Századok – 2002
Tanulmányok - Tóth István György: Ahogy Róma látott minket. Magyarország és Erdély a Propaganda jelentéseiben a 17. században III/547
AHOGY RÓMA LÁTOTT MINKET A 17. SZÁZADBAN 581 ROME'S POINT OF VIEW. HUNGARY AND TRANSYLVANIA IN THE REPORTS OF THE PROPAGANDA IN THE 17t h CENTURY. by István György Tóth (Summary) The study analyses the picture of Hungary from the standpoint of the Holy Congregation for the Propagation of Faith, the papal organisation governing missionary work throughout the world, as well as the role played by Hungary in the general reports prepared by the Congregation on the state of all missions. Three such general reports were made by the Congregation during the century following its creation, all of them prepared by the active or future secretary. The report of Francesco Ingoli from 1630-31, long believed to have been lost, was recently found. The dating of the work is helped by Ingoli's hints to the events of Transylvanian politics following the death of Gábor Bethlen. Even the sources of Ingoli can be identified in the reports of cardinal Péter Pázmány and several missionaries. Since Ingoli is much better informed on the southern Slav world than on Hungary, his sources seem to have been Rome-based Croatian priests. Ingoli spared no words in praising the Slav language, which he thought was one and the same from Russia to Dalmatia, and was even spoken in Skandinavia and Styria, and, consequently, its knowledge was of prime importance for the missions. The next general overview of the missions was prepared by secretary Urbano Cerri in 1677-78. A critical edition of the text, based on the comparison of several manuscripts, is given in the appendix of the present work, accompanied by a translation. The dating of the document is once again facilitated by its Hungarian references. Hungary's picture in Cerri's work is in many respects different from the one found at Ingoli. Cerri's report was critical of the Church, his aim being to unveil its defects and merits as well for „domestic" use. As a result, the original Italian text has never been printed by the Catholic Church. The report was taken by the Protestants, the natural enemies of Catholic mission, from the library of the abbey of Sank Gallen, and, translated to English and French, was distributed throughout Europe as a catalogue of the sins of the Church. Although the latter was dedicated to the pope, it was nevetheless put on the Index; ironically, the report made by the secretary of the Congregation for pope Innicent XI himself was banned by the Catholic Church. Hungary turns up twice in Cerri's work, in two distant places. First it is handled as part of the Ottoman Empire, and later emerges again, this time during the description of the Habsburg Empire. Consequently, Cerri, unlike Ingoli, did not treat Hungary as a single country (partly under foreign occupation): he spoke of two different countries, one subjected to the rule of the Emperor, the other to that of the Sultan. Cerri's work preserved important details of a lost report made by the missionary bishop of Belgrade, Matteo Benlich, on Temesvár and its region. Although Cerri faithfully followed his sources in describing the state of the mission in Hungary, he nevertheless made surprising mistakes. For instance, he described the northern Zips as part of the Ottoman territory; the separate status of the thirteen towns, mortgaged to the king of Poland, seems to have deceived even the most experienced Italian missionaries. The reports of Francesco Ingoli and Urbano Cerri are equally important for Hungarian historiography. They reveal that the Congregation regarded, although to a varying extent, all three parts of Hungary as a missionary area. Missionary work in Ottoman Hungary and in Transylvania was justified by the dissolution of the ecclesiastical organisation as well as by the rule of the „pagan" sultan and the protestant prince of Transylvania respectively. In royal Hungary, as in the Protestant regions of Germany, the Congregation helped through internal missions the recovery of the Catholic Church and the conversion of the Protestants. Although both of them made serious geographical errors, the reports of the two secretaries show that the Congregation had a very clear picture of the region, and the secretaries were able to follow closely the intricate problems of the local missions. The fact that Cerri's report has preserved for us many details of the all-important but lost report of bishop Matteo Benlich is crucial for the research of the Hungarian missions.
