The Raven King Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library Marcus Tanner

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 the Ottoman Empire after Matthias' death in 1490, yielded its treasures and the exquisite library, witness to a golden cultural age, was dispersed across Europe. The quest to recover this collection of sumptuously illuminated manuscripts 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 charts the odyssey of the Raven King and his magnificent bequest, uncovering the remarkable story of a life and library almost lost to history.

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 has written a fascinating book, which tells not only the life-story of Matthias Corvinus but also the later history of his library... Tanner has a shrewd sense of character and a vivid eye for detail, and he succeeds in bringing to life the politics of Matthias's reign, with all its dynastic in-fighting and geopolitical jockeying for position.' Noel Malcolm, The Telegraph"