Zrinski

From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project

The Zrinski family, known also as Zrínyi in Hungarian, was a Croatian noble family, influential in the Hungarian Kingdom during the period in history marked by the Ottoman wars in Europe.

The Zrinskis, "those of Zrin", is a branch of the Šubić family, which arose when king Louis I the Great needed some of the Šubićs' fortresses for his coming wars against Venice, and the city of Zadar in particular. Louis I took their estates around Bribir in the Hrvatsko Primorje hinterlands (they used to be known as "princes of Bribir") and gave them the Zrin estate in the Croatian region of Banovina, near the modern city of Petrinja.

Princess Jelena Šubić married Vladislav Kotromanić. Their first born child Tvrtko I became the Ban of Bosnia and since 1377 the King of Bosnia. Their niece and adopted daughter Elizabeta Kotromanić, Elisabeth of Bosnia, married Louis I the Great. Elizabeth's and Louis' daughters succeeded their father and became queens in their own right, Mary of Hungary and Jadwiga of Poland, respectively.

The Zrinskis were Croats and played a crucial role in the history of the Croatian state, both before their arrival to Zrin and after. On the other hand, they also had the national identity called hungarus or natio hungarica, which means "somebody from the Kingdom of Hungary", regardless of the language they speak. They were one of many noble families in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Because they lived, worked and intermarried with nobility from all parts of the multiethnic kingdom, it was natural and expected to be fluent in four or five languages. It is sure, that Nicholas Zrinski spoke at least Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Turkish and of course Latin. It is also interesting that he is the most prominent Hungarian poet in the 17th century, while his brother Peter is known for his poems in Croatian language.

The family gave four bans of Croatia (viceroy s):

Nicholas Šubić Zrinski (Nikola Šubić Zrinski in Croatian, Szigeti Zrínyi Miklós in Hungarian) (1508-1566, ban: 1542-1556)
George Zrinski (Juraj Zrinski in Croatian, Zrínyi György in Hungarian) (ban: 1622-1626)
Nicholas Zrinski (Nikola Zrinski in Croatian, Zrínyi Miklós in Hungarian) (1620-1664, ban: 1647-1664)
Peter Zrinski (Petar Zrinski in Croatian, Zrínyi Péter in Hungarian) (1621–30 March 1671, ban: 1665-1670)

Joannes Torquatus de Corbavia who was the ban between 1521 and 1524 had also married one Helen Zrinski. Another Helen Zrinski was the wife of Francis I Rákóczi (whom she married in 1666) and of Imre Thököly (whom she married in 1682).

During Stanley's expedition in Africa in 1882, his explorer and confidant Croat from Požega Dragutin Lerman in Congo discovered the waterfalls which he named "Zrinski chutes."

Already at the end of the twelfth century the Šubić family whose native place was Bribir inherited the title of princes and later on their power steadily increased, so that they possessed the territory between the rivers Krka and Zrmanja and the sea by the 13th century. At the outset of the 14th century, Pavao Šubić governed Bosnia as far as the Drina. Later on the town of Zrin by which they gained the epithet Zrinski fell into their hands. In the 16th century, Ban Nikola Zrinski gained dominion over Medjimurje with its capital at Čakovec.

It is less known that successors of Zrinski family are by occasion still alive in Greece under the family name Sdrinias. The common knowledge is that noble families Zrinski and Frankopans were perished by death sentence in Wiener Neustadt on April 30th 1671 because of their role in the so called Zrinski-Frankopan Plot (in Hungarian historiography called Wesselényi Plot) against the Emperor.