Néhány gondolat Zermegh János Commentariusáról

Abstract

The Commentarius of János Zermegh embraces the events in Hungary from the battle of Mohács to the death of János Szapolyai. Contrary to former opinions, Pongrác Sörös proved already in 1907 that the text had without doubt been written after 1566, because Zermegh mentions the death of Zrínyi and the fall of Szigetvár, but he did not try to explain why Zermegh had finished his memoirs with the year 1540. This may be explained by the fact that Zermegh had been encouraged to write his work by Simon Forgách, while the historiographer Ferenc Forgách, the brother of Simon Forgách, started his own text with the aforementioned year 1540 and the death of János Szapolyai. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the Commentarius of Zermegh had not been written directly for Ferenc Forgách, who in fact never used this text, but rather for the Italian humanist, Gian Michele Bruto, who exploited the works of both Forgách and Zernegh as a source for his own historical opus.