According to Marcus Tanne, the surviving 216 volumes of the King's library "show that Matthias had the literary tastes of a classic 'alpha male' ", who preferred secular books to devotional works. For instance, a Latin translation of Xenophon's biography of Cyrus the Great, Quintus Curtius Rufus's book of Alexander the Great, and a military treatise by the contemporaneous Roberto Valturio survived. Matthias enjoyed reading, as demonstrated by a letter in which he thanked the Italian scholar Pomponio Leto who had sent him Silius Italicus's work of the Second Punic War.
caption: The Renaissance palaces of the summer residence at Visegrád, engraving from the 1480s
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