THE RAVEN KING’S LIBRARY
BY MARCUS TANNER
中文书名(仅供参考):乌鸦王～消失的图书馆
(Click on cover for book detail)
ABOUT THE BOOK
奇幻故事裡，被稱作烏鴉王的Matthias Corvinas，其實是真有其人。15世紀的匈牙利，他力抗奧斯曼帝國(今為土耳其)的入侵，最後在關鍵性的戰役中贏得勝利，就此統一兩國。之後他和義大利公主聯姻並締造義大利文藝復興，因而獲得眾人的景仰與愛戴。
烏鴉王最偉大的成就是建造一座圖書館，裡頭收藏超過五千件古典的文學和哲學作品，且建築完工後透過當時最傑出的美術家彩繪壁畫，而他的藏書最特別的是:每本書的版權標籤都如同烏鴉般的漆黑光亮，也因為他使得當時匈牙利的文化享譽歐洲。不幸的是在他死後，土耳其終究入侵得逞，所有的書庫被掠奪、焚毀，煙硝四散。
為了挽救藏書手稿，激起每個世代的貴族、教徒、收藏家、學者爭先恐後的尋找這些失落的寶藏。現在，這座象徵匈牙利的圖書館，該國人民也把復興責任當作使命般重視。本書作者追尋烏鴉王高貴的情操和遺物，解開一段著名的歷史故事與消失的圖書館。
Seizing the Hungarian throne at the age of fifteen, Matthias Corvinus, ’the Raven King’, was an effervescent presence on the fifteenth-century stage. A successful warrior and munificent art patron, he sought to leave as symbols of his strategic and humanist ambitions a strong, unified country, splendid palaces, and the most magnificent library in Christendom. But Hungary, invaded by Turkey after Matthias’ death in 1490, yielded its treasures and the exquisite library of two thousand volumes, witness to a golden cultural age, was dispersed first across Europe and then the world.The quest to recover this collection of sumptuously illuminated scripts provoked and tantalised generations of princes, cardinals, collectors and scholars, and imbued Hungarians with the mythical conviction that the restoration of the lost library would seal their country’s rebirth. In this thrilling and absorbing account, drawing on a wealth of original sources in several languages, Marcus Tanner tracks the destiny of the Raven King and his magnificent bequest, uncovering the remarkable story of a life and library almost lost to history.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcus Tanner was Balkan correspondent of the London Independent from 1988 to 1994, reporting from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. He is now a freelance leader-writer for the newspaper, as well as for other papers. He has written four previous books, three of them published by Yale University Press.
Marcus Tanner 記者兼作家，《巴爾幹調查報導網路》的編輯、英國《獨立新聞》的撰稿者。之前的作品全部由耶魯大學出版，被全世界的大學生作為研究參考用。
RECENT PRESS
Questing lost manuscripts
Jul 17th 2008
>From The Economist print edition
SOMEWHERE deep in the court of the Ottoman sultans lay the hidden library of Hungary’s most famous medieval king, Matthias Corvinus. If only it could be discovered and the books prised out of Turkish hands, then all would be well and Hungarian honour and glory restored. Or so believed many a 19th-century Hungarian academic and nationalist.
“We wanted to scream we had reached our goal,” wrote one, who in 1862 along with two companions had succeeded in gaining access to the court. A pile of books was brought out for them to see, including six manuscripts from the fabled library. In the end the quest was a failure; there was no hidden treasure trove. But some of the books had indeed survived for more than 300 years in Constantinople, others were found elsewhere and Marcus Tanner has written a lively account of the search.
Matthias, known as the “Raven King”, reigned from 1458 to 1490. He was born a commoner, albeit into a wealthy Transylvanian family. By the time he died, he had stemmed the relentless Ottoman advance through Europe and himself ruled over an empire that stretched from the Black Sea to Dalmatia and from Moravia to Bosnia. Within decades all of this was gone and for some 150 years Hungary was under Ottoman domination.
Hungarians came to regard Matthias’s rule as a golden age, the apogee of Hungarian power. Golden age in more senses than one: Matthias assembled one of Europe’s finest libraries, second in size only to the Vatican’s. Given that almost all of the books were copied by hand and richly illuminated, and that most of them came from Florence and had then to be transported to Hungary, this was an amazing, and amazingly expensive, achievement. After all, when Matthias settled on Beatrice, a Neapolitan, to be his bride, it took her three months to get to him along roads infested with highwaymen and Turkish raiders.
Though many of the books commissioned by Matthias were religious, a large proportion were not. Indeed, says Mr Tanner, his taste was decidedly “alpha male”. What he wanted were “war stories, lives of great rulers and books about inventions, geography, medicine, natural wonders and the stars”. When Hungary fell to the Turks and the library was lost, its size in the minds of men grew exponentially. Figures of up to 50,000 books were bandied about. In fact there were probably never more than 2,500.