The Correspondence of John of Capestrano

In 1451, John of Capestrano set out on a long journey crisscrossing Central Europe and leading, in its final stage, to the Kingdom of Hungary. After having spent almost a year and a half there from May 1455 onwards, he met his death in Ilok (Újlak) on the southern border of the kingdom, on 23 October 1456, three months after the victory against the Ottomans in Belgrade. The more than 150 letters written or received by him during this last phase of his life constitute a precious part of his extant epistolary that shed light on his relations with the popes and the Roman curia, the internal conflicts of the Franciscan Observance, the political and religious conditions of Hungary, and the preparations of the anti-Ottoman Crusade.
A group of Hungarian and Romanian scholars has undertaken publishing these letters in their original language ( Latin or, sometimes, Italian), supplementing them with those of further exchanges between the friar and ecclesiastical or secular officeholders, as well as major landowners of the Kingdom of Hungary before May 1455. Following the publication of his correspondence regarding Polish and Silesian matters, this volume is the second one in the series Corpus Epistolarum Ioannis de Capistrano. The editors hope to provide a useful resource for researchers interested in the history of fifteenth-century Central Europe.