The letters of the Hungarian nobleman Boldizsár Batthyány (1542-1590) included in this selection provide snippets of everyday life in the southeastern territories of the Habsburg Monarchy. Batthyány was a Protestant landlord, an owner of mines, a friend and patron of the botanist Clusius, a successful military leader, a reader of Paracelsian works and a passionate alchemist. Not cut out for courtly life at Vienna or Prague, Batthyány chose to stay in his residences in Western Hungary and keep track of novelties - rare and exotic plants, fresh publications on topics of interest and new ideas - through correspondence. These letters evoke the dark times of religious persecutions, the Turkish wars, devastating epidemics, inter-dynastic intrigue, while also allowing an up-close-and-personal look at the pastimes which helped people take their minds off the calamities life threw at them. Merchants, potters, goldsmiths, physicians, miners and alchemists who usually remain invisible to grand narratives come to life in these pages and provide a rare treat of intimacy for the reader.
Dóra Bobory holds a PhD in History from the Central European University of Budapest. Her research interests include the history of alchemy, astrology, autobiography writing and collecting in the early modern period. Her biography of Batthyány (The Sword and the Crucible. Count Boldizsár Batthyány and Natural Philosophy in Sixteenth-Century Hungary) was published in 2009.