On 5 March 1674, all the Protestant preachers, school-directors and tutors (Lutherans and Calvinists a like) from Royal Hungary had been summoned to a so-called judicium delegatum – a special tribunal – to Pozsony (present-day Bratislava), as a consequence of the call of the archbishop of Esztergom, György Szelepcsényi. This summons was backed by the Habsburg ruler, Leopold I who issued a royal decree to the whole territory of Hungary and beyond, to major places under Turkish rule, where Protestants operated, who supposedly partici-pated in a conspiracy and uprising. The tribunal was about to detect and convict all the guilty partakers.1
There were certain estimations regarding the actual number of Protestants who were summoned to the tribunal: on the one hand, the eyewitness partici-pants calculated a number of around 250 persons;2 on the other hand, however, any kind of guessing is unnecessary since those who had to show up in Pozsony were 500, as the list of names in the record attests.3 As for the proportions of
* This paper was first read at the Religious and Ethnic Identities in the Process of Expulsion and Diaspora Formation from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century conference, in June 2013 at CEU Budapest. I am grateful to Katalin Szende and John Tolan for their suggestions in the process of extending and complet-ing the text.
1 The main source for reconstructing the tribunal is the recently published critical edition by Katalin S.
Varga who discovered the (most probably only original) copy of the record in the Archive of the Esztergom Archbishopric in 1999, see Vitetnek ítélőszékre … Az 1674-es gályarabper jegyzőkönyve (Taking to the Tribunal. The Records of the Galley-slaves Trial in 1674). Translated, edited, with preface, notes and lists by Katalin S. Varga, Pozsony: Kalligram, 2002. (henceforth S. Varga 2002)
2 ‘Akik megjelentenek többen voltanak 250-nél, kik közülük reformátusok voltanak 57-en, a többi mind augustanusok.’ Those who showed up were more than 250, and out of them were 57 Calvinists, and the rest was Lutheran – stated Bálint Kocsi Csergő, a survivor of the case, whose memorial is considered as the other main source for the reconstruction. His work was completed first in Latin in 1676 as Narratio brevis de oppressione libertatis ecclesiae Hungariae, then was translated into Hungarian and published in 1738, Utrecht. Kősziklán épült ház ostroma (Siege of the House Built on a Cliff ). Later it was republished by the historian Péter Bod with some abridges, and this version was included to the volume prepared for the 300th anniversary of its first release in Latin, see Galeria omnium Sanctorum. A magyarországi gályarab prédikátorok emlékezete (The Memory of the Hungarian Galley-Slave Preachers). Ed. and foreword by László Makkai. Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1976. The Hungarian version of Kocsi Csergő’s work is on pp. 29–110, henceforth, Kocsi, Narratio.
3 See S. Varga 2002, 219–237. Throughout the text, I use ‘record’ designating the minutes of the tribunal.
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the 500 Protestants: there is a consensus in the literature that the majority of the persons present was Lutheran, almost 80 per cent of them, and the rest was Calvinist. The size and the intensity of the trial are astonishing. Moreover, if we look at the composition, the language and the argumentation of the text, it seems to have been carefully fabricated in order to justify, even present as inevitable, the expulsion of Protestants; this, as we will see, raises further questions.
This article attempts to present the contexts and main motifs of this show-case trial by using both the record (prepared by the Catholic bishopric) and the memorials of the accused eyewitnesses that were published after the whole case.
Parallel to this, it aims at tracing the historiographical depictions and reflections after the case. What becomes visible from these documents is an extremely com-plex web of political and ecclesiastical interests that was embedded in the context of religious agendas, of practicing (or lacking) toleration, and the dynamic of power relations.4 Questions of free practice of religions within Royal Hungary (which was a dependent entity and a state between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg controlled lands) have very much been connected to loyalty and questions of political freedom. Protestantism – which gained significant adhe-sion among Hungarians – as a well-separated and institutionalized belonging and practice within the urban society, nobility, education, and even in the Turkish occupied territories could easily been accused of being rebellious for not having partnership and cooperation with Catholic authorities and the representatives of the Habsburg Court.5
The tribunal became infamous in Hungarian scholarship and beyond, as it was called the ‘galley-slaves lawsuit’ against Hungarian Protestants – since the most stubborn preachers had been penalized and sold to galleys as a consequence of the case –, aiming at their full expulsion, not only from their offices, but from the ter-ritory of Hungary. One of the underlying concepts of the tribunal was, according to the archbishop, that preachers cannot be condemned publicly because of their religion, but rather on account of their rebellion. Besides this formulation, the preachers’ infidelity was considered as treason felony which was a more serious
4 For the antedecents and the complexity of certain aspects see for example Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner, eds Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
5 In the years of 1673 and 74 several cities had been forced to elect Catholic judges or councillors as the royal mandate ruled, but they often refused to do so. Thus they had been punished by taking away their churches, for instance, as it happened to Lőcse, Kassa, Bártfa, Késmárk, Kisszeben and Eperjes or in Sopron. See S. Varga 2002, 20–21. For the earlier years, on the spread of the Reformation and ways of institutionalization see Katalin Péter, ‘Hungary,’ in The Reformation in National Context. Eds. Bob Scribner, Roy Porter, Mikulas Teich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 155–167. As for the political aspects of the regional history of Protestantism see R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas, eds, Crown, Church and Estates. Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. London:
Palgrave-MacMillan, 1991.
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accusation than a high treason (crimen perduellonis), and that should be investi-gated by a court deleinvesti-gated by the king – the iudicium delegatum. The composition of the court was decided by the ruler in an ad hoc manner, and he delegated into this entity the Hungarian councilors of the so-called gubernium which operated from the suspension of the estates’ constitution.6 A secular court adjudicated which naturally comprised church dignitaries, too, and the procedure itself was an extraordinary court of judicature (processus extraordinarius).7
Besides this legal context, the preceding events and affairs could shed light on such a carefully-organized attack against the Protestants. There had been plots and conspiracies against the Habsburg rule from the 1660s onwards, led by the prominent representatives of the Hungarian aristocratic families, such as the Wesselényi, Nádasdy and Frangepán families.8 The armed insurrection (rebellió in Hungarian in the documentation) of April 1670 by Péter Zrínyi, Croat bán, and Ferenc Rákóczi I, elected prince of Transylvania, had the similar ending. The organizers of this uprising had been cited to a court which played a double role:
it was a court and an investigative authority at the same time. The accused and prosecuted persons had been summoned to the iudicium delegatum in a manner that the indictment was not revealed. Moreover, the prosecutor referred to a clause that was included to the peace treaty of Vienna, 1606, which says that the Hungarian estates renounce the right of resistance and remain faithful to their legal ruler.9 Following the sequence of lawsuits in 1670–1671, the Habsburg court governed the kingdom without the involvement of the Diet, but with imperial
6 King Leopold I settled a regency (gubernium) in February 1673 to administer and act with full pow-ers of the affairs of Hungary. This entity, reporting and responsible exclusively to the ruler, consisted of three Hungarian and three German councillors, and its members played a crucial role in the tribu-nal. The Hungarian delegates, as part of the highest dignitaries of the country, were as follows: György Szelepcsényi, royal governor and archbishop of Esztergom at the same time, Ádám Forgách, seneschalsy, and János Majthényi. See Árpád Károlyi, A magyar alkotmány felfüggesztése 1673-ban (The Suspension of the Hungarian Constitution in 1673), Budapest: MTA, 1873.
7 See Katalin Péter, ‘A magyarországi protestáns prédikátorok és tanítók ellen indított per 1674-ben’
(The Lawsuit Against Hungarian Protestant Preachers and Teachers in 1674), in A Ráday Gyűjtemény Évkönyvei. Budapest, 1983, 34–35.
8 The Wesselényi rebellion and its handling by the Habsburg authority led to the execution of its leaders, but also had an inspiration to the later uprisings, see the still useful account of it: Gyula Pauler, Wesselényi Ferenc nádor és társainak összeesküvése 1664–1671 (The Consipracy of Palatine Ferenc Wesselényi and His Fellows in 1664–1671). 2 vols Budapest: MTA, 1876. The so-called peace treaty of Vasvár on August 10, 1664 that concluded the war against the Turks (1663–1664) also generated dissatisfaction since the victo-rious Habsburg forces gave up the occupied territories, and instead of rolling back the Ottoman Empire, they engaged in Western diplomatic transactions.
9 In the Central European political culture there was a distinct feature which continued a late medieval tradition by sharing the authority between the monarchy and the estates. The estates had established themselves, competing with the monarchy for control, and by the same token, creating the duality of pow-er. The estates sat as diets, operated as administrative, financial and judicial institutions, and used their votes regarding taxes to enhance their polotical influence. For the most recent overview of the political culture within church history, see Maria Craciun and Elaine Fulton, Communities of Devotion: Religious
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ordinances. This kind of absolutist governance also resulted in the occupation of the frontier castles and the release of their soldiers, the introduction of new types of taxes and the establishment of the above mentioned gubernium. There was another ‘test case’ before the tribunal of March 1674: on 25 September 1673 all the Lutheran priests (superintendentes) and 32 ministers were summoned from Lower-Hungary (the north-western part of the country). The judgment had already been fabricated since all of them were sentenced to torture or death.
However, before the final pronouncement of this sentence, it was modified and extended: the judge offered a possibility of having mercy, if the Lutherans would sign a declaration (reversalis) on their conversion into Catholic faith. This type of intimidation was quite successful: two pastors converted, fourteen went on voluntary exile, and the rest abandoned their offices.10
The operation of courts was regulated by the 41st article of the 1659 Diet, and according to this, the so-called octa-court of judicature and the iudicium extraordinarium are the orderly form of operation of the Royal Judicial Board.
The accusation against all the preachers and their fellow travelers (such as the chaplains and tutors) was treason felony which was supported by those cases that happened in such ‘rebellious’ times.11 These stereotyped charges could easily fit into the passages of the prosecutors, and they could readily transfer the stigma of infidelity (nota infidelitas) into a proved legal notion (delictum).
Historical studies had already revealed that there were conceptual maneuvers and theoretical works for launching such tribunals. Besides Leopold Kollonich, who became the chair of the Chamber of Pozsony in 1672, certain Hungarian dignitaries should be considered as initiators of tribunals against preachers. The theoretical framework and the point of view of the Viennese Court was pre-sented by György Bársony, honorary bishop of Várad, who published a work titled The Truth Declared to the Whole World.12 His proposition was that the violent conversion of rebellious Protestants can be justified from the historical and legal perspective, and even more, this action pleases God. This pamphlet propagated the politics of violence by affirming the invalidity of the laws of 1606 and 1647 – which guaranteed the free exercise of religions –, that were achieved by the Hungarian Protestants and Transylvania. Bársony argued that these laws
Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 1450–1800. Surrey-Burlington: Ashgate, 2011, Introduction, 1–28.
10 Cited by S. Varga 2002, 19. There was another trial on May 13, 1673 in Nagyszombat (present-day Trnava), presided by György Szelepcsényi, against the so-called ‘acatholics.’
11 Within this legal frame there were almost 250 trials between January 1670 and the summer of 1674, see Péter 1983, 31–39.
12 Veritas toti mundo declarata, Cassovia, 1671.
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had never been accepted by either the Catholic clergy or the Protestant church which always deviated from these points.13
Before the iudicium delegatum in Pozsony started its operation in March 1674, there were a series of hearings and testimonies in seven counties of Hungary, a task delegated the local chapters.14 If we look at the process itself before the actual procedural acts of the lawsuit, we find particular features: the testimony had been organized outside of the court in this trial, and the preparation of the record was continuous. The procedure – the preceding discussions between the prosecutor and the preachers – had been written down and all the documents were extracted in order to help the decision-making of the tribunal. The task of the plaintiff (the royal prosecutor) was to justify the accusation, and he could freely interpret all the charges against the accused. Moreover, he could even deviate from them and propose other, new ones. As opposed to this, the defendant’s witnesses were not questioned at all, their statements were transmitted to the court, though, it was not obliged to consider them (and rarely did so).15
The procedure of the tribunal of Pozsony, presided by György Szelepcsényi, started in early March and lasted almost two months, until the end of April. At the beginning, a reference had been made between the continuity of the ‘unfin-ished trial against the accomplice rebel preachers,’ held on September 1673, and the present one. Then the circle of accused persons was exposed by mentioning those who were obliged to be present, and also, and with more emphasis, those people who remained absent. Szelepcsényi stressed here, at the beginning, and throughout the procedure that the court’s judgment involved both the persons present and those absent.
Then the indictment was pronounced which could be summarized and en-listed in six main points:
1. the accused had extended their offices beyond the approved limits (they devi-ated from the main lines of their profession, they did not acknowledge and respect the laws and the authority of their superiors);
2. the accused, above all, made profanities (blasphemia) against Catholics, there-fore, against their King, the Catholic order, the saints, and mostly, against the Holy Virgin Mary (they singled out preacher Pál Régius of Kisszeben, who was guilty of all of these accusations);
13 Counter-texts were also published by Mihály Szatmárnémeti, who changed the word veritas in the title into falsitas, or by György Komáromi Csipkés and János Pósaházi.
14 Vas, Szepes, Győr, Esztergom, Pozsony, Hont and Nógrád counties were involved.
15 The record of the tribunal, therefore, is an extensive extract including the shortened versions of all possible memorials, and based on this edited extract the tribunal could make its final decision.
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3. the accused rebelled against the Catholic state, against the public peace, and against the Roman Catholic faith, and launched an uprising against the state and His Excellency the King;
4. the accused organized assemblies, corresponded with rebels, and agitated;
behind all these efforts stands their ‘Turkishness’ and their desire to see the country’s demise;
5. the accused resisted the summonses and the deliverers were put into Turkish jails;
6. the accused desecrated and robbed Catholic churches, and they distributed disparaging books from their own pulpits, printed squibs (pasquillus), and falsely informed foreign rulers.16
Besides the exceptional mentioning of Régius, all the accusations are general, and, without personal proofs, valid for all the accused persons. The strategy of the law-suit was to spread out these various forms of guilt to all the cited Protestants. The logic of the defendant’s argumentation is just the opposite: they emphasized that the accusations should be proved person by person and not in a general manner, and the events and places should be referred to in concreto. The accused were ready to prove their innocence individually by means of a personal oath. However, as the record shows, there was no room for a real dialogue – partly and primarily because of the constructedness of the lawsuit –, and partly as a consequence of the mode of presenting the arguments: both judges and the representatives of the defense were delegated persons who aimed at showing either a type of evidence (the fabricated indictments), or the impossibility and lack of realistic proofs.
Therefore, their individual markers and characteristics remained blurred in this dichotomy, since they acted as representatives of the rule and authority versus a community of accused people.
After reading these accusations aloud, the royal prosecutor proposed a com-plex death sentence as punishment: because of the profanities their hands should be cut off, on account of violating and outraging saints and their images they should be burned alive, and for the treason felony they should have a capital pun-ishment and loose all their property. The tribunal, however, had left a loophole for the release of the accused Protestant: it was a declaration that should be signed after a deliberation of three possible options. These were as follows:
1. The Protestant preachers, school-directors, ministers, clerks, tutors, students and even sextons would voluntarily surrender of all their ecclesiastical and school positions, and would never again teach either at churches or schools,
16 S. Varga 2002, 47–53.
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and would never exercise their professions either in public or in secret. They would live their lives in peace as faithful subordinates to their Royal Majesty.
2. They would beexiled from the Kingdom of Hungary, validated by a decla-ration which expresses that they had chosen exile voluntarily without any pressure. This option should be completed within 15 days, and they bound themselves not to find asylum either in the Empire, the hereditary lands, or withthe enemies of the King.
3. They would convert to the Catholic faith.
The representative of the accused Protestants was István Séllyei of Pápa, Transdanubian priest who denied their participation in any of the uprisings (or in the preparations of any rebellion).17 In his plea he argued for their innocence and emphasized that the rebellion was rather a coalition of Roman Catholic prel-ates and noblemen than that of a Protestant one. Séllyei rejected the accusations, and asked the judges to prove the case by testimonies of witnesses. The tribunal allowed ex officio pleaders to the courtroom for the defense of the accused, who refuted all points of the prosecution. They considered the accusations as too general, and proposed to present proofs person by person. Moreover, they also claimed that they had authentic witnesses to be asked in the courtroom. In this way the prosecutors were driven into corners, but they repeatedly responded that the tribunal was not against individuals, but rather the rebellious community of Protestant clergy, thus, it is not necessary to have an investigation focusing on
The representative of the accused Protestants was István Séllyei of Pápa, Transdanubian priest who denied their participation in any of the uprisings (or in the preparations of any rebellion).17 In his plea he argued for their innocence and emphasized that the rebellion was rather a coalition of Roman Catholic prel-ates and noblemen than that of a Protestant one. Séllyei rejected the accusations, and asked the judges to prove the case by testimonies of witnesses. The tribunal allowed ex officio pleaders to the courtroom for the defense of the accused, who refuted all points of the prosecution. They considered the accusations as too general, and proposed to present proofs person by person. Moreover, they also claimed that they had authentic witnesses to be asked in the courtroom. In this way the prosecutors were driven into corners, but they repeatedly responded that the tribunal was not against individuals, but rather the rebellious community of Protestant clergy, thus, it is not necessary to have an investigation focusing on