By the end of the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire power had been expelled out of Hungary. At the same time, the death of the King of Spain, forecast the end of the “Western” Habsburg Empire. Emerging economic nations England and the Netherlands wanted to create a new balance of power in which the Principality of Transylvania was also concerned. The Spanish War of Succession ended with the peace of Utrecht, which created a modern style of diplomacy. Ferenc Rákóczi II realized the chance of Hungary’s independence in a rearranging Europe, thus he started his war of independence. One of the spectacular social rise families of the era was the Vay family. Adam Vay wanted to be out of the war of independence. However, when the imperial troops burned down Gács Castle, he joined Rákóczi. Rising to the rank of general, Vay went to exile with his family in Poland after the peace of Szatmár (present-day Satu Mare, Romania). In exile, not only deprivation but also disease threatened them. Typical for the manorial courts of the era, scholar and lay healers worked together. His well-read wife, Anna Zay, began writing herbarium following this tradition. She tried most of the recipes he collected among the personnel of her house. Her work was circulated as a manuscript copy, which preserved the 16th – 17th-century Hungarian medical language. For the people of this era, above the battlefield injuries, the most feared disease was the plague. For Zay, prayer strengthened her endurance, helped her bearing much suffering and sorrow and provided hope to be freed from her exile. God speaks to man through the word, but prayers speak to God.
The 1563 Ruthenian Translation of the Czech Lucidář in a Manuscript Copy of the First Half of the 17th Century: Publication
