János Rimay’s Anjou-period Hungarian Prayer Book

Abstract

In the 1610s, János Rimay wrote an introduction to his planned edition of Bálint Balassi's poems, in which he mentioned the Hungarian prayer book by Mary of Anjou, the Hungarian queen who reigned at the end of the 14th century, since he compared its language with that of Balassi. During Rimay's official diplomatic mission in 1609, he spent over six months in Buda Castle, which was under Turkish rule at the time, where he met Ali Kadizade Pasha on several occasions. It was perhaps at this time that he had the opportunity, through certain means, to retrieve the Anjou prayer book from the former royal palace. This manuscript was older than the earliest known codices in the "Nyelvemléktár". Balassi did not invent his poetic language entirely anew, and Rimay was curious about its antecedents, making him interested in texts much older than the contemporary ones. By the beginning of the 16th century, the basic words and expressions of love and religious poems had largely been created by the creativity of the translators of the codices. The task of discovering the linguistic antecedents of the Balassi poems, which Rimay described as jewels of the Hungarian language, remains an ongoing challenge today.