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Domonkos Kálmáncsehi, the grand provost of the Basilica of Our Lady and the Royal Coronation Church in Székesfehérvár, the Bishop of Várad and Transylvania was one of the prominent figures in the court of King Matthias.
We know from the Italian humanist historian Antonio Bonfini that the king entrusted financial and diplomatic duties to him, who possessed excellent oratorical skills and an engaging personality. In the eyes of posterity, however, the prelate became famous because of his bibliophilia. Four exceptionally beautiful codices have survived from his library, the main value of which is that they were made entirely in Hungary and were decorated in the new Renaissance style that was newly established in the royal court.
The year before last, a facsimile selection of the conjoined breviary and missal kept in the collection of The Morgan Library&Museum in New York took place, and now you dear Reader can hold in your hands the prayer book made in 1492 and preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.
The publication of the missal and the prayer book coincides with the visits of His Holiness Pope Francis to Hungary in September 2021 and April 2023, so this special timing of their publication is also a tribute to the Holy Father.
The extremely ornate, jewel-box-like codex contains many interesting things. Its composition testifies the specific interweaving of Hungarian and Austrian liturgical traditions. We know his scribe, as he named himself in the manuscript: he is the Minorite monk Stephanus de Cachol. The decoration of the codex gives a special context to all the styles of book painting that were present in the king's Corvina Library and that developed in the royal workshop in Buda in the last years of King Matthias's reign, they also provide a glimpse into the process of how court art was transformed after the death of the great patron Matthias. Therefore, this decorative manuscript is an extremely important source for the researchers of Hungarian Renaissance art.