Tamas I Nadasdy

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Count Tamas Nádasdy (I), called the Great Palatine (1498–1562), Hungarian statesman, was the son of Francis I Nádasdy and was educated at Graz, Bologna and Rome.

In 1521 he accompanied Thomas Cardinal Cajetan (whom the pope had sent to Hungary to preach a crusade against the Turks) to Buda as his interpreter. In 1525 he became a member of the council of state and was sent by King Louis II to the diet of Speyer to ask for help in the imminent Turkish war. During his absence the Mohács catastrophe took place, and Nádasdy only returned to Hungary in time to escort the queen-widow from Komárom to Pressburg. He was sent to offer the Hungarian crown to the archduke Ferdinand, and on his coronation (3 November 1527) was made commandant of Buda. On the capture of Buda by Suleiman the Magnificent, Nádasdy went over to John Zapolya. In 1530 he successfully defended Buda against the imperial troops. In 1533 his jealousy of the dominant influence of Lodovico Gritti caused him to desert John for Ferdinand, to whom he afterwards remained faithful. In 1535 he married Orsolya Kanizsai, the last member and heiress of the powerful and wealthy Kanizsai family. He was endowed with enormous estates by the emperor, and from 1537 onwards became Ferdinand's secret but most influential counsellor. Subsequently, as ban of Croatia-Slavonia, he valiantly defended that border province against the Turks.

He did his utmost to promote education, and the school which he founded at Uj-Sziget, where he also set up a printing press, received a warm eulogy from Philip Melanchthon. In 1540 Nádasdy was appointed iudex curie regie; in 1547 he presided over the Diet of Nagyszombat, and finally, in 1559, was elected palatine by the diet of Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia). In his declining years he aided the heroic Miklós Zrinyi against the Turks.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.