The Royal Librarian's Notes
Gábor Bolonyai The Royal Librarian’s Notes The first printed Greek-Latin dictionary was edited by Johannes Crastonus in 1478 in Milan. Its second edition was released 5 years later on 10 November 1483 in Vicenza. One copy of it was bought by a certain Paulus Romuleus,1 who sent it as a present to his friend, Taddeo Ugoleto serving at that time as a royal librarian in the distant Buda. Apart from enlarging the library’s collection, Ugoleto was also for a while in charge of educating János Corvin, Matthias’s illegitimate son. In the king’s ambitious view, a proper education for a royal scion and heir (although, for the time being, János was only a secret heir) comprised knowledge of both Latin and Greek languages. Thus, a new printed dictionary must have been doubly welcome for Ugoleto: both for his own research work (perhaps he had already cherished plans of editing printed texts, which were fulfilled later on)2 and his teaching obligations. It is no wonder, therefore, that as soon as the Crastonus dictionary had arrived, Ugoleto immediately got down to work on it. He read through the whole book item by item, and added notes propria manu on the margins, by inserting missing entries, alternative meanings, and other grammatical information. The original printed dictionary contained about 15 thousand entries (on 520 pages), to which Ugoleto supplied more than one thousand new items. We do not know exactly how much time this meticuously done work took, but certainly not more than six months, because, as his note at the end of the book indicates, by the 20th of June next year he had already finished it: „Relectum xxo.
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