bavarikon4UDescription
Under the influence of Italian humanism and of his book-collector tutor János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443–1490) developed a passion for books and learning. Elected king of Hungary in 1458 at the age of 14, Matthias won great acclaim for his battles against the Ottoman Turks and his patronage of learning and science. He created the Bibliotheca Corvinian, in its day one of Europe's finest libraries. After his death, and especially after the conquest of Buda by the Turks in 1541, the library was dispersed and much of the collection was destroyed, with the surviving volumes scattered all over Europe. This codex, one of eight manuscripts originally in the Corvinus Library and now preserved in the Bavarian State Library, contains Book I - V of the histories of the Greek historian Polybios (3rd/2nd century B.C.), a part of the history of the empire after Mark Aurelius by the Greek historian Herodianus (around 200 A.D.) and the late antique novel "Aithiopiká" by Heliodor of Emesa. The writer was Isidoros, Metropolitan of Kiev (died 1463), one of the most prominent figures of the late Byzantine Empire. A handwritten note in the codex proves that it was taken away from the city after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453. On unknown ways it then probably came into the possession of Matthias Corvinus. Later it belonged to the Nuremberg physician Joachim Camerarius II (1534 - 1598), who donated the volume to Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in 1577, which brought it into what was then the Munich Court Library, now the Bavarian State Library. The Bibliotheca Corviniana Collection was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2005.