Egy felesleges Erdély-történet?
A Redundant History of Transylvania?

The Significance of Farkas Bethlen’s History

Summary/Abstract: The study examines the purpose for which Farkas Bethlen wrote his huge, 3000-pages compilation on the history of Transylvania at the end of the 17th century. Although his achievement is comparable to that of Antonio Bonfini’s, it may be asked whether following the publication of Miklós Istvánffy’s Historiae de rebus Ungaricis there was a need for another work on the period between 1526 and 1609. The study argues that although Bethlen knew and used Istvánffy’s work, he implemented a different concept. Bethlen’s aim was to write a comprehensive history of Transylvania, as the title itself reflects, and for that he begins his discussion of the events in 1526, when the battle of Mohács and the fall of the Kingdom of Hungary has led to the birth of the independent Principality of Transylvania. Another element of his concept is that the compilation should be based on the works of authors with Transylvanian connections, such as Brutus, Ambrus Somogyi, István Szamosközy or János Baranyai Decsi. His aim was to compile a specific Transylvanian narrative from works that almost exclusively remained in manuscript until Bethlen’s time. Another claim of the study is that Farkas Bethlen did not write his work against his cousin’s, János Bethlen’s own work, since the two works complement each other. This is exemplified also by a colligate preserved in the Széchényi National Library from Budapest, where the two works were bound together, thus, with the necessary additions, created a historia continuata for the period between 1526 and 1690. In our opinion this means that the complementary nature of the two works was obvious for the contemporaries as well.

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