A Divided Hungary in Europe

University of Groningen Preface Teszelszky, Roger; Almási, Gábor; Brzeziński, Szymon; Horn, Ildikó; Zarnóczki, Áron Published in: A Divided Hungary in Europe IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2014 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Teszelszky, R., Almási, G., Brzeziński, S., Horn, I., & Zarnóczki, Á. (2014). Preface. In K. Teszelszky, G. Almási, S. Brzeziński, I. Horn, & Á. Zarnóczki (Eds.), A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks and Representations, 1541-1699 (Vol. 3, pp. i-xii). [1] Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 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Download date: 25-11-2021 A Divided Hungary in Europe A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks and Representations, 1541-1699 Edited by Gábor Almási, Szymon Brzeziński, Ildikó Horn, Kees Teszelszky and Áron Zarnóczki Volume 3 The Making and Uses of the Image of Hungary and Transylvania Edited by Kees Teszelszky A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks and Representations, 1541-1699; Volume 3 – The Making and Uses of the Image of Hungary and Transylvania, Edited by Kees Teszelszky This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Kees Teszelszky and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6688-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6688-0 CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................................ ix In Search of Hungary in Europe: An Introduction ...................................... 1 Kees Teszelszky The Genesis and Metamorphosis of Images of Hungary in the Holy Roman Empire ........................................................................................... 15 Nóra G. Etényi The fertilitas Pannoniae Topos in German Literature after the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683 ............................................................................. 45 Orsolya Lénárt Forms and Functions of the Image of Hungary in Poland-Lithuania ....... 61 Szymon Brzeziński Hungary and the Hungarians in Italian Public Opinion during and after the Long Turkish War................................................................. 89 Tamás Kruppa The Perception of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia in Croatian Historiography (1500–1660) ............................................... 107 Iva Kurelac Hungarians in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Moldavian and Wallachian Chronicles ..................................................................... 125 Klára Jakó Crown and Kingdom in the Republic: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of Early Modern Hungary in the Low Countries (1588–1648) ............................................................................ 145 Kees Teszelszky viii Contents Buda’s Reconquest (1686) and the Image of Hungarians, Ottomans and Habsburgs in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drama ........................... 167 Orsolya Réthelyi Contributors ............................................................................................. 195 Index ........................................................................................................ 197 PREFACE A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks, and Representations, 1541−1699 is a three-volume series, which is the result of the collaboration of 29 scholars engaged in the study of the history of early modern Hungary and Europe. The work has been initiated and conducted by the research programme “Hungary in early modern Europe,” financed by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), and headed by Professor Ágnes R. Várkonyi at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest.1 Our fundamental purpose was to provide state-of-the-art knowledge of early modern Hungary in a European context for an English-speaking audience. The title of the series may sound self-explanatory, but in the case of early modern “Hungary,” one needs to make a number of precursory remarks. The medieval Kingdom of Hungary, which included Croatia in a personal union from the beginning of the twelfth century, gradually fell apart under Ottoman pressure after the fatal battle of 1526. This tragic battle, fought on the plain of Mohács, where even the young King Louis II lost his life in the swamps, meant the end of the large, independent kingdom, founded by King Saint Stephen in the year 1000. More directly, it led to a civil war between the parties of the new national king, John Szapolyai (1526–1540), and the Habsburg king, Ferdinand I (1526−1564), who had contractual rights for ruling the kingdom. Before Buda was captured by the Ottomans in 1541, Saint Stephen’s Kingdom had already been in the process of falling into three territorial-political units: “Royal Hungary”—the legal heir of the Kingdom of Hungary—under the Habsburgs, which continued to include Croatia; Transylvania and the eastern stripe of the country (called Partium),2 which soon had to give up 1 The research programme was hosted by the Department of Medieval Early Modern History at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. We gratefully thank the support of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA, no. 81948) in financing this book project. We would also like to express our gratitude to Professor Ágnes R. Várkonyi, who guided this research programme with wisdom and discreetness. 2 The so-called Partium (Partium Regni Hungariae, Partes adnexae) comprised the northern and eastern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, which became connected to the Principality of Transylvania after its formation, without being a formal part of x Preface pretences to the crown, rapidly developing into an Ottoman vassal state; and finally the areas that fell under Ottoman occupation with a frontier that continued moving mainly at the expense of “Royal Hungary.” Transylvania, adopting the ambiguous status of a semi-autonomous Ottoman satellite state, at the same time became a secondary repository of Hungarian political traditions and a bastion of the Protestant churches, hence a permanent embarrassment to the Habsburgs. What remained of Hungary proper on the north-western part of the former kingdom, however, was unable to withstand Ottoman pressure without continuous Habsburg support. The resources of this land were in a great part consumed by military expenses, apparently more than was the case in the new Principality of Transylvania. Although Hungary as one of Europe’s significant powers ceased to exist, the fiction—or ideal—of a unified country survived during the more than 150 years of Ottoman rule. This was also reflected on most of the maps prepared of Hungary, which kept ignoring the Ottomans and insisted on a medieval vision of the land. (The map on the cover of this book, distinguishing between “Hungaria Turcica” and “Hungaria Austriaca,” is one of the few exceptions.3) Naturally, in nourishing the idea of a glorious past state, the principal actors were the ruling class, held together by common legal-political traditions and cultural heritage. Nonetheless, the unifying forces of cultural and religious practices and institutions were significant also at lower levels of society, especially among the learned. The churches in divided Hungary disregarded political fragmentation. Protestant churches and Catholic missionaries alike were free to organise themselves in “Ottoman Hungary,” becoming the major cohesive forces of the area. In legitimating this project that treats the parts of “divided Hungary” altogether and places the question of cultural exchange in its centre, one might easily overemphasise cohesive forces and a common territorialhistorical consciousness. This is certainly not one of our goals. The fact that Buda was reconquered in 1686 and the Ottomans were entirely expelled from Hungary by 1699 should not influence our interpretation of past events in a deterministic way. By the second half of the sixteenth century, it. The territory originally (in 1570) consisted of the counties Bihar, Zaránd, Kraszna, Máramaros, Middle Szolnok, but underwent numerous changes in territorial range due to the Ottoman expansion an struggles between the Habsburgs and Transylvania. 3 This map of the “Kingdom of Hungary” drawn by the Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu and dedicated to Ferenc Nádasdy, lord chief justice of Hungary, also indicates a part of Transylvania (“Transylvaniae pars”). A Divided Hungary in Europe Volume 3 xi Transylvania was already a distinct, independent principality—independent at least of the Habsburg Monarchy—and was considered, and desired to be considered, more and more as such abroad. Moreover, Transylvania had been and remained different from the rest of “divided Hungary” in many respects. This was most apparent in its political structure, in the curious system of three nations—the Hungarian nobility, the Saxons and the Székelys—represented at the Transylvanian Diet, and in the proportionally greater power and wealth of the prince, whose election was nonetheless controlled by the Sublime Porte. Aristocratic landowners were considerably poorer here, to the point that we can hardly speak of the check of the estates in Transylvania. Needless to say, “Ottoman Hungary,” integrated administratively into the Ottoman Empire, was even more different than Transylvania in regard to the Kingdom of Hungary, both in its political-economic system and cultural life, which were dominated, at least in the major cities, by an Ottoman presence. This is not to say that individual parts of “divided Hungary” were not themselves fragmented and heterogeneous—something that was far from exceptional in early modern Europe, but nonetheless deserves to be emphasised. The lands of the Holy Crown of Saint Stephen were populated by a great number of ethnically, linguistically, culturally and religiously different groups, some of them enjoying political autonomy, like the population of Croatia—most of them Catholic Slavs—or the Lutheran Saxons in Transylvania, and some lacking any political recognition, like the Orthodox Romanians spread out in Transylvania. Besides heterogeneity, we should also stress the lack of a real capital, that is, a political centre with a royal court and a university. In the Kingdom of Hungary, political life was organised in the shadow of the Viennese imperial court, which attracted few Hungarians (unlike in the eighteenth century). Higher education gained impetus with the establishment of the Jesuit University of Nagyszombat (Trnava)4—on the western edges of the country—only in the seventeenth century. It was primarily the aristocratic courts and city schools that made up for the lack of a political, cultural and educational centre. In the case of Transylvania, the princely court could only 4 In referring to place names in historical Hungary, there is no good solution that equally satisfies all researchers of the Carpathian Basin. Since each country (Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria) which shares parts of the Kingdom of Hungary have their own historical traditions in the use of place names, while English-language publications vary in usage and concur only in a very few names (like the use of the German name Pressburg for Bratislava/Pozsony), we have decided to stick to the Hungarian tradition and mention the present version of place names in parentheses. xii Preface periodically compete in importance with the major cities such as Kolozsvár (Cluj), Nagyszeben (Sibiu), or Brassó (Brașov). Despite fragmentation, heterogeneity and the continuous pressure of the Ottoman Empire, war-ridden “divided Hungary” saw a surprising cultural flourishing in the sixteenth century and maintained its common cultural identity also in the seventeenth century. This could hardly be possible without intense exchange with the rest of Europe, which has been the principal subject of our research programme. This series of volumes approaches themes of exchange of information and knowledge from two perspectives: exchange through traditional channels provided by religious/educational institutions and the system of European study tours (Volume 1: Study Tours and Intellectual-Religious Relationships), and the less regular channels and improvised networks of political diplomacy (Volume 2: Diplomacy, Information Flow and Cultural Exchange). A by-product of this exchange of information was the changing image of early modern Hungary and Transylvania, which is presented in the third and in some aspects concluding volume of essays (Volume 3: The Making and Uses of the Image of Hungary and Transylvania). Unlike earlier approaches to the same questions, these volumes intend to draw an alternative map of early modern Hungary. On this map, the centre-periphery conceptions of European early modern culture will be replaced by new narratives written from the perspective of historical actors, and the dominance of Western-Hungarian relationships are kept in balance with openness to the significance of Hungary’s direct neighbours, most importantly the Ottoman Empire. The invited authors of the volumes comprise key historians interested in questions of cultural history. The majority of them are Hungarian, working for academic institutions with a keen eye on both archival and printed sources. One of the goals of the volumes is to make their work known to a foreign language public in a coherent framework, dealing with some of the key questions that set the cultural and intellectual horizon and determined the image of early modern Hungary. The editors