HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE DRUGET’S FAMILY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Abstract

The paper analyzes the Anjou noble family of Druget’s in the Middle Ages as a historiographic issue. Over the past 200 years, the Druget’s family was directly or indirectly a research subject of eight European historiographies: Hungarian, Slovak, Italian, French, Polish, Ukrainian, Serbian and Croatian. It was the case primarily because of its interesting, French - Naples origin, and influence they had as paladins in Hungary in the first half of the fourteenth century. However, the key point for the historiography regarding the history study of this family was the fire of the Naples State Archives in 1943. Since then, historians have focused on the family presence in Central Europe. Only recent findings from the papers of Italian historiography have again started the topic of the Druget’s origin, which was ‘the problem’ since the infancy of the critical historiography dedicated to this family. The founder of the critical historiography on the history of the family was certainly Carolus Wagner. This erudite, historian, genealogist, and a publisher of historical sources, was actually the first researcher who systematically presented a history and genealogy of the Druget’s family which was already dead. Wagner's text on the Druget’s was published posthumously, in 1802, in the third volume of the famous Collectanea Genealogico-historica illustrium Hungariae familiarum interciderunt que jam.