Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
GÉZA PÁLFFY DISMEMBERED BUT CULTURALLY CONNECTED IN CENTRAL EUROPE The introductory essay of the catalogue examines the special process by which the western Christian population of the late medieval state of Hungary, when the territory was divided into three parts after 1526 (Kingdom of Hungary, Principality of Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary), and despite being split between the Protestant and Catholic faiths, managed to remain within the Central European cultural circle in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. It is a process which is of interest for the history of the whole of Europe. Cultural and artistic contacts remained close even after 1566, when the central areas of Hungary became a permanent part of the Ottoman Empire, whose sultans also possessed the holy cities of Islam (Mecca and Medina) and were in themselves the religious and secular leaders of Islam. The Principality of Transylvania, which came into existence in the mid-16 th century as an Ottoman vassal state, never became part of the Islamic cultural circle. In the late Middle Ages, the state of Hungary was the dominant central power in Europe, its throne fought over by the most prominent dynasties of the continent (Angevins, Luxemburgs, Habsburgs and Jagiellos). Around 1500 it considerably surpassed the lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Austrian hereditary provinces in terms of both size (325,000 km 2 ) and population (approximately 3,300,000). It is thus no exaggeration to identify the Kingdom of Hungary with the Realm of St Stephen plus the Kingdom of Croatia, on the coast of the Adriatic, since 1102. Through these competing dynasties, the kings of Hungary had, since the late 14th century, always also been rulers of other states (Poland, Bohemia, and sometimes even the Holy Roman Empire). The resulting Central European composite state was largely controlled from their Buda court. As a result the Buda residence, in addition to one of the dominant political and economic centres of the region, became a major cultural and artistic centre. Under Matthias Corvinus and the Jagiellos, for example, it became one of the dominant centres of the continent's Renaissance art. In the half a century after 1526, the Kingdom of Hungary underwent a fundamental role change. Following the loss of Szigetvár and Gyula (1566), 40 per cent of its area was under Ottoman occupation, and the vassal Principality of Transylvania was another 20 per cent within the Turks' sphere of interest. The remaining part of the former central power became part of a new monarchy led by the Austrian House of Habsburg. This brought the role of the Hungarian state as an independent central power to an end, although it retained fundamental significance for Central Europe. For one thing, it became the Habsburgs' anti-Ottoman bulwark and an essential breadbasket and source of revenue. But the political prestige and grand style which had developed for some five hundred years did not disappear overnight. The Kingdom of Hungary thus enjoyed a very exalted position, second place, in the royal titles of Ferdinand I and his successors. In the ranking of the Habsburg Monarchy, therefore, it came after the Holy Roman Empire and before the Kingdom of Bohemia. It achieved this despite losing even its capital city (Buda) in 1541. In the former territory of the state of Hungary new political, military and economic boundaries (border castle and border customs systems) were set up with both the Ottoman Empire and the Principality of Transylvania. The social, cultural and artistic connections which had been built up over several hundred years were not to be broken by these new political and economic boundaries. Indeed, they remained very lively among the Western Christian population which was separated into two secular empires locked in mutual struggle, and the cohesion of the Hungarian population living in these different states even became stronger. The cultural, religious and artistic currents of European Christendom all — if with some breaks, and in different frameworks than in late medieval Hungary — found their way to the Western Christian population of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Transylvania and the Ottoman territories. Nearly every form of Protestantism put down permanent roots in all three parts of the country (with new networks of schools), and various places of humanist scholarship went on working in both the Kingdom and Transylvania. The peregrinatio academica to the leading Protestant and Catholic universities of the continent went on in all three parts of the country. Finally, as the catalogue descriptions clearly demonstrate, late Renaissance art lived on in all three areas of the country, right up to the end of the 17 th century. One permanent change, however, was that the legacy and cultural role of Matthias Corvinus' royal court, in adaptation to the new political boundaries, was jointly continued by several different artistic centres. In the Kingdom, the various institutions and centres of scholarship in the two new "capital cities" (Pozsony [Bratislava] and Vienna), the courts of the Hungarian prelates and aristocrats, such as the palaces of the Archbishop of Esztergom in Pozsony and Nagyszombat (Trnava), the courts of the Nádasdys in Sárvár and Pottendorf, the Perényis and in the 17 th century of the Rákóczis in Sárospatak, the Batthyánys in Németújvár (Güssing) and Rohonc, the Zrínyis in Csáktornya (Cakovec), the Pálffys in Pozsony and Vöröskő, the Esterházys in Fraknó and Kismarton etc. Similar functions were fulfilled in Transylvania primarily by the royal court in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), in the Ottoman-occupied
