WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY MODERN TIME – OUTSTANDING PERSONALITIES OF THE DRUGETH FAMILY

Abstract

The article is devoted to today's actual problem - the analysis of the role of women of noble origin in early modern times in the socio-political and socio-economic relations of the northeastern part of the Hungarian kingdom. Although the study of gender (women's) history has recently gained momentum and become popular, this problem has been little studied in Ukrainian and Hungarian historical science and requires further research. The article presents an analysis of historical documents from the 16th to the first half of the 17th century with a special emphasis on the female characters of the Drugeth family. During the writing of the article, the author encountered various problems, including lack of basic biographical data. The problem is also the fact that the available data are incomplete and contradictory, and the family (genealogical) trees are compiled incorrectly, so the author proposes to introduce a new, refined version of the Drugeth genealogy into scientific circulation. Further archival research enables the author to slowly but surely write a more plausible history of the family. The article summarizes the study new aspects of the family history through the unknown (or yet published) moments of the life path of the Drugeth women (Anna Báthory, Erzsébet Perényi, Margit Zrínyi, Fruzsina Török, Erzsébet Rákóczi, Fruzsina Dóczy) and new give aspects of the family's history, and characteristics of their impact on socio-political, economic and religious changes in the region through the prism of Hungarian legislation. In our opinion, thanks to the research, we made an additional contribution to the study of some unknown fragments of the history of the Drugeth family. The article analyzes the concept of Transcarpathian historians regarding the decisive influence of aristocratic women on the religious practice (religious conversion) of noble families during the Reformation and then the Counter-Reformation. It has been proven that Drugeth women had a significant influence on their environment, including on the formation of socio-political and socio-economic relations. In our opinion, during the writing of the article, an additional contribution was made to the study of unknown fragments of the history of the Drugeth family.