Bálint Balassi

Balassi was born at Zólyom in the Captaincy of Cisdanubia and Mining Towns in the Kingdom of Hungary (today Zvolen, Slovakia).

His first work was a translation of Michael Bock's Wurtzgärtlein für krancke Seelen (Little Herb Garden for Sad Souls), (published in Kraków), to comfort his father while in Polish exile.

On his father's rehabilitation, Bálint accompanied him to court, and was also present at the coronation diet in Pressburg (today's Bratislava), capital of Royal Hungary in 1572.

[5] In 1574 Bálint was sent to the camp of Gáspár Bekes to assist him against Stephen Báthory; but his troops were encountered and scattered on the way there, and he himself was wounded and taken prisoner.

His wife's greedy relatives nearly ruined him by legal processes, and when in 1586 he turned Catholic to escape their persecutions they slandered him, saying that he and his son had embraced Islam.

They are all most original, exceedingly objective and so excellent in point of style that it is difficult even to imagine him a contemporary of Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos and Péter Ilosvay.