In the Footsteps of the Missing Thuróczy

A decade and a half after the Buda Chronicle of András Hess, another work written by royal judge János Thuróczy was published in print. It is no exaggeration to say that the first (and later the subsequent) edition, launched in the early spring of 1488, had defined the image of Hungary as perceived by Europe for a long time. This was shaped not only by the woodcut images of the Brno and Augsburg editions, but also by the popularity of the work on the history of the Hungarians and definitely by its widespread dissemination.

This assumption was confirmed by the provenance research of the editio princeps, more precisely by the attempt to reconstruct the historical path of the individual copies, mainly with Hungarian owners. The reader receives the first summary of the research and exciting investigation with the author’s undisguised desire that all of this could once be expanded with the provenance analysis of more than a hundred copies of the Augsburg edition.

The stories of each copy teach us how the formation and development of collections (often their destruction, truncation) may depend on chance, and how important a role we can play in preserving what has remained until the end of time.

The summary was made using the Foreword by the author.