Pál Fodor: How the Ottoman rule began in Buda... (Summary)
96Pál Fodor: How the Ottoman rule began in Buda...
(Summary)
(Summary)
A document preserved in the mühimme defteri of 1552 is presented here. The order issued by the Imperial Council concerns the corrupt practices of the first warden (dizdar) in the Buda Castle during the mid-l540s. The abuses of the dizdar ranged from unlawful confiscation of bequests and bribing the first surveyor of the Buda vilayet, the famous Halil Bey, to the exploiting of the state treasury for his own purposes. Among the charges brought against him mention is made of his neglecting the affair of a certain monastic library consisting of 800 books. This piece of information compared with that of L. Marsigli from 1686 helps to solve the problem concerning the fate of the famous library of King Matthias Corvinus. It entirely supports the view of Cs. Csapodi who thought that the books preserved in Ottoman Buda originally did not belong to the so-called Corvinas, but to an ecclesiastical library in the Buda Castle. On the basis of the sultanic order it can be stated that this library was identical to that of the Franciscans and it was seized by the Ottomans in the early 1540s. The library survived the Ottoman times, but due to the careless storing and the events during the siege of Buda in 1686 it suffered great damages. L. Marsigli, who came upon it after the recapture of the castle, found only 300 books worth transporting to Vienna.
