The first surviving ‘schoolbook’ of Hungarian music education: The Szalkai Codex

One of the most outstanding cultural events of the year 2019 is the facsimile edition of the Hungarian Szalkai Codex, thanks for which are due to cooperation between the Library of the Primate of Esztergom and the Collection of the Roman Catholic Church at Sárospatak. This outstanding cultural asset, written at Sárospatak (called Patak at that time) and guarded at Esztergom, serves as a curiosity not only for researchers interested in palaeography but also for specialists working in different fields of the history of education. This codex is not only the oldest, but at the same time the only surviving Hungarian schoolbook from the Middle Ages. With its help we may reconstruct some of the ways in which town (parish) schools operated under the reign of King Matthias. The present study focuses on medieval music education