History of Europe

Naldus Manuscript for Hungary?

The Marshal of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Piotr Całbecki, made an appeal to withdraw from the work on the draft act on handing over the valuable manuscript of Naldus to Hungary. The local government member is not alone in his opposition to the actions of the Seym.

Codex "Epistola de laudibus augustae Bibliothecae atque libri quatuor versibus scripti eodem argumento ad serenissimum Mathiam Corvinum Panoniae regem" ("Letter to the Most Serene Matthias Corvinum Panoniae regem, on praise of the distinguished library and the books of four verses written on the same subject") - located in the collections of the Provincial Public Library - the Copernican Library in Toruń, a valuable piece of literature - it is created by Italian masters in the mid-15th century, written in the form of a poem, a kind of catalog of the collection of illuminated manuscripts of the famous Bibliothecae Corvinianae, one of the greatest European Renaissance collections . Connected with Toruń since the 16th century, the book is one of the most valuable preserved Western European illuminated manuscripts from the 15th century.

Money isn't everything

The bill presented by a group of deputies from the Law and Justice Parliamentary Club was submitted to the Sejm on February 2, 2022 and was referred for the 1st reading to the Culture and Media Committee on February 9. It concerns the acquisition by the State Treasury of the property of the Codex by Naldus Naldius.

Local government officials are not alone in their efforts

The draft assumes that as of the effective date of the proposed act, the existing owner of the Code (Provincial Public Library - Książnica Kopernikańska in Toruń) will be expropriated and the ownership right will be acquired by the State Treasury. The current owner of the manuscript is to receive compensation as compensation for the damage caused by the loss of property . We are talking about 25 million zlotys. Then the manuscript, as a gesture of thanks and for strengthening friendly relations, is to be handed over to Hungarians, who had already donated the children's armor of Sigismund II Augustus to the Wawel collection.

- We treat this set not only as historically connected and representing Toruń, but our entire province. […] Now that the matter has taken formal shape, we have to refer to what is happening in the Sejm, and above all in the Ministry of Culture. I cannot imagine that such an initiative, due to political conditions, would be taken individually by one Member. We know that these types of projects are not accidental. Today, the sejmik will certainly adopt an appropriate resolution on this matter, appealing to both the parliamentarians and the scientific community to abandon this intention - says the initiator of the appeal, Piotr Całbecki.

The actions of politicians spark controversy. Some critics note that the donation of such valuable gifts at the end of the Hungarian election campaign is not accidental. Moreover, the possible transfer of the manuscript will be a huge loss for Polish culture. A loss that cannot be compensated by any money.

Many opposing voices

The initiators of the appeal to the Polish authorities are not alone. They are supported by local government officials, people of science and culture. On February 7, 2022, the Seymik of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship published an official statement. We read in them:

"The Seymik of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship expressly opposes the parliamentary draft law on the transfer of the code to Hungary" Epistola de laudibus augustae Bibliothecae atque libri quatuor versibus scripti eodem argumento ad serenissimum Mathiam Corvinum Panoniae regem "aimed at taking away the ownership of the above-mentioned manuscript from the Provincial Public Library - Copernican Library in Toruń and transferring it to the State Treasury."

Parchment codex, a manuscript written in the second half of the XV century

Adam Manikowski, former director of the National Library in Warsaw, recalls a similar situation that took place in France:

- It is the duty of every conscious intellectual who cares about preserving the goods of the national culture in its entirety to oppose this type of practice. When, in the late 1980s, the president of France, Francois Mitterrand, handed over a collection of manuscripts from the French Bibliotheque Nationale to South Korea in exchange for the sale of a license to build a TGV in that country, which was extremely profitable for France, he was almost crucified by the world of culture and had to publicly apologize for this error ”

Dr hab. Bartosz Awianowicz, on the other hand, referred to the arguments that the handed-over manuscript was "not closely related to the history of Poland":

- This is because already in 1594, when the library of the Toruń humanities gymnasium, then raised to the rank of an academic gymnasium1, was already being established, it already had a work by Naldi, as evidenced by the publication this year at the Toruń publishing house of Andreas Cotenius, in the edition of the outstanding Toruń poet Hulderk Schober, who added his own elegy Ad lector to the edition. De Bibiliotheca Matthiae Regis Ungariae (To the Reader. About the library of Matthias, King of Hungary).

Toruńska Książnica Kopernikańska has launched a website kodekskorwina.pl, where you can support a declaration with an appeal to the Sejm to abandon work on the parliamentary draft law on handing over a valuable manuscript owned by the library to Hungary.

Click and sign the declaration