Introduction

Andreas Dudith (1533-1589) was a prominent and intriguingly complex figure of Hungarian and even European late Humanism. He was one of the few people who played an important part not only in the politics but also in the Church organisation of his age and he was a well-known scholar, too. In the end, feeling disillusioned with both the ecclesiastical and the secular offices he had held - his alienation from his former ideals is well illustrated by the facts that he got married twice and felt attracted to antitrinitarianism - he spent the last years of his life in exile, devoting himself entirely to scholarship, reading and books. While he played an active part in politics and held a high office in the Church, the spiritual leaders of Europe thought him worthy of their regard - he met a number of important people at the Council of Trent - and he was in regular correspondence with a great number of contemporary theologians, scholars and leading statesmen.

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The number of volumes held in his library can best be assessed on the basis of the so-called Dudith-number, a kind of shelf-mark written on the upper edge of the pages. This numbering - a separate set of numbers for each size - is indicative of the fact that the books were accessioned and even of how the books were placed on the shelves; it seems to convey that the books were not in an upright position, but were laid horizontally on top of one another, with the number on the upper edge facing outwards. The highest numbers in the series are: 664 for the folio size, 972 for the quarto, 2125 for the octavo. (Octavo is the smallest size in the collection.) We tend to agree with Walde's estimation, based on these numbers, amounting to about four thousand volumes. It should be mentioned, however, that Walde's estimation has referred to the number of volumes and not to the number of titles, which must have been much larger. Our list shows that most of the volumes were miscellaneous collections, made up of a number of titles, bound together either on publication or later. Consequently, Andreas Dudith's book collection must have held about five to six thousand works, as far as our present knowledge goes. Another conclusion, based on the gaps in our index of D-numbers, may be that the collection was scattered so widely and so much of it disappeared, that it is very hard to find among the surviving items volumes that were placed next to each other in the original collection. It is also evident from our list that the titles known to us account for somewhat less than ten per cent of Dudith's original library. That is the reason why we have thought is important to stress, in the half-title of the present volume, that our work is only a partial reconstruction of Dudith's collection, the reader can expect to find here no more than that.

The Dudith library was considered to be an important collection at the time. Not only the number of volumes, but also its contents were thought to be impressive. Even the small fraction that has survived from it substantiates this claim. It was the importance of the collection that induced its owner to contemplate bequeathing his collection to the University of Wittenberg, where he also planned to set up a college - the Collegium Dudithiana - for young fellow countrymen eager to study. His sudden death, however, prevented him from achieving this lofty goal.

From his death to 1609 his collection was kept - under rather adverse circumstances - in Breslau (Wrocław). His widow must have sold it in 1609 or 1610, and it was then that most of the books - though not the entire collection - were acquired by Dietrichstein, for his famous library, housed at Nicolsburg. By the time when Dudith's books were sold, Dietrichstein's library had become an important collection. It had been established by Adam Dietrichstein (1527-1590) - cardinal of Olmutz, a leading figure of the Counter-Reformation - owner of Nicolsburg, and was further developed by Franz Dietrichstein. Besides Dudith's books, the collections previously owned by Jacob Conrad Praetorius von Perlenberg, the Back von Leopoldsdorf family, Giacomo Malipiero and Hieronymus Picinardus - "Scholasticus Olomucensis" - but whose library was housed in Venice also came into the possession of the Dietrichstein family, in due course. Apart from Dudith's books, the Dietrichstein library held some further items of interest, connected with Hungary. These have been listed in the second Appendix to the present book, because - as Hungarica - they may have been part of Dudith's collection, too.