Thurzó family
 |
|
| Country | |
|---|---|
| Titles |
|
| Founder | György (I) |
| Final sovereign | Imre (Árva branch) Mihály (Szepes branch) |
| Founding | 1430s |
| Dissolution | 1621 (Árva branch) 1636 (Szepes branch) |
| Cadet branches | Árva branch Szepes branch |
Thurzó or Turzo (German; Hungarian: Thurzó; Slovak: Turzo; Polish: Turzonowie) was a Hungarian noble family from the 15th century to the first half of the 17th century. The ancestors of the Thurzó family came to the Kingdom of Hungary from Lower Austria.[1] Their original possessions were located around the village of Betlenfalva in the Szepes county (today Betlanovce, Spiš region). From the end of the 15th century, they were mostly businessmen and entrepreneurs in Kraków, Levoča, Szepes, Gemer, central Upper Hungary, Transylvania, Bohemia and Germany. In 1495, they established the Thurzo-Fugger company, which is sometimes regarded as the first capitalist company in Europe.[2] They soon acquired a monopoly on the trade of copper and opened new places all over Europe. Around the year 1500 they dominated the production of precious and non-ferrous metals in Hungary.
From their earnings they bought lands in the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary (today Slovakia), and owned several castles and their surroundings, for example Červený Kameň, Lietava, Tematín, Zvolen, Hlohovec, Orava and so on, as well as land in the other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary and Germany.
In the whole of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, they were one of the most prominent families of Royal Hungary, and slowly began to control the key top posts in the kingdom. They became perpetual ispáns (hereditary heads) of the Szepes (Spiš) and Árva (today Orava) counties (in today Slovakia).
The Thurzó family died out in the first half of the 17th century, with the Orava-Bytča branch in 1621 and the Szepes branches in 1635 and 1636.
References [edit]
- ^ Jacqueline Glomski, Patronage and humanist literature in the age of the Jagiellons: court and career in the writings of Rudolf Agricola Junior, Valentin Eck, and Leonard Cox, University of Toronto Press, 2007, p. 261 [1]
- ^ Kayo Hirakawa, The Pictorialization of Dürer's Drawings in Northern Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, pg. 48, Peter Lang Publishing (2009), ISBN 3-03911-725-4
External links [edit]
- Marek, Miroslav. "Thurzo family tree (uses Hungarian names only)". Genealogy.EU.
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