„Ut tantus thesaurus ex tenebris in lucem hominum prodeat”
„Ut tantus thesaurus ex tenebris in lucem hominum prodeat”

István Szamosközy and the Rerum Ungaricarum libri

Summary/Abstract: By the end of 1593 or early 1594 István Szamosközy (1565-1612) returned from Padua to Transylvania and soon became the court historian of Prince Sigismund Báthory. One of his first tasks in this position was the editing of the manuscript work Rerum Ungaricarum libri XX by Gian Michele Bruto (1517-1592). For this purpose, in late 1594 or early 1595, he wrote a long memorandum to the Prince, in which he described in detail the corrections that Brutus’s manuscript needed before publication. The complete manuscript of the Rerum Ungaricarum libri, until recently known only in fragments, has been discovered in 2020. Through an analysis of Szamosközy’s notes identified on the Brutus-manuscripts and of his memorandum to the Prince, this paper shows what work Szamosközy actually did and what historical concept he tried to realize between 1594 and 1598.

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