Some textual criticism questions regarding the text of King Matthias’ foreign affairs letters

Abstract

This study reports on the textual criticism dilemmas that I encountered while translating and editing the Latin items of the volume titled Foreign Letters of King Matthias 1458–1479 (published in 2023). The main text of the 130-year-old edition on which the translation was based turned out to be inaccurate in many places, so it became necessary to compare it with the manuscript copies that still exist today. The use of the text variants found in this way in the main text entailed many questions and difficult decisions: how can the original goal, the most complete translation, be reconciled with philological accuracy and exactingness? The study presents these dilemmas and their results with concrete examples.