Dissertatio de Regiae Budensis bibliothecae...

The new venture of the series is to publish summarizing Corvina descriptions written before 1850. Discussions on the history of the Buda library in the 19th century do not always refer back to the works of early modern authors. The publication of narrative texts, which today can be interpreted as source literature, is also important because data has been embezzled since their publication, and researchers of today do not deal exactly with these segments. Although, the evaluation of these can bring new results with the help of technological possibilities.

The first choice was Xystus Schier’s dissertatio, which was published in 1766 during such a historical and political period when the Hunyadi era was considered a heyday. Mentioning the history of the Bibliotheca Corvina, the intention to collect the codices, can be considered not only a scientific or bibliophilic intention at this time, instead, taking it into consideration was a political message as well. The interest in the library in Buda was also made topical by the expulsion of the Ottomans from Buda.

Xystus Schier was a German-speaking Augustinian monk, a historian of his order, but he also wrote several books on the history of the Hungarians. He studied meticulously the cultural history of the age of Matthias Corvinus, but there is no precise answer as to why he chose the history of the Bibliotheca Corvina as a research topic.

The discussion, edited by István Monok and supplemented with an afterword by him, is now published in three languages ​​(Hungarian, Latin, English) and illustrated with codex pages, also containing the facsimile pages of the original work. The Hungarian translation was edited by Péter Ekler.