Dénesi Tamás (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 3. (Pannonhalma, 2015)
III.Forrásközlések
FORGÁCH (III.) ZSIGMOND LEVELEZÉSE LIPPAY GYÖRGGYEL (1639–1644) 297 András Péter Szabó The Correspondence between Zsigmond Forgách III and György Lippay (1639–1644) Six months ago, in a learned and monumental edition of sources, Péter Tusor published the correspondence of one of the most important Hungarian prelates of the 17th century, György Lippay, Chancellor (1635–1642)and Archbishop of Esztergom (1642–1666) including his letters to the lay aristocrats and noblemen of Hungary. The present paper publishes Lippay’s five letters sent to Zsigmond Forgách III (1616–1645), a young catholic aristocrat of Upper Hungary; these letters are not included in the complete edition, they belong to the so called Vép Archives of the Erdődy family kept in Pannonhalma. To these documents of a dozen were added Zsigmond Forgách’s ten reply letters to the Archbishop from the collection of the Primate’s Archives in Esztergom, and in the appendix, two letters by Imre Lósy, Archbishop of Esztergom (1637–1642), and one letter by István Bosnyák, Bishop of Veszprém and Chancellor (1642–1644) sent to Forgách are also made available. These source-documents form not more than 15–20% of the complete correspondence of Lippay and the young aristocrat who died young, however, they illuminate the close but sometimes suspended relationship between the highly promising Forgách and the prelate who patronised him. The correspondence’s centre of gravity is the troubled year of 1643, when the young aristocrat was considered not only a promising agent but a significant actor of the political life in Upper Hungary. While Lippay’s shorter letters are dominated by the news on the Thirty Years’ War besides the information influencing Forgách’s advancement, Forgách’s sometimes rather long letters of report sum up the events occurring in the mainly protestant Upper Hungary and the news from Transylvania which the aristocrat regarded ever more threatening. Forgách’s last letters were written in 1644, when György Rákóczi I, the Prince of Transylvania as the ally of the Swedes, started attacking the Kingdom of Hungary and Emperor Ferdinand III. The publication of this correspondence comes to an end where Forgách’s correspondence with the Prince of Transylvania starts in the summer of 1644 as is disclosed in my previous publication. These two sets of sources together clarify the portrait an almost forgotten aristocrat of the 17th century, Zsigmond Forgách III.
