The fifty historical portraits in this volume have two kinds of messages to share. On the one hand, they speak about a country-Hungary-to other readers in other countries of Europe and the world at large. On the other hand, they speak about centuries of the past to readers oI today and tomorrow. All the personalities described in this book attained international fame for their creative efforts in culture, art, science and politics in their own limes. The first in the fist, King Stephen, managed to connect his country with the Christian culture of medieval Europe around the year 1000; he was an active contributor to the great expansion of European culture spanning the continent from Scandinavia to the Danube River. In his Exhortations he advised his son to give a warm welcome to knights and clergymen from abroad. Then, a couple of other medieval figures remind the reader that the eastern zone of Central Europe from the Baltic region to the Adriatic, comprising Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, was already catching up with Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, forming close ties with each other and the West. King Louis the Great (1340-1380) also keld the Polish throne and tried to promote the interests of the Anjou in Italy as well, which was made possible by, among other things, the fact that most of the gold of Europe was mined in Hungary at the time. A hundred years fater, under King Matthias (1458-1490), the culture of Renaissance humanism came to full bloom in Hungary. Janus Pannonius, the eminent poet of the time also featured on the following pages, was one of the key figures of that cultural boom.