Petancius: Genealogia

The author of Dalmatian origin whom researchers, based upon 16th century sources, used to refer wrongly as illuminator, accomplished diplomatic missions in the Turkish Sultan’s court on behalf of Vladislaus II. He is present in the tradition of history-writing with several Turkish-related texts that would be published in print from the beginning of the 16th century in a row. The reason was the Ottoman expansion that made the topic timely. Petancius’s work on Turkish emperors, military leaders, high ranking officials and the administration and legislation of the empire is a peculiar manuscript of the Corvina Library: it has the format of a scroll and there are two copies preserved. We now have much more details at hand on both copies of Petancius’s work than in the past decades.
The copy that is kept today in collections of Madrid, is the more precise one in terms of text and philology. Some features of the writing point at an Italian scribe who nevertheless must have been working in Buda. Also the decoration was made in Buda, with style elements typical of the Cassianus group. The scroll in the collections of Budapest was made nearly at the same time as the one in Madrid from which it was copied in Buda. The scribe also in this case was of Italian nationality or education, yet not identical with the other: while the Madrid text is of a style close to handwriting, the text of the Budapest scroll resembles the writing of books. (An obvious sign of the relation between them is that the places with errors of copying and misunderstandings in the Budapest copy exactly coincide with the places of the Madrid scroll where the text, although correct, is hard to read.) The decoration is visibly different from that of the Madrid copy. (Ferenc Földesi. The entry written for the guide to the exhibition was made on the basis of Géza Dávid’s’, Bálint Lakatos’ and Árpád Mikó’s descriptions below: The CORVINA LIBRARY and the Buda Workshop. Exhibition Catalog. (Publication in progress.) Budapest: NSZL, 2019, Cat. E10)

Source: The Corvina Library and the Buda Worskhop: [National Széchényi Library, November 6, 2018 –February 9, 2019] A Guide to the Exhibition; introduction and summary tables: Edina Zsupán; object descriptions: Edina Zsupán, Ferenc Földesi; English translation: Ágnes Latorre, Budapest: NSZL, 2018, p. 120