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Péter Pázmány, Archbishop of Esztergom, the driving force behind the re-Ca¬
tholicisation of Hungary, was himself a Jesuit. His relationship with the Calvinist
princes of Transylvania, however, shows that he was far from being a Habsburg
supporter in his political thinking. As a result, he also had serious arguments with
Miklós Esterhazy, the country’s palatine.’ Namely, Pazmany did not approve
of a theoretically possible unification of the country which would begin by abol¬
ishing Transylvania as a vassal principality and continue by turning against the
Turks. He considered it politically and militarily unrealistic, and at the same time
a threat to the independence of Hungary and Hungarian culture, one that could
turn many Hungarian aristocratic families against the Emperor.**4 History proved
his thinking correct, since after the successful campaign against the Turks (1664),
the Hungarian nobility conspired against the Emperor (1671) after the Habsburgs
and Turks signed a peace treaty (Vasvar, 1664), and then several independence
struggles (Thököly, Räköczi) closed the 17th century and started the 18th.
Peter Pazmäny and the Hungarian Jesuits intended to present the country to
the world as one with an independent Christian culture, and to raise it culturally
as such. Catholic, of course. Although the Jesuit Melchior Inchofer (1585-1648)
wrote the church history of Hungary,** the Austrian Jesuits (Austrian politics)
prevented its publication for a long time. The concept of this work is that Hun¬
garian Christianity is not a “f/ia” of Austrian Christianity, but from the time
of Saint Stephen it is an independent church that has successfully spread its
faith and culture.*“* The Jesuits continued to spread this idea and tried to found
a Provincia Hungarica independent of the Provincia Austriaca (their efforts were
unsuccessful).**” It should be immediately noted that those Hungarian aristocrats
who did not believe in the success of an armed confrontation against the Habsburg
power, following the same logic in the 18th century tried to create a patronage
that on the one hand supported cultural institutions, and on the other hand spread
a Catholic but Hungarian culture among the culturally underdeveloped classes.
Alongside the imminent family histories, Matthias Hunyadi was given a role in
the concept of the ideal familia.
‘The attempt to acquire the Bibliotheca Corvina was, in our opinion, part of both
Jesuit conversion and cultural policy, and, from this point of view, the question of
whether in Turkish times in Buda there really were corvinas (ornamented codices
from Matthias’s library) or pieces of the library of the former royal chapel (unorna¬
mented theological paper codices and printed materials) is inconsequential.
It is important to emphasise, however, that decades before the expulsion of the
Turks, the ideologues of the imperial court in Vienna had already begun to define
58 Cr. Pérer K. 1972.; Pérer K. 1985.; Pérer K. 1986.
54 I know that this is an oversimplification of the question, it is not as easy to answer, P4zmäny’s approach
changed over time as well. Cf. Harcirray 1987, 405-448.; Hareirtay 2009, 113-151.
INCHOFER 1644.
546 DÜMMERTH 1987a, 155—204.
54 CF. LUKÁCs, ADATTÁR 25, 1989.
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