Incunabula Fragments Found in Renaissance Book Bindings from Buda

Bindings Related to the Binding of Lányi Codex and the Booksellers of Buda

Abstract

The National Széchényi Library bought Desiderius Erasmus’ famous work, the Institutio principis Christiani printed in Basel in 1516 by Johann Froben at an auction organized by the Borda Antiquarian Bookshop in 1994. Erzsébet Muckenhaupt has demonstrated that this book was bound in leather in the same bookbinding workshop as two early 16th century Hungarian-language manuscripts, codices Lányi and Apor. The Erasmus volume was restored and fragments of prints were discovered in its binding in 2004.
In the first part of the paper, I present the bibliographical data of the host book and of the six print fragments used as binder’s waste. In the second part of the study, I analyse the six works from the point of view of content and form. I try to find out whether the fragments are related somehow, from where the bookbinders acquired them, and whether the fact that the publishing of three of the prints used as binder’s waste was connected to the booksellers of Buda is more than mere accident. In answering these questions, I resort to the content analysis of the volumes which were bound at the same place as the Lányi Codex in order to find out more about the bookbinding workshop where the analysed fragments were used as binder’s waste. All these suggest that the group of volumes related to the Lányi Codex with regard to their binding were bound in a workshop operated by or in close contact with the booksellers of Buda.