The University of Paris and Its Hungarian Students and Masters during the reign of Louis XII and Francois Ier [antikvár]

PREFACE When I began to write this Preface to the University of Paris and Its Hungarian Students and Masters during the Reign of Louis XII and François 1er, an old French proverb came to mind : "On revient toujours a ses premiers amours:" One always returns to his first love. When young, timid, and in the shadow of my great masters of Budapest and those of Paris : Etienne Gilson, Profundissimus; Charles Samaran, Longaevissimus ver-issimus; Edmond Farai, Elegantissimus; Alexander Eckhardt, Strictissi-mus; Johannes Horváth, Facundissimus; and Zoltán Gombocz, Humanis-simus — I was involved in several publications in the field of Franco-Hungarian intellectual relations. In the dangerous years of World War II, I intended to show that Hungary's life was tied to the great centers of Western Christianity and learning. During the dark days of 1944,1 dated my Les Rapports Dynastiques Franco-Hongrois on July 14, Bastille Day. Now some 40 years later, writing about Hungarians studying in Paris from 1495 to 1525,1 returned to my first love, to the history of Franco-Hungarian intellectual relations. My interest in the life of Hungarian students at the University of Paris was partly enkindled, thanks to the ever-young master of my youth, Charles Maxime Donatien Samaran. For 50 years, from 1932 to 1982, he took me under his protective wing, calling me "ancien éleve devenu ami". In my early student days in the Ville de Lumiere, Charles Samaran, as professor of Paleography, with his students at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, was transcribing the Records of the Proctors of the English-German Nation for the second half of the fifteenth century. This period included the reign of King Matthias of Hungary, 1458-1490, a fertile period of Hungarian intellectual life. Several Hungarian students were mentioned in this Liber procuratorum, a magnificent paleographical album, as Samaran qualified these records, which aroused my curiosity for the Hungarians studying in Paris. Passing before the site of the old Abbey of Sainte-Genevieve on Place Panthéon, I was intrigued by those Hungarian students of the twelfth century who were grouped in this monastic school around the famous theologian Etienne de Tournai. One of them, Bethlen, died in Paris without leaving any debts to anyone, "sive apud Christianum sive apud Judaeum". His parents donated a white horse to the Abbey along with other gifts. After the publication ol Auctarium III by Charles Samaran and Emile Van Moé in 1935,1 wrote a study in 1938 on the Hungarian subjects at the University of Paris, learning and teaching there, from the twelfth to the end ofthe fifteenth century: "La vie a Paris des étudiants hongrois au Moyen Age", Archivum Philologicum 62 (1938), pp. 182-210. At the University of Budapest, I was also fortunate enough to have an outstanding master, Alexander Eckhardt, who was interested in the intellectual history of humanistic Paris. He disserted on Franco-Hungarian cultural relations in the time of Jodocus Clichtoveus, Hieronymus ab Han-gesto, both theologians ofthe Sorbonne, and Bonifacius de Ceva. These scholars all dedicated various publications to John Gosztonyi, the Hungarian bishop of Győr, between the years of 1515 to 1519. Curious about 17