Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 109-112. (Budapest, 1985)
IN MEMORIAM JOHANNES SAMBUCUS - Zsámboky János (Johannes Sambucus) (magyar, angol, német nyelven)
(Clusius), the famous botanist, Jean Dorât (Auratus), the ,,poéta regius" and the bibliophile Jean Grober. His second long stay in Italy took place between the autumn of 1561 and the late summer of 1563: Genua, Milano, Napoli, Brindisi, Otranto, Salerno were the towns he bought a manuscript in each for his library. He went on with his purchase on the way back in Capua, Florence, Viterbo, Rome, Siena, Pistoia and Bologna. He arrives home for the coronation of Maximilian I in the company of György Purkircher of Pozsony (Pressburg, today Bratislava in Czechoslovakia), right before 8 September 1563. In the same month he left for the north, now for the last time, he lived in Gent at the house of the philologist Theodor Poelmann (Pulmanus). Through Poelmann he got acquainted with the printer of Antwerp, Christophle Plantin who after 1564 became his most frequent and most preferred publisher. Among others the ,,Emblemata" appeared there in 1564 with such a success that it came out again in 1566 in the Flemish translation of Marcus Antonius van Diestl and in 1567 in the French translation of Jacques Grévin. The collection of medial portraits discussed in this volume, the ,,Icones" published ten years later, in 1574, is the most beantiful product of the Plantin printing house. The monography on the history of the printing house is ornamented with the Renaissance frames of the portraits. János Zsámboky finally settled down in Vienna in September 1564, and after the death of the good friend Wolfgang Lazius on 19 June 1565 he gained the title of court historiographer. In August 1567 he married the daughter Krisztina of Kálmán Egerer, and ironmonger of Pozsony, two daughters and a son were born of this marriage. After settling in Vienna he kept on enlarging his library which owed its fame to the Greek and Latin manuscripts. The collection of ancient coins and antiquities as well as a family dispute at law, however, shattered his financial position and he was forced to offer for sale his precious manuscripts. The sales contract dated from 17 October 1578 witnessed that about 530 manuscripts went over to the possession of the imperial library of Vienna. Unfortunately the whole purchase price was never payed. On 13 June 1584, at 53, Zsámboky died of apoplexy. For the 450th anniversary of the birth of the excellent Hungarian humanist physician and historiographer, Üie facsimile of the 1564 first edition of the famous „Emblemata" was published, by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. For the 500th anniversary of his death the facsimile of another Plantin edition, the medical portraits of the „veterum aliquot ac recentium Medicorum Philosophorumque Icones" was published by the Hungarian Society for the History of Medicine and the State Book-Distributing Agency. In the accompanying essays Mária Vida discusses the publishing and medical history of the work while Zoltán Kádár and Gabriella Jantsits provide the art historical evaluation of the portraits. The essays were published as an inset to the facsimile edition in Hungarian, English and German languages.
