Wesselényi Ferenc nádor szemantikai érdeklődése

Abstract

Ferenc Wesselényi, the Palatine of Hungary (1655-1667) - after whom the famous antiHabsburg conspiracy was named around the Peace of Vasvár in 1664 - was a highly educated, talented person with excellent taste and a good stylistic sense. This is fairly represented in his correspondence, and writings with public, propagandistic aims. His above published letter to the Jesuit pater Ferenc Lippay, the brother of György Lippay, the Archbishop of Esztergom, is another proof of his abilities. Amongst his illnesses and in deep disappointment as a statesman because of being bypassed by the Habsburg Court, he wants the addressee to answer his linguistic problem. He had not heard the Hungarian word "parsit" (pázsit, lawn) before, and that is why he could not understand one sentence written on the occasion of the death of Prince Jägerndorf: "Az jó halál megfojtotta parsitját." (The good death has exterminated his grass.) Johann Georg, Prince of Jägerndorf in Silesia at that time became one of the followers of the Czech King Frederick against Ferdinand II. So after the Battle of White Mountain, where Frederick was beaten in November 1620, Johann Georg also had to leave his homeland and his properties after being deprived of his princedom and sent into exile. He came to Hungary and joined up to Gábor Bethlen's army against Ferdinand II. He even lived in Transylvania for a while, and took part in the war. In August 1623 Bethlen's allies were defeated by Tilly, the commander of the Catholic League at Stadtlohn, in Westphalen. After the battle, Johann Georg turned up in Hungary again, in the circles of Bethlen, and died in the town of Lőcse (Levoca) on 2 March 1624. - The sentence Wesselényi inquired for must have been written in a Hungarian funeral speech, poem or pamphlet about the Prince. If so, the sentence meant: good death came in the right time, and perished his grass in its youth, that is, before he could realise his aim to turn against his enemy, perhaps the Catholics participating on the Habsburg side. Or, being the context unknown, it might refer to his future in the light of the renewed peace-talks between Gábor Bethlen and Fedinand II. The word and metaphor of pázsit (young grass) was a familiar one in Hungarian poetry in the 16th—17th centuries. It might originate from the Biblical text in relationship with death and the green grass fading away because of hot sunshine. The same metaphor was used by the greatest Hungarian prose-writer of the century: Cardinal Péter Pázmány.