Armed Memory: Agency and Peasant Revolts in Central and Southern Europe (1450-1700) 9783666550973, 9783525550977

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Refo500 Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon, (New Haven), Ute Lotz-Heumann (Tucson), Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Johannes Schilling (Kiel), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück), David M. Whitford (Waco).

Volume 27

Gabriella Erdélyi (ed.)

Armed Memory Agency and Peasant Revolts in Central and Southern Europe (1450–1700)

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

With 18 figures Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.dnb.de. ISSN 2197-0165 ISBN 978-3-666-55097-3 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, 37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch GmbH, Ochsenfurt

Contents

Acknowledgements

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Gabriella Erdélyi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19

Part I Revolt Territories: European and Transnational Contexts Peter Blickle Revolten in Europa 1200–1800

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

Katalin Péter The Other Way. Negotiating Freedom in a Gutsherrschaft Country, the Kingdom of Hungary, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries . . . .

59

Marco Gentile In Search of the Italian “Common Man.” Rethinking the 1462 Peasant Uprising in the Territory of Piacenza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

Part II Utopia and Vision: Religious Radicalism Martin Rothkegel Institutionalisierte Rebellion. Aufsässige Praktiken der Hutterischen Täufer in Mähren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

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Contents

Pál Ács Falsorum fratrum rebellio. Jeno˝ Szu˝cs’s Essays on the Peasant Revolt of György Dózsa 40 Years Later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Zoltán Csepregi Bund, Bundschuh, Verbundenheit. Radikales Gemeinschaftsprinzip in der frühen Reformation Ungarns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Part III Unfinished Pasts: Early Modern Narratives of Revolts Farkas Gábor Kiss Ambiguity and Paradox in the Humanistic Literature of the Jagiellonian Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 László Szörényi Das Epos „Matthiados carmina heroica“ von Ioannes Bocatius (Kaschau, 1614) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Gabriella Erdélyi The Memory War of the Dózsa Revolt in Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Gergely Tóth Caught in the Web of Interpretations. The 1514 Peasant War in Early Modern Hungarian Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Part IV Modern Images: Revolt Representations in the 19th and 20th Centuries Natasˇa Sˇtefanec Why Did Gubec Have to Die Dózsa’s Death? Historical Representations of the Croatian Peasant Rebellion of 1573 and of Its Leader’s Public Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Márton Szilágyi Der Bauernkrieg von 1514 als Exemplum. Die literarischen Dózsa-Interpretationen im 19. Jahrhundert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Giorgio Politi Spontane Generation einer Fälschung. Michael Gaismair und „seine“ sogenannte Landesordnung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

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Erzsébet Tatai Dózsa ’72. The Visual Representation of György Dózsa in the Middle of the Kádár Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Márta Fata War György Dózsa der ungarische Thomas Müntzer? Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in der Volksrepublik Ungarn und in der DDR im Vergleich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Acknowledgements

The studies in this volume were originally conceived as papers for the conference Revolt, Violence and Memory: Peasant Uprisings in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, that was held in Budapest in May 2014. The conference, funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), was a REFO500 event and part of the research agenda of the HAS Research Centre for the Humanities (RCH), entitled 500 Years of Hungarian Reformation in European Context. Histories, Traditions, and Scholarship (2012–2017). The publication of the conference proceedings was financially supported by the Hungarian National Research Fund (research project OTKA-81435). We are grateful to the editorial board of the REFO500 Academic Series and the anonymous peer reviewers for their invaluable suggestions. We thank the scrupulous work of our copy-editors Sean Lambert and Andreas Schmidt-Schweizer and the project’s assistants Réka Krizmanics and András Péterfi at HAS RCH, who offered a dedicated assistance throughout the editorial process. We are also greatly indebted to Elke Liebig and Christoph Spill at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht publishers for their enthusiasm and support in seeing this volume through the press.

List of Contributors

Pál Ács is senior research fellow at the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is honorary professor of Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest) and editor of the journal Magyar Könyvszemle [Hungarian Book Review]. He is the author of Átszitált ido˝. Tinóditól Tandoriig [Sifted Time. From Tinódi to Tandori], Budapest, 2015; “Az ido˝ ósága” – Történetiség és történetszemlélet a régi magyar irodalomban [“The Antiquity of Time”–Historicity and Historical Vision in Early Modern Hungarian Literature], Budapest, 2002. Peter Blickle is professor emeritus of modern history at the University of Berne. He has published on legal history: Landschaften im Alten Reich (München, 1973); Kommunalismus (2 vols, München, 2000); on Reformation history: Die Revolution von 1525 (4th edn, München, 2004), and Gemeindereformation (München, 1985). He is the editor of one of the seven volumes of The Origins of the Modern State in Europe, Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford, 1997), and of the Handbuch der Geschichte Europas (9 vols, Stuttgart 2001−12). Zoltán Csepregi is professor and Head of the Institute for Church History at the Lutheran University (Budapest). He is DSc of literary science (2011, Budapest). He has specialized in early modern Protestant movements and is involved in the publication of early modern texts in Latin and German (editor of “Martin Luther’s Selected Works”: Luther Válogatott Mu˝vei). His books include Magyar pietizmus, 1700−1756 [Hungarian Pietism, 1700−1756] (Budapest, 2000), and A reformáció nyelve. Tanulmányok a magyarországi reformáció elso˝ negyedszázadának vizsgálata alapján [The Language of the Reformation. Studies on the Early Reformation in Hungary]. Budapest, 2013. Gabriella Erdélyi is senior research fellow in the Institute of History (Research Centre for the Humanities) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. She is editor of The Hungarian Historical Review (2013–). She has recently

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List of Contributors

published A Cloister on Trial. Religious Culture and Everyday Life in Late Medieval Hungary (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). Márta Fata is fellow at the Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte und Landeskunde and lecturer at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Her research interests comprise the history of migration, the history of memory, confessionalization, German-Hungarian relations in the Early Modern and the Modern Period. Her most recent book is Migration im kameralistischen Staat Josephs II. Theorie und Praxis der Ansiedlungspolitik in Ungarn, Siebenbürgen, Galizien und der Bukowina von 1768 bis 1790 (Münster, 2014). Marco Gentile is senior lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Parma and member of the editorial board of the journal Società e Storia. He was awarded a PhD in Historical Studies from the University of Trent (2003), and was Dombrowski Fellow in history at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (2005–2006). His research focus is late medieval Italian society and forms of political conflict. He is the author of Fazioni al governo. Politica e società a Parma nel Quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 2009), editor of Guelfi e ghibellini nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Rome: Viella, 2005), and coeditor of Noblesse et états princiers en Italie et en France au XVe siècle (Rome: école Française de Rome, 2009). Farkas Gábor Kiss is a specialist on Latin and Hungarian literature in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He has taught at the Eötvös University of Budapest and in the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies at the University of Innsbruck. His interests include Central European humanism, the history of reading, the relationship between the vernaculars and Latin, and late medieval art of memory. Currently he is the head of the Humanism in East Central Europe “Lendület” research group, a five-year research project funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His main projects at present are the publication of an anthology of late medieval texts on the art of memory from East Central Europe (with Lucie Dolezalova and Rafal Wójcik) and an in-depth study of texts and transmissions of authors from Hungary in the period 1420–1620, resulting in a Verfasserlexikon for this region. Katalin Péter is professor emeritus of the Institute of History (Research Centre for the Humanities) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and also professor emeritus of the Central European University. She has published widely on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history. Her tropics range from the Protestant Reformation to the history of the family. She is the editor of Beloved Children. The History of Aristocratic Childhood in Hungary in the Early Modern Age (Budapest and New

List of Contributors

13

York: CEU Press, 2000) and her most recent book is Magánélet a régi Magyarországon [Private Life in Early Modern Hungary], Budapest, 2012. Giorgio Politi is professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. He is the author of La società cremonese nella prima età spagnola (Milano: Unicopli, 2002), which reconsiders the role of the Spanish Habsburgs in Italy. He specializes in the history of European peasant revolts, which is marked by such monographs as Gli statuti impossibili. La rivoluzione tedesca del 1525 e il “programma” di Michael Gaismair (Torino: Einaudi, 1975) and La storia lingua morta. Manifesto. Il telaio incantato, Il caso Thomas Müntzer (Milano: Unicopli 2011). Martin Rothkegel studied Protestant Theology (ThD, Charles University Prague, 2001) and Classical Philology (PhD, University of Hamburg, 2005). He is Professor of Church History at the Theologische Hochschule Elstal near Berlin, Germany. His research interests are focused on the Radical Reformation and Humanism in East Central Europe. He is the editor of the series Bibliotheca Dissidentium. Répertoire desnon-conformistes religieux des seizième et dix-septième siècles (Baden-Baden: Éditions Valentin Koerner). Natasˇa Sˇtefanec is associate professor at the History Department of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and vice-director of the Postgraduate Doctoral Studies in Early Modern History at the University of Zagreb. She was awarded PhD in history by the Central European University (Budapest) in 2004. She has published two monographs, co-edited several volumes and published numerous articles. Her research interest comprises early modern Croatian history in a wider regional and imperial framework, the history of the military border systems in Central and Southeastern Europe as well as administrative, institutional and legal organization and development of the Habsburg-Ottoman military frontier. More recently, she has focused on migrations and socio-cultural practices on the Habsburg-Ottoman borderland. Márton Szilágyi (DSc) is professor and Head of Department at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest). He specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hungarian literature. He was guest professor at the University of Vienna (2002– 2004). He wrote a monograph on the Hungarian-language journal Uránia, published at the end of the eighteenth century (Kármán József és Pajor Gáspár Urániája. Debrecen, 1998). He is also prolific as the editor of contemporary literary texts (works by Ferenc Kölcsey, Ferenc Kazinczy). His most recent book is A költo˝ társadalmi helye. Csokonai Vitéz Mihály pályafutásának mikrotörténeti dimenziói [The Social Position of the Poet. The Microhistorical Dimensions of the Career of Mihály Csokonai Vitéz], Budapest, 2014.

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List of Contributors

László Szörényi is professor emeritus of the Institute for Literary Studies (Research Centre for the Humanities) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and also professor emeritus of the University of Szeged. He was Director of the Institute for Literary Studies (1997–2012). He is a prolific scholar of humanism, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century neo-Latin poetry in Hungary and Europe as well as modern literature. He recently published Harmóniára teremtve. Tanulmányok Mátyás királyról [Created for Harmony. Studies on King Matthias], (Budapest, 2012) and Petrarca Budapesten. Esszék, tanulmányok [Petrarch in Budapest. Essays and Studies], Budapest, 2011; 2nd edition: 2015. Erzsébet Tatai is senior research fellow at the Institute for Art History of the Research Center for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. As the chief curator of the Mu˝csarnok [Kunsthalle] in Budapest (2001–2002) and director of the Bartók 32 Gallery (Budapest, 1993–199) she was curator of about seventy exhibitions. She has published one monograph (Neo-Conceptual Art in Hungary in the Nineties, Budapest, 2005, in Hungarian) and co-edited Conceptual Art at the Turn of the Millenium. Konceptuálne umenie na zlome tisícrocˇi. Konceptuális mu˝vészet az ezredfordulón (With Jana Gerzˇová, Budapest–Bratislava, 2002). She has published numerous essays and studies on contemporary art, iconography and feminist visual culture. Gergely Tóth is research fellow in the Institute of History (Research Centre for the Humanities) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded his PhD in History at the Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest) in 2008. He is a specialist on early modern historiography in Hungary and neo-Latin philology. His major project is the publication of the works of the historian Mátyás Bél (1684–1749), of which he has published three volumes (Matthias Bel, Notitia Hungariae novae historico-geographica. Comitatuum ineditorum Tomus I–III, Budapest, 2011–15).

List of Illustrations

Gabriella Erdélyi Fig 1. The execution of Dózsa on the front page of Stephanus Taurinus, Stauromachia (Vindobonae, 1519). With the permission of the National Széchényi Library (Budapest), Régi Nyomtatványok Tára (Collection of Old Prints) Apponyi Hungarica, no. 137. Fig 2. The execution of Dózsa in Paul Ricaut, Die Neu eröffnete Ottomanische Pforte (Augsburg, 1694) vol. 2, p. 106. Library and Information Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Oriental Collection.

Giorgio Politi Fig. 1. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung: Wasserzeichen aus der Wiener Abschrift (Ochsenköpfe mit einer Schlange mit doppelter Kontur). Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Oesterreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, Fol. 3; G. Piccard, Die Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Findbuch II/I, Abteilung XVI, Typ 331, Stuttgart 1966. Fig. 2. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung: Wasserzeichen aus der Brixner Abschrift (Doppeladler) Archivio diocesano Bressanone/Brixen, Archivio aulico/Hofarchiv, N. 16575; C. M. Briquet, Les filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600, Généve 1907, Aigle, Aigle à deux têtes, Tafel Nr. 285; Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Die Wasserzeichensammlung Piccard ( J 340), s. www.piccard-online.de.

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List of Illustrations

Fig. 3. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung, Wiener Abschrift (Detail): Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Oesterreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, 5a. Fig. 4. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung, Wiener Abschrift (Detail): Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Oesterreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, 4b.

Erzsébet Tatai Fig. 1.

András Váci: In Memory of Dózsa I. 1972, etching, 489x296 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.237. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 2. Imre Kovács: In Remembrance of Peasants Revolts I. Execution of György Dózsa, Zincography, 140x196 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.232. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 3. Mihály Gácsi: Lords’ Vengeance, linocut, 331x505 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.230. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 4. Vladimir Szabó: In Memory of Dózsa, pencil, 600x750 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. F. 73.157. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 5. Árpád Bognár: Dózsa III. 1972, etching, 297x396 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.236. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 6. Gábor Pásztor: 1514. 1972, fiber pen, 430x307 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. F 73.149. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 7. Tibor Zala: His Spirit Fire Could not Burn (Dózsa). 1972, colored lithograph, 610x430 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.249. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 8. Endre Sziráki: Humans, Wolves IV. 1972, lithograph, 316x430 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G.73.234. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 9. Gábor Rádóczy Gyarmathy: Hunger. 1970, color etching, 591x480 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.250. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 10. Ferenc Banga: Suspense 1514. 1971, China ink, 420x600 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. F 73.153. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi. Fig. 11. István Bodóczky: Dózsa. 1972, oil, canvas, 150x110 cm. Private property. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

List of Illustrations

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Fig. 12. Dóra Maurer: Looking for Dózsa! 1972, fiberboard, paper, collage, pencil, 62x100 cm. Pécs, Janus Pannonius Múzeum Inv. 74.71. Photo: István Füzi.

Gabriella Erdélyi

Introduction

The Faces of Peasants There remains a vivid picture in academic circles, the larger public and in school books of the peasantry living east of the Elbe as being “exploited” and “overburden” with forced labor. Furthermore, peasants endured this passively as they sank into the state of “second serfdom” at the time when free peasant ownership and personal status emerged in the West due to the active resistance of the peasants there. This notion of a dual Western and Eastern model of European peasantry—the systems of Grundherrschaft versus Gutsherrschaft—reached its most extensive version, both in terms of its geographical scope as well as its theses, during the time when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain.1 In response to this long-established paradigm based on the concept of two enormous regions, over more recent decades the earlier observation—going back to Otto Brunner himself—seems to have become prevalent again: that the immense diversity of peasant conditions in Europe renders any grand-scale comparison meaningless.2 As a result, local studies and national frameworks dominate the field of the history of late medieval and early modern European rural society.3

1 On the historiography of the model see András Vári, “Kelet- és Nyugat-Európa agrártársadalmi dualizmusa – tavalyi hó?,” Korall. Társadalomtörténeti Folyóirat 15–16 (2004): 117–44; Idem, “Wirrwarr der Herrschaftstypen? Herrschaftselemente und regionale Typologien von Herrschaft über Bauern,” in Historie und Eigen-Sinn: Festschrift für Jan Peters zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Axel Lubinski, Thomas Rudert, and Martina Schattkowsky (Weimar: Böhlau, 1997), 115–27. 2 See the results of the project called Potsdamer Studien zur Geschichte der ländlichen Gesellschaft (Böhlau: Cologne–Weimar–Vienna, 2001–2003), 4 vols. For more thoughts on this issue see Katalin Péter’s chapter in this book. 3 As the editors of this collective volume note, the effort at a new comparison of European servile status was induced by the lack of such modern scholarly output. Contributions in the book stress the fundamental local variations of the conditions of serfdom. Paul Freedman and Monique Bourin, eds., Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). This impression is also reinforced by the survey by

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Gabriella Erdélyi

Is there a viable alternative to the oversimplified model shaped by political ideologies and the empiricist narratives of a protean social reality? By its focus on peasant revolts, the present edited volume attempts to narrate, on the one hand, the entangled history of peasants and, on the other hand, to reflect upon the entangled memories of revolts and of their leaders.4 Such an approach is based on the assumption that rebellions—I use the term revolt, rebellion, uprising and unrest as synonyms—render themselves more apt for comparison since they place peasants, otherwise portrayed as passive and exploited in their everyday lives, on the stage amid independent action. In terms of methodology, this volume wishes to promote the move from local, national and sometimes comparative history, which have dominated scholarly literature on European peasantry and peasant revolts, to the history of interactions, transfers and entanglements.5 With regard to the book’s geographical scope, it wishes to put under the spotlight that part of Europe which is always missing from the comparative analyses of European peasant revolts.6 Under the term Central Europe we focus on the region that historians came to call “Habsburg central Europe” of the early modern period: the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, territories of the Bohemian Crown, the Austrian Hereditary Provinces, as well as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The inclusion of northern Italy into our investigation had an a priori justification: the Ottoman expansion threatening Europe on both land and sea, the military and political challenge of which placed additional burdens on and increased the potency of social tensions among social strata in both Central Europe and the Mediterranean.7 It turned out, however,

4

5 6

7

Peter Blickle in this book of the scholarly literature of rural revolts in the last fifty years. See further literature there. For the concept of entangled history or histoire croisée see Shalini Randeria, “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities and Legal pluralism in PostColonial India,” in Unraveling Ties. From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, ed. Yehuda Elkana et al. (Frankfurt: Campus, 2002), 284–311; Bénédicte Zimmermann and Michael Werner, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Feflexivity,” History and Theory 45 (2006): 30–50. On the concept cultural transfer in history writing and the advantages of this approach compared to comparative history see Michael Espagne, “Au delà du comparatisme,” in idem, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), 35–49. Hugues Neveux most typically writes about England, France and the German territories under Europe: Hugues Neveux, Révoltes Paysannes En Europe (XIVe-XVIIe Siècle) (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997). The terms Central Europe designates the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in Peter Blickle, ed., Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Peter Blickle’s chapter in this book is an exception in this regard: he includes the Mediterranean (Italy and Spain) and also the post-communist countries of what he calls Eastern Europe (Hungary, Czech Republic) into his summary of European revolts. See for example the role of the extraordinary tax called Turkish Aid (Türkenhilfe) as a factor that made the peasants feel that the social status quo had been damaged before 1525 and also in

Introduction

21

that we have an argument more relevant to our social historical perspective. Marco Gentile’s case study of the 1462 peasant uprising in the territory of Piacenza provides an exceptional insight into what has been deemed to be structurally impossible by experts of Italian rural protests: the alliance between peasants and urban commoners.8 The Gemeiner Mann of the Mediterranean sounds, therefore, like an apt title for a future European research project. This volume is an endeavor to unravel the ways in which ideas, rituals, people, texts and images related to revolts migrated and met in Europe and how their interaction mutually shaped them. The identification of the transfers and adaptations between the ideas and practices of rebellious peasants in Europe is facilitated by the chosen perspective. The authors who have contributed to this volume sought to narrate the histories of peasant resistance from the perspective of the actors—the peasants themselves.9 In historical narratives peasants most often appear as the passive victims of great historical processes, such as the rivalry between territorial states and landlords for control of the serfs, who from that angle appeared to be the “Leibeigene” of their overlords.10 Historians who are perhaps more interested in longue durée processes than the world of peasants investigated the ways in which peasants contributed to the making of the modern state, which has become the mainstream approach of peasant revolts in the last two or three decades.11 According to these investigations, the rebellion of peasants against the state effectively served to advance the process of centralization.12 Although the approach interprets itself as a model of state-building from below,

8

9 10 11

12

Moravia in 1530 (on the latter see Martin Rothkegel’s essay in this volume). The role of the anti-Ottoman crusade in the outbreak of the rural rebellion is most obvious in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1514. See the argument of Samuel Cohn, who established a divide between Europe north (France and Flanders) and south of the Alps (Italy) along the existence versus lack of city–country cooperation. Samuel K. Cohn, Lust for Liberty. The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 157–76. On the centrality of the concept of experience in the variant attempts of the transcultural reorientation of historical scholarship see for example Michel Espagne, “Sur les limites du comparatisme en histoire culturelle,” Genèses 17 (1994): 112–21. As an example for this perspective see R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, first edn. 1979), 88–91. See the volume on peasant resistance within the project entitled The Origins of the Modern State in Europe. Peter Blickle, ed., Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein, and Jon Mathieu, eds., Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe, 1300–1900 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Peter Rauscher and Martin Scheutz, eds., Die Stimme der ewigen Verlierer? Aufstände, Revolten und Revolutionen in den österreichischen Ländern (ca.1450– 1815) (Vienna–Munich: Oldenbourg–Böhlau, 2013). Blickle, ed., Resistance, passim, for example 337; Blockmans, Holenstein and Mathieu, eds., Empowering Interactions, 218.

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it hardly goes beyond the Tillyan thesis of “wars made states,”13 extending its explanatory value to peasant wars, and thus remains a top-down narrative of the peasant world. And although its narrative, based on an evolutionary conception of history, may seem persuasive to modern readers, the rebels would have been surprised by the statement that they were, in fact, building the state from below when they demanded freedom via armed uprising. The application of this stateoriented perspective is anachronistic in an age when, for the peasants, authority was essentially represented by the landlord and thus peasants never rebelled against the king, but against his wicked advisors as well as the nobility and the Church as a feudal institution.14 Contemporary peasants would be surprised not only by this image of the homo politicus, but also by that of the homo oeconomicus, which they had been considered in the 1930s. According to the latter concept, the peasants organized their household and economy based exclusively on rational and economic considerations, thus being driven solely by the aim of maximizing the profit derived from the difference between the gross yield of their economic activity and the taxes levied on it. The landlord, from this perspective, enters the life of the peasant only in the role of the “economic exploiter.”15 Evidently, the high price to be paid for comparativism is oversimplification. The present volume aims to avoid such perils through its focus on the lived experiences of contemporary agents. As a first step in this endeavor, we return the given names to the protagonists of our narratives, even if we are overly accustomed to books on the peasantry that do not use any personal names. Dispensing with this anonymity, we wish to portray peasants as people with faces and personalities; and more than that, as actors possessing independent spheres of action, personal relationships with their landlords, private thoughts and even emotions. The (loose) personal subjection and the (negligible quantity of) labor services, or robot, was onerous for Hungarian peasants primarily in an emotional sense, which made them invest an immense amount of money and know-how into purchasing freedoms for themselves, as Katalin Péter argues in this volume. Péter’s thesis represents a radical rejection of that which has become accepted knowledge of the so-called second serfdom in East Elbia and in fact reminds the reader of the embarrassment of the wealthy Dutch during the same time period as portrayed vividly by Simon Shama. 13 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992, revised edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 14 Rauscher and Scheutz formulate this problem of perspective, though nevertheless regard it to be legitimate due to other aspects that remain unspecified. Rauscher and Scheutz, eds., Die Stimme der ewigen Verlierer?, 23–24. 15 Cf. Wilhelm Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur in Mitteleuropa vom 13. zum 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg–Berlin: Parey, 1935).

Introduction

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This volume contends that the “political” moments of armed collective resistance and the everyday lives of peasants seemingly dominated by their “economic” activities can be better grasped in the process of Herrschaft, in which—if considered as a social practice—the relations between peasants and their overlords are shaped within the dynamic of their everyday communication and interactions.16 From this angle, their everyday lives and exceptional moments of armed rebellion appear as part of the social practice of “negotiating freedom.”17 This is highlighted with exceptional clarity in the chapter by Marco Gentile in this volume regarding the Rebellion of Piacenza in 1462, in which the author pinpoints the pivotal role that rituals of negotiation played in the armed conflict and speaks of a limited or regulated use of force. Gentile argues, moreover, that the well-known fact that in Southern Europe and in particular Italy there were relatively few rural revolts in the fifteenth century can be seen as evidence of the effective use on the part of peasants of existing legal channels for negotiating freedom. The concept of freedom refers not to a human right,18 as it evolved in later discourses of freedom, but to a practical matter, most typically an exemption from a duty tied to the peasant plot. According to S. A. Eddie’s investigation of rural life in Prussia, during the period under discussion such exemptions entailed ad hoc deals in which peasants altered their economic and personal status.19 For the individual, freedom in its fullness meant the possession of a plot free from any taxes and services, in other words, reaching noble status.20 The status of nobility could be purchased with money or earned through education or the provision of services, just as it could through armed uprising. A different interpretation of the demand of peasants for freedom also appears in this volume,21 which shows that more work should be done in this field in the future.

16 Cf. Alf Lüdtke, “Einleitung: Herrschaft als sozale Praxis,” in idem, Herrschaft als soziale Praxis. Historische und sozialanthropologische Studien, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Insituts für Geschichte 91 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 9–63. See also detailed case studies of other members of the Göttingen school (David Warren Sabean, Hans Medick, and Jürgen Schlumbohm), which are strongly influenced by social anthropology. 17 Thus I propose to extend the concept used by Katalin Péter in this volume referring only to their everyday negotiations aimed at elevating their social status. 18 See the contrary argumentation of Samuel Cohn with regard to the aims of late medieval revolts in Italy, France and Flanders in his book Lust for Liberty. 19 S. A. Eddie, Freedom’s Price: Serfdom, Subjection and Reform in Prussia, 1648–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1. 20 As interpreted by Katalin Péter in this book. 21 See the chapter in the present volume by Peter Blickle, who argues that the slogan of freedom represented the effort to abolish “Leibeigenschaft” and also to extend communal political rights. Commoners in North Italy aimed to redress justice (overturned by new taxes) without changing the social order, as shown by Marco Gentile in this volume.

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When did rebellion break out? From our anthropological perspective, at moments when the mutually expected reciprocity of human relations was undermined.22 If this premise is accepted, it logically follows that this happened in both the West and in the East, in both the Grundherrschaft and Gutsherrschaft zones of Europe. The most recent investigator of rural life in Prussia, generally considered as the archetype of Eastern exploitation, asserts that Herrschaft in the Gutsherrschaft zone did not represent unilateral exploitation, but a mutually beneficial relationship, “a more balanced system of mutual rights and responsibilities than the received wisdom has allowed … where peasants were well capable of defending their rights.”23 In this volume, Katalin Péter also describes Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a Gutsherrschaft zone. She uses the category of Gutsherrschaft in its limited, original sense introduced by traditional German history writing, thus denoting the relation in which peasants became subjected to the manor through their possession of a plot (Gutsuntertänigkeit).24 Péter therefore preserves the concept which originates from contemporary usage and discards its extended interpretation, which constructed a homogenous social system from it whose central criteria are commonly held to be the workings of the seigneurial Gutswirtschaft, the labor of the serfs for the lord and the fragility of their personal rights and of their possessions. On the contrary, in this volume one can read of the hereditary nature of the peasant tenant plot, the far-reaching personal freedom of Hungarian peasants and of their purposeful actions.

Shared Ideas and Experiences Revolts were sparked off when these mutual relations between peasants and lords were damaged and the lords did not fulfill their obligations from the perspective of the peasants. The language of negotiation, which escalated into conflict amid the disappointment resulting from its failure, was very often that of religion in the first half of the sixteenth century, when the majority of armed conflicts discussed in this book took place. If we want to take seriously the actions and thoughts of peasants, this deserves special attention. Therefore, the second section of this volume (Part II) is dedicated to issues related to the role of religion in revolts. With regard to this subject, the edited volume entitled Religion and Rural Revolt signifies an important milestone, which, extraordinarily, discussed the role of 22 See also Blockmans, Holenstein, and Mathieu, eds., Empowering Interactions, 170. 23 Eddie, Freedom’s Price, 88. 24 Georg Friedrich Knapp, Die Bauern-Befreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preußens, vol. 1 (Leipzig: n.p. 1887), 22–23.

Introduction

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religion in peasant rebellions in a global context already in 1982.25 The research of the Hungarian medievalist, Jeno˝ Szu˝cs (1928–88), who enjoyed international fame at the time appears to have influenced the choice of themes in the edited volume.26 At the beginning of the 1970s, Szu˝cs expressed radically new viewpoints concerning the revolt of 1514 in Hungary. The results of his research were fully published in Hungarian and partially in German in 1972.27 Szu˝cs was the first historian to divert attention from the economic and social contexts to the religious rhetoric of texts possibly produced by the rebels themselves—thus placing him a little before research concerning the German Peasants’ War of 1525, which gathered new impetus with the anniversary of 1975.28 His central concern was the question of who had translated the orthodox Christian ideology of the crusade against the Ottomans into a religio-political language (which he called “popular crusade ideology”) that mobilized the masses and how they had done so. Szu˝cs identified the young, “apostate” Observant Franciscan friars in the role of military leaders and as forgers of the central idea of the revolt, which claimed that the consecrated army of crusaders, being commissioned not only by the pope, but by God himself, must fight not against the Ottoman-Turks, but against the “infidel” nobility that failed to perform their duty. Szu˝cs reached this insight through nuanced philological readings: on the one hand, he identified the rhetoric of religious mysticism and apocalyptic ideas in the texts produced by the Observant Franciscans in the Kingdom of Hungary; while on the other hand, he noticed that the centers of the revolt—as well as the regions which reacted most intensely to evangelical ideas a decade later—coincided with the location of major cloisters of the Observant Franciscans. Szu˝cs spoke of the ambivalence inherent in the spirituality of the latter order: the social criticism preached from the pulpit on the basis of the sermons of the leaders of the Observant Franciscans, Oswaldus de Lasko and Pelbartus de Temeswar, combined with the spiritual traditions of the order easily developed into a rebellion against all kinds of authority. This, according to Szu˝cs, accounts for the fact that while the Observant Franciscans were officially entrusted to preach the crusade in the name of the pope and the king, the spiritual and military leaders of the revolt against the 25 János M. Bak and Gerhard Benecke, eds., Religion and Rural Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). 26 On the oeuvre of Szu˝cs and its reception in more detail on the twentieth anniversary of his death see Gábor Gyáni, “Szu˝cs Jeno˝, a magányos történetíró,” Forrás 40, no. 6 (2008): 13–17. 27 On his works concerning the 1514 revolt see the study of Pál Ács here. In German: Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Die Ideologie des Bauernkrieges,” in Aus der Geschichte der Ostmitteleuropäischen Bauernbewegungen im 16.–17. Jahrhundert, ed. Gusztáv Heckenast (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1977), 157–88. 28 Szu˝cs’s writings on the 1514 revolt were occasioned by official commemorations in 1972 of the 500-year anniversary of the “invented” birth year of Dózsa. See more on these commemorations in the chapter by Pál Ács in this volume.

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nobility came from the same religious order.29 These insights, very novel in the 1970s, would merit further introduction and analysis since their reception by international historical scholarship has been rather minimal.30 Nevertheless, his observation that the popular public sphere of religion, revolt and reformation was organized in the early sixteenth-century Kingdom of Hungary by Franciscan preaching has become accepted knowledge in the field of Hungarian historical scholarship, a circumstance reflected in some of the studies in this volume. Jeno˝ Szu˝cs thus established the continuity between the peasant revolt and the Protestant Reformation in Hungary. This continuity was provided—thus again foreshadowing a subsequent tendency in international historical discourse31— by the Observant reform movement of mendicant orders, most importantly the Franciscans in Hungary.32 Although the dominant role of Observant Franciscans in the first generation of evangelical preachers has by now been questioned,33 the close connection between the Hungarian Peasant War of 1514 and the Protestant Reformation has become an established premise: both are considered to be religious movements of the common man (szegény község in Hungarian). The recent historical narrative of the rural reformation in Hungary begins with the Dózsa rebellion, since, as the author argues, it was based on popular belief in Church tenets, namely the system of penitence and salvation. The cruel retribution after the rebellion was suppressed also communicated its message in

29 Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “A ferences obszervancia és az 1514. évi parasztháború. Egy kódex tanúsága,” Levéltári Közlemények 43 (1972): 213–63, here 235–36, 243–44; Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409–35, here 426. 30 This gap is partially filled by Pál Ács’s chapter in this volume regarding the intellectual genesis of Szu˝cs’s thoughts on the Dózsa revolt and will be more fully addressed soon by a forthcoming collection to be published by CEU Press of Szu˝cs’s studies in English translation with an introduction by Gábor Gyáni, Gábor Klaniczay, and Balázs Trencsényi. 31 On different aspects of the continuity between the late medieval Observant reform movement and sixteenth-century reformations see Kaspar Elm, ed., Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, Berliner Historische Studien, 14; Ordensstudien, 6 (Berlin: Drucker & Humblot, 1989); Dipple, Geoffrey, Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation: Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996); Rex, Richard, “The Friars in the English Reformation,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Johannes Schilling, Gewesene Mönche. Lebensgeschichten in der Reformation (Munich, 1990). 32 The possibility of the link between Observant Franciscan preaching and revolt is also raised in the case of the rebellion of the common man (alliance of urban and village ordinary men) in the territory of Piacenza in Lombardy. See the study by Marco Gentile in the present volume. 33 And other aspects of the continuity have been suggested, like that of the typical career of humanist canons turning into radical Protestant preachers. Cf. Zoltán Csepregi, A reformáció nyelve. Tanulmányok a magyarországi reformáció elso˝ negyedszázadának vizsgálata alapján (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2013), passim.

Introduction

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Christian symbols.34 In other words, both parties—the ruling élite and the peasants—understood and used that language.35 Peasant resistance and Protestant Reformation, due to its inversed chronology in comparison to the events in Hungary, is more obviously intertwined with the German Peasants’ War of 1525. It has been a unanimously held view for decades now that the German Peasants’ War signified the reformation of the common man: the norm of scripture provided universal legitimation to the previously fragmented, local and secular agendas of small communities and thus galvanized social movements.36 By contrast, the reception of evangelical ideas among the Hungarian rural population, both villagers and residents of small towns, seems not to have taken place within the context of the process of domination. As has been recently proposed, after the open conflict between lords and peasants in the 1514 peasant revolt, the issue of religion became neither a tool with which to elicit the obedience of subjects nor a means of everyday peasant resistance in the sixteenth century.37 Because landlords expressed little or no interest in the religious practices of their serfs (what kind of services they attended and who performed them), the latter were able to freely choose their religion. The freedom of religious choice meant that some serfs embraced the new tenets, while others refused them. If this is accepted, then the circumstance that some communities were concerned with issues of religion and acted autonomously regarding them, while others seem to have been disinterested and passive, can presumably be interpreted in the context of intra-communal/locality politics. The above interpretation of the rural reformation as a predominantly religious event in Hungary needs to be tested by further empirical research. The scholarly evaluations, however, of the religious profile of the Dózsa revolt are highly controversial. Some authors stress that an originally orthodox crusade-religion provided the stimulus, social integration and symbolism for what they deem to be a social revolt.38 In 1514 peasants fought for their “salvation” under the sign of the cross in the name of the pope, the king and God against the “infidel” landlords and tax collectors with the battle cry “Jesus.” Others stress the revolt’s revolutionary character, placing it in line with the German Peasants’ War fought in the name of “Godly law.”39 Additionally, Szu˝cs, as we have seen, stressed the 34 On the Christocentric symbolism of the public execution of peasant leaders see Gabriella Erdélyi’s study in the present volume. 35 Katalin Péter, A reformáció: kényszer vagy választás (Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, 2004), 48–50. 36 Robert W. Scribner, The German Reformation (London: Macmillan, 1986); Peter Blickle, Die Reformation im Reich (Stuttgart: UTB Ulmer, 1992, 2nd edn.), 122–23. 37 Péter, A reformáció, 108−17. 38 Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400−1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 20−22, 69−75. 39 See Peter Blickle’s essay in this volume.

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vital role of Franciscan spiritualism. All in all, the general claim of Norman Housley that both traditional and innovative religion could work as stimuli for armed revolts, providing its form, language and symbols, seems to be wellgrounded. A more precise understanding of the ideas shared by the peasant, lesser noble and clerical participants in the Dózsa revolt is, however, a task to be completed in the course of further research based on expanded source material. This expansion of source material is to be understood in terms of the qualitative nature of the sources involved, since we have so far had access to very little that was produced by the rebels themselves and it is common scholarly practice to deduce from sources produced by the powerful what peasants believed and planned. It is, however, possible to retrieve rebel voices from the “archives of repression”40 as the analysis of petitions from clerical rebels to the pope requesting his pardon for committing homicide and partaking in warfare included in the present volume attest.41 This volume aims to identify interactions and adaptations among the cultural patterns that governed the practices of negotiations—peaceful and armed— between authorities and their subjects. Martin Rothkegel describes in detail the process of how the Anabaptist craftsmen of Moravia translated some of the violent and rebellious attitudes of the peasants of 1525 into their urban milieu based on the principle of biblical peace. The author convincingly argues based on newly revealed documentation that in the religious culture of the Hutterite Anabaptists, certain subversive concepts and rebellious practices (the rule of God’s word, community of goods, banning the clergy, refusal to pay war tax) that had their origins in the revolutionary dynamic of German Peasants’ War were reinterpreted and transformed into enduring religious principles and practices. Fundamentally, Rothkegel proposes the thesis that the Hutterites practiced a symbolic form of “permanent rebellion,” thus going beyond the centuries-old dichotomy of historical representation that either portrayed Anabaptists as politically subversive rebels or, to the contrary, as religious idealists. Zoltán Csepregi’s study provides another interesting case study regarding the way communal rituals of resistance were transferred across the borders of politics and religion just as well as they were across those of social strata. Csepregi explores the different appearances of the Bund tradition symbolized by the Bundschuh,42 well-known from the rural areas of the German territories before and during the 40 The concept was coined by Dominique Julia, “La religion – histoire religieuse,” in Faire de l’historie, vol. 2, Nouvelles Approches, ed. Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora (Paris, 1973), 137– 67, here 147. 41 See the chapter by Gabriella Erdélyi in this volume. 42 More recently on the old theme see Peter Blickle and Thomas Adam, eds., Bundschuh: Untergrombach 1502, das unruhige Reich und die Revolutionierbarkeit Europas (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004.)

Introduction

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rebellion of 1525, in the Kingdom of Hungary during the early Protestant Reformation. More concretely, he looks at the cases in which urban communities forged a life-long alliance with their spiritual leader against the interference of Roman Catholic authorities (kings or bishops) if these exerted pressure in order to remove “heretic” preachers from towns. This chapter most importantly demonstrates that such Bunds were formed by the German-speaking citizens of Moravia and Upper Hungary (today Slovakia) already before Thomas Müntzer and others did so during the German Peasants’ War; moreover, it proves through concrete example that this communal ritual of resistance crossed both linguistic and ethnic borders. Hungarian-speaking communities also implemented reformation ideas through their insistence on choosing their own pastors. Obviously, the alliance between the community and the leader elected by it also served to communicate with authorities and to regulate the relationship with them. This study essentially reinforces the validity of studying the tools of negotiation between subjects and authorities within the dynamic of the universal and the local.

Entangled Memories The interpretation of revolts as events of collective violence also highlights the experiences of participants, both rebels and rulers. Authors who contributed to this volume seek to answer questions related to the experiences of collective violence among participants and the ways in which individuals and groups used remembering and forgetting as a means of forging an identity for themselves. Instead of the narratives of the powerful that became the normative stories of history, the perspective of the rebels more forcefully uncovers the everyday faces of revolt.43 The interpretation of the public executions of peasant leaders, whom the powerful regarded as traitors, using the tools of cultural history aims to decipher the contemporary meanings and messages that these public rituals may have carried instead of regarding them simply as the manifestation of barbarism and extreme brutality.44 The comparative analysis of the brutal public executions of the Hungarian and the Croatian peasant leaders, György Dózsa and Matija Gubec, illuminates not only the meanings that these acts carried to contemporary actors and spectators, but also shows how the memories of the two legendary martyrs intermingled in early modern cultural memory.45 The historical interpretations of late medieval and early modern instances of violence are closely intertwined with inquiries into the collective memory of 43 See for example the chapters by Natasˇa Sˇtefanec and Gabriella Erdélyi in this book. 44 See the piece by Natasˇa Sˇtefanec in this volume. 45 Ibid.

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revolts, the subsequent representations of violence and functions in the process of identity-formation of the same representations. Thus, contributors examine how later narrators used the rebels for their own purposes, in other words the subsequent representation of the revolts and their leaders in images, literature and historiography comes into focus. Most of the cultural-historical approaches of memory and violence aspire to render more comprehensible the impact of twentieth-century total wars on the individual, community, state-building and the economy.46 One of the central topics is, for example, how individuals experienced, interpreted and processed the diverse phenomena of collective, often extreme, violence. The personal narratives are usually considered as memory practices, which, in close interaction with public memory discourses, served to present and maintain individual identity. The different forms of textual representation—in literature, the press or in history writing—of war and violence and their usage in the course of their visual representation represents another key issue. The study of the memory wars over the monopolization of the interpretation of past events is also important, since such wars may have a shaping influence on the making of the myths of collective cultural memory.47 The cultural history of early modern memory and violence also concentrates on the theme of wars and rebellions.48 Such a focus is possible since a relatively large number of diaries and memoirs, written by both soldiers and civilians in this period, have been preserved and serve as a tool to examine how individuals perceived and processed the horrors of war.49 Moreover, as a consequence of the 46 See for example Stefan Goebel and Derek Keene, eds., Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Jay M. Winter, Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the 20th Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006). 47 How this happened after the Dózsa revolt is addressed by Gabriella Erdélyi in this volume. The chapter by Gergely Tóth shows, moreover, that the humanist historical tradition, at the beginning of which stands the contemporary author Stephanus Taurinus, had an enormous influence on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical representations and the public memory of the revolt. 48 To cite only a few important examples: Hans Medick, “Introduction. The Thirty Years War in Experience and Memory,” in idem and Benjamin Marschke, Experiencing the Thirty Years War. A Brief History with Documents (Boston–New York: Bedford–St Martin’s, 2013), 1–28; John Gibney, The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013); Alain Hugon, Naples insurgée. De l’événement à la mémoire, 1647–1648 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires Rennes, 2011); Philip Benedict, “Shaping the Memory of the French Wars of Religion. The First Centuries,” in Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe, ed. J. Pollmann, E. Kuijpers, J. Müller, and J. van der Steen (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 111–25. 49 See, for example, Benigna von Krusenstjern and Hans Medick, Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe. Der Dreißigjährige Krieg aus der Nähe, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte l48 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); Yuval Noah Harari, Renaissance Military Memoirs. War, History, and Identity, 1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004).

Introduction

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printing revolution, Europe was flooded with richly illustrated leaflets and reports on wars and revolts that were designed to meet the demands of a growing reading public hungry for all kinds of news and horrors. While pamphlets and woodcuts depicting actual warfare served to construct and maintain the image of the brutal and barbarous enemy, the visual representations of revolts with their central image of the exemplary and severe retributions exacted upon rebels also delivered powerful messages to their subjects.50 The image of the Hungarian peasant leader, Dózsa, with a burning iron-crown on his head and silently suffering his torture circulated throughout Europe on the title sheets of leaflets.51 The rebels who turned into martyrs can thus be regarded as the characteristic themes of an early modern “transnational memory.”52 Erdélyi’s chapter seeks to answer the questions how the self-image of society in early modern Hungary was shaped by the textual and visual representations of Dózsa as martyr. The author argues that in the German territories the identities of rebel and Lutheran became entangled because the 1525 peasant war was instrumentalized in the construction of Catholic and Protestant identities; by contrast, in Hungary, instead of the figure of the rebel, the extreme brutality of the death of the “peasant king” Dózsa came to epitomize later memories of the revolt. It was the suggestive vision of the humanist writers which most influentially shaped the historical representations of coming centuries—therefore the deconstruction of this tradition, the identification of the intertextual references of the humanist narratives of the revolt, surfaces recurrently in various chapters. Seen through this prism, the savage and audacious figure of Dózsa and his prototypes in antiquity—Caesar, Catilina and Rufinus—become visible. However, at the moment of his death the demeanor of the peasant leader changes: in humanist dramaturgies he faces his torments with stoic self-assurance or Christ-

50 Dietmar Peil, “Strafe und Ritual. Zur Darstellungen von Straftaten und Bestrafungen im illustrierten Flugblatt,” in Wahrnehmungsgeschichte und Wissensdiskurs im illustrierten Flugblatt der Frühen Neuzeit (1450–1700), ed. Wolfgang Harms and Alfred Messerli (Basel: Schwabe, 2002), 465–89; and Péter Tóth G., “A lator teste és a lator test. A bu˝nösség kultúrája a kora újkori Magyarországon és a büntetés-emlékeztetés problémája,” Korall. Társadalomtudományi Folyóirat 5−6 (2001): 141−62. 51 Series of pamphlets published in German cities in late 1514: Zeckel Jorg, “Die auffrur so geschehen ist im Vngerlandt mit dem creutzern vnnd auch darbey wie man der creutzer haubtman hat gefangen vnnd getoedt [1514],” in Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV, ed. Antonius Fekete Nagy et al. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1979), no. 227. On the interpretation of the imagery of the public execution of the Hungarian peasant leader see Marianna D. Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary in 1514? The Dózsa-Passion,” in European Iconography East and West: Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference, ed. György E. Szo˝nyi (Brill: Leiden, 1996), 91–108. 52 Dagmar Freist: “Lost in Time and Space? Glocal Memoryscapes in the Early Modern World,” in Memory before Modernity, ed. Pollmann, Kuijpers, Müller and Steen, 203–22.

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like humility.53 Paradoxically, the religious dimension yet to be found in humanist narratives—even if it is a game with mock passions54—sinks under the narrative surface of the revolt stories in the age of confessional rivalry.55 Dózsa as a Christian martyr resurfaces with overwhelming force in the literature of the first half of the nineteenth century,56 after which the progressive, leftist tradition would soon fabricate from the leader of the 1514 peasant rebellion the figure of an ecstatic revolutionary. The plebeian revolutionaries then were endowed with a coherent social program by Marxist history writing. In this book some of these myths are also deconstructed.57 The multi-faced and ambiguous figure of Dózsa constructed by humanist writers and the space left open for interpretation, as pointed out by Farkas Gábor Kiss in this volume, serves also as a tool for putting literature on the market, which enhanced livelihood of the author in the world of patron-client relationships. The chapter by Pál Ács also calls attention to the significance of the close connection between the author’s identity and his interpretation of the past. Ács, writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, thinks that Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, when he wrote about the Dózsa rebellion in the early 1970s, was primarily interested in the relationship between intellectuals and mass movements. Ács argues that Szu˝cs was capable of placing the figure of the Observant Franciscan friars in the role of the radical “intellectual” and the anti-establishment “opposition,” since the Franciscan Observant movement was in many respects analogous to the 1968 generation, most importantly in the unsteadiness of their ideologies. Following the investigations of early modern representations, Part IV of this volume is dedicated to an analysis of the ways in which the figures of various peasant leaders were used by nineteenth and twentieth century literature and historical scholarship as well as by the visual arts. Márton Szilágyi’s chapter is important because, in addition to its insight into the image of Dózsa in the literature of the 1840s, it entails crucial consequences with regard to the working of cultural memory. This chapter contests the notion that approaches to the past emerge one after the other, in other words, the evolutionary concept of public memory. In the “experimental laboratory” of the literature of the first half of the 53 In his study, Gergely Tóth stresses the influence of the Sallustian epic pattern and the figure of Catilina on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historians. The complex intertextual motifs of the epic by Stephanus Taurinus (Stauromachia, 1519) is analyzed by Farkas Gábor Kiss in this book. 54 This is suggested by Farkas Gábor Kiss based on the cover illustration of the epic by Taurinus. 55 For more details on this see the chapter by Gergely Tóth. 56 For more detail on this see the study by Márton Szilágyi in this volume. 57 Giorgio Politi makes the plausible case that the leader of the Tyrolian peasants in 1525, Michael Gaismair, cannot be the author of the written program of the revolt, generally known as Gaismair’s Landesordnung. On Müntzer’s and Dózsa’s social programs in Marxist narratives of the peasant uprisings see Márta Fata’s essay in this volume.

Introduction

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nineteenth century Szilágyi shows that collective memory is always polyphonic, since earlier memory practices do not disappear with the emergence of new ways of relating to the past, but coexist with new practices.58 The conceptual framework usually described as “conservative,” which envisioned Dózsa as a beast and mass murderer and the revolt led by him as a period of anarchy leading directly to the collapse of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, endured in the nineteenth century even after the emergence of positive, “liberal” images of Dózsa. Márta Fata contributed to the volume with an important case study about the entangled public memories of the Hungarian and the German peasant wars, which—as she argues—can be traced to Engels, who in 1850 discussed the Hungarian peasant revolt as an antecedent of the 1525 “plebeian revolution” and thus—fairly exceptionally—put the Hungarian event on the map of Europe. Some characteristic similarities between the public memory of Müntzer and Dózsa are identified: they both appear in the middle of the nineteenth century in the role of the first revolutionaries as well as Christian martyrs.59 However, Fata’s article stresses their divergent roles in the legitimation of communist regimes. While Dózsa remained the leader of peasants and thus did not become part of the canonized national pantheon in Hungary, in Eastern Germany, which had to justify its existence as an independent state, Müntzer became a founding father of the state and a national hero. We furthermore receive an exciting insight into the process in which individual and collective memories are smoothed into basic stories of normative claim, capable of forming the experience of present and future alike. The commemorations occasioned by anniversaries form especially intensive periods in the construction of national identity and thus some of the contributions in this volume focus on them.60 From the study of László Szörényi we learn that already on the occasion of the first centenary of the Hungarian peasant revolt in 1614, the rebellion was recalled by memory agents as one of the national movements for independence. Similar to this period following the national movement led by István Bocskai, Dózsa was a prime candidate to serve as a national hero and leader of the oppressed following the repression of Hungary’s war of independence in 1848–49 and during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution as 58 Cf. Judith Pollmann and Erika Kuijpers, “Introduction. On the Early Modernity of Early Modern Memory,” in Memory before Modernity, ed. Pollmann, Kuijpers, Müller, and Steen, 1–2, 22–23. 59 On the literary representation of Dózsa’s death as Christian conversion see Márton Szilágyi’s study. 60 Cf. David Cressy, “National Memory in Early Modern England,” in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 61–73. See also the chapter by Erzsébet Tatai on the commemorations performed by the visual arts on the invented 500 anniversary in 1972. On the commemorations by historians see the essay by Ács.

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well.61 That Dózsa was not finally cast in this role was due to power games related to memory politics during each period. Finally, the central objective of this volume is to provide a more nuanced historical conception of peasant revolts. Instead of the binary model of seigneurial oppression versus peasant resistance, it depicts revolts within the relational paradigm of Herrschaft, described here as a process of negotiation between lords and their subjects. From this perspective, revolts do not appear as functional disorders and events of extreme violence and senseless brutality, but rather as the negotiation of freedom pursued with other means and with another language. Moreover, commoners living in both towns and villages are put on stage as active agents with independent spheres of action, having the ability to assert their own interests. Consequently, the contours of the frontier that sharply divided the commoners of Europe into Western and Eastern types have begun to fade. Moreover, though our focus on transfers and reinterpretations of a variety of objects—communal rituals, religious concepts, memory practices, and so on—that governed the practices of negotiations, both peaceful and armed, between authorities and their subjects and the way in which these crossed the boundaries between social strata, languages and political borders, we wish to contribute to the making of a European history of peasants and armed conflicts with their overlords.

Bibliography Abel, Wilhelm. Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur in Mitteleuropa vom 13. zum 19. Jahrhundert. Hamburg–Berlin: Parey, 1935. Bak, M. János, and Gerhard Benecke, eds. Religion and Rural Revolt. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. Birnbaum, Marianna D. “A Mock Calvary in 1514? The Dózsa-Passion.” In European Iconography East and West: Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference, edited by György E. Szo˝nyi, 91–108. Brill: Leiden, 1996. Blickle, Peter, and Thomas Adam, eds. Bundschuh: Untergrombach 1502, das unruhige Reich und die Revolutionierbarkeit Europas. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004. – ed. Resistance, Representation and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) – ed. The Origins of the Modern State in Europe, Resistance, Representation and Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. – Die Reformation im Reich. 2. edition. Stuttgart: UTB Ulmer, 1992. Blockmans, Wim, André Holenstein, and Jon Mathieu, eds. Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe, 1300–1900. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 61 For more on that see Fata’s chapter.

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Cohn, Samuel K. Lust for Liberty. The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200– 1425. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Cressy, David. “National Memory in Early Modern England.” In Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, edited by John R. Gillis, 61–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Dipple, Geoffrey. Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation: Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996. Eddie, S. A. Freedom’s Price: Serfdom, Subjection and Reform in Prussia, 1648–1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Elm, Kaspar, ed. Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen. Berliner Historische Studien 14. Ordensstudien 6. Berlin: Drucker & Humblot, 1989. Espagne, Michael. “Au delà du comparatisme.” In idem, Les transferts culturels francoallemands, 35–49. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999. Espagne, Michel. “Sur les limites du comparatisme en histoire culturelle.” Genèses 17 (1994): 112–21. Evans, R. J. W. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Freedman, Paul, and Monique Bourin, eds., Forms of servitude in Northern and Central Europe: decline, resistance, and expansion. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Gibney, John. The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013. Goebel, Stefan, and Derek Keene, eds. Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Gyáni, Gábor. “Szu˝cs Jeno˝, a magányos történetíró” [ Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, the Lonely Historian]. Forrás 40, no. 6 (2008): 13–17. Harari, Yuval Noah. Renaissance Military Memoirs. War, History, and Identity, 1450–1600. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004. Housley, Norman. Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400−1536. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Hugon, Alain. Naples insurgée. De l’événement à la mémoire, 1647–1648. Rennes: Presses Universitaires Rennes, 2011. Julia, Dominique. “La religion – histoire religieuse.” In Faire de l’historie. Vol. 2. Nouvelles Approches, edited by Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, 137–67. Paris: Gallimard, 1973. Knapp, Georg Friedrich. Die Bauern-Befreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preußens. Vol. 1. Leipzig: n.p. 1887. Lüdtke, Alf. Herrschaft als soziale Praxis. Historische und sozialanthropologische Studien. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Insituts für Geschichte 91. Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991. Medick, Hans. “Introduction. The Thirty Years War in Experience and Memory.” In idem and Benjamin Marschke. Experiencing the Thirty Years War. A Brief History with Documents, 1–28. Boston–New York: Bedford–St Martin’s, 2013. Neveux, Hugues. Révoltes Paysannes En Europe (XIVe-XVIIe Siècle). Paris: Albin Michel, 1997. Peil, Dietmar. “Strafe und Ritual. Zur Darstellungen von Straftaten und Bestrafungen im illustrierten Flugblatt.” In Wahrnehmungsgeschichte und Wissensdiskurs im illustrierten

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Flugblatt der Frühen Neuzeit (1450–1700), edited by Wolfgang Harms and Alfred Messerli, 465–89. Basel: Schwabe, 2002. Péter, Katalin. A reformáció: kényszer vagy választás? [The Reformation: Coercion or Free Choice?]. Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, 2004. Pollmann, J., E. Kuijpers, J. Müller, and J. van der Steen, eds. Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Potsdamer Studien zur Geschichte der ländlichen Gesellschaft. 4 vols. Böhlau: Cologne– Weimar–Vienna, 2001–2003. Randeria, Shalini. “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities and Legal pluralism in Post-Colonial India.” In Unraveling Ties. From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, edited by Yehuda Elkana et al., 284–311. Frankfurt: Campus, 2002. Rauscher, Peter, and Martin Scheutz, eds. Die Stimme der ewigen Verlierer? Aufstände, Revolten und Revolutionen in den österreichischen Ländern (ca.1450–1815). Vienna– Munich: Oldenbourg–Böhlau, 2013). Rex, Richard. “The Friars in the English Reformation.” In The Beginnings of English Protestantism, edited by Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, 38–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Schilling, Johannes. Gewesene Mönche. Lebensgeschichten in der Reformation. München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1990. Scribner, Robert W. The German Reformation. London: Macmillan, 1986. Szu˝cs, Jeno˝. “A ferences obszervancia és az 1514. évi parasztháború. Egy kódex tanúsága” [The Franciscan Observant Movement and the Peasant War of 1514 in Hungary. The Evidence of a Codex]. Levéltári Közlemények 43 (1972): 213–63. “Die Ideologie des Bauernkrieges.” In Aus der Geschichte der Ostmitteleuropäischen Bauernbewegungen im 16.–17. Jahrhundert, edited by Gusztáv Heckenast, 157–88. Budapest: Akadémiai, 1977. – “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében” [Franciscan Oppositional Currents in the Background of the Hungarian Peasant War and the Reformation]. Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409–35. Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992. Revised edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Tóth G., Péter. “A lator teste és a lator test. A bu˝nösség kultúrája a kora újkori Magyarországon és a büntetés-emlékeztetés problémája” [The Sinner’s Body and the Sinful Body. The Culture of Guilt in Early Modern Hungary and the Issue of Reminding on the Punishment]. Korall. Társadalomtudományi Folyóirat 5−6 (2001): 141−62. Vári, András. “Kelet- és Nyugat-Európa agrártársadalmi dualizmusa – tavalyi hó?” [The Dualism of the Agrarian Society of Eastern and Western Europe – An Out-of-date Issue?]. Korall. Társadalomtörténeti Folyóirat 15–16 (2004): 117–44. – “Wirrwarr der Herrschaftstypen? Herrschaftselemente und regionale Typologien von Herrschaft über Bauern.” In Historie und Eigen-Sinn: Festschrift für Jan Peters zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Axel Lubinski, Thomas Rudert, and Martina Schattkowsky, 115–27. Weimar: Böhlau, 1997. von Krusenstjern, Benigna, and Hans Medick. Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe. Der Dreißigjährige Krieg aus der Nähe. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte l48. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999.

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Winter, Jay M. Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the 20th Century. New Haven, Con.: Yale University Press, 2006. Zimmermann, Bénédicte, and Michael Werner. “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity.” History and Theory 45 (2006): 30–50.

Part I Revolt Territories: European and Transnational Contexts

Peter Blickle

Revolten in Europa 1200–1800

Zur politischen Kultur Alteuropas gehört die Revolte. Das ist Ergebnis und Ertrag einer intensiv und kontrovers geführten Forschungsdiskussion in den letzten 50 Jahren. Sie verdankt viel dem Selbstverständnis der sozialistischen Staaten Ostund Ostmitteleuropas, die in einem produktiven Wettstreit mit der Sowjetunion ihre Tradition revolutionär zu begründen suchten. Ungarn, die Tschechoslowakei und Deutschland haben sich daran in vorderster Front beteiligt und um Johannes Huss, György Dózsa und Thomas Müntzer geradezu Staatsmythen geschaffen, unter denen die der Frühbürgerlichen Revolution besondere Prominenz erlangt hat. Der sogenannte Westen hat darauf einerseits abwehrend reagiert, daraus aber seinerseits großen Gewinn gezogen. Etwa durch die Müntzer-Forschung, die in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren einen steilen Aufstieg zu verzeichnen hatte und auch theologisch ein intellektuelles Niveau erreichte, das selbst die internationale Luther-Forschung in den Schatten stellte. Andererseits gab es in den westeuropäischen Ländern genuine Ansätze der Revoltenforschung insofern, als der Paradigmenwechsel vom Primat der Außenpolitik zum Primat der Innenpolitik seit den 1960er Jahren die Gesellschaft und vor allem gesellschaftliche Ungleichheiten und Spannungen als bewegende Kräfte der Geschichte namhaft machte. Die Häufigkeit von Revolten war zunächst das überraschende Ergebnis dieser Forschungen. Für das Mittelalter hat Samuel K. Cohn über 1000 Unruhen gezählt1, auch für die frühe Neuzeit gehen sie nach Untersuchungen in England, Frankreich, Spanien und Ostdeutschland in die Hunderte.2 Ihre Prägekraft für die politische Kultur liegt angesichts solcher Zahlen nahe, obschon die Kategorisierung der europäischen Geschichte nach Staatsformen und Herrschaftsstilen immer noch vorherrscht. Früher selbstverständliche und auch noch heute vertretene Auffassungen von der Vergeblichkeit und Folgenlosigkeit von Revolten sind nicht länger aufrecht

1 Cohn, Lust for Liberty. 2 Hilton, Bond Men Made Free; Nicolas, La rébellion française.

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zu erhalten. Worin die Folgen liegen, ist allerdings alles andere als gesichert. Die terminologischen Unschärfen sind dafür ein erster Beleg. Revolte ist ein weicher Begriff, wie ihn Historiker lieben.3 Seine lexikographische Bearbeitung bewegt sich auf einem traurig niedrigen Niveau. Selbst Revoltenforscher verstehen darunter sehr verschiedenes. Abgrenzungsversuche zu Revolution haben wenig zur Klärung beigetragen. Der Begriff Revolution hat einen harten Kern in den Merkmalen massenhafte Bewegung, die zur Durchsetzung eines in die Zukunft gewandten emanzipatorischen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Konzepts (das mit Hanna Arendt meist um die Freiheit organisiert ist) dient und sich der (militärischen) Gewalt bedient. (Dieser Revolutionsbegriff trägt das Prägesiegel der Französischen Revolution von 1789.) Revolte ist spätestens seit 1500 in den romanischen Ländern der geläufige Ausdruck für Vorgänge, die in der englischen, niederländischen und deutschen Sprache mit Uprisings, Oproeren und Aufruhr und Empörung abgebildet werden. Nach zeitgenössischen Definitionen ist die Schnittmenge mit Revolutionen groß. Eine geradezu klassische Definition hat Johannes Stumpf geliefert, ein Weggefährte Huldrich Zwinglis und ein scharfer Beobachter des Bauernkriegs von 1525. „Solche uffrür aber (glych wie ander alle)“, kommentierte er die Vorgänge, „ist mit tyranny gelegt und gestillet worden; dan tyrrany und uffrur geho(e)rend zusamen; es ist deckel und haffen za(e)men“.4 Dieser bildliche Vergleich, so einfach er ist, trifft die Wirklichkeit, aber er ist ergänzungsbedürftig. Denn komplementär zu Tyrannei ist Freiheit. Das gilt für alle Jahrhunderte des Alten Europa. Die „libertas Siciliae“ soll durch die Sizilianische Vesper von 1282 wiederhergestellt werden, die „churbayerische Libertät“ durch den Bayerischen Bauernkrieg von 1705. Johannes Stumpf rhythmisiert die Geschichte in der Metapher von Druck und Überdruck. Das ist bei mehreren Tausend Revolten eine vertretbare Sichtweise.5 Kann man Richtungen benennen oder anders gefragt, kann man Folgen namhaft machen? Wenn im folgenden mit großen Aufständen gearbeitet wird – im wesentlichen Sizilien (1282), Schweiz (1291), Flandern (1323–1328), Frankreich (1356), England (1381), Hussiten, Ungarn (1514), Kastilien (1520), Heiliges Römisches Reich (1525), England (1549), Schweden (1542), Finnland (1590), Oberösterreich (1626), Frankreich (1639), Süditalien (1648) und Bayern (1705) 6 – begründet sich 3 Vogler, Revolte oder Revolution? 4 Stumpf, Schweizer- und Reformationschronik, 262. 5 Als neutralen Dachbegriff könnte man auch die Unruhe bevorzugen. Sie ist anders als Aufruhr nicht pejorativ besetzt und nicht wie Empörung eine obrigkeitliche Normierung. Unruhe, als Metapher verstanden, hält ein Laufwerk wie die Uhr in Gang und taktet die Zeit. Damit wäre ein erste Einschätzung der Revolten benannt. Ohne sie läuft die Geschichte des Alten Europa nicht. Vgl. Blickle, Unruhen. 6 Vgl. die Listung der Aufstände bei Blickle, Kommunalismus, Bd. 2, 248f.

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das aus dem Umstand, dass sie besonders detailliert bearbeitet sind. Keineswegs sollen damit methodisch kleine Unruhen marginalisiert oder ausgeschlossen sein, denn aus ihnen haben sich Erkenntnisse ziehen lassen, die anders verdeckt geblieben wären. Ein Beispiel ist etwa die von Bauern gegen ihre Herrschaften durchgesetzte Anerkennung der Hausnotdurft, welche die Auskömmlichkeit des Hauses allen herrschaftlichen und staatlichen Ansprüchen überordnet. Das ist an vergleichsweise gewaltfreien Auseinandersetzungen in bayerischen Klöstern als Norm herausgearbeitet worden7 und findet sich als Theoriebaustein in JeanJacques Rousseaus Konzept des Gesellschaftsvertrags. Das „besoin de subsister“ hat für ihn das moralische Rückrat der Ökonomie zu sein. Die Meistererzählung des Alten Europa beginnt bei einem adelig-monarchisch geprägten Mittelalter, das sich seit dem Spätmittelalter institutionell verdichtet und personal im Königtum zentriert. Das Christentum ist durch seine theoretisch-theologische Untermauerung der Drei-Stände-Lehre und ihrer Zuspitzung im Gottesgnadentum, ungeachtet seiner Spaltung in Konfessionen seit dem 16. Jahrhundert, die entscheidende ideologische Stütze dieses Systems. Erst durch das Bürgertum und eine diesem kongeniale Theorie des Gesellschaftsvertrags wird 1789 eine revolutionäre Wende eingeleitet und in den Folgejahrzehnten durchsetzt. Die Revolten haben in diesem Rahmen eine über alle Jahrhundert durchaus vergleichbare Grundstruktur. Immer wird eine Reduktion erhöhter wirtschaftlicher Lasten (Feudalabgaben, Steuern) gefordert, die mit dem Wunsch nach politischer Partizipation einhergeht. Wird beides verweigert, kommt es zur Abgabenverweigerung und zur kollektiven Stabilisierung in Form eines eidlichen Zusammenschlusses. Niedergeschlagen wird die Revolte – in der Regel jede – militärisch oder gerichtlich. Politisch brisant ist an der Revolte, dass sich alle oder zumindest große Teile der Untertanen (des Herrschaftsgebiets) beteiligen, ihre Forderungen ethisch mit dem Gemeinwohl oder Gemeinnutz (an Stelle des gebräuchlichen Herrennutz) legitimieren und mit der wechselseitigen Eidleistung (coniuratio) das Herrschaftsverhältnis, das durch den Huldigungseid begründet wird, kündigen und damit theoretisch auch prinzipiell in Frage stellen. In diesem systemisch stabilen Rahmen lassen sich zeitlich gestaffelt drei unterscheidbare Typen von europäischen Revolten ausmachen, die dem Spätmittelalter (1), der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (2) und der Frühen Neuzeit (3) zugeordnet werden können.

7 Renate Blickle, Hausnotdurft, 62–64.

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1. Eine summierende Charakterisierung der Revolten des Spätmittelalters kann über die Zuschreibungen kommunal, parlamentarisch und freiheitlich erfolgen. Die Revolten von der Sizilianischen Vesper 12828 über den von 1323 bis 1328 dauernden Aufstand in Flandern,9 die 1358 in Paris angezettelte Revolte von Marcel Etienne mit weiter Ausstrahlung in die nördliche Île-de-France, die Picardie und Champagne ( Jacquerie10) und den englische Bauernkrieg von 138111 sind solche, an denen Stadt und Land beteiligt sind. In Flandern sind es neben den führenden Städten Brügge und Gent mehr als vierzig ländliche Gemeinden, in England die Dörfer (Pfarreien) mehrerer Grafschaften sowie London und andere Städte, insgesamt ungefähr ein Drittel des Königreichs, in Sizilien schließen sich von den rund 150 Dorfgemeinden 100 dem von Palermo und Messina geführten Aufstand an. Eine Variante stellt England dar, denn dort bilden die hundreds Grundlage des Aufstandes aber auch sie sind wie Städte und Dörfer anderwärts lokale Einheiten der Friedewahrung und Rechtspflege. Gemeinsam ist allen Unruhen als politischer Kitt der Eid. Durch Eide verbinden sich die „civitates, terrae, castra et loca totius Sicilie“ zur „communitas Siciliae“. Eidlich durch eine congregatio bekräftigten die Bauern der Grafschaft Kent am 2. Juni 1381 ihre politischen Ziele.12 Über Flandern wird auf Betreiben des französischen Königs 1325 das Interdikt verhängt, wegen der „conjurationes et collegationes“, mit denen sie sich zu einer „universalis quasi Flandrie communitas“ zusammengeschlossen hätten. Die überörtliche coniuratio war eine Innovation. Sie konnte auf das Vorbild der der örtlichen pax iurata zurückgreifen, die man aus Städten (und gelegentlich auch Dörfern) kannte, auch auf den Landfrieden, der – freilich unter königlicher oder fürstlicher Führung – einen größeren Raum erfasste. Kai-Henrik Günther hat von „regionalen Kommunen“ gesprochen und damit einen treffenden Ordnungsbegriff geschaffen für Verbände, welche die Logik der Kommunen, die rechtliche Gleichheit ihrer Mitglieder nämlich, auf einen größeren Raum weiten.13 Er bezieht sich auf Sizilien und Flandern – England ist nicht sein Untersuchungsgegenstand – und die Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft. Dort hatten sich 1291 „universitates“ und „communitates“, näherhin drei ländliche Gemeinden, wechselseitig verpflichtet, Konflikte nur vor Gerichten auszutragen. Fehden des einheimischen Adels 8 9 10 11

Günther, Sizilianer, 37–49, 136–158. Te Brake, Plague of Insurrection Schmale, Geschichte Frankreichs, 103–105. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free; Eiden, „In der Knechtschaft werdet ihr verharren…“; Justice, Writing and Rebellion. 12 Hilton, Bond Men Made Free, 224f. 13 Günther, Sizilianer, 334–340.

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wurden damit kriminalisiert und zwar von Menschen, die sich coniurati nannten. Als Eidgenossen gibt es sie noch heute als staatlichen Verband. Die Coniurati in Sizilien, Flandern und der Schweiz waren, wie sozialgeschichtliche Studien bestätigt haben, die Haushaltsvorstände. Die grundbesitzende, Steuern zahlende Mittelschicht stellt die Insurgenten. Wo die Quellen Einblicke in das strukturelle Subsystem der Aufstände erlauben, kommen verfasste Gemeinden ans Licht. In Sizilien konnten sie ihre Richter und Steuereinnehmer wählen, in Flandern sind commune belegt, die schon aufgrund ihres Namens als eidlich gefestigte Korporationen gelten und durch die Verwaltung ausgedehnten Besitzes (Kirche, Straßen, Wälder, Allmenden) und der Kanäle (wateringen, ambachten) stabil waren. In Frankreich wurde die Jacquerie durch Gemeindeversammlungen und dort gewählte Führer vorbereitet. Das alles verlangt, die Revolten kommunalistisch zu nennen. Kommunalismus besagt14, dass Stadtgemeinde und Landgemeinde funktional und institutionell gleich aufgebaut Verbände darstellen. Gemeinsam ist beiden eine Satzungskompetenz der Gemeindeversammlung bzw. ihrer repräsentativen Organe, eine eigene Verwaltung im Rahmen der von den Satzungen gedeckten Zuständigkeiten (Räte) und die Rechtsprechung über Fälle der Übertretung der Satzungen. Die Gemeinde ist eine Form der Vergesellschaftung der laboratores (Bauern, Handwerker). Sie erfolgte aufgrund des Wandels der Arbeitsorganisation von einer auf den Herrenhof (Hofverband, Villikation) orientierten zu einer an das Haus gebundenen individuell-genossenschaftlichen Wirtschaftweise einerseits und einer Siedlungsverdichtung in Form von Stadt, Markt, Dorf oder ähnlichen lokalen Verbänden andererseits. Das gemeindliche Zusammenleben wird geprägt durch die Nachbarschaft der „Häuser“ und die genossenschaftlich organisierte Arbeit (Landwirtschaft, Zunft). Brutalität gehört zum Bild der Aufstände. Die Rebellen schossen sich buchstäblich auf den Adel und die königlichen oder fürstlichen Räte und Amtsträger ein, die als korrupt und fehdewütig, willkürlich und erpresserisch galten. Ersetzt wurden sie durch eigene, gewählte Hauptleute und Räte. Soweit sie im Amt blieben, legitimierten sie sich über ihre Wähler, nicht mehr über ihren Stand als Adelige. Die feudalen Verhältnisse wurden gewissermaßen an kommunale Strukturen angepasst. Das gilt auch für die Satzungstätigkeit. Damit verbunden war die Absicht, an der Ausgestaltung des Rechts aktiv beteiligt zu sein. Bereits nach den ersten Erfolgen der flämischen Rebellen wird das Verfahrensrecht an den Gerichten neu geregelt: Gerichtsort, Gerichtstag, Sitzungshäufigkeit, Besoldung der Richter und Gerichtsgebühren. Friede (pais), Ruhe (rust) und Gemeinnutz (profijt) 15 sollen befördert werden. In England sollten die hundreds wie 14 Blickle, Kommunalismus Bd. 2, 1 [leicht gekürzt]. 15 Günther, Sizilianer, 213.

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früher für Frieden und eine funktionierende Gerichtsbarkeit selbst verantwortlich sein (Lay of Winchester 1285), „certain laws proposed by themselves“ sollten das geltende common law ergänzen und ersetzen.16 Das konnte eigentlich nur auf eine Repräsentation im house of commons hinauslaufen. Für Frankreich zielten die Unruhen darauf ab, in den Ständeversammlungen das städtische Element zu stärken und im königlichen Rat das der Stände. Ob die Vertretung der Dörfer und Städte in den états généraux seit 1484 in dieser Fluchtlinie liegt, ist unklar, doch ausdrücklich sollten auf diese Weise ihre Beschwerden (cahiers de doléances) berücksichtigt werden.17 Die kommunalistischen Strukturen sollten also auf der oberen quasi-staatlichen Ebene eine Entsprechung finden, die man verdeutlichend parlamentarisch nennen kann. „No one should be a serf“, lautet die Forderung der englischen Bauern 1381. Die „libertatem omnium Syculorum“nennt der Kapitän von Palermo das Ziel ihres Bündnisses, Abgesandte an alle Orte Siziliens werden aufgefordert, die „libertas Sycilie“ zu beschwören. In Flandern pocht man auf die Erhaltung der bestehenden „frankisen“, das sind aber offensichtlich mehr als Freiheiten im Sinne von Privilegien, weil man mit ihrem Verlust die „servitus“ einhergehen sah18. Der Freiheitserwerb gehört zu den ersten großen kollektiven Aktionen der Eidgenossen, die rund 50 Jahre nach ihrem Zusammenschluss von 1291 alle in ihren communitates und universitates lebenden Leibeigenen freikaufen. Unter allem, was man den Revolten zuschreiben kann, verfügt die wechselseitige eidliche Verpflichtung der Rebellen über besonders viel subversives Potential. Denn erstens galt sie im Urteil des Adels, wenn er nicht selbst wie bei den Landfrieden der Initiator war, als conspiratio und damit als crimen laesae maiestatis, und zweitens konnte sie durch ihre Regionalität als alternative politische Struktur zum Herrschaftsraum gedeutet werden. In diese Richtung gingen in der Tat die Revolten in der zweiten Phase.

2. Wohl zu keiner Zeit hat Europa so viele und so eruptive Ausbrüche von Wut der commons, der communeros und des gemeinen Mannes, wie jetzt Untertanen hießen, erlebt als zur Zeit Kaiser Maximilians I. und Karls V. Allein im Heiligen Römischen Reich fallen 20 % aller Revolten zwischen 1300 und 1800 in diese Zeit.19 Als Revolutionen gelten drei: die Revolte der Communeros in Kastilien 16 Eiden, Leibeigenschaft, 417, 422f. Zitiert bei Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 146. 17 Mousnier, L’assassinat d’Henri IV, 249ff; Bulst, Die französischen Generalstände, 50. Vgl. Schmale, Geschichte Frankreichs, 116f. 18 Günther, Sizilianer, 151, 175ff. 19 Bierbrauer, Bäuerliche Revolten im Alten Reich, 62–68.

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1520, der heute meist Revolution des gemeinen Mannes genannte Bauernkrieg von 1525 im Reich und der Dózsa-Aufstand von 1514 in Ungarn. Wenn sie hier gegenläufig zur Chronologie dargestellt werden, so deswegen, weil ich aus der Analyse der kastilischen und deutschen Vorgänge Fragen an das mir wenig vertraute Ungarn stellen will. Vorausgeschickt sei, dass die Kommunalisierung Europas in dieser Zeit insgesamt erhebliche Fortschritte machte. Es gibt einen guten Indikator, sie zu messen – die Reformation. Mit ihr wird die Gemeinde erstmals in eine der großen gesellschaftstheoretischen Entwürfe Europas eingebaut. Alle Reformatoren, Martin Luther, Huldrich Zwingli und Jean Calvin, entwerfen eine Ekklesiologie, in der das Christentum auf die lokale Ebene zurückgenommen ist. Die Kirche ist die Gemeinde, sie entscheidet über die richtige Lehre und sie bestellt ihren Seelsorger.20 Soweit die Theorie der Theologie, für die Praxis gilt das nur regional. Die Reformation Lutherscher Observanz hat durch die Landeskirchen die Gemeinden unter staatliche Kontrolle gebracht. Im Reformiertentum hingegen lebt die Gemeinde fort mit politischen Folgen vor allem in den Niederlanden, England und den Neuenglandkolonien. In Kastilien schlossen sich 1520 schrittweise die großen Städte – einschließlich großer Teile des ländlichen Hinterlandes21 – zusammen, gegen König Karl I., seine burgundische Klientel und die exorbitanten Steuerforderungen zur Finanzierung der Kaiserwahl. Am 25. September 1520 konstituieren sich unter einem Eid die 14 größten kastilischen Städte zur Junta General, die auch als Santa Communidad firmiert.22 In der spätmittelalterlichen Tradition steht der Aufstand durch seinen kommunalistischen Charakter und als regionale coniuratio. Innovativ waren die politischen Vorstellungen. Die Junta General hatte sich eine geschriebene Verfassung gegeben. Ihr entsprechend führte ein Bundesstag die laufenden Geschäfte, untergliedert in ministerienähnliche Kommission für Krieg, Verwaltung, Rechtspflege und Finanzen. Es handelt sich um eine gewissermaßen verstetigten Ausschuss der cortes (Generalstände), der mit dem König das Regiment hätte bilden, die Steuern bewilligen und die Gesetze machen sollen. Roland Mousnier hat diesen Moment der spanischen Geschichte mit dem Frankreich des Jahres 1789 verglichen. Die Cortes seien auf dem Weg zu einer Nationalversammlung gewesen.23 In Kastilien wurde das ganze Königreich vom Aufstand erfasst. Im Bauernkrieg 1525 waren es vor allem der Süden Deutschlands und angrenzenden Teile

20 Blickle, Gemeindereformation, 133–149. 21 Vgl. Pelizaeus, Dynamik der Macht, 146f. 22 Haliczer, The comuneros of Castile, 113ff. Ergänzend Pietschmann, Zwei frühneuzeitliche Volkserhebungen im Vergleich, 101–119. 23 Mousnier, La monarchie absolue en Europe, 233f.

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Österreichs und der Schweiz, in Zahlen: geschätzte eine Million Menschen beteiligten sich am Aufstand, 100 000 kamen zu Tode. Den Bauernkrieg kann man aus den Zwölf Artikel der oberschwäbischen Bauern und der sogenannte Memminger Bundesordnung entwickeln.24 Beide sind in den Druck gegangen und haben 28 beziehungsweise 11 Auflagen erlebt, beide sind in den meisten Regionen übernommen worden, und auf sie wurden die Fürsten und Adel – unter ihnen das Erzstift Mainz – zum Beitritt verpflichtet. Die Zwölf Artikel fordern erstens eine Erweiterung der Rechte der Gemeinde: sie soll den Pfarrer wählen, über die Verwendung des Zehnten entscheiden, die Bewirtschaftung von Allmenden und Wälder organisieren. Sie beansprucht folglich in diesen Bereichen eine Satzungshoheit, verbunden mit dem Recht, die notwendigen Ämter zur Durchsetzung der Satzungen einzurichten. Über den Gemeinden steht eine „Christliche Vereinigung“ geführt von 12 Räten und drei Obersten. Diese korporativ-bündische Verfassung diente als Vorlage für Verfassungskonzepte im deutschen Südwesten und in Franken. Wo Fürstentümer landständisch verfasst waren sollten die Gemeinden institutionell in den Landtagen stärker verankert und politische Macht damit neu legitimiert werden. In Württemberg sollte der Herzog dann wieder in seine politischen Rechte eingesetzt werden, wenn er sich darauf verpflichten ließ, die Geschäfte mit einem zwölfköpfigen Regiment zu führen, das sich aus vier Bauern, vier Bürgern und vier Adeligen zusammengesetzt hätte. Dörfer sollten in ihrer Autonomie so gestärkt werden, dass jede Gemeinde ihren eigenen Rat und ihr eigenes Gericht erhalten hätte, also in ihrer politischen Grundausstattung den Städten gleichgestellt worden wäre. Die Gemeinde sollten ihre Vertreter in den Landtag schicken, der Landtag hätte die Landesordnungen und Policeyen gemacht und aus den drei Stände das zwölfköpfige Regiment gewählt. Die Zwölf Artikel enthalten zweitens die Forderung nach Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft. Ausdrücklich wird die Freiheit verlangt und zwar mit der dreifachen Begründung, Christus habe die Menschen durch seinen Kreuzestod freigekauft, das Testament kenne keine Leibeigenschaft und unter Christen dürfe es sie nicht geben. Die Forderung hat das Reich geradezu elektrisiert. In wüsten Invektiven verurteilten Luther und das ganze reformatorische Lager die Forderung als „fleischlich“, Kaiser Karl V. sah dahinter nichts anderes als die verkehrte Ideologe der „secte lutherienne“. Luther hat hinter der Freiheitsforderung auch die Absicht gesehen, den Obrigkeiten ihre Macht zu nehmen. Der Verdacht war zulässig, denn die Bauern forderten von jeder Obrigkeit, in ihrer Gesetzgebung christlich zu sein, dem göttlichen Recht entsprechend, anderenfalls konnte man

24 Blickle, Revolution von 1525, 24–32 [Zwölf Artikel], 152–160 [Memminger Bundesordnung], 321–327 [Text der Zwölf Artikel].

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sich wohl Regimentsformen denken, wie sie in der benachbarten Eidgenossenschaft und in Graubünden bestanden – republikanische. Lassen sich aus den Vorgängen in Kastilien und im Reich analytische Kategorien für den Ungarischen Aufstand von 1514 gewinnen? Ist die von Péter Gunst25 betonte Beteilung der Marktflecken vornehmlich des Tieflandes, geeignet, den Aufstand der kommunalistischen Tradition der Revolten zuzuordnen? Sind die mit der Bulle Leos X. den Kreuzzugsteilnehmern gemachten Versprechungen und die nach der militärischen Niederlage verhängten Sanktionen des Reichstags, namentlich die Strafe der Leibeigenschaft, die im Tripartitum opus iuris [„Vergeltungsgesetz“] festgehalten wurden, im Horizont der Freiheitsbewegung der zeitgenössischen Revolten zu sehen? Lässt sich aus der ursprünglichen Kreuzfahrerbewegung, auch wenn sie sich gegen den einheimischen Adel kehrte, und der starken Unterstützung durch die lokalen Geistlichen, namentlich die Franziskaner, eine strukturelle Ähnlichkeit zu den Christlichen Vereinigungen im Reich herstellen? Auch die Zwölf Artikel von 1525 sind davon überzeugt, die Erlösung von ihren Lasten sei Gottes Wille und gleiche dem Auszug der Israeliten aus Ägypten. Allgemein gesprochen – gilt für Ungarn die These von Ivan Varga, dass für bäuerliche Revolten „die Transzendentalisierung des politischen Protests die einzige Möglichkeit sei, das Transzendentale politisch zu machen“.26 Márta Fata hat neulich zu diesen Fragen wichtige Ergebnisse beigesteuert.27 Sie konnte auf Schriften von am Aufstand beteiligten Franziskanern hinweisen, die den Kreuzzug (auch in seiner Variante als Kampf gegen renitente Adlige) als „ex voluntate omnipotenz [!] Dei“ einstuften und gegen (solche) Feinde und ihre willkürliche Eintreibung von Steuern und Abgaben den geschlossenen Widerstand der Gemeinden als legitim propagierten. Heiliger Krieg blieb der Kreuzzug auch, als er sich gegen den Adel richtete. Diese Gemeinden seien vornehmlich in den Marktflecken zu suchen wegen ihrer ausgeprägten Selbstverwaltung. Und die Aufständischen selbst seien durchaus nicht mit der Bevölkerung gleichzusetzen, vielmehr mit dem „gmain man“, wie deutschsprachige Quellen den ungarischen „szegény ember“ übersetzen. Dort, in solchen Gemeinden, fand auch die Reformation zuerst Eingang, diesen, dem gemeinen Mann, hat möglicherweise Dózsa die Freiheit (der Szekler) versprochen.

25 Gunst, Der Ungarische Bauernaufstand von 1514, 62–83. 26 Varga, The politicisation of the transcendent, 470–481 [Zitat 480f.] 27 Fata, Der ungarische Bauernaufstand, vor allem 6–8, 10 [Seitenzahlen nach Manuskript]. Frau Fata danke ich für die Überlassung ihres Vortragstextes.

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3. Die Frühe Neuzeit unterscheidet sich vom späten Mittelalter nicht zuletzt dadurch, dass der öffentliche Raum, den zunächst die Städte und Dörfer durch ihre Stadtrechte und Dorfordnungen normiert hatten, die Aufmerksamkeit der Könige und Fürsten findet. Das ist der Siegeszug der guten Policey.28 Landesordnungen überlagern lokale Rechtsgewohnheiten und Statuten, staatliche Verwaltungen wie Ämter oder Intendanturen die entsprechenden kommunalen Einrichtungen, obschon die lokale Gesellschaft mit der Obrigkeit ihre Interessen austauscht und beide sich nach dem jüngsten Konzept der empowering interactions wechselseitig stärken.29 Das könnte den veränderten Charakter der Unruhen erklären helfen. Sie unterteilen sich erstens in städtische und ländliche. Die kommunale Verfassung verliert die solidarisierende Kraft für Handwerker und Bauern. Das unterstreicht die Beobachtung, dass auf dem Weg in die Neuzeit zweitens die innergemeindliche Solidarität schwächer wird. Faktionen (Radikale und Gemäßigte) treten an ihre Stelle30, eine offenkundige zeitgleiche Parallelbildung zur Entstehung der Parteien im englischen und schwedischen Parlament. Das freilich darf den Blick nicht verstellen für jene Unruhen, die von solchen Gemeinden ausgingen, die nicht in einen stabiler werdenden Staat integriert wurden. Das Paradebeispiel ist Genf, das Laboratorium der Revolten im 18. Jahrhundert. Auffallend ist drittens, dass den großen Revolten der Neuzeit ein neues Motiv zugrunde liegt – die Fremdherrschaft. Das gilt für den finnischen Keulenkrieg (1590) und die Aufstände in Karelien und Estland, den oberösterreichischen Bauernkrieg (1626), den Massaniello Aufstand in Süditalien (1648) und den bayerischen Bauernkrieg (1705). Ein kursorischer Blick auf die besonders gut erforschten Revolten in Frankreich, England und Deutschland soll das skizzierte Bild vervollständigen. Von Hugues Neveux stammt für Frankreich das bündige Urteil, „es waren die Gemeinden, die den Widerstand organisierten“.31 Der Legitimation des Aufstandes dienten oft verurkundete Privilegien oder mythologisierte Freiheiten.32 Der Aufstand der Nu-pieds 1639 in der Normandie gegen die Einführung der Salzsteuer (gabelle) mag diese Einschätzung illustrieren.33 Die Kirchenglocke rief die Menschen zusammen, als Gemeinde wählten sie syndics und capitaines und marschierten unter deren und ihrer Priester Führung in die nächste königliche Stadt, um sich für ihre Petitionen bei 28 29 30 31

Überblick: Iseli, Gute Policey. Holenstein, Introduction: Empowering Interactions, 1–31. Würgler, Unruhen und Öffentlichkeit, 55ff. Luebke, His Majesty’s Rebels, 1–24, 212–213. Neveux, Appendix I. Commentary from a French Perspective, 46f. Vgl. Nicolas, La rébellion française, 155–166. 32 Bercé, Croquants et Nu-Pieds. 33 Jacquart, Immobilisme et catastrophe.

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den Beamten Gehör zu verschaffen. Die Kollektivbezeichnung Nu-pieds wurde im Verlauf des Aufstandes personalisiert. Von einem Jean Nu-pieds war jetzt die Rede, der die Rebellen im Auftrag Gottes von der Tyrannei befreie. Konkret berief man sich auf ein Privileg der Normandie von 1315. In England fanden die großen Aufstände im 16. Jahrhundert statt, im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert dominieren mit den sogenannten Land Protests und Food Riots Aufstandsformen, deren Binnenstruktur schwer zu erkennen und folglich auch nicht zu generalisieren ist.34 Unter den Revolten des 16. Jahrhunderts ragt die Kett’s Rebellion von 1549 heraus. Ausgehend von Norfolk erfasste sich rasch acht weitere Grafschaften und mobilisierte wohlsituierte Bauern, Söldner, Handwerker und townsfolk.35 Wie das Niederreißen der Zäume der enclosures und die Vertreibung der landlords aus ihren Burgen zeigt, lieferten Probleme der Landwirtschaft ein Hauptmotiv des Aufstandes. Das organisatorische Gerüst der sechswöchigen Herrschaft Robert Kett’s bildeten die hundreds wie schon 1381. Je zwei Vertreter aus 24 der insgesamt 32 hundreds von Norfolk und der Stadt Norwich saßen im Rat von Robert Kett. Am Rande kommt die Pfarrei ins Spiel: Pfarrer sollten von den Pfarrgemeinden bestellt werden und sich mit einer Pfründe begnügen. Schon 1381 war ähnliches, allerdings Radikaleres zu hören. Die Kirche sollte säkularisiert und ihr Besitz unter den Parochianen verteilt werden. In Deutschland gibt es einen deutlich erkennbaren Unruhenkorridor im Westen des Reiches, der von den Niederlanden bis nach Basel reicht, aber auffälligerweise die Kurfürstentümer umgeht.36 Überwiegend handelt es sich um reichsgräfliche, reichsprälatische und reichsstädtische Herrschaften, in denen die Aufstände stattfinden, rhapsodisch über Jahrhunderte hinweg immer wieder ausbrechend. Ortsvorsteher, Ammänner, Vögte und Schultheissen der Dörfer stehen nach wie vor an der Spitze. Kartographiert man die Revolten der frühen Neuzeit in Mitteleuropa fällt auf, dass die habsburgischen Länder im Vergleich zu Brandenburg, Pommern, Mecklenburg ungleich mehr Aufstände zu verzeichnen haben.37 Möglicherweise darf man diese Beobachtung mit den Konfessionsgrenzen in Verbindung bringen. Schon Otto Hintze hat das Fehlen eigentlicher Aufstände im Norden und Osten dem Luthertum als einem „Instrument der Domestikation der bäuerlichen Erbuntertanen“ zugeschrieben38, und Hans Maier verdankt man die Einsicht, dass die Theorien der guten Policey (Polizeiwissenschaft) vornehmlich ein

34 35 36 37

Charlesworth (ed.), An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain. Cornwall, Revolt of the Peasantry 1549, 137–241; Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers, Bd. 1, 208–214. Bibliographie der deutschen Literatur bei Blickle, Unruhen. Überblicke über die ältere Forschung bei Schulze, Bäuerlicher Widerstand und feudale Herrschaft, in Schulze, (Hg.), Europäische Bauernrevolten der frühen Neuzeit. 38 Zitiert bei Franz, Geschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes, 195.

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Leistung der Lutheraner seien39, ein Mittel, um der natura corrupta des Menschen, die sich für Luther vor allem im Ungehorsam gegenüber der Obrigkeit ausdrückte, Herr zu werden. Der konfessionelle Interpretationsansatz hat auch einige Evidenz für Europa. Auch Spanien und Italien sind erheblich revoltenintensiver40 als das lutherische Dänemark, Norwegen und Schweden.41 Das schloss Widerstand freilich nicht gänzlich aus.42 In diesem Zusammenhang ist eine Beobachtung wichtig, die vor allem bei Revolten gegen Fremdherrschaft hervortritt. Die Referenz auf eine göttliche Stiftung des Rechts, wie sie in der Redeweise vom göttlichen Recht 1525 und in anderen spätmittelalterlichen Revolten (unter anderem auch Ungarn) zum Ausdruck kommt, verblasst. An ihre Stelle treten naturrechtlichte Vorstellungen. Im Juli 1626 schickten die oberösterreichischen Bauern eine Beschwerschrift in 137 Artikeln an den Kaiser.43 Es sei offenkundig, daß sie „den fürsteenden tot und lantsverwüestung“ zu ertragen hätten, würden sie sich nicht wehren. „Auß schuldiger lieb gegen unserm lieben vatterlant, eltern, weib und kinder“ und aufgrund der „natürlichen rechten nach anweisung und trib der natur selbsten, so allen thieren auf erden zu irer selbst erhaltung, hail und wolfart und sorgfaltigkeit eingepflanzet“, hätten sie nicht nur das Recht, sondern auch die Pflicht, die „leste hilf und zueflucht bei erlaubter, natürlicher defension zu suechen“. Dem vergleicht sich ein Schreiben der bayerischen Bauern 1705 an den Reichstag.44 „Wan Gott und die Natur selbsten“, so beginnt das Schreiben, „sogar denen unvernünftigen Thieren insgemein einen innerlichen Antrieb eingeflesset hat“, sich zu verteidigen, dann sei es nicht verwunderlich, wenn sich „eine gesambte bis auf das bluet eusserist betrangte gemain des Ober- und Underlandts Bayern“ zusammengeschlossen habe, um sich mittels „der natürlich in allen Rechten zuegelassenen defension zu erhalten“. Der Bauer als Landwirt habe wie „ein ellendister Sklav mit betrübisten Herzen zusechen“ müssen, wie die Früchte des Feldes verwüstet und das Vieh hingeschlachtet wurden, als Ehemann wie seine Frau von den Soldaten vergewaltigt wurde. Hier erstrahlt wieder scharf beleuchtet das dychotomische Paar Tyrannei – Freiheit.

39 40 41 42 43 44

Maier, Staats- und Verwaltungslehre, 132f, 159f, 284f. Valdeón Baruque, Los conflictos sociales en el reino de Castilla. Für Widerstand in Skandinavien Njåstad, Grenser for makt; Katajala, Nälkäkapina. Peters (Hg.), Konflikt und Kontrolle. Druck bei Felix Stieve, Der oberösterreichische Bauernaufstand, Bd. 2, 255–268. Van Dülmen, Bäuerlicher Protest [Quellenabdruck], 350–361.

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4. Die Revolten sind militärisch niedergeschlagen worden. Sind sie damit auch politisch gescheitert? Aus dem subversiven Untergrund der Revolten lassen sich drei Stränge erkennen, die in die politische Moderne führen. Erstens wurzelt die moderne individuelle Freiheit in den Revolten. Schon Rodney Hilton ist aufgefallen, dass trotz Unterdrückung der English rising von 1381 langfristig zur Auflösung von serfdom und villainage geführt hat. Das lässt sich mit Vorgängen in Katalonien in der zweiten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts parallelisieren, wo nach Bauernaufständen mit königlicher Zustimmung große Syndikate entstanden, die den Freikauf Tausender Leibeigener abwickelten. Auch in Deutschland verblasste die Leibeigenschaft nach dem Bauernkrieg von 1525, ohne dass sie förmlich aufgehoben worden wäre. Nach Einschätzung der Enzyklopädisten des 18. Jahrhunderts hat „vornehmlich durch den Bauren-Krieg der Bauren-Stand eine grosse Änderung bekommen und zwar [so, dass] der grösste Teil derer Teutschen Bauren als die eigentlichen Knechte derer Teutschen freye Leute geworden“. Als diese Sätze geschrieben wurden, waren im Süden Deutschlands noch zwei bis zehn Prozent der Bewohner leibeigen. Der Widerstand gegen Leibeigenschaft hat die Vorstellung von einer Freiheit des Individuums stark geprägt. Die politischen Eliten Europas haben das nie akzeptiert und insofern war der Freiheitsbegriff hart umkämpft wie Orlando Patterson in seiner magistralen Arbeit Freedom gezeigt hat.45 Die polnische Freiheit, die preußische Freiheit, die teutsche Libertät sind durchgängig Attribute des Adels und meinen freie Ausgestaltung des eigenen Herrschaftsraums und verfassungsmäßig gesicherte Beratung des Königs und Fürsten. Auf Freiheit als Menschenrecht hin waren sie nicht generalisierbar. Zweitens lässt sich das Konzept des Gesellschaftsvertrags und damit der theoretische Grundriss republikanischer, tendenziell demokratischer politischer Organisationsformen auf Revolten zurückführen. Sie alle zielen in ihrer Programmatik auf eine Stärkung der Kommunen, also auf Autononomie und Autokephalie im lokalen Rahmen, und betreiben wenn möglich eine Absicherung im bestehenden herrschaftlich-staatlichen Rahmen. Im besten Fall führt das zu Verbänden wie der Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft oder zur Repräsentation in den Ständeversammlungen europäischer Königreiche und Fürstentümer. Das fördert aber auch die politiktheoretische Phantasie und Kreativität, wofür Jean-Jacques Rousseaus und sein Contrat social von 1762 ein schönes Beispiel liefert. In den Jahrzehnten vor dessen Erscheinen hatte Genf an die acht sogenannte Troublen zu verzeichnen. Genf ist aber zweifellos ein wichtiger Referenzpunkt für den Contrat social.46 Die 45 Patterson, Freedom. 46 Würgler, Unruhe und Öffentlichkeit, 243–246.

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tragenden Säulen von Rousseaus dort entwickelter Republik, nämlich erstens der freiwillige Zusammenschluss von Menschen zur Sicherung ihrer Freiheit und ihres Eigentums sowie zur Förderung des gemeinen Nutzens und zweitens dessen Realisierung durch die Positivierung ihrer gemeinsamen Interessen (volonté générale) in Gesetzen, bilden die Theorie zum Verfahren, wie Genf sich im 16. Jahrhundert aus der Stadtherrschaft des Bischofs und seines Vogtes, des Herzogs von Savoyen, gelöst hatte, allgemeiner gesprochen wie Kommunen im Spätmittelalter sich durch die coniuratio konstituierten und ihren Verband über das ius statuendi ausgestalteten. Wegweisend wurde das Werk für die Französische Verfassung von 1793 und keinesfalls nur für Robespierre, für den süddeutschen Gemeindeliberalismus Ernst Rottecks und dessen Fernwirkungen auf die Weimarer Verfassung und keinesfalls für Totalitarismen. Selbst die Rechtsphilosophie Immanuel Kants und damit eine der wesentlichen theoretischen Grundlagen des Rechtsstaats wäre ohne Rousseau nicht denkbar.47 Drittens haben die Revolten ihre Verfasstheit als moralische Körperschaft, die sie durch die regionale coniuratio erreicht hatten, wohl auch an die Vergesellschaftungsform covenant weitergeben. In Massachusetts hat das bereits im 17. Jahrhundert politische Gestalt angenommen. Die Siedler der Neuenglandkolonie von Massachusetts48 schlossen sich zu einem covenant (boddy politick) zusammen. Voraussetzung für die Mitgliedschaft im covenant waren persönliche Freiheit und Besitz von Eigentum sowie ein der Gemeinschaft insgesamt geleisteter Eid. Wer zum Eid zugelassen wurde, entschied die (kongregationalistische) Kirchengemeinde, der Eid selbst war ein einfacher Treueid (oath of fidelity) auf die Rechtsordnung der Kolonie. „To make Laws and Ordinances for the Good and Welfare […]“, war der Zweck des politischen Verbandes. Gesetze zu machen stand seit den 1630 Jahren dem General Court zu. In ihm, der eigentlichen Legislative der Kolonie, war jede Siedlung mit zwei gewählten Delegierten vertreten (representatives of Towns and Villages). Auf dieser Basis wurde 1638 ein Grundgesetz (body of liberties) ausgearbeitet und allen Gemeinden zur Stellungnahme zugesandt.

47 Müller, Die demokratische Verfassung, 32–35. 48 Dillinger, Die politische Repräsentation, 272–438.

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Literatur Bercé, Yves-Marie, Croquants et Nu-Pieds. Les soulèvements paysans en France du XVIe au XIXe siècle, Paris 1974. Bierbrauer, Peter, Bäuerliche Revolten im Alten Reich. Ein Forschungsbericht, in: Peter Blickle/Peter Bierbrauer/Renate Blickle/Claudia Ulbrich, Aufruhr und Empörung?, München 1980, 62–68. Blickle, Peter, Die Revolution von 1525, München 42004. – Gemeindereformation. Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil, München 1985. – Unruhen in der ständischen Gesellschaft 1300–1800, Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 1, München 32012. – Kommunalismus. Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform, 2 Bde., München 2000. Blickle, Renate, Hausnotdurft. Ein Fundamentalrecht in der altständischen Ordnung Bayerns, in: Günter Birtsch (Hg.), Grund- und Freiheitsrechte von der ständischen zur spätbürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Veröffentlichung zur Geschichte der Grund- und Freiheitsrechte 2), Göttingen 1987, 62–64. Cohn, Samuel K., Lust for Liberty. The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe 1200– 1425, Cambridge, MA 2006. Bulst, Neithard, Die französischen Generalstände von 1468 und 1484. Prosopographische Untersuchungen zu den Delegierten (Francia, Beiheft 26), Sigmaringen 1992. Charlesworth, Andrew (Hg.), An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain 1548–1900, London 1983. Cornwall, John, Revolt of the Peasantry 1549, London 1977. Dillinger, Johannes, Die politische Repräsentation der Landbevölkerung. Neuengland und Europa in der Frühen Neuzeit (Transatlantische Historische Studien 34), Stuttgart 2008. Dülmen, Richard van, Bäuerlicher Protest und patriotische Bewegung. Der Volksaufstand in Bayern von 1705/6, in: Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 45, 1982, 331–361. Eiden, Herbert, „In der Knechtschaft werdet ihr verharren…“. Ursachen und Verlauf des englischen Bauernaufstandes von 1381, Trier 1995. Fata, Márta, Der ungarische Bauernaufstand unter György Dózsa 1514 [Manuskript], erscheint in einem von Anton Schindling herausgegebenen Sammelband: 500 Jahre „Armer Konrad“ und „Tübinger Vertrag“ im überregionalen Vergleich 2015. Tübingen. Franz, Günther, Geschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 21976. Günther, Kai-Henrik, Sizilianer, Flamen, Eidgenossen. Regionale Kommunen und das soziale Wissen um kommunale Conjuratio im Spätmittelalter, Quellen und Forschungen zur Agrargeschichte 57, Stuttgart 2013. Gunst, Péter, Der Ungarische Bauernaufstand von 1514, in: Revolte und Revolution in Europa, Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft 4, München 1975, 62–83. Haliczer, Stephen, The comuneros of Castile. The Forging of a Revolution 1475–1521, Madison, Wisconsin 1981. Hilton, Rodney, Bond Men Made Free. Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381, London 21973.

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Holenstein, André, Introduction: Empowering Interactions. Looking at Statebuilding from Below, in: Wim Blockmans/André Holenstein/Jon Mathieu (Hg.), Empowering Interactions. Political Cultures and Emergence of the State in Europe 1300–1800, Farnham 2009, 1–31. Iseli, Andrea, Gute Policey. Öffentliche Ordnung in der Frühen Neuzeit, Stuttgart 2009. Jacquart, Jean, Immobilisme et catastrophe 1560–1660, in: Georges Duby/Armand Wallon (Hg.), Histoire de la France rurale, 2. Bd., Paris 1975, 331–353. Justice, Steven, Writing and Rebellion, England in 1381, Berkeley 1994. Katajala, Kimmo, Nälkäkapina. Veronvuokraus ja talonpoikainen vastarinta Karjalassa 1683–1697, Helsinki 1994. Luebke, David Martin, His Majesty’s Rebels. Communities, Factions, and Rural Revolt in the Black Forest, 1725–1745, Ithaca 1997. Maier, Hans, Die ältere deutsche Staats- und Verwaltungslehre, München 21980. Mousnier, Roland, L’assassinat d’Henri IV, 14 mai 1610 (Trente journée qui ont fait la France vol. 13), Paris 1964. – La monarchie absolue en Europe du Ve siècle à nos jours, Paris 1982. Müller, Jörg Paul, Die demokratische Verfassung, Zürich 22009. Neveux, Hugues, Appendix I. Commentary from a French Perspective, in: Peter Blickle (Hg.) Resistance, Representation, and Community, Oxford 1997, 44–53. Nicolas, Jean, La rébellion française. Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale 1661– 1789, Paris 2002. Njåstad, Magne, Grenser for makt. Konflikter og konflitklosing mellom lokalsamfunn og ovrighet ca 1300–1540, Trondheim 2003. Patterson, Orlando, Freedom, Vol. I: Freedom in the making of Western Culture, London 1991. Pelizaeus, Ludolf, Dynamik der Macht, städtischer Widerstand und Konfliktbewältigung im Reich Karls V., Münster 2007. Peters, Jan (Hg.), Konflikt und Kontrolle in Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften. Über Resistenzund Herrschaftsverhalten in ländlichen Sozialgebilden der Frühen Neuzeit, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte Bd. 120, Göttingen 1995. Pietschmann, Horst, Zwei frühneuzeitliche Volkserhebungen im Vergleich: die ‚Comunidades’ von Kastilien und der deutsche Bauernkrieg, in: Rainer Postel/Franklin Kopitsch (Hgg.), Reformation und Revolution. Festschrift für Rainer Wohlfeil zum 60. Geburtstag, Stuttgart 1989, 101–119. Schmale, Wolfgang, Geschichte Frankreichs, Stuttgart 2000. Schulze, Winfried, Bäuerlicher Widerstand und feudale Herrschaft in der frühen Neuzeit, Neuzeit im Aufbau Bd. 6, Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt 1980. – (Hg.), Europäische Bauernrevolten der frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt 1982. Stieve, Felix, Der oberösterreichische Bauernaufstand des Jahres 1626, 2 Bde., Linz 21904/5. Stumpf, Johannes, Schweizer- und Reformationschronik, 1. Teil, hg. von Ernst Gagliardi/ Hans Müller/Fritz Büsser, Quellen zur Schweizer Geschichte. Neue Folge, Abt.: Chroniken, Bd. 5, Basel 1952. Te Brake, William H., Plague of Insurrection. Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flandre, 1323–1328, Philadelphia 1993. Valdeón Baruque, Julio, Los conflictos sociales en el reino de Castilla en los siglos XIV y XV, Madrid 31986.

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Varga, Iván, The politicisation of the transcendent: a quasi-sociological postscript, in: János M. Bak/Gerhard Benecke (Hg.), Religion and rural revolt, Manchester 1984, 470–481. Vogler, Günter, Revolte oder Revolution? Anmerkungen und Fragen zum Revolutionsproblem in der frühen Neuzeit, in: Stefan Ehrenpreis u. a. (Hg.), Wege der Neuzeit. Festschrift für Heinz Schilling zum 65. Geburtstag, Berlin 2007, 381–413. Würgler, Andreas, Unruhen und Öffentlichkeit. Städtische und ländliche Protestbewegungen im 18. Jahrhundert, Frühneuzeit-Forschungen 1, Tübingen 1995. Zagorin, Perez, Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660, 2 vols., Cambridge 1982.

Katalin Péter

The Other Way Negotiating Freedom in a Gutsherrschaft Country, the Kingdom of Hungary, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

My aim with this essay is to introduce the impact of the defeat of the 1514 Dózsa revolution on the poor man’s and woman’s social agency. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lords and subjects avoided open confrontation. My supposition is that lords and subjects were in awe of each other. Instead of fighting, peasants used the opportunities hidden in the Gutsherrschafts system for obtaining freedom. Bargaining with the powers that be was a useful tool to satisfy social ambitions. The actions of simple people show freedom as a practical matter. It meant absolution of certain duties, for the individual, the complete fulfillment of it meant nobility. As the relevant charters assured the ennobled person, “in order that you may enjoy freedom more valuable than treasures” you are added to the country’s nobility. Freedom brought about by noble status was more valuable than treasures but money could buy it.

Introduction: “Örökös jobbágyság” – Perpetual Serfdom The starting point of my considerations here is that the participants in the Dózsa uprising fought for freedom. Other historians would perhaps determine a different objective of the movement. Its interpretations vary, roughly, between revolution against the extremes of the poorest and struggle for a better position at the market of the affluent peasant.1 The motive of freedom was inserted into the 1 Sándor Márki, Dózsa György (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1913); Gábor Barta and Antal Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben (Budapest: Gondolat, 1977); István Szabó, “Középkorvégi parasztlázadások,” in idem, Tanulmányok a Magyar parasztság történetébo˝l (Budapest: Teleki Pál Tudományos Intézet, 1948), 51−62; Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409−53; Peter Gunst, “Der ungarische Bauernkrieg von 1514,” Historische Zeitschrift, Beihefte, Neue Reihe 4 (1975): 62−83; János M. Bak, “Delinquent Lords and Forsaken Serfs,” in Society in Change, ed. S.B. Vardy and H.A. Vardy (Boulder, Col.: East European Monographs, 1983), 291−304; Norman Housley, “Crusading as Social Revolt. The Hungarian Peasant Uprising of 1514,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49 (1998): 1−29; Gábor Klaniczay, “Images and Designation for

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elements of explanation by a very-well informed contemporary, Vladislaus II, King of Hungary. He had to give a general assessment of the situation in July 1514 because Pope Leo X had demanded it. The pope was staggered when the people he had called to arms to fight the Ottoman turned against the nobility. The king, with an allusion to the famous wealth of Hungary in natural resources, informed him that there was an abundance of simple people – rusticana plebs – farming and working with cattle in the country, who had caused an unexpected war. The reason for that was, according to the king, that “the people is always keen on new matters, it strives for them ardently so that it vindicates itself liberty instead of servitude.” Then he went on to describe the horrendous rampage, worse than the deeds of the Turks, which the rioters had carried out.2 The nature of the freedom that King Vladislaus, and probably the people as well, had in mind will not be discussed here because no liberty of any sort emerged as a result of the uprising. Exactly the opposite occurred. Three months after the gruesome execution of the revolt’s leader the Diet convened for the retaliation of the “most evil” actions against “the magnates and the whole nobility.” The Members seethed with anger and, according to the preamble of the Acts, originally intended to kill all peasants. Then their sober senses prevailed and talk about the punishment of the rebels started.3 The result was a series of resolutions placing tools of various worth in the hands of the nobility for the building of seigniorial domination or the strengthening of it. The most conspicuous in this regard was the serfs’ “binding to the soil” as historians call it, which entailed the prohibition on movement from the plot assigned to him/her by the lord/lady of the estate in order that they remain serfs “perpetually.” Furthermore, the Diet enacted resolutions fulfilling the wildest dreams of all noble persons with any possession. According to the Acts, all married peasants – rustici uxorati – had to do one day’s service a week for the lord. That obligation was declared for everybody married regardless of whether the peasant possessed a whole plot or was a cotter. With regard to duties in cash and in kind, these were placed upon all married peasants as well. A person farming a whole plot had to pay, according to the 1514 Laws, the same amount of money—one gold forint a year—as the person who owed no house and no farmland at all. On top of everything else, the Diet declared that all cotters had to build a house for themselves within three years. Those laws might look like a tray Rebellious Peasants in Medieval Hungary,” in The Man of Many Devices Who Wandered Full Many Years, ed. Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebo˝k (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 1999), 117−21. 2 Letter of the king to the pope: Buda, July 3, 1514, in Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno XDIV, ed. Antonius Fekete Nagy et al. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1979), 142−43. 3 Preambulum and Acts of the Diet 1514: Corpus Juris Hungarici 1000−1526, ed. Kolosvári Sándor and Óvári Kelemen (Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1889).

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full of delicacies from which the landlords could pick and choose freely. However, it must have been clear even for those with the meanest intellect and the least experience in agriculture already at the time of finalizing the Act’s text that it was absolutely impossible to fully carry it out. Historians who use the term “second serfdom” regard the 1514 Laws, although most of us know that they were never literally implemented, to be the foundation of this phenomenon. In Hungary an eminent historian, István Szabó, suggested the name örökös jobbágyság – perpetual serfdom for sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury serfdom in reference to the decision of the Diet to keep the serfs in their status perpetually.4 But another historian, more versatile than all others, Sándor Takács, was of the opinion that because of the many variations the period’s serfdom produced that it is impossible to give a general definition of it.5 One is tempted to apply Takács’s opinion to the whole Central European Gutsherrschaft system. In this regard I refer to the great project Potsdamer Studien zur Geschichte der ländlichen Gesellschaft, the main result of which has been the picture of the most variegated societal construct east of the Elbe.6 There are many reasons for that variety. Differences in data, differences in the familiarity of the historian with them, differences in her attitude to the past and to her own topic in general are among the reasons for differences in history. Fairly recently a startling example of the historian’s role in shaping history emerged. A book by Sean Eddie on Prussian serfdom appeared which depicts the period of the ‘second serfdom’—the term in single quote—as a time of good opportunities and choices for the peasant.7 It contradicts everything one previously heard about the serf ’s strict dependency under the second serfdom described by many as the Prussian way. In spite of his originality—or precisely because of it—Eddie has enjoyed great academic success. I am dealing here with matters in the Kingdom of Hungary without drawing comparisons to other countries. A state with its own laws and jurisdiction was the necessary basis for establishing Gutsherrschaft. The attitude of not comparing different countries can be justified by warnings from the side of eminent experts. To mention merely the two most important ones in my opinion, Otto Brunner, the founder of the topic Herrschaft, thought comparison in regard to Gutsherrschaft to be expressly dangerous, while Bob Evans, who seems to be the historian most 4 István Szabó, A jobbágy birtoklása az örökös jobbágyság korában, Értekezések a Történeti Tudományok Körébo˝l 35, new series (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1947). 5 Sándor Takács, “A Magyar léhen és holden,” in idem, Emlékezzünk eleinkro˝l (Budapest: Genius, n.d.), 285–330. 6 The results have been published in four volumes, accessed June 9, 2015, www.spk-digital.de/ search.html?action=search&q=”Potsdamer Studien zur Geschichte der ländlichen Gesellschaft“ 7 S. A. Eddie, Freedom’s Price (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 91−95.

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familiar with Europe’s Gutsherrschafts zone, says that we are far from understanding it properly.8 Of the many names of the social concatenation east of the Elbe, I like using István Szabó’s term örökös jobbágyság. It alludes, in my interpretation—örökös meaning both “perpetual” and “hereditary”—indirectly to the main characteristic of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century serfdom in Hungary. The plot assigned by the lord to the serf was hereditary for three generations. It reverted to the lord like noble possession did to the Crown.

Some Intricacies The great estates functioned like kingdoms.9 There were many differences between them, but they had some common features. Among these common aspects was that they had precisely determined borders within which the lord exercised jurisdiction, then his relationship with his subjects in the Kingdom of Hungary was based economically and symbolically on the plot farmed by the peasant tenant and it was in the power of the Herrschaft to define the conditions of a person or a community considered to be his subjects. As to differences, there were many. To begin with, the aldermen, judges or scultets of different localities to whom the first instance of jurisdiction was delegated and who “carried the person of the lord” among the subjects could be produced in three ways: they were elected “freely,” that is, without the official interference of the lordship; they could be elected from among the “candidates of the castle”; and they could be appointed “by the castle.” Even the forms of acquiring a plot were not consistent. The normal and most frequent way was to get a plot “by the grace of his lordship” or “by the grace of our lady” and the new tenant was introduced by the commissioner of the lord/lady to the actual plot like lords/ladies were introduced into newly acquired estates by the officials of the kings. More simple was to inherit the plot, with the consent of the Herrschaft only in the case in which the new tenant was not the direct descendant of the former owner. Lastly, in some places, a person aspiring to the status of the tenant could buy the plot for money from the lord himself or from a peasant tenant with or without the consent of the lord. The reasons for the differences have not yet been explored by historians. The manorial surveys which produce this contradictory data refer– if to anything – mostly to the “old custom” of the community or to the custom of larger social 8 Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft, (Vienna–Wiesbaden: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1959), VII–VIII; R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550−1700. An Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 90. 9 Brunner, Land und Herrschaft, 240.

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units.10 How the whole system worked in situations in which the estate was in the possession of several landowners in the condominiums – that is, under joint ownership – has remained unexplored at present.11 However, my intention is not to examine characteristics in general. I want to tackle situations in which serfs reach a standing defined by the terms liber-libera and libertas or the same terms in the vernaculars. There were, as it is common knowledge, several vernaculars spoken in that time’s Hungary.

There Was No Need to Bargain for Freedom in Family Matters To begin with, I am providing a sketch of the field in which there was no freedom to negotiate. In family matters there was no need to approach the Herrschaft because neither marriage nor the upbringing of children was in the lord’s sphere of power. That state of affairs was clearly described by the 1514 Laws. They show that there was, even at the nadir of the serfs’ history, no inclination on the domination side to interfere in the subject’s family arrangements. In Hungary the marriage of the serf was not compulsory; neither was there a need for the landlord’s permission or even his/her consent. The choice of the marriage partner was determined, of course, by many social and ecclesiastical expectations and regulations, however, the seignior had no saying in it. That is clear from the relevant Act of the 1514 Laws, which requires married serfs to perform manual service, called robot in Hungary, without mentioning any obligation to marry. With regard to other sources, many petitions by widows asking to be relieved from services because of their husband’s loss have been preserved.12 And the answer in each case of which we are aware was to reduce the labor obligations of the supplicant to what was called “widows’ turn.” No widow was told to marry in order that the farm could go on the usual way. If the widow had children she asked to be reprieved until the time the boy grew up or the girls “met their luck” by marrying. In no case known to us were such petitions rejected. To take away the plot of the family from the widow was unthinkable. The fact should be stressed at the same time by all means that many widows continued farming on their own, several of them more successfully than 10 I used mainly two published collections of manorial surveys: Ferenc Maksay, ed., Urbáriumok XVI–XVII. század (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1959); Richard Marsina and Michael Kusˇík (eds.), Urbáre feudálnych panstiev na Slovensku, 2 vols (Bratislava: Akadémie, 1959). 11 A most informative source material in matters of condominium, that of the estate Korlátko˝ in the neighborhood of present-day Trnava, Slovakia, has been preserved: MNL OL P 506. T 1. Fasc. 8. No. 1248. 45. csomó. 12 Such petitions have been preserved in practically all archives of landowners. Many of them was published. Vera Zimányi, “Supplicationum merita,” Történelmi Szemle 40 (1998): 299−332.

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their late husbands, without the help of the landlord.13 Their right to do so was never questioned. That is, it was not questioned by the lord; the attitude of the relatives was another matter. Cases of inheritance were as frequent among serfs as among the greatest landowners. The other item of freedom in family matters concerns children. I do not mean here the norm to care for them intensively and to treat their illnesses. That was natural: The peasant beating the wife and neglecting the children when he just happened not to be drinking has been an outdated figure in historical writing for decades now. As a Hungarian peculiarity, the respect for family ties by the seignior is worthy of consideration. Here children were not taken away from their parents for service in the manor or in the castle. This is corroborated by an article in the 1514 Laws and many other sources. The cited article says that mothers moving from the estate can take their sons of tender age with them, though they have to return when they reach full age. Full age having been 24 years for male offspring among peasants, this means that the legislators, even in their bloodthirsty moods, did not lay claim to the manpower of young people, let alone children. As to other sources on this attitude, the narratives of everyday life are full of accounts telling about children doing something together with their parents or grandparents.14

Cases of Communal Negotiation It was not my intention to indicate anything with regard to serfdom’s heavy or light nature by telling about the freedom in family matters. This freedom obviously did not compensate the simple man and the simple woman for frustrating conditions in other spheres of life. They took actions against them. If serfs of that time felt uncomfortable with their status the historian is not in the position to question that. To make the presentation of negotiating freedom simple I am placing some cases before the reader, cases of communal aspiration for freedom at first, and then cases of individual negotiations of freedom. The first communal negotiation in matters of seigniorial domination I know of was between the village Szenc (Senec, in Slovakia) and its proprietor Stibor of Stiboricz at the end of the fourteenth century. Szenc was a small place, though the important roadway in the 13 I once checked the farming of all heads of household for hundred and fifty years in Sárospatak with this result. Katalin Péter, “Women Heading Households in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Hungarian Rural Society,” in La donna nell economica secc. XIII–XVIII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Prato: Istituto F. Datini, 1990), 293−300. 14 There have been no ego-documents by this period’s peasants preserved. Legal deposits contain relatively frequent glimpses of the everyday life of simple people.

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direction of Prague crossed it. The proprietor was one of the richest and most influential men in the country. A member of a high-ranking Polish family, he was the fiercest adherent of King and Emperor Sigismund. In return, Voivode Stibor was made the lord of many castles, towns and villages by the hundred by the king in Hungary. He had at one time, among many other estates, half of current-day Slovakia in his possession.15 Szenc was one of many villages and other settlements below the status of towns in a formerly royal dominion under the domination of Voivode Stibor. The inhabitants of it, most probably the magistrate, decided to offer the landlord a monetary tax for the freedom from robot and other personal services. How this idea, which was original at that time, emerged we do not know. Neither do we know how they approached the lord. Taking into account the many offices he filled besides being one of the leading generals of the country, it must have been most difficult to even gain information on his whereabouts. In addition, it was not customary for the subjects to pay visits to the seignior. Voivode Stibor built up a very well-functioning system to mediate his power; the usual way for the serfs was to address their concerns to the castellans or other officers of the manors. In the summer of 1396 Tamás, the judge of Szenc, and Márton, member of the magistrate, appeared before their lord in the faraway castle Lubló (Lˇubovniansky hrad, Slovakia) and asked him to make a contract with them about annual dues.16 After some reflection n the voivode bestowed upon the inhabitants of Szenc the singular grace – gratiam singularem – that they pay him and his successors in eternity a yearly tax of 300 gold forints in three installments. In exchange for that they were absolved of all duties toward him. There was one exception: if the voivode or his wife wanted to stay in Szenc the town had to provide them with two meals daily three times a year. What remained intact were, naturally, the royal dues, which were outside the reach of a landlord. Three hundred gold forints was an immense sum. Only a single comparison: one could buy the possession of a whole village for just 200 forints.17 Thus the cost of freedom was very high, but by all accounts worth it. According to the first data that provided figures regarding the relationship between the obligations of Szenc and other localities at the same estate one hundred years later, Szenc’s inhabitants had to pay somewhat more than three forints a year per household while everywhere else that sum amounted to between five and eight forints. Services, forced labor included, were to be performed besides that in other

15 Voivode Stibor’s biography, including many documents: Gusztáv Wenzel, Stibor Vajda, Értekezések a Történeti Tudományok Körébo˝l 40 (Budapest: Eggenberger, 1874). 16 Sources on the negotiation are published in Wenzel, Stibor. 17 The Buda Chapter confirms the sale of the village Kér by István Búi to Balázs son of Sebes for 200 forints: 27 01 1352. MNL OL DLDF 25818.

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localities.18 It is not surprising that after the death of Voivode Stibor and then his heir, who followed the policy of his father in matters of authority, representatives of Szenc appeared in the relevant royal courts five times with the demand that the king confirms Stibor of Stiboricz’s disposition. Rudolph II bestowed the final confirmation in 1589.19 Under the next king, Szenc and the whole domain of which it was part came into the hands of Count Miklós Esterházy, who managed the domain mainly without requiring forced labor from his subjects.20 The other communal case of serfs negotiating freedom I should like to present here is of much later date. It is the battle of wits between the communities Szentgyörgy (Sankt Georgen; Svätý Jur, in Slovakia) and Bazin (Bösing; Pesinok, in Slovakia) in and their possessors, basically István Illésházy and the Royal Chamber. The final winners of the struggle were the inhabitants of the two towns, vine-growing centers of great estates in the western part of that time’s Hungary.21 They were in private possession since the thirteenth century. The events leading at the end to Szentgyörgy’s and Bazin’s royal free city status started, as far as sources tell us, in 1548 right after they were pledged, for a considerable sum of money, by King Ferdinand I to one of his most loyal supporters and generals, Gáspár Serédy. The representatives of Szentgyörgy and Bazin, together with those of the villages belonging to the estates, appeared in the King’s Personal Presence Court and accused the new landlord of violating their old customs and his being harsh with them generally. The delegates presented their case in a convincing manner as Ferdinand decided to send commissioners in order to investigate the situation. That gesture was clearly insulting for Serédy, the king’s follower. Nevertheless, the commissioners went from place to place at the estate, like church visitators, and recorded all grievances. The consequence of the 1548 inquisition was the first-ever royal charter issued by Ferdinand that confirmed all former customs and laws of Szentgyörgy and Bazin. However, as the next pledgee, a certain Count Salm, violated the rights of the towns as well, János Krusith, his successor, received the estate in 1575 only on condition that he observe truly and sincerely all privileges and customs valid there. A great scandal took place under István Illésházy, who married the widow of Krusith, Katalin Pálffy. Illésházy tried to avoid the restitution of the estate to the Royal Chamber due in 1595. He failed, but was very good at thematizing grievances, thus Illésházy managed to include the requisition he called usurpation of Szentgyörgy and Bazin into the complaints of the Bocskai uprising. 18 19 20 21

1521 manorial survey: MNL OL DLDF 37007. MNL OL Libri regii 4 580−93. The sources on the economic side of Esterházy’s Herrschaft: MNL OL P 108. Repositorium. I wrote about this, with many references to earlier literature, frocusing on the authority aspect of the matter. Péter Katalin, “Illésházy Istvánról,” Publicationes Universitatis Miskolcinensis Sectio Philosophica 13 (2008): 127−66.

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The towns, actually meaning their magistrates, must have been familiar with the power relations at the royal offices. All their deeds testify to the fact that they had information on the negotiations at court. Their most spectacular maneuver was when they somehow fabricated a situation in which the king asked them to put down the sum owned by the Chamber to Illésházy. In unambiguous words he asked them to take themselves out of pawn. Szentgyörgy and Bazin reacted accordingly; they declared themselves ready to pay the Chamber, within some days, more than 130,000 forints. As to the value of that amount of money, it was equal with ten years’ manorial taxes of the estates, including not only the two towns, but all villages as well. In the end, they handed out the immense sum to Illésházy. Thus Szentgyörgy and Bazin returned, after roughly three centuries, to the possession of the Royal Chamber. Then came the Bocskai uprising and the peace negotiations in which Illésházy led the delegation of the insurgents. He gained a decision due to which Szentgyörgy and Bazin had to revert to his domination. I could not find out whether Illésházy repaid the money of the towns that they had paid him for getting out of pawn. I have the very strong suspicion that he did not. What is sure is the fact that following his death, Katalin Pálffy put Illésházy’s larger-than-life statue, as part of his sepulchral vault, into the parish church of Bazin. It was not a very neat gesture. And it was not the end of anything. Szentgyörgy’s and Bazin’s negotiating freedom went on. At this stage they had to move into national politics: the connection between the towns and the Bocskai uprising established by Illésházy had placed the matter of Szentgyörgy’s and Bazin’s freedom into the context of the nobility’s internal struggles. The towns were able to maneuver on that platform as well as they had been able to move about amid the royal institutions. Their ingenuity and familiarity with the country’s power relations made them the winners. At the 1649 Diet, an article referred to Szentgyörgy and Bazin as royal free cities. That meant the highest public-law ranking among the localities of the kingdom. As István Németh recently traced the hierarchy of cities, the royal free-city bore many more freedoms for the inhabitants than the possession by the Royal Chamber.22 The next time when a serfs’ community reached the coveted status of royal freecity was in 1693. Debrecen received the royal charter which designated this status in April of that year after long bargaining conducted by the town’s three delegates: the town’s judge István Dobozi; János Pósalaki town scrivener; and the rich merchant town-council member György Komáromi. They agreed to pay 20,000 forints at once. In addition, the 20,000 forints turned out to be their last installment for freedom. The starting point in this direction most probably originated in the fifteenth century, when the king pawned Debrecen, in royal possession just before 22 István H. Németh, Várospolitika és gazdaságpolitika a 16–17. századi Magyarországon (Budapest: Gondolat, 2004), I. 176−77, 218−19.

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that, to a man of no importance for 13,000 forints. Debrecen started negotiating freedom by paying him. At that time it was no longer a simple village, in 1361 Debrecen had negotiated freedoms that had indicated some standing above villages. That, however, was not the end of their aspirations. They continued to bargain, paid various private possessors—the mother of King Matthias among them larger or smaller sums for different fractional freedoms. The great coup was that they started to behave like citizens of a genuine free royal city. Debrecen’s strong point was culture and commerce. The medieval parish school, the remains of which can be seen close to the Great Church of Debrecen today, was most probably already of a very high level before the sixteenth century. One has to suppose this because it became renowned throughout Hungary after the Reformation, which was not the case with regard to all medieval parish schools. The first register of students that we know, from 1588, shows that young people from all over the country and of different vernaculars were enrolled. The first known list of professors dates from earlier and shows that at least some of them studied abroad. The other feature of Debrecen’s culture was its printing press, which began operating in 1561. It was at first under private ownership, later the town council gained possession of it. Thus Debrecen was—for more than hundred years—the only community of tenant peasants in the Kingdom of Hungary that produced books by its own means. The Debrecen printing press published a large portion of the period’s Hungarian-language literature, primarily by authors of Calvinist conviction for ecclesiastical ends. The Reformed theologian Péter Melius Juhász was a regular among the clients. The best-selling popular works of the schoolmaster Péter Ilosvai Selymes also appeared in many editions in Debrecen. As for commerce, the merchants of Debrecen dealt in cloth. They were middlemen between different regions of textile manufacture since in Debrecen cloth was not produced. In order that their business remained unhindered, the magistrate negotiated freedom from different taxes, the freedom to sell cloth in small quantities instead of selling in several rolls only and they did everything to draw other merchants and other merchandise to Debrecen. According to many historians, the most important achievement of towns regarding commerce was to establish as many annual fairs within their walls as possible. Debrecen on the eve of early modernity can really be described as a collector of market privileges. They started to gather them already at the beginning of the fifteenth century when, in 1405, Jakab Fekes, the judge of the town, and János Nagy, the learned member of the council, approached King Sigismund to ask for the privilege of celebrating two statewide fairs a year.23 There were at the end of the sixteenth 23 On the legal aspect of Debrecen’s commerce: Boglárka Weisz, “Debrecen kereskedelmi életének jogi háttere,” in Debrecen város 650 éves, ed. Attila Bárány and Klára Papp (Debrecen: Debreceni egyetem, 2011), 131−48.

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century already more than 100 days a year when the marketplace in Debrecen was open to the whole country and to merchants from abroad. István Orosz characterized the moves of Debrecen or Debrecen’s representatives in the dealings with higher and lower authorities as “smart” – “ügyes”, in Hungarian.24 There’s reason in his opinion. With the famous school, the printing press and the fairs, Debrecen constructed an urban atmosphere. Urban in the mind of the contemporaries meant meeting people and exchanging ideas, as the eminent provost of Pécs, tutor of King Louis II, Jacobus Piso, defined it.25 Early modern Debrecen offered exactly that. The royal letter declaring Debrecen to be a royal free-city was merely the official warrant of the town’s true character. The opportunity to acquire the grace of Emperor Leopold came about with the constant wars against the Ottomans. The royal administration was in a desperate need of ready cash. We do not know why other communities did not take advantage of that chance. The supposition based on other cases is that other communities lacked the drive or the money—or both—for enduring the vicissitudes of negotiating full freedom. The final answer, however, would depend on the results of studies on the behavior of communities that did not start negotiating freedom, if we had such results. We do not have them at the moment. It is very difficult to find sources on something that did not happen. In any case, we know for sure that negotiating the status of royal free-city was not a general practice. After Debrecen came Szatmárnémeti, which gained success in its struggle for freedom in the eighteenth century after several hundred years of bargaining.26 It was much more usual for communities of serfs to negotiate partial freedoms like Szenc did, as mentioned at the beginning of the present text. It is no exaggeration to say that there was no great domain without partially free large or small locations at the time of Gutsherrschaft in the Kingdom of Hungary. We know of a little village with 25 households that bought freedom for all manual labors at the same time in the middle of the sixteenth century, as Somorja, one of the greatest market towns in the country.27 The village was so small that the editors of the relevant manorial survey had never heard of it; they could not find its name in the illegible text of the document. However, facts are facts: the no-name village was able to buy freedoms for money. Somorja, on the other hand, was of a considerable 24 For the latest discussion on Debrecen’s becoming a royal free city see István Orosz, “Debrecen útja,” in Debrecen 650 éves, 115−30. 25 Jacobus Piso, “Ad Leptam,” in Analecta nova ad historiam renascentium in Hungaria literarum spectantia, Eugenius and Stephanus Hegedu˝s (Budapest: Hornyanszky, 1903), 409. 26 Judit Pál, “Der Preis der Freiheit. Die freie königliche Stadt Szatmárnémeti am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Ergebene Diener ihrer Herren?, ed. Eugenius Abel and Stephanus Brakensiek and Heide Wunder (Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 2006), 123−43. 27 Maksay, Urbáriumok, 281.

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size already at the thirteenth century. It has a Romanesque church from that time that still stands today. The church building throws a most favorable light on the community of Somorja. It was built, of course, for Roman Catholics before it became Protestant after the Reformation. Nevertheless, the enchanting frescoes have survived. The Reformed congregation even added new parts to them. And Somorja was one of the first localities in Hungary in which the community introduced three-field farming. They were rich. Another community, the village Dobrafalva with partial freedoms, was less well-to-do. It owned the liberty to do only half of the services of all other serfs on the estate, except at the seat of the landlords.28 They had gained their freedom from Prince Lo˝rinc Újlaky; of the date we only know that he died in 1524 and the privilege was valid through 1630. That means, taking into account the customs of the country in this regard, that the representatives of a village appeared at the castle each time a new landlord was installed and negotiated for the validity of privileges they had received from somebody else. All communities with liberties had to do that. Otherwise, without the new proprietor’s confirmation, the liberties in question were lost. The most frequently bought freedom by communities was liberty from personal services, robot, but it could be any element or all parts of the serfs’ obligations.

Cases of Individuals Negotiating Freedom A good example of an individual negotiating freedom would be that of Mrs. Bixi, a widow most probably, in the Transdanubian village Csákány. According to the 1574 manorial survey, she paid six forints a year in two installments for freedom from all services. The liberty was donated to her “by the letter of our poor lady.”29 That meant the late Kata Szvetkovich. The sum Mrs. Bixi paid was roughly twenty times more than the tax of people who were, in addition to paying, under the obligation of robot and was the highest sum extracted for freedoms in the whole village. She must have been an able negotiator. A much more spectacular case of individual negotiating emerges from a source in 1604 in Németújvár. At that time, at the summons of the landlord Ferenc Batthyány, 38 peasants put down 8,000 forints on a single day as loans for different freedoms. As a guarantee, the seignior issued individual documents on the loan and on the freedoms for each person involved.30

28 1573 manorial survey MNL OL Microfilms, box 4315. 29 1574 manorial survey: Ibid., 4312. 30 The documents have been extracted by the original author in the text of a 1640 manorial survey: MNL OL P 1322 Batthyány család levéltára, Urbáriumok és összeírások 76.2.

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The action itself was not original; peasants usually handed over “loans” for the different exemptions they called freedoms. The continuance of the exemption was normally undefined: it lasted as long as the lord/lady did not repay the money. In certain exceptional cases the liberty could continue until the death of the beneficiary and I have seen a case in which the “freedom from doing service” went on to the offspring in both lines.31 The “freedoms” for some years were usually not negotiated personally, but determined by custom: in the event of fire and other catastrophes the aggrieved parties actually automatically received freedoms in order to allow them to recover. In this case, with Batthyány’s subjects as protagonists, the striking fact is that the sum acquired from the serfs was fairly large. The peasant tenants involved paid between 100 and 1,250 forints each. Thus the 8,000 forints were collected. For that sum one could buy approximately 2,000 fattened oxen. Batthyány bought himself and his family a new estate partly on the money from the peasants. As for the peasant tenants, Batthyány’s call for lending him money in exchange for freedoms constructed a complicated decision-making situation. It was brought about by the seignior, but no official compulsion was attached. Due to great luck with sources, I had the opportunity to check—taking into account all heads of household at the estate—the connections between the peasants’ financial and social stance and their readiness to take part in the lord’s venture. I looked for a relationship even between the distance of the plot from the castle and the farmers’ willingness to lend.32 To state the result succinctly: I could not detect connections between the rational circumstances of money-lending peasants and their behavior in the decision-making process. It seems that the resolutions were built on individual considerations. The next case I want to present is that of a boy, András Bodnár. In 1620 he appeared before the magistrate of Sárospatak with his tutor. He was there to announce his departure to a nearby town, Gönc. The reason for this, said András, was that he wanted to study. It had been the wish of his mother who had left him a certain sum in order to ensure that he “does not grow up a peasant and ignoramus, but learns a trade of his own choice.” “My wish is for the craft of the cobbler,” ended the putting of the boy.33 We do not know anything else about him. Also the case of Péter Lyakicz in Barátmajor, a tiny village in the west of the country, does not offer much information. The basics: he left the plot of his family to study abroad, and returned in 1612. In the meantime Péter had lost contact with his family. That is obvious from the fact that his brothers had 31 In the 1573 manorial survey of Csákány: MNL OL Microfilms box 4315. 32 All the participants in the venture were men. 33 Protocollum Iudicis Primarii et Senatus Sáros Nagy Patak 1. 206. A Sárospataki Református Kollégium Levéltára SD I. 4.

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disposed of the plot without taking his rights into consideration. As, however, Lyakicz wanted to return to farming, he filed a suit for his part of the plot in the manorial court. The verdict was that he was to receive the whole plot, though had to recompense one of his brothers out of hand. He did that without hesitation. His reaction to the ruling of the court shows that Lyakicz had been successful in his activity abroad, from where he returned home with a fair amount of money. Nevertheless, Péter Lyakicz’s aim was, after having taken a look at the world, to resume serfdom and live the life of the serfs in an off-the-map village.34 Another, totally different case of an individual negotiating freedom has as its protagonist Mátyás Urbán. He left his family and the plot they farmed at a very young age. After a time, according to his many depositions, he obtained the freedom to apply for nobility by giving the officials in charge the gift of five barrels of wine, three yards of fine cloth and a pair of crimson boots. He had to make many statements partly because the bizarre story of the boots and other goods, partly because of the situation he had created. Urbán had obtained a royal charter granting him nobility and Zemplén County declared it thus he became a real nobleman. The problem was that at first by custom, then from 1630 by law, peasant tenants were not allowed to apply for nobility without the consent of the landlord and Urbán’s tale about his lord’s consent seemed more than suspicious. Who was to blame? The Royal Chancellery where the letter of nobility was issued? The county assembly which declared Urbán’s elevation to nobility? Who was the person to victimize? Through close scrutiny, the main wrongdoer could be determined to be the king. In the end, the deputy lieutenant who had been entrusted to resolve the situation decided to believe the unbelievable. Urbán’s nobility survived the storm.35

Buying Nobility Normally, for tenant peasants, the first step toward nobility was to approach the seigneur. I have to stress here the social status of the main actor because under other societal conditions the mode of action for nobility was different. That is obvious in the cases of burghers who had no landlord and was fairly common among the members of different secular or ecclesiastical bureaucracies. The rarest method was to transact heroic deeds. The times of the valiant noble knight were long past. It seems most improbable that there was ever a time when the 34 Documents on Lyakicz’s case before the manorial court: Endre Varga, ed., Úriszéki perek, XVI–XVII. század (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1958), 128−30. 35 Documents telling the story: MNL OL E 197. 39. csomó.

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main prerequisite for acquiring nobility was heroism.36 Heroism was not an often-mentioned trait in the royal charters donating nobility, although it figured and figures largely in the notions of nobility even today. According to the letters of nobility that have been preserved in their original or as an insert in other documents, the ennobled persons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were mostly the courtiers or inner servants of high priests and high-ranking lords. It is characteristic of the situation that King Ferdinand’s first known letter of nobility was issued in 1531 to a certain courtier and protégé of Elek Thurzó, Ferenc Felpecz.37 Somewhat earlier, a week after his coronation, he bestowed the first exemptions on a simple rural house. The inhabitants of the said house in Szentmárton were Gergely Hethes and his family, while the sponsor of Hethes was the royal secretary Miklós Gerendi. Among the early ennoblements of the sixteenth century was that of a learned man, Magister Andreas, chaplain of Ferdinand I. The nobility he acquired in 1549 was extended by the king to Magister Andreas’s sister, the sister’s husband and children living in Zala County. They all were taken by Ferdinand “from the condition of ignobility and peasantry”—conditio ignobilitatis et rusticitatis—in which they existed and put into the “society and number of the real nobility”—in coetum and numerum verum nobilium—of his Hungarian kingdom.38 Magister Andreas had been recommended to the king by two high priests, one of them the landlord of the estate where the family lived. Of the real peasant’s ennoblement we know much less. By real peasant I mean people farming plots of seigneurial lands. Very little documentation of their ennoblements has survived. Surviving documents are from people who went further socially and into more secure living conditions than noble persons in rural settlements. It is not difficult to guess how easily documents perished or got lost in houses at the mercy of fire and marauders. It did not help in this regard that, according to common custom, houses were whitewashed inside several times a year when all movables were put in the yard. Peasants had kept chests for valuables for centuries at that time and most of them took great care of their files. We nevertheless do not know at present about the archive of a single peasant-turnednobleman from this period. There are problems also with people who reached the level of castle dweller. A complicated document, that is, the official copy of it, tells about the ennoblement of a whole large peasant tenant family in a most instructive

36 Some historians regard nobility to be the creation of the kings. More reflective opinion explains the birth of the noble estate with the self-organizing actions of the counties from the eleventh century on. Kings started issuing letters of nobility much later. 37 MNL OL Libri regii 1. 198. March 25, 1531. Thurzó can be called the richest and most powerful man in Hungary at that time. 38 Ibid., 2. 320−22. March 6, 1549.

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way.39 The main beneficiary was István Varga, alias Kovács. Then his wife and children, his brothers with their wives and children were enumerated in the royal letter. As to the events that led to their ennoblement, they started with the VargaKovács family paying 1,200 forints to their seigneur, a nobleman called György Hamvay, his wife and five offspring. After the money had been deposited, the Hamvays manumitted the members of the Varga-Kovács family and liberated the house they lived in and the plot they farmed. That happened through Hamvay’s oral declaration regarding all this, in Hungarian, before the Eger Chapter with explicit permission to apply for the royal confirmation of Hamvay’s declaration as well as for an armalis, as the royal letter of nobility was called in Hungary. At the end he stated the most important fact: the mutual obligation of the two parties to defend the other does not end before Gömör County declares the nobility of the Varga-Kovács family and they turn into free noble people. The Chapter issued Hamvay’s declaration in Latin, the Varga-Kovács family approached King Leopold, that is his office, which bestowed upon them the liberties they asked for with the justification that they had obediently served the Hungarian Crown and His Majesty. At this point, the Varga-Kovács family asked for a royal charter containing all documents regarding the matter, the declaration in Hungarian included. They got it. In addition, they asked the Royal Chancellery to copy the whole text into the Royal Books, which contain documents judged especially important by the beneficiaries. The proceedings took more than two years from the declaration before the Eger Chapter to the insertion of Leopold’s diploma in the Royal Books. And it cost another fortune. The first fortune was the 1,200 forints put down before Hamvay started action. Random information on the tenant peasant’s ennoblement process tells about the Varga-Kovács diploma’s characteristic features. Omitted in the text is the problem of who started the proceedings. Was it the tenant peasant who asked for freedom or did the lord offer that opportunity? It depended most probably on the circumstances of each case. Then there must surely have been some bargaining. The sums in the letters of manumission are very high. It is impossible to imagine that the peasants put them down without any hesitation. Then the case had to be carried to different authorities. Who knew about the possibility that one could obtain Latin documents of declarations in the vernacular? Was a man who grew up in a small Hungarian village familiar with the whereabouts and the function of royal offices? Or did the tenant peasant employ lawyers? We know very little about the technicalities of becoming a noble.40 One thing is certain: it was not easy. It was not easy materially and it was not easy intellectually for the peasant to reach nobility.

39 Ibid., 14. 393–97. September 23, 1667. 40 Tamás, Szálkai Armálisok (PhD dissertation, University of Debrecen, 2010). This work des-

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Notwithstanding the difficulties, many tenant peasants set out for attaining nobility’s freedom, and most of them did it successfully. They were “thrusting” for nobility, as a contemporary text reprovingly stated.41 Historians tried to calculate percentages of the ennobled peasants; the results vary between 4 and 20 percent of the kingdom’s population. Doubts can be raised about the figures. There is no doubt, however, about noble persons figuring in manorial surveys. The phenomenon of ennobled persons living on seigneurial soil created embittered debates among politicians. Even the Diet had to deal with it several times. The Lower House aimed to liberate these people from the manorial jurisdiction, while the Upper House was, of course, against it. After decades of struggle in which the kings sided with the Upper House, the decision was taken at the Diet in 1646−47. Looking at the mass of laws enacted at that time I could not find out in whose favor they were. The many decisions of the Members seem contradictory. Anyway, Article 22, with reference to earlier decisions, “abolished” the manorial court for persons of the nobility. At the same time, a tax was levied upon them and their social milieu was not necessarily in favor of the new nobles’ liberty. The question then arises: was it worth paying so much for a status that did not basically change the living conditions of the beneficiary? The answer to this question is unequivocally positive. Otherwise the peasant tenants would have left “nobility fair.” Their curious behavior’s explanation was expressed in a Hungarian-language statement by György Hamvay in which he asserted that after the county declared the nobility of the Varga-Kovács family, their mutual dependency would automatically be dissolved. In other words, although most of the many new nobles were far from being able to acquire a status changing their lifestyle radically, they ceased to be the subjects of anybody, except the king. It seems that they judged the money invested in their own emotional comfort to be well-spent.

What the Negotiations Tell Us about Tenant Peasant Society First and foremost, I would like to call attention to the massive presence of the money motive in the cases described above. It seems that the normal state of affairs for serfs was to have money at their disposal. In the example of Szentgyörgy and Bazin I know that they used the services of a moneylender. That means that both they and the banker were sure of the towns’ solvency. All the other instances, except that of Urbán, show larger or smaller sums of ready cash cribes many technical niceties in obtaining early-modern royal charters entailing a coat of arms in Bihar County. 41 Corpus Juris Hungarici 1630 Act 30 Preamble.

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in the hands of individual serfs or communities of serfs. This is not the first time that I have encountered the serf-money phenomenon. Some years ago I collected all the data I could find on the savings of peasants. The result was that households under normal circumstances, working according to society’s expectations or norms, kept in their possession a sum approximately equal to the price of an average house in their region.42 The other strong motive I would highlight is the omnipresence of the drive for social ascent, even by unbelievably crooked means. That is the general impression one gets when looking at the deeds of the agents. The serfs of Gutsherrschaft Hungary were familiar with the working of domination, in royal context as well as in private dominions, and they used the opportunities offered by the system. The simplest opportunity was to pay for freedoms. There was, however, another means for social ascent—the tailoring of the family. I cannot illustrate that with the help of individual cases due to the extremely complicated nature of the matter. Éva Veress did an excellent study on it.43 In the 1960s, she investigated social mobility in the sixteenth century of serfs in two villages of the upper Tisza region using the method of family reconstruction. Her result has served to illustrate a situation in which practically all households were keen to improve their position. That meant moving from the end of the village, often gradually, to the village center near the church building, or to move from some obscure place to the vicinity of the road leading to nearby towns. In order to achieve their goals, the serfs played, so to say, with family structure. After establishing joint households, if need demanded it, they dissolved them. Sons were put into the status of cotters or they took up independent farming, then left it and moved back to the paternal or, in many instances, maternal household. Old parents stayed with the next generation or established another household for longer or shorter times. The family structures studied by Éva Veress had nothing in common with the stationary demographic descriptions. This playing with family structure was based on the landlords’ interests. If the services put on the plot were performed or paid for by money, the division of labor by the serfs did not concern the masters. The motive of learning is, as a matter of fact, served to promote the objective of social advancement. This motive is conspicuous in the sources. My examples told about one boy who wanted to learn a craft, while the other may have had academic ambitions. Learning a trade was a fairly common venture among young sons of serfs, while going abroad to university was less common. Nevertheless, 42 Katalin Péter, “Ad vocem fösvénység. Pénz a jobbágy – földesúr viszonyban az örökös jobbágyság idején,” accessed June 9, 2015, www.iti.mta.hu/Szorenyi60/peter.pdf. 43 Éva Veress, “Háztartás, telek és termelés hegyaljai és bodrogközi jobbágyfalvakban a XVI. század derekán,” in Jobbágytelek és parasztgazdaság, ed. László Makkai (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1966), 285−426.

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there was an appreciable inclination toward learning. Gabriella Erdélyi even diagnosed an unscrupulous form of this. She wrote about runaway friars who, according to her interpretation of data, had entered friaries in order to benefit from the frequently high-quality schools in them and then, upon completing their studies, they simply left.44 If we know the origins of people who studied, the percentage of serfs among them is high in my opinion. Among the bishops of the fifteenth century there were 15 sons of serfs, and among the members of three Chapters studied by József Köblös, 15 percent were of the same descent.45 The estimation of the burden of forced labor—the exemption from which was worth so much to peasants—depends on both the temperament of the historian as well as that of the serfs. In the first context, a good example of it can be drawn from a provision in many manorial instructions. The provision is the following: “the poor people or subjects [they rarely use the term serf], have to work in accordance with the steward’s command.” Some historians interpret this to indicate that the serfs were forced to perform unlimited robot. Others say that in certain situations the robot was so complex that it was impossible to define it in a general way. I am of the latter conviction. On the other hand, the serfs refer to themselves as overburdened by robot in all sources mentioning that aspect of life. Historians tend to believe this literally and write about exploited serfs who are at the end of their tether. Others have certain doubts. László Makkai, who was most familiar with all aspects of serfdom, elucidated the fact that the serfs usually put 16 times less effort into forced labor than into farming their own plot. And Jan Peters, the eminent expert on agrarian societies in East Elbia, attributed the usual slackness of robot to the mental attitudes of the serfs. They considered the inclusion of play and relaxation into work at the manor to be justified. In my opinion, the point for the historian is not the burden of robot. The main question is how serfs felt about working for the lord. The amount of money they put into freedom from it, either as communities or as individuals, shows that, whatever the burden, serfs felt uncomfortable with the manual services determined by the representatives of seigneurial domination. I would say robot was much more a matter of emotions than a matter of rational reflection. In addition, robot was the main aspect in the life of serfs in which conflicts between members of communities could emerge most easily. It is obvious: people who were in a position to buy freedom from robot were not in the same league as those who had to work regularly under the watching eyes of overseers. 44 Gabriella Erdélyi, Szökött szerzetesek. Ero˝szak és fiatalok a késo˝ középkorban (Budapest: Libri, 2011), 30−38. 45 Erik Fügedi, “Hungarian Bishops in the Fifteenth Century,” in idem, Kings, Bishops, Nobles, and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, ed. János M. Bak (London: Variorum, 1986), 191−206; József Köblös, Az egyházi középréteg Mátyás és a Jagellók korában (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1994).

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Some Observations Regarding the Great Revolts of the Period According to certain interpretations of the movement attributed to György Dózsa, the war of the simple people against the nobility was one of the main factors that led to the Hungarian Kingdom’s ruin in the sixteenth century. That was voiced already by contemporaries and has been asserted since then by many historians. The rationale surrounding this matter has been the following: there must be some explanation for the fact that the large and powerful country of King Matthias fell victim to the Ottomans within a generation after his death in 1490. One of the explanations is that for many reasons, including the brutal uprising and its brutal crushing, Hungary was in a lamentably vulnerable state and unable to defend itself. The indisputable facts are: Hungary fell into three parts. One of the parts became a separate state, the Principality of Transylvania. Another part, a large one, was incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The third part remained the Kingdom of Hungary. In this latter part ruled members of the Habsburg dynasty, while the part under Ottoman rule was the property of the Sultans and national rulers ruled in Transylvania. I am dealing here with the kingdom part. The subjects of the kings engaged in a long line of movements against foreign rule. The movements can be called uprisings, rebellions, wars of independence and wars for freedom. The name depends on the historian’s intellectual inclination. The common feature of all uprisings was first of all that they were led by high-ranking lords or princes of Transylvania who used the peasant’s longing for freedom to their own end. Secondly, the kings being Catholic, all wars of independence were linked closely to the free exercise of Protestant religions. At the beginning the leaders were of the Reformed denomination, then came an Evangelical political figure and at the end a converted Catholic member of the eminently Reformed Rákóczi family. I would not define those wars as rural revolts; nevertheless, because of the high percentage of peasants among the participants, it is justified to characterize them with the words of Ivan Varga—they politicized the transcendent.46 It is presently uncertain whether there was a high percentage of peasants in the wars of independence. We know the exact names only of a group of cattle-driving warrior hajdús that received nobility and free farmlands from István Bocskai. With that he set the tone for future leaders in need of popular support: freedom, social ascent and/or quiet life at the congregation had to be promised. That is also something we know. The absolute majority of adherents of the wars against foreign rule were most likely Protestants. The details, however, have not yet been 46 Ivan Varga, “The Politicisation of the Transcendent: a Quasi-Sociological Postscript,” in Religion and Rural Revolt, ed. János M. Bak and Gerhard Benecke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 481.

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explored, although contemporaries were already aware of popular action’s center at this time.47 Zsuzsanna Lórántffy commissioned the pastors at her estates to say prayers for her husband. He was the prince of Transylvania and an eminent antiHabsburg fighter in the Thirty Years’ War György Rákóczi I. The princess was explicit in her letters: The ministers had to say prayers in the church, then lead the members of the congregation to meet and celebrate the prince on his way to the battlefield at the roadside.48 Research should be done into the life of the parishes.

Archival Sources Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (The National Archives of Hungary, MNL OL), Mohács elo˝tti gyu˝jtemény (Pre-Mohács Collection) DLDF P 1322 Batthyány család levéltára (Archives of the Batthyány Family) E 156 Magyar Kamara Archívuma (Archives of the Hungarian Royal Chamber), Urbáriumok és összeírások (Manorial surveys and conscriptions) E 197, Magyar Kamara Archívuma, Archivum Patakiense Rákócziano-Trautsonianum A 57 Magyar Kancellária Levéltára (Archives of the Hungarian Royal Chancery) Libri regii Microfilms, box 4312 (Batthyány)

A Sárospataki Református Kollégium Levéltára SD I. 4. Protocollum Iudicis Primarii et Senatus Sáros Nagy Patak 1. 206. Prothocollum venerabilis tractus Zemplen Kgy 2. I/2. VI.

Bibliography Bak, János M. “Delinquent Lords and Forsaken Serfs.” In Society in Change, edited by S.B. Vardy and H.A. Vardy, 291−304. Boulder, Col: East European Monographs, 1983. Barta, Gábor, and Antal Fekete Nagy. Parasztháború 1514-ben [Peasant War in 1514]. Budapest: Gondolat, 1977. Brunner, Otto. Land und Herrschaft. Vienna–Wiesbaden: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1959. Eddie, S. A. Freedom’s Price. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Erdélyi, Gabriella. Szökött szerzetesek. Ero˝szak és fiatalok a késo˝ középkorban [Runaway Friars. Violence and Youth in Late Medieval Hungary]. Budapest: Libri, 2011. 47 Peter Blickle wrote much about the societal functions of the Gemeinde. Instead of giving a list of works I refer to his study in this volume. 48 The copy of one of her letters has been preserved in the Zemplén deanery records. Sárospataki Református Kollégium Levéltára Prothocollum venerabilis tractus Zemplen Kgy 2. I/2. VI.

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Evans, R. J. W. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700. An Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fekete Nagy, Antonius, Victor Kenéz, Ladislaus Solymosi, and Geisa Érszegi, eds. Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV. Publicationes Archivi Nationalis Hungarici II, Fontes 12. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979. Fraknói, Vilmos. Erdo˝di Bakócz Tamás élete [The Life of Tamás Erdo˝di Bakócz]. Budapest: Méhner, 1889. Fügedi, Erik. “Hungarian Bishops in the Fifteenth Century.” In idem. Kings,Bishops, Nobles, and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, edited by János M. Bak, 191–206. London: Variorum, 1986. Gunst, Peter. “Der ungarische Bauernkrieg von 1514.” Historische Zeitschrift Beihefte Neue Reihe 4 (1975): 62−83. H. Németh, István. Várospolitika és gazdaságpolitika a 16–17. századi Magyarországon [Urban Policy and Economic Policy in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Hungary]. Budapest: Gondolat, 2004. Housley, Norman. “Crusading as Social Revolt. The Hungarian Peasant Uprising of 1514.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49 (1998): 1−29. Klaniczay, Gábor. “Images and Designation for Rebellious Peasants in Medieval Hungary.” In The Man of Many Devices Who Wandered Full Many Years, edited by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebo˝k, 117−21. Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 1999. Köblös, József. Az egyházi középréteg Mátyás és a Jagellók korában [The Mid–Level Clergy at the Time of Matthias and the Jagiellonians]. Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1994. Kolosvári, Sándor, and Kelemen Óvári, eds. Corpus Juris Hungarici 1000−1526. Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1889. Maksay, Ferenc, ed. Urbáriumok XVI–XVII. Század [Manorial Consriptions, Sixteenth– Seventeenth Centuries]. Budapest: Akadémiai, 1959. Márki, Sándor. Dózsa György [György Dózsa]. Budapest: Athenaeum, 1913. Marsina, Richard and Michael Kusˇík, eds. Urbáre feudálnych panstiev na Slovensku, 2 vols. Bratislava: Akadémie, 1959. Orosz, István. “Debrecen útja” [Debrecen’s Road]. In Debrecen város 650 éves [The City of Debrecen Is 650 Years Old], edited by Attila Bárány and Klára Papp, 115–30. Debrecen: Debreceni Egyetem, 2011. Pál, Judit. “Der Preis der Freiheit. Die freie königliche Stadt Szatmárnémeti am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts.” In Ergebene Diener ihrer Herren?, edited by Stefan Brakensiek and Heide Wunder, 123–43. Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 2006. Péter, Katalin. “Ad vocem fösvénység. Pénz a jobbágy – földesúr viszonyban az örökös jobbágyság idején”[Ad vocem Stinginess. Money in the Serf-Landlord Relationship at the Time of Hereditary Serfdom]. Accessed June 9, 2015. www.iti.mta.hu/Szorenyi60/ peter.pdf. – “Illésházy Istvánról” [On István Illésházy]. Publicationes Universitatis Miskolcinensis Sectio Philosophica 13 (2008): 127–66. – “Women Heading Households in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Hungarian Rural Society.” In La donna nell economica secc. XIII–XVIII, edited by Simonetta Cavaciocchi, 293–300. Prato: Istituto F. Datini, 1990.

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Piso, Jacobus. “Ad Leptam.” In Analecta nova ad historiam renascentium in Hungaria literarum spectantia, edited by Ábel Eugenius and Stephanus Hegedu˝s. Budapest: Hornyanszky, 1903. Szabó, István. “Középkorvégi parasztlázadások” [Peasant Rebellions of the Late Middle Ages]. In idem, Tanulmányok a Magyar parasztság történetébo˝l [Studies from the History of the Hungarian Peasantry], 51−62. Budapest: Teleki Pál Tudományos Intézet, 1948. Szabó, István. A jobbágy birtoklása az örökös jobbágyság korában, Értekezések a TörténetiTudományok Körébo˝l, XXXV, új sorozat [The Holdings of Serfs in the Era of Hereditary Serfdom. Papers from the Historical Sciences XXXV New Series]. Budapest: Akadémiai, 1947. Szálkai, Tamás. “Armálisok” [Charters Bearing Coat of Arms]. PhD diss. University of Debrecen, 2010. Szu˝cs, Jeno˝. “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében” [Current of Franciscan Opposition in the Background of the Hungarian Peasant War and Reformation]. Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409−53. Takács, Sándor. “A Magyar léhen és holden” [The Hungarian Léhen and Holden]. In idem, Emlékezzünk eleinkro˝l [Let’s Remember Our Forebears]. Budapest: Genius, n.d.: 285– 330. Varga, Ivan. “The Politicisation of the Transcendent: a Quasi-Sociological Postscript.” In Religion and Rural Revolt, edited by János M. Bak and Gerhard Benecke. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. Veress, Éva. “Háztartás, telek és termelés hegyaljai és bodrogközi jobbágyfalvakban a XVI. század derekán” [Household, Plot of Land and Production in the Serf Villages of Hegyalja and Bodrogköz in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century]. In Jobbágytelek és parasztgazdaság [Serf Plots of Land and Peasant Economy], edited by László Makkai, 285–426. Budapest: Akadémiai, 1966. Weisz, Boglárka. “Debrecen kereskedelmi életének jogi háttere” [The Legal Background of the Commercial Life of Debrecen]. Debrecen város 650 éves [The City of Debrecen Is 650 Years Old], edited by Attila Bárány and Klára Papp, 131–48. Debrecen: Debreceni Egyetem, 2011. Wenzel, Gusztáv. Stibor Vajda. Értekezések a Történeti Tudományok Körébo˝l 40 [Voivode Stibor. Papers from the Historical Sciences 40]. Budapest: Eggenberger, 1874. Zimányi Vera. “Supplicationum merita.” Történelmi Szemle 40 (1998): 299–332.

Marco Gentile

In Search of the Italian “Common Man.” Rethinking the 1462 Peasant Uprising in the Territory of Piacenza

Introduction In the winter of 1462, a vast uprising shook the territory of Piacenza, one of the southern provinces of the Duchy of Milan. A few thousand men from several villages under seigneurial rule, located mainly in the middle and lower valley of the river Trebbia, gathered in huge assemblies to protest against the unbearable tax burden they had to sustain and finally took the decision to march on Piacenza. As the peasants approached the city gates and the urban mob threatened to join the rural insurgents, both the ruling élite of Piacenza and the rural lords were thrown into panic. The ducal governor of the province managed to negotiate the withdrawal of the peasants, who, in exchange, formally obtained a substantial reduction of their fiscal obligations and the promise that their representatives would be permitted to go to Milan to present their grievances to the duke himself. Once the rebels had been persuaded to return home and the ducal officials and the rural lords had regained control of the villages involved in the uprising, the written promises made to the peasants were broken and, after a few months, a systematic repression began. The leader of the rebels, Giacomino Pellizzari, better known as Peloia, hanged himself in prison. Count Onofrio Anguissola, a member of the local landed nobility who had been involved in the disorders, openly rebelled against the duke: his castles were besieged and taken, and he was captured and handed over to the ducal officials by his own kin. Onofrio’s followers were then crushed by ducal troops. This is a brief account of what was probably the most important revolt of the peasantry in fifteenth-century Northern Italy. The territorial size and the number of the peasants involved far exceeded any other riot or revolt in the Lombard countryside of the fifteenth century, and the uprising made a lasting impression on contemporaries. Years after the end of the revolt, in times of political crisis, some observers would openly (and worriedly) refer to what had

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happened in “Peloia’s times”; others, in times of famine, would invoke a new Peloia, or wish they were Peloia themselves.1 In what follows I shall seek not so much to reconstruct the events, for the story of those months in 1462 has already been told in detail, but to look at the sources to find traces of the political cultures expressed by the actors. In particular, I shall try to reconstruct at least some fragments of the political culture of the commoners. Social unrest and revolts in the countryside have never been among the favorite subjects of historians of fifteenth-century Italy.2 However, over the past two decades, this theme seems to have been even more neglected than it has been traditionally. The reasons for this silence are varied. First of all, mainstream historiography tends to focus on the cities, which the Italian great narrative still regards, to a large extent, as the backbone of the regional states that provided the framework for the general political organization in that period. Only in recent years has a strong new line of research on late medieval rural communities emerged, in particular in the work by Massimo Della Misericordia on the central Alps and by Federico Del Tredici on the Milanese contado.3 It might also be observed that popular uprisings in fifteenth-century Italy have been overshadowed by very important episodes of revolt at the end of the previous century and at the beginning of the following. The fourteenth-century uprisings in Italy have been studied in the context of general crisis, characterized by a state of permanent war throughout the peninsula and by the peak in population growth prior to the Black Death and its consequences. The last significant publication devoted to popular uprisings in Italy consists of the proceedings of a conference held in Florence in 2006 on protest and revolt in town and country during the 1 ASMi Famiglie 171 (Scotti), Lancillotto Scotti to Bianca Maria Sforza (without date, but presumably 1466); ibid. SC 838, Giovanni Del Conte and Azzone Visconti to Bona and Gian Galeazzo Sforza (30 Jan. 1477, Parma). I would like to thank Letizia Arcangeli, Massimo Della Misericordia and Jocasta Gardner for their help and advice. The letters cited were sent from Piacenza, unless otherwise specified. Note on weights and currency. The standard measure for dry goods in Piacenza and its province was the staio piacentino (34.92 liters), divided into 16 coppelli or stopelli (2. 18 liters). I do not follow here Angelo Martini, Manuale di metrologia ossia misure, pesi e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli (Turin: Loescher 1883), 520, on the basis of ASMi SC 765, Luchino da Conago to Francesco Sforza (1462 May 28). The standard currency of the Duchy of Milan was the lira imperiale, subdivided into 20 soldi, and each soldo into 12 denari. In Francesco Sforza time the accounting currencies were the ducato (worth 4 lire imperiali) and the fiorino (worth 32 soldi, i. e. 1.6 to the lira imperiale). 2 Cf. Samuel K. Cohn Jr., Creating the Florentine State. Peasants and Rebellions, 1348–1434 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 115–16. 3 In addition to their works cited below, see at least Massimo Della Misericordia, “Decidere e agire in comunità nel XV secolo (un aspetto del dibattito politico nel dominio sforzesco),” in Linguaggi politici nell’Italia del Rinascimento, ed. Andrea Gamberini and Giuseppe Petralia (Rome: Viella, 2007), 290–378; Federico Del Tredici, Comunità, nobili e gentiluomini nel contado di Milano del Quattrocento (Milan: Unicopli, 2013).

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fourteenth century.4 The most famous uprising during this century is the 1378 Tumulto dei Ciompi, doubtlessly due in part to the centrality of Florence in the aforementioned great narrative.5 As for the countryside, the best-known case study is probably the revolt of the Tuchini in Piedmont, which lasted for about five years (from 1386 to 1391) and caused much trouble to the state of the Savoy.6 On the other hand, a major and extremely violent uprising known as the Carnival of Udine that took place in Friuli in 1511 attracted the attention of several historians of the Renaissance, particularly after the publication in 1993 of Edward Muir’s book Mad Blood Stirring, which generated lively debate in the subsequent literature.7 This general lack of interest in fifteenth-century revolts, however, is due not only to trends and fashion in historiography. It is a matter of fact that, in Italy, the fifteenth century as a whole was a period of economic and demographic recovery following the negative peak reached between the 1380s and the 1420s. These two elements have already been underscored by historians of the Kingdom of Naples as relevant factors for the decreasing frequency of episodes of unrest in fifteenthcentury southern Italy, while, by contrast, the fourteenth century had seen very high levels of conflict and banditry in the countryside.8 In central Italy, particularly in Tuscany, the successful diffusion of the sharecropping system (mezzadria) is now widely recognized as a factor that helped to reduce tensions

4 Rivolte urbane e rivolte contadine nell’Europa del Trecento. Un confronto, ed. Monique Bourin, Giovanni Cherubini and Giuliano Pinto (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009). 5 The bibliography on the subject is naturally enormous. For a recent survey, see Patrick Lantschner, “The ‘Ciompi Revolution’ Constructed: Modern Historians and the NineteenthCentury Paradigm of Revolution,” Annali di Storia di Firenze 4 (2009): 277–97. Accessed May 11 2015, doi: 10.13128/Annali_Stor_Firen-9864. 6 See Alessandro Barbero, “La rivolta come strumento politico delle comunità rurali: il Tuchinaggio nel Canavese (1386–1391),” in Linguaggi politici nell’Italia del Rinascimento, ed. Andrea Gamberini and Giuseppe Petralia (Rome: Viella, 2007), 245–65; Barbero, “Una rivolta antinobiliare nel Piemonte trecentesco: il Tuchinaggio nel Canavese,” in Rivolte urbane e rivolte contadine, 153–96. 7 Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring. Vendetta & Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Cf. Furio Bianco, “‘Mihi vindictam’: Aristocratic Clans and Rural Communities in a Feud in Friuli in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” in Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, ed. Trevor Dean and Kate J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 249–73; Bianco, 1511, La ‘crudel zobia grassa.’ Rivolte contadine e faide nobiliari in Friuli tra ‘400 e ‘500 (Pordenone: Edizioni Biblioteca dell’Immagine, 1995); Osvaldo Raggio, “Politica, cultura, archetipi. Il giovedì grasso di Udine (1511),” Quaderni storici 88 (1995): 221–31; Giorgio Politi, “Crisi e civilizzazione di un’aristocrazia: a proposito di un libro recente,” Studi veneziani 29 (1995): 103–42. 8 Giovanni Vitolo, “Rivolte contadine e brigantaggi nel Mezzogiorno angioino,” Annali dell’Istituto Alcide Cervi 16 (1994): 223–24.

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between landholders and tenants.9 In addition to the generally improved material conditions of the rural populations during the fifteenth century, one must consider that the unrest of the peasantry could reveal itself in different ways. As Della Misericordia put it, “il conflitto aperto con i domini loci non fu certamente l’unica strada per l’affermazione del comune rurale”: the commoners often successfully adopted disobedience as a specific strategy to undermine the legitimacy of the lords towards the Prince.10 Generally speaking, the conflicts between lords, peasants and citizens tended to shift to a legal level in a process of Verrechtlichung that has been described in several studies on fifteenth and sixteenth century Lombardy.11 Moreover, after the Italic League was proclaimed in 1455, the relative stability of the Italian system significantly reduced the potential space for political disturbance. In his recent synthesis, Della Misericordia argues that the fact that peasant rebellions in late-medieval Italy “cannot be compared in scale to those in France, England and Germany” should be explained by the political and economic strength of the Italian rural communities, which were “often superior to those from continental Europe.”12 Many scattered episodes of collective protest and social unrest in the countryside can, of course, be identified throughout the fifteenth century, especially if one agrees with Samuel Cohn that sharp distinctions between rebellion, revolt and riot are often misleading.13 The exclusive use of narrative sources can be 9 Roberta Mucciarelli and Gabriella Piccinni, “Un’Italia senza rivolte? Il conflitto sociale nelle aree mezzadrili,” Annali dell’Istituto Alcide Cervi 16 (1994): 173–206. 10 Massimo Della Misericordia, Divenire comunità. Comuni rurali, poteri locali, identità sociali e territoriali in Valtellina e nella montagna lombarda del tardo medioevo (Milan: Unicopli, 2006), 142–43. 11 Letizia Arcangeli, “Uomini e feudatario nella prima metà del XVI secolo. Due cause antifeudali nel marchesato di Pellegrino,” in Gentiluomini di Lombardia. Ricerche sull’aristocrazia padana nel Rinascimento (Milan: Unicopli, 2003), 201–67; Della Misericordia, “La mediazione giudiziaria dei conflitti sociali alla fine del medioevo. Tribunali ecclesiastici e resistenza comunitaria in Valtellina,” in Criminalità e giustizia in Italia e in Germania. Pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo medioevo et età moderna, ed. Marco Bellabarba, Gerd Schwerhoff, and Andrea Zorzi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 135–71; Federica Cengarle, “La comunità di Pecetto contro i Mandelli feudatari. Linguaggi politici a confronto,” in Poteri signorili e feudali nelle campagne dell’Italia settentrionale fra Tre e Quattrocento: fondamenti di legittimità e forme di esercizio, ed. Federica Cengarle, Giorgio Chittolini and Gian Maria Varanini (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2005), 105–26. On the concept of juridification of the social conflicts see Winfried Schulze, Bäuerlicher Widerstand und Feudale Herrschaft in der frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart – Bad Cannstatt: Fromman-Holzboog, 1980), 89, 141. 12 Della Misericordia, “The Rural Communities,” in The Italian Renaissance State, ed. Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 282–83. 13 Cohn, Lust for Liberty. The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425. Italy, France and Flanders (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3–4. Among these episodes, the most relevant in terms of size and violence is perhaps the 1455 revolt in the territory of Pistoia (Tuscany), where the rural communities tried to challenge the fiscal

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misleading as well, because they normally say very little about the protesters’ point of view and often cover up facts which were embarrassing for the selfrepresentation of the ruling élites. Stressing the unreliability of the chroniclers, Cohn justifiably wonders “how many revolts remain hidden from history, even sizable ones, such as those that raged over the mountaintops of Florence between 1400 and 1403, involving thousands of peasants in well over 200 villages.”14 It is clear that further systematic research on this topic is needed, and for the Duchy of Milan under the Sforza alone a general survey would be very welcome and useful.15 However, if size represents the most important factor one must note that no other massive peasant uprising is known to have taken place in fifteenthcentury Italy aside from the major insurrection that broke out in Calabria (Kingdom of Naples) in 1459 and was crushed by King Ferrante in a bloodbath during which more than 3,000 peasants were slaughtered.16 At the opposite end of the peninsula, the Piacenza case study seems to be the only known example of massive peasant uprising from fifteenth-century Northern Italy. With regard to the 1462 uprising, the most recent works are two articles published in 1986 by Alfonso Cesare Biaggi and in 1995 by Daniele Andreozzi.17 Both the essays on the uprising rely on the work of the eighteenth-century historian Cristoforo

14 15

16 17

privileges held by the citizens. Francesco Neri, “I capitoli dei «Paciali» del 1455,” in Pistoia e la Toscana nel Medioevo. Studi per Natale Rauty, ed. Elena Vannucchi (Pistoia: Società Pistoiese di Storia Patria, 1997), 231–51. For other areas, such as Veneto, Latium and Piedmont see, for instance, Gian Paolo Marchi, “La schiuma del mondo (testimonianze di una letteratura anticontadina tra Medioevo e Rinascimento),” in I secoli XVIII–XX, vol 2, of Uomini e civiltà agraria in territorio veronese, ed. Giorgio Borelli, 2 vols. (Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1982), 676–81; Alfio Cortonesi, “Rivendicazioni contadine e iniziativa antisignorile nel Tardo Medioevo. Testimonianze dal Lazio Meridionale, Annali dell’Istituto Alcide Cervi 16 (1994): 167–72; Rinaldo Comba, “Boschi e alpeggi fra certosini e contadini nell’Italia centro-settentrionale: fine XII secolo–inizi XV,” in Rivolte urbane e rivolte contadine, 246–28. Cohn, Lust for Liberty, 18. On the 1401–1405 revolt in the Florentine mountains, see Cohn, Creating the Florentine State. That such work clearly has potential is evident from the cases identified in later fifteenthcentury Western Lombardy: see Enrico Roveda, “I beni comuni nella Bassa fra Ticino e Sesia (secoli XV e XVI),” in Uomini, terre e acque. Studi sull’agricoltura della “Bassa lombarda” tra XV e XVII secolo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012), 192–94; Giancarlo Andenna, “Rivolte contadine per la difesa di diritti comunitari. Novara nella seconda metà del Quattrocento,” in Lo sguardo lungimirante delle capitali. Saggi in onore di Francesca Bocchi, ed. Manuela Ghizzoni, Hubert Houben, and Rosa Smurra (Rome: Viella, 2014), 213–29. Ernesto Pontieri, “La Calabria a metà del secolo XVe le rivolte di Antonio Centelles,” Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 10 (1924): 5–154. Alfonso C. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina del 1462,” Bollettino Storico Piacentino 61 (1986): 180–229; Daniele Andreozzi, “La rivolta contadina del 1462 nell’episcopato di Piacenza” Annali dell’Istituto Alcide Cervi 16 (1994): 65–81; see also Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545. Ipotesi di ricerca (Piacenza: Tipografia Legatoria Commerciale, 1997), 101–13; Andreozzi, “‘Cum bello modo e senza spesa alcuna.’ L’esazione delle imposte dirette nel ducato di Milano,” Nuova rivista Storica 85 (2001): 1–38.

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Poggiali18 and above all on the letters of the Carteggio sforzesco—that is, the correspondence between the Milanese dukes and their peripheral officials. For the purpose of this contribution, I also examined the sections Famiglie and Comuni in the State Archives of Milan and carried out extensive research in the notarial archives of Piacenza, which did not prove particularly generous in supplying direct information on the uprising. Study of the letters written during the revolt to the Marquis of Mantua Ludovico II Gonzaga by his informers in the Duchy of Milan and of the reports from his envoy in Milan, Vincenzo Della Scalona, proved to be more fruitful.19

Piacenza in the Sforza Duchy Rural lordship was still a key element of the social and political structure that existed in fifteenth-century Northern Italy, particularly in the state of Milan under the Visconti and the Sforza. The landed nobility very often held not only lands and castles, but also criminal jurisdiction over extensive areas. In the southern provinces of the duchy, the gentiluomini (as they are called in the contemporary sources) still managed to preserve the role of intermediary between the inhabitants of the countryside, the cities and the central government, providing military and fiscal protection to the rural communities.20 Given the aggressive economic policies pursued by the urban élites, who enjoyed substantial fiscal privileges, the rural commoners often preferred seigneurial rule to direct dependency on the cities.21 This is not surprising, for while urban élites were mainly concerned with maximizing rental income, the members of the landed nobility (particularly those of higher rank) were in comparison moderate exploiters of their subjects and kept fostering vast networks of personal bonds which guaranteed them strong clienteles that could be used to achieve their political aims. This way, the potential for conflict in rural areas could be channeled by the lords into proper armies, which in the case of powerful households such as the Fieschi, the Landi, the Pallavicini and the Rossi could amount to 18 Cristoforo Poggiali, Memorie storiche di Piacenza compilate dal proposto Cristoforo Poggiali bibliotecario di sua altezza reale, VII (Piacenza: Filippo G. Giacopazzi, 1759). 19 In particular Martino Anguissola’s letters: ASMn AG 1367. See also Carteggio degli oratori mantovani alla corte sforzesca (1450–1499), ed. Franca Leverotti. Vol 4 (1462), ed. Isabella Lazzarini (Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le attività culturali, 2002). 20 Marco Gentile, “Aristocrazia signorile e costituzione del ducato visconteo-sforzesco: appunti e problemi di ricerca,” in Noblesse et États princiers en Italie et en France au XVe siècle, ed. Marco Gentile and Pierre Savy (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2009), 125–55. 21 Giorgio Chittolini, “Il luogo di Mercato, il comune di Parma e i marchesi Pallavicini di Pellegrino,” in La formazione dello stato regionale e le istituzioni del contado. Secoli XIVe XV, 2nd ed. (Milan: Unicopli, 2005), 95–148.

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several hundred men. These armed clienteles, which could be offered to the prince (or to his enemies) in the event of a general political crisis and used in the frequent local wars between rival noble lineages, formed the backbone of the factions that were such an important part of the Lombard political landscape in the late Middle Ages.22 In several provinces of the duchy, the political horizon of the high landed nobility was not limited to competition between seigneurial lineages and negotiation of privileges with the dukes of Milan. The cities and the control of their offices and institutions were a very important source of political power for the main aristocratic families and the ties between rural and urban factions were often so strong that a strict distinction between these two sides would not make sense.23 The Duchy of Milan under the Sforza (1450–1535) was a lightweight state. Coercive power had to be used very carefully by the central government: the peripheral officials of the dukes had to rely on local patronage networks and factions to maintain order, and consensus was crucial. The material constitution of the Sforza duchy was based on bilateral pacts and bonds of allegiance between the prince, the cities, the communities and the lords, who normally formalized their political relationship with the center in feudal terms. In other words, in the second half of the fifteenth century the Duchy of Milan, in spite of the fact that it represented itself as a territorial state in its relations with the other Italian powers, was still very much a Personenverbandsstaat.24 The first Sforza duke, Francesco, who had married a daughter of the last Visconti duke (Filippo Maria), gained control over the state after a long military campaign and the legal foundations of his legitimacy were weak. During his long reign (from 1452 to 1493) the emperor Frederick III repeatedly refused to recognize the Sforza as dukes of Milan, and the ducal title could be bought at a very high price from Maximilian I only in 1494.25 As a result of this lack of legitimacy, the power of Francesco Sforza was never fully stable; and in the 1460s several people, both inside and outside the Duchy of Milan, were anxiously waiting for his death.

22 Arcangeli, Gentiluomini di Lombardia; Gentile, Terra e poteri. Parma e il Parmense nel ducato visconteo all’inizio del Quattrocento (Milan: Unicopli, 2001); Chittolini, “Guerre, guerricciole e riassetti territoriali in una provincia lombarda di confine: Parma e il Parmense, agosto 1447–febbraio 1449,” Società e storia 108 (2005): 221–49. 23 Gentile, Fazioni al governo. Politica e società a Parma nel Quattrocento (Rome: Viella, 2009). 24 Chittolini, “Infeudazioni e politica feudale nel ducato visconteo-sforzesco,” in La formazione dello stato regionale, 52; Gentile, Aristocrazia signorile, 155. 25 Jane Black, Absolutism in Renaissance Milan. Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and Sforza 1329–1535 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009), 81–93; Black, “Double Duchy: the Sforza dukes and the other Lombard title,” in Europa e Italia. Studi in onore di Giorgio Chittolini, ed. Paola Guglielmotti, Isabella Lazzarini, and Gian Maria Varanini (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011), 15–27.

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During the middle of the fifteenth century, Piacenza was a city of about 21,000 inhabitants26 and theoretically controlled a territory (contado) of around 3,000 square kilometers, which stretched from the river Po to the mountains of the Apennines. As in many other Lombard towns and cities, civic offices and seats on the civic council were divided between the members of four factions, which took their names from the main lineages of the high landed nobility: the Landi and Anguissola of Ghibelline political tradition; and the Scotti and Fontana, who were Guelfs.27 These factions, called squadre or parti, were not informal groups. In fifteenth-century Lombard towns, there were not necessarily just two factions— there could be three (as in Cremona), four (as in Piacenza and in Parma) or even more. These groups were generally built up around the main local noble affinities: their elementary units were usually urban lineages, they had a strong institutional basis and called themselves universitates, as any other legally recognized guild. Throughout the fifteenth century, factions were much more than a way of organizing conflict, since the administration of several Lombard towns depended on them. In sum, they looked very much like corporate groups, which an anthropologist would probably prefer to call “parties” even if they did not have a specific political program. Above this local level was another tier, where both central governments and the local powers spoke the Guelf/Ghibelline political language. At the time, the two traditional names were still very suited to linking forces belonging to different towns, territories and regions, and still proved very useful in what one might call “international relations.” The urban factions normally had strong connections with the leaders of the landed noble lineages and their rural subjects and clients.28 In Piacenza, the integration between city and countryside was particularly evident. Major seigneurial lineages such as Landi, Anguissola and Scotti had urban origins, being originally mercantile families which, during the fourteenth century, had developed a landed and castellan profile. Many members of minor branches of these families lived in the town and had seats on the civic councils. The landed nobility ruled large parts of the territory, both formally and informally, and their presence greatly limited the control that the communal institutions and the ducal officials could exercise in the province.29 In addition to the four main lineages, the Dal Verme held fiefs southwest of the city, extending 26 Maria Ginatempo and Lucia Sandri, L’Italia delle città. Il popolamento urbano tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (secoli XIII–XVI) (Florence: Le Lettere, 1989), 85. 27 Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545; Roberto Bellosta, “Le ‘squadre’ in consiglio. Assemblee cittadine ed élite di governo urbana a Piacenza nella seconda metà del Quattrocento tra divisioni di parte ed ingerenze ducali,” Nuova Rivista Storica 87 (2003): 1–54. 28 On the factions see Gentile, “Factions and Parties: Problems and Perspectives,” in The Italian Renaissance State, 304–22. 29 Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545.

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from the plain to the mountains between the dioceses of Piacenza, Bobbio and Pavia.30 The very powerful Pallavicini occupied a vast and strategically important region on both banks of the river Po, between Piacenza, Cremona and Parma;31 and it is also worth mentioning informal lordships such as the Nicelli family in the valley of the river Nure.32 The lineages of the landed nobility were split into different branches, which were not always on friendly terms with one another. Conflicts among relatives, brothers and cousins were very common.33 In the territory of Piacenza, unlike in other provinces of the duchy, rural lordship was quite fragmented and there were no large and compact seigneurial “states” as in the nearby province of Parma, with the exception of the Dal Verme, whose fiefs extended across the dioceses of Piacenza, Bobbio and Pavia. This fragmentation brought about a reduced capacity for fiscal protection of the communities, particularly when the central government tightened its fiscal policies and increased the taxes to be paid by the fief holders.34 There is no evidence that during the second half of the fifteenth century the lords of the Piacentino significantly increased the financial pressure on their tenants and subjects. Apparently, the fragile social equilibrium based on reciprocity between lords and peasants was affected above all by the increasing fiscal demands coming from Milan.35

The Uprising The year 1461 was a difficult one for the peasants. The harvest was the third poor one in three years. Nonetheless, the central government raised its fiscal demands and several peasant families who were unable to pay suffered confiscation of personal goods, even including beds.36 The city of Piacenza reacted to the fi-

30 Pierre Savy, Seigneurs et condottières. Les Dal Verme. Appartenances sociales, constructions étatiques et pratiques politiques dans l’Italie de la Renaissance (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2013). 31 Arcangeli, “Un lignaggio padano tra autonomia signorile e corte principesca. I Pallavicini,” in Noblesse et États princiers, 29–100. 32 Andreozzi, Nascita di un disordine. Una famiglia signorile e una valle piacentina tra XVe XVI secolo (Milan: Unicopli, 1993). 33 See, for instance, various controversies between members of the Anguissola family in ASMi Famiglie 6 (Anguissola). 34 For some significant episodes of unrest in the Parmesan territory between the 1460s and the 1470s, cf. Bruno Colombi, Soragna feudo e comune, vol. 2 (Parma: Battei, 1986), 11–12; and Gentile, Fazioni al governo, 166. It is worth noting that only the small fiefs were affected by episodes of protest, disobedience and revolt and not the major seigneurial states. 35 Biaggi, La rivolta piacentina; Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 88–94; La rivolta contadina. 36 The podestà of Fiorenzuola, writing to the Duchess Bianca Maria, estimated that 200 families

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nancial emergency in the usual way, increasing indirect taxes on the retail of goods such as bread, meat, wine and wood, and avoiding direct forms of taxation that would have damaged the well-to-do citizens. Given the fact that in the Duchy of Milan the citizens were normally exempt from direct taxation, with the exemption extending to their properties in the countryside,37 the burden—as was customary in such circumstances—fell on the commoners and particularly on the rural communities.38 Towards the end of 1461, the health of Duke Francesco Sforza deteriorated seriously. By the end of December, rumors that he was dying or even already dead began to spread. In spite of an official denial sent from Milan, the situation got out of control. The newly appointed governor of Piacenza, Corrado Fogliani, had been informed that the peasants were planning a big uprising in several villages (loci) of the province even before he entered the city on January 7.39 He immediately asked for reinforcements, but within a few days the peasants had organized and their first act was the forcible liberation by 200 men from Montechiaro and Macerato of three prisoners that the capitano del divieto was taking to Piacenza on January 11.40 Since these two villages were fiefs of a branch of the Anguissola family, the brothers Gian Galeazzo and Onofrio Anguissola (who were embroiled in a bitter legal fight over their father’s inheritance) 41 were sus-

37

38

39

40

41

had been forced to sleep on straw due to the recent seizures. ASMi SC 765, Bongiovanni Amati to Bianca Maria Visconti (9 Jan. 1462, Fiorenzuola). Chittolini, “Fiscalité d’État’ et prérogatives urbaines dans le Duché de Milan à la fin du Moyen Âge,” in Le droit d’imposer. Vol. 1, of L’impôt au Moyen Âge. L’impôt public et le prélèvement seigneurial fin XIIe–début XVIe siècle, Philippe Contamine, Jean Kerhervé, and Albert Rigaudière (Paris: Ministère de l’économie, des finances et de l’industrie, 2002), 147–76; Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 95–100. Even the ducal referendary thought that the fiscal burden imposed on the peasants was excessive. ASMi SC 765, Luchino da Conago to Bianca Maria Visconti (3 Jan. 1462). On the mechanism of tax collection see Andreozzi, “‘Cum bello modo e senza spesa alcuna.’”; Piacenza 1402–1545, 49–54, 88–94. The main sources on the events are the letters of the ducal officials kept in ASMi SC (Piacenza), 762, 763, 764, and 765. Relevant documents are also ibid., Potenze Sovrane 1625. The most important chronicle is Antonio da Ripalta, Annales placentini ab anno MCCCCI ad annum MCCCCLXIII, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. Ludovico A. Muratori, vol. 20 (Milan: 1731), col. 907–11. Very useful are also the letters published in Carteggio degli oratori mantovani. Corrado Fogliani was brother ex matre to the duke himself. See Covini, “Fogliano (Fogliani, Sforza Fogliani), Corrado da”, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 48 (1997), ad vocem. ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 June 1462). The capitano del divieto was the most important ducal official in the countryside. His duty was normally the repression of smuggling, which was very common in particular for goods such as corn and salt. Franca Leverotti, “Gli officiali del ducato sforzesco,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Quaderni 1 (1997): 51–52. This scene is archetypal: see Jean Nicolas, La rebellion française, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard 2008), 115. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 217–18. Their quarrel had been going on for almost ten years,

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pected of having stirred up the peasants and reacted by accusing one another.42 In fact, the leaders of the expedition against the capitano were a chancellor and a castellan in the service of Gian Galeazzo43: it is very unlikely that their master did not know what they were doing. A few days later, Martino Anguissola observed that his relative Gian Galeazzo, though he was the most powerful lord in the family in terms of the number of his men, tended to be too liberal with his subjects, either because he was not apt to command or “because he loved his men too much.”44 After three quiet weeks, the uprising broke out. On January 22, the commissioner in charge of the collection of the taxes on salt and horses had gone to Rivergaro, where the capitano del divieto was based, to coordinate the tax collection.45 The following day, in the morning, some 1,500 armed peasants turned up and attacked the two officials and their men (four of whom were killed) and ransacked the house of the captain.46 In such circumstances, this kind of excesso et inconvenente was far from rare and was legitimate according to the standards of the crowd (urban and rural) in terms of moral economy.47 According to Martino Anguissola, however, the attack had been planned in advance (“they decided to come and hack to pieces the captain and the commissioner”) and a huge number of peasants had joined in, thus it soon became clear that it was the prelude to something much worse.48 The following day, a few hundreds

42 43 44 45

46 47

48

since the death of their fat her Bartolomeo. For a while they had kept their lands and castles pro indiviso, but, as Onofrio noted in a plea to Francesco Sforza, the family properties had to be divided “so that for the future each brother knows what belongs to him, because coownership (comunione) often brings about hate and discord.” ASMi Famiglie 6 (Anguissola), Onofrio Anguissola to Francesco Sforza (without date). Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 186–87. ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). “Per tropo amor ch’el ge porta.” ASMn AG 1367 (8 Feb. 1462), Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga. The latter was originally an extraordinary tax for the maintenance of troops, which had become a form of direct taxation on the inhabitants of the countryside in the whole duchy, and was regularly collected every year. See Nadia Covini, “‘Alle spese di Zoan Villano’.” Gli alloggiamenti militari nel dominio visconteo-sforzesco,” Nuova Rivista Storica 76 (1992): 1– 52; cf. Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 52–53. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 188–89. This was the definition used by Antonio Anguissola. ASMi SC 764, Antonio Anguissola to Bianca Maria Visconti (25 Jan. 1462); Martino Anguissola called it “eccesso” and “rumore.” ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga, (6 Feb. 1462). I borrow the concept of moral economy, of course, from Edward P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76–136. Cf. Della Misericordia, “La mediazione giudiziaria,” 161–62; Arcangeli, “‘Como bosco et spelunca di latroni.’ Città e ordine pubblico a Parma e nello Stato di Milano tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento,” in Le polizie informali, ed. Livio Antonielli (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2010), 69–71. “Fecero conscilio de vegnir a taliar a pezo el capitagno con el comissario” (my italics). ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462).

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peasants “of every age” from various villages, above all, apparently, from Montechiaro and Veano (respectively under the jurisdiction of Gian Galeazzo Anguissola and Manfredo Landi), assembled in the marketplace of Agazzano, subject to Francesco Scotti. There, “a man from these mountains proclaimed that their time had come, the duke of Milan was dead, and that if in the present circumstances they could not find a way to avoid paying so much in taxes and for salt, then so much the worse for them.”49 Reportedly, the slogan they shouted was “Long live the Popolo and the White, and death to the traitors, taxes and salt!” From Agazzano, they went to the marketplace of Veggiola.50 “Long live the White!”, or “Bianco! Bianco!” as Martino Anguissola explained in a long letter to his patron Ludovico Gonzaga, meant that the peasants had decided to do without the factions (“they agreed not to shout any party name, that is neither Guelf nor Ghibelline”). He interpreted this as a sign that they were acting without the consent of their lords. Worse still, the meeting had taken the dangerous shape of a coniuratio: “All the peasants of every age got together and promised to each other to act the same way.”51 When Gian Galeazzo Anguissola tried to arrest four of his subjects, partly to remove the suspicion that he might have been involved in the protest, he had to face the violent reaction of “a thousand peasants,” who attacked his men and chased them for several miles, leaving him, in his own words, “dismayed.” Gian Galeazzo also wrote that the riot (tumulto) had spread across the whole province, all because of the imprudence of the commissioner, who had

49 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462). Estimates of the size of the crowd vary between 400 and 500. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 188–89. 50 According to the official reconstruction which accompanied a list, drawn up in June, of peasants and villages involved in the uprising. ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). 51 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462). Martino’s letter dispels all doubt on the interpretation of the white color. Corrado Fogliani is not quite clear: “In their way of speaking, white means a pure thing … In the city there are four parties, which can be reduced to two, and every man who is a member of these four parties can join this Company of the White, for he will be welcomed as good and pure.” (“Qual biancho a loro modo si è a dire una cosa pura … Ne la cità sonno quatro parte che se reduceno in due, et caduno chi è de queste quatro può intrare in questa compagnia del biancho, perché sarà acceptato per bono et puro.” ASMi SC 765 (29 Jan. 1462), Corrado Fogliani to Francesco Sforza (my italics). According to Cristoforo Poggiali, Bianco referred to Bianco Granelli, who was one of Onofrio Anguissola’s followers captured and hanged in July 1462. Poggiali, Memorie storiche, 354. Cf. Ripalta, Annales, col. 910: “Ex caporalibus eorum sex suspensi fuerunt in platea Communis, inter quos fuit Bianchus Granellus omnium primus.” Biaggi does not attempt an interpretation. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 191. Andreozzi suggests that “inneggiare al bianco significava … la messa in discussione del modello di organizzazione territoriale basato sulla mediazione dei signori tra Stato e uomini.” His rendition of Fogliani’s letter is not entirely accurate: “Nella ‘compagnia del biancho’ poteva entrare qualsiasi membro delle quattro classi in cui era suddivisa la città purché reputato ‘buono e puro»’. Andreozzi, “La rivolta contadina,” 70; Piacenza 1402–1545, 102 (my italics).

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made the mistake of starting the tax collection from the mountains and the places where men were less disciplined (disoluti).52 The leader of the insurgents (caporale) was a furrier from Veano, an “extremely poor but sturdy man.”53 According to the chronicler Antonio da Ripalta, still alive at the time, during the riot at Rivergaro he had dressed up in the clothes that the capitano del divieto had hurriedly left behind and had mounted a horse, proclaiming himself emperor of the peasants.54 Whether it was already Carnival time or not (which it may well have been, given that Easter fell on March 30 in 1462), it was very well known what such acts of status inversion meant, particularly when the redress of justice was thought to be at stake. During the 1511 revolt in Udine, members of the popular faction of the Zambarlani “masqueraded in the clothing of their victims and revealed in wearing the hats of the dead aristocrats, the most obvious insignia of rank… . Most powerfully, the Zambarlani gave form to vendetta justice by mimicking the customs of official justice.”55 The furrier was called Iacopino Pellizzaro, also known as Peloia, and “Peloia! Peloia!” was the name that everybody shouted: the nickname meant “bald,” with a pejorative connotation.56 It was he who, after the assembly in Agazzano, went from village to village with three companions to order that the pillaging should cease and to announce that they were going to the city, where they had an understanding (inteligentia) with the urban lower classes.57 On January 29, the peasants, by then numbering about 4,000, started to march towards Piacenza, reaching the city in the late afternoon. Governor Corrado Fogliani had not yet received the requested reinforcements and tried to organize the defense of Piacenza with the help of the citizenry. The well-to-do took up 52 ASMi SC 765, Gian Galeazzo Anguissola to Bianca Maria Visconti (25 Jan. 1462, Montechiaro). The moral nuance of the original word used by Anguissola, disoluti (literally “dissolute”), gets lost in translation. Generally speaking, the highlanders of the Apennines had a bad reputation: just five years before, the podestà of Varzi (not very far from the location of events described here) wrote to the duke that “the men of that mountain have too long teeth and are as hairy as bears” to justify the fear they inspired in his agents. ASMi SC 769, Francesco Dini to Francesco Sforza (11 Dec. 1456, Varzi). 53 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga, (6 Feb. 1462). 54 “Dum autem ista fierent, quidam rusticus de Vigiano nomine Jacopinus Pilizzarius sibi vestem talarem, hoc est usque ad talos, sive calces longam, ipsius Capitanei imposuit; et equum ascendens, tamquam aliorum Rusticorum Imperator residebat, ex quo Rustici omnes una voce clamare coeperunt: Pelogia, Pelogia, vivat Pelogia Princeps noster.” Ripalta, Annales, col. 907. 55 Muir, Mad Blood Stirring, 198. 56 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462). Peloia indicates baldness caused by sexually transmitted diseases: see Giuseppe Trenti, Voci di terre estensi. Glossario del volgare di uso commune (Ferrara – Modena) da documenti e cronache del tempo. Secoli XIV–XVI (Vignola: Fondazione di Vignola, 2008), 407. 57 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462). His four companions were Brutacera, Andrea de Raio and Pasquino Zurlo from Montechiaro,

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arms, fearing the sack of the city, but the lower-class commoners (described by the sources in disparaging terms such as populazo or povolaglia), significantly, refused to cooperate.58 The peasants, however, had no intention of assaulting the city, asking instead to enter into negotiation with Fogliani. Their representatives said that they wanted to be “one body and soul” with the city and that they had taken action because of their extreme poverty. They requested to be released from their past debts with the ducal chamber and to be permitted to buy only the quantity of salt required for the real need of each family (and not the usual fixed amounts) at a lower price. They also asked for the direct taxes to be reduced to the amount levied at the time of the previous duke, Filippo Maria, and to pay them (as had been customary under the Visconti) only for six months and not for the whole year; and last but not least, they asked to pay the taxes in kind, if necessary. Fogliani suggested that they send 12 envoys to the duke to present their requests directly and to ask for forgiveness. The peasants summoned their assembly and decided that they liked the proposal, but wanted the governor to leave the city in order to repeat it to the crowd. Fogliani, very unwillingly, had to go out to face the crowd. He was welcomed with enthusiasm by the peasants: everybody wanted to touch his hands and the crowd cheered the prince shouting “Duca! Duca!” The governor listened to the peasants, tried to calm them down and managed to get back safely into the city. His greatest worry was the evident alliance between the peasants and the populazo. His worries were justified. In the city, the crowd freed all the prisoners and set fire to the prison; during the night they also sacked the office responsible for administration of the salt tax and burned the tax records.59 The following morning the peasants came back in greater number than the day before. Fogliani tried to exploit the presence of some members of the landed nobility in the city to persuade the peasants to leave, but the mediation of the gentiluomini failed. The insurgents would not speak to their lords and asked for a meeting with representatives of the urban crowd, which was refused by Fogliani. The governor agreed instead to talk personally with eight envoys of the peasants who said that the requests to the duke that they had voiced the day before had to be written in a legally proper form and drawn up in a notarial deed. Fogliani, taken by surprise, tried to play for time, but when the city mob opened the gates and let the peasants in, he had no choice but to call a notary and accede to their twelve points.60 According to Antonio da Ripalta, instead, the gentiluomini played a decisive role and “octo reduxerunt in Urbem Rusticos viros Consulares 58 “Non se ne volseno impazar.” ASMi SC 765, Corrado Fogliani to Bianca Maria Visconti (29 Jan. 1462). 59 “Cognoscendo la cosa grave e pericolosa perché sonno quasi una cosa medesma et de una opinione cum li populari.” Ibid. Cf. Ripalta, Annales, col. 907. 60 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462). Cf. Carteggio degli oratori mantovani, 103–04.

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et antiquos ad capitulandum.”61 The official report written in June by the ducal officials, however, lists sixteen of these consoli and elderly peasants.62 Significantly, the insurgents also requested the signature and seal of sixteen aristocrats and citizens, four from each faction.63 All of these capitoli, as they were technically called, asked for the abolition or the reduction of taxes on staple commodities, relevant either in the city or in the territory of Piacenza. Clearly, there had been some discussion between representatives of the peasants and those of the populazo: the possibility of paying in kind was not mentioned, and several requests relating to the city had been added. The first one asked for the mill tax to be abolished. The second asked for the taxes on the retail of wine, bread and meat to be abolished as well. The third and fourth asked for any offence committed by either the peasants or the city crowd to be dismissed, and for all the outlaws to be allowed to go back home, subject to a formal peace between the interested parties. The fifth asked for the transportation tax (carregio) to be abolished. The sixth asked for the horse tax to be paid for only six months per year (as had been customary in the times of the previous duke) and fixed at an amount of 40 soldi per horse for a maximum of 800 horses (down from 1,600 previously). The seventh asked for the peasant families to be allowed to buy only the quantity of salt that they actually consumed and fixed a lower price at two soldi per measure (stopello). The eighth asked for the corn toll (imbottato) to be abolished. The ninth asked for the wine and the hay tolls to be lowered by half. The tenth asked for the so-called “New Toll” to be abolished. The eleventh asked for the intratae on wheat and wine to be lowered by half. The twelfth asked for the abolition of the scales toll (dazio della stadera) on all crops and livestock raised in the province.64 61 Ripalta, Annales, col. 907. 62 They were Giovanni Grossi from S. Imento, Rizzo Gabo and Loxo from Calendasco, Stefano de Jochino from Gropparello, Matteo and Antonio Gisoni from Veano, Jacopino Corno from Quarto, Martino Marescalco from Rivergaro, Bartolomeo Malvezzi from Montechiaro, Giovanni Grazzano and Gabrio Bondi from S. Damiano, Antonio Feragalli from Gazzola, Martino de Ianuzzo from Momeliano, Lorenzo Del Miglio from Campremoldo di Sotto, Leone Vecchi from Agazzano and Giovanni Businelli from Casaliggio. ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). 63 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (6 Feb. 1462). Antonio da Ripalta names ten of the subscribers: Bartolomeo Scotti, Manfredo Landi, Gian Galeazzo Anguissola, Onofrio Anguissola, Giovanni Anguissola, Vergiuso Landi, Sebastiano Scotti, Daniele Tedeschi, Zanotto Arcelli and Raffaele Fulgosi. Ripalta, Annales, col. 907. 64 The capitoli, which can be reconstructed at least in part through the letters written by Fogliani and others, have been handed down by Antonio da Ripalta. Ripalta, Annales, col. 908. I have not been able to find any trace of the capitoli in the notarial archive of Piacenza. The copy of a different version can be found in Milan: the main differences seem to be the request that no podestà hold office in Piacenza for more than a year and that no podestà be allowed to come back to administer justice before five years had elapsed, and the abolition of the salt tax in the city. ASMi Comuni 72 (without date).

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Negotiation and Repression After the ratification of the capitoli, the peasants left the city, but maintained a state of partial mobilization. Apparently, they sent envoys to trumpet their success “everywhere,” even to the neighboring provinces of Pavia and Parma.65 As the ambassador of the Marquis of Mantua at the Sforza court remarked, the very fact that the peasants had insisted on the abolition of the milling tax, which affected only the city and her district (districtus), was a clear sign of agreement and unity between them and the urban crowd.66 Fogliani, for his part, wrote to the duke that were it not for the populazo of the city, he would not be worried about the peasants;67 nor did he doubt their loyalty towards the state.68 He had been visited in secret by Peloia and four of his companions, and Peloia had promised he would take charge of monitoring the marketplaces of the province in order to prevent further disorder.69 Other ducal envoys, such as Marchese da Varese and Giovan Pietro Cagnola, had different ideas and sent alarming reports to Milan calling for the use of force against the vilanaglia and the city crowd before they became accustomed to their concessions and before other cities in the duchy followed the bad example. Apparently, they were particularly horrified by the rumors about a collective oath (compagnia cum sagramento or coniuratione) taken or to be taken by the peasants, which had to be prevented at any cost or annulled by force. Before the arrival in the province of Marchese da Varese, however, nobody had used the word “rebellion” to describe what was happening.70 On February 7, in Ponte dell’Olio, the peasants publicly proclaimed the capitoli they had obtained.71 Meanwhile, in Piacenza, the opinion of the feudal lords and of the urban élite that the capitoli granted to the peasants and to the urban crowd should not be upheld 65 ASMi SC 765, Marchese da Varese to Francesco Sforza (3 Feb. 1462); on their propaganda ibid., Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). 66 Carteggio degli oratori mantovani, 103–04. The districtus or distretto was the portion of the territory/diocese/contado directly under the jurisdiction of the city: in the Piacentino, as I noted above, the area was not very large due to the numerous fiefs and rural lordships located in the province. 67 “Et quando dicto populazo fusse tutto de bono animo, io farìa poco caso de quelli de fori.” ASMi SC 765, Corrado Fogliani to Francesco Sforza (6 Feb. 1462). 68 Ibid., Corrado Fogliani to Gandolfo da Bologna (4 Feb. 1462). 69 Ibid., Corrado Fogliani to Francesco Sforza (4 Feb. 1462). 70 Ibid., Giovanni Cagnola da Lodi to Francesco Sforza (2 Feb. 1462); ibid., Marchese da Varese to Francesco Sforza (3 Feb. 1462). Both the ducal decrees and the statutes strictly forbade unions and coniurationes. This kind of accusation “esponeva a una dura repressione e a pesanti conseguenze penali.” Arcangeli, “Uomini e feudatario,” 215. Cf. Gentile, Fazioni al governo, 39. 71 “Questi villani fecero fare una crida et publicare li suoi capitolli.” ASMi SC 765, Giovanni Cagnola da Lodi to Francesco Sforza (8 Feb. 1462).

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was being voiced openly. According to the leaders of the factions, the capitoli, to which the city was legally committed, would bring about a catastrophic reduction in the tax revenues both in the town and in the countryside.72 On February 11, Francesco Maletta was sent to Piacenza to join Fogliani as ducal commissioner for the city and the province. His main tasks were to find out whether the men who had not taken part in Peloia’s coniuratione were among those asking for the capitoli to be upheld, and in general to try to divide the peasants’ front.73 A general civic council was summoned on February 17 and it was decided to let the Duke of Milan know that the citizens did not want taxes and tolls to be touched or changed. It was decided to send four prestigious landed lords to Milan, one for each faction, with representatives of the guilds. The active role of the guilds was unusual in such circumstances and added a touch of solemnity. The urban élite and ducal officials were clearly trying to give the impression of broad consensus by involving them, especially given that the chiefs of the guilds “had authority on the popolo minuto.” The aim of the diplomatic mission was to encourage the duke to dismiss the capitoli and to take back the tax mitigations that he had granted in his own interest.74 In the countryside, the lords took charge of speaking with their subjects to persuade the peasants to commit themselves to the final decision of the duke on the fiscal mitigation. The results were mixed. The opinion of the peasants varied considerably, but many thought and said that the lords were deceiving them.75 They summoned their parliament in Agazzano on February 21 (attended by more than 1,000 peasants) and the following day in Rivergaro, where after much “reasoning and debate” they concluded that they wanted their capitoli to be upheld and to be loyal subjects of the duke. The peasants also elected four representatives, wrote Fogliani, “one for each squadra or faction—that is four landexi, four scottexi, four anguxoli and four fontanexi, who with the authority and power of them all are going to come and speak to me tomorrow.” Despite their factional organization, they wanted to speak to the governor directly, without any intermediation by the lords or anyone else.76 Fogliani was quite 72 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (12 Feb. 1462); ASMi SC 765, Giovan Pietro Cagnola da Lodi to Francesco Sforza (8 Feb. 1462); ibid., Corrado Fogliani a Francesco Sforza (11 Feb. 1462). 73 Carteggio degli oratori mantovani, 125. 74 ASMi SC 765, Alessandro da Foligno to Francesco Sforza (17 Feb. 1462); ibid., Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (17 Feb. 1462). 75 Ibid., Gian Galeazzo Anguissola to Corrado Fogliani (18 Feb. 1462, Montechiaro); ibid. Giovan Carlo Anguissola to Corrado Fogliani (20 Feb. 1462, Vigolzone); ibid., Corrado Fogliani to Francesco Sforza (21 Feb. 1462); Giovan Pietro Cagnola to Francesco Sforza (21 Feb. 1462); ibid., Onofrio Anguissola to Bianca Maria Visconti (25 Feb. 1462, Statto); ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (23 Feb. 1462). 76 ASMi SC 765, Corrado Fogliani to Francesco Sforza (23 Feb. 1462).

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happy with the reports of his spies and was persuaded that the peasants were now divided: “the gentlemen have managed to persuade half of their men,” he noted.77 Martino Anguissola was less optimistic in his reports to the Marquis of Mantua. According to him, the peasants met in assembly every single day and “were adamant that they were going to be kept in the very condition in which Corrado Fogliani had put them, and that the gentlemen were the ones who had deceived and betrayed them.” And if Manfredo Landi was fairly sure about the obedience of his men, Bernardo and Giuliano Anguissola had been assaulted and had managed to escape with the help of some peasants who were “less evil” than the others,78 while the men from Gragnano had pointed out to their lord Alberto Scotti that under no circumstances they would pay the taxes.79 The representatives elected by the peasants let Fogliani know that “they did not want any gentleman chief of faction to meddle with their business.” Fogliani again suggested going to Milan to see the duke. The peasants accepted and asked Fogliani to go with them, which he agreed to do, also because he wished to leave Piacenza anyway. Meanwhile, the delegation of the gentlemen on behalf of the city was ready to go to Milan: it was composed of Alberto Scotti, Manfredo Landi, three Anguissola and Zanotto Arcelli, the latter representing the Fontana faction. Manfredo Landi took Peloia with him.80 Both delegations were received by Francesco Sforza, who granted some relevant tax reductions to the city, officially and in written form.81 Mitigations were promised to the peasants’ envoys too, but only informally and orally (ad bocha).82 It is impossible to determine what exactly the duke promised to the peasants. As for the salt tax, they were apparently allowed to pay three soldi per stopello, while the previous price was five soldi. But the duke and his advisors had already decided to play for time with the peasants, waiting for the right moment to start the repression. As for Peloia, his loyalty was bought quite easily: he was admitted to the ducal special troops (provisionati) together with two of his nephews.83 77 Ibid., (22 and 23 Feb. 1462); ibid., Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (23 Feb. 1462). On Francesco Maletta see Leverotti, Diplomazia e governo dello stato. I «famigli cavalcanti» di Francesco Sforza 1450–1466 (Pisa: ETS, 1992), 199–201; Covini, “Maletta, Francesco,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 68 (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2007), ad vocem. 78 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (23 Feb. 1462). 79 ASMi SC 765, Giovan Pietro Cagnola to Francesco Sforza (21 Feb. 1462). 80 Ibid., Francesco Maletta and Corrado Fogliani to Francesco Sforza (23 Feb. 1462). 81 ASPc, Consiglio generale e Anzianato, Provvigioni e Riformagioni, registry 16 (1458–1463) fols. 156r–157r. 82 ASMi SC 765, Luchino da Conago to Francesco Sforza (26 May 1462). Andreozzi noted that the central government put considerable effort not only into avoiding giving any legitimation to their requests, but also into destroying any written evidence of the negotiation. Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 106. 83 ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (24 Giu. 1462).

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By the end of February, order had been restored. The urban crowd had been silenced, partly as a result of the tax mitigations, partly because ducal troops had been sent to keep Piacenza quiet. In addition, massive works to repair and rebuild the city walls and fortifications were started immediately, under the supervision of Francesco Maletta. Meanwhile, the representatives of the peasants asked to see the original documents concerning the amount of money they had paid in various taxes and tolls over the previous years, claiming that they had paid the ducal officials far more than they should have.84 On March 20, Maletta gave them the certified copies of the original documents they had requested.85 As Martino Anguissola wrote to his Mantuan master: “The peasants are thoroughly (molto subtilmente) investigating this matter and they are going to go back to Milan with this enquiry (inquisitione).” They thought (and said) that they would obtain from the duke much more than they would get through the mediation of the gentiluomini.86 After a parliament held on March 23 in Podenzano, where the representatives of 82 villages of the territory from each faction (“cioè de ogni squadra: Angusoli, Scotti, Landesi et Fontanesi”) debated, twenty-four envoys were elected to go to Milan again to negotiate mitigations.87 In was perhaps on this occasion that the findings of the peasants’ enquiry were provided at some point to the duke in the form of a written report, which has partly survived.88 In the manuscript were listed the “robberies, extortions and undue payments” inflicted on sixty-eight communities during the previous two years by the captain Luchino Roberti and the commissioner Giovanni Albertuzzi da Compiano as well as by their agents and collectors.89 To synthesize its content, the homines claimed to have paid in addition to the 27,000 lire due for the salt tax and the horse tax, 24,000 lire in undue expenses.90 Accordingly, during the spring the peasants put themselves forward as tax collectors, trying to establish with the central gov84 ASMn AG1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (20 Mar. 1462). 85 ASMi SC 765, Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (20 Mar. 1462). 86 ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (20 Mar. 1462); ASMi SC 765, Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (24 Mar. 1462). 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. Potenze Sovrane 1625, without date. The manuscript does not bear any title. Andreozzi, who discovered the document, calls it “Sindacato degli ufficiali di Piacenza,” probably because a “sindicato de li officiali de Piasenza” taken to Milan by the peasants is mentioned by Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta in a letter to the duke. Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402– 1545, 107; “‘Cum bello modo e senza spesa alcuna’”: 15. Cf. ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). 89 It is worth noticing that in the Duchy of Milan such offices were venal. Luchino Roberti had bought the office of capitano del divieto for two years in 1458 for 212 fiorini, and in 1460 had it renewed for the two following years paying 225 fiorini. The referendary Luchino da Conago and the podestà Giovanni Luigi da Ozeno had paid for their offices as well. Andreozzi, “‘Cum bello modo e senza spesa alcuna’”: 7–8. 90 Andreozzi, “‘Cum bello modo e senza spesa alcuna’”: 17.

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ernment a direct relationship that would bypass not only the intermediation of the city and of the rural lords, but also that of the officials. Just before an assembly to be held in Agazzano, their envoys informed Maletta that they wanted the “best” men of each village to vouch for the payment of the salt tax. They also planned the election of eight or ten men who would be responsible for the relations with the ducal officials.91 On June 13 they let Maletta know that the money for their guarantees were ready.92 According to the podestà of the city, on June 17 the consoli of some fifty villages met in another assembly in Gariga and reaffirmed that they did not want the mediation of the gentiluomini nor of anyone else between them and the Duke.93 The following day, Francesco Maletta and Tommaso Morroni wrote to Milan to point out that the assembly had been cancelled because only fifty people had turned up. However, six envoys had visited the ducal officials and had told them that they had elected twenty-four representatives. Six of them were in charge of communicating with the officials and with the central government. The other eighteen would “take care and charge” of visiting the villages “to advise, to conclude and to collect the money,” because it was not always possible “to gather their swarm (turma).”94 Their proposal was turned down, just as their offers to contribute to the reconstruction of the city walls had been turned down.95 On June 22, Tommaso Morroni informed the duke that a peasant envoy was coming to Milan on a horse to ask if the promised mitigations would be upheld. Morroni prompted the duke to laugh at the question and to say: “I have my officials in Piacenza, and they shall deal with the matter” or “any other thing” provided that the duke did not give a definite answer and did not look offended “by their wicked questions.”96 In April, a plot against Francesco Sforza had been discovered. Tiberto Brandolini, ducal condottiere and feudal lord of Castell’Arquato, Castelnuovo and Saliceto in the province of Piacenza, was found guilty of secret negotiations (based on the hope for the duke’s death) with an old enemy of Francesco Sforza, Giacomo Piccinino, and with John of Anjou. Arrested on April 22 while he was waiting to see the duke, Tiberto committed suicide in prison a few days later. He was honored with magnificent funerals in Milan.97 Corrado Fogliani was later

91 92 93 94 95 96 97

ASMi SC, Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (5 Jun. 1462). Ibid., Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (13 Jun. 1462) Ibid., Giovan Luigi de’ Capitani di Ozino to Francesco Sforza (17 Jun. 1462). Ibid., Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). Ibid., Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (24 May 1462). Ibid., Tommaso Morroni to Francesco Sforza (22 Jun. 1462). On the plot see Covini, L’esercito del duca. Organizzazione militare e istituzioni al tempo degli Sforza (1450–1480) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1998), 122–132; Serena Ferente, La sfortuna di Jacopo Piccinino. Storia dei bracceschi in Italia 1423–1465 (Florence: Olschki, 2005), 129–33.

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rewarded with one of his fiefs, Castelnuovo.98 At the beginning of June, Francesco Maletta was joined by the ducal advisor Tommaso Morroni da Rieti.99 Interestingly, this eminent humanist, diplomat and member of the state apparatus had relevant economic interests in the Piacentino, concerning in particular the iron mines of the high Val Nure, where he had been enfeoffed of some communities.100 Maletta and Morroni were ordered to draw up a list of the rural communities and of the men who had played an active role in the uprising. Sixty-seven communities were listed, together with forty-five men who were considered the instigators of the revolt and thirty-two who had forced Corrado Fogliani into signing the capitoli on January 31.101 In August (after the harvest) the arrests and executions began, which went on until December. Peloia was imprisoned too and reportedly committed suicide.102 The communities that had not joined the uprising were rewarded with the full exemption from the salt tax for the whole year. Onofrio Anguissola had probably been in touch with Brandolini’s subversive network.103 Aside from his quarrelsome attitude towards relatives and neighbors, which is substantiated in abundant documentary evidence,104 in May the accusations of having stirred and protected the insurgents from the beginning of the revolt increased. He was accused of trying to make himself “captain” of the peasants, of recruiting men in Valle Sturla in the Genoese Apennines, of giving his livery to men from Agazzano subject to Francesco Scotti.105 The ducal officials believed that he was stirring the peasants, and it seems that indeed he tried to enquire if they could be persuaded to rise again, this time under his leadership.106 Francesco Maletta, though, admitted that it was “very hard to find one truth, in town and country, because of these damned partisan passions which reign upon them.”107 Hated by his brother already, in permanent conflict with the subjects of

98 Brandolini’s subjects had not joined the uprising. 99 On Tommaso Morroni da Rieti see Covini, “Morroni, Tommaso (Tommaso da Rieti),” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 77 (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2012), ad vocem. 100 Andreozzi, Nascita di un disordine, 90. 101 ASMi SC 765, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). 102 Poggiali, Memorie storiche, 366. 103 ASMi SC 765, Onofrio Anguissola to Sigismondo Brandolini (26 May 1462, Statto). 104 Various letters in ASMi Famiglie 6 (Anguissola). 105 Cf. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 217–26; Andreozzi, “La rivolta contadina,” 77–81. A detailed report against Onofrio was written by a citizen of the Landi faction. ASMi Famiglie 6 (Anguissola), without date, and see various letters ibid. 106 ASMi SC 765, Francesco Scotti to Francesco Maletta (5 Jun. 1462, Agazzano); ibid., Giacomo da Ripalta, Ettore da Piacenza, Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (8, 11, 15 Jun. 1462); Alessandro Mariani abbot of S. Sepolcro to Bianca Maria Visconti (8 and 9 Jun. 1462); ibid., Tommaso Morroni to Francesco Sforza (24 and 30 Jun. 1462). 107 Ibid., Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (6 Jun. 1462).

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Pietro Dal Verme in Bobbio,108 Onofrio’s efforts to gain the loyalty of other lords’ men and subjects brought upon himself the resentment and the hostility of his peers as well as the indifference of his relatives.109 Worse still, he was accused of boasting of his friendship with old enemies of Francesco Sforza, such as Bartolomeo Colleoni, and of spreading rumors of a defeat inflicted by Giacomo Piccinino on the Milanese army that had been sent to help the King of Naples in the war against John of Anjou.110 All that meant “plotting” against the state and it was probably the decisive element determining his fate. When he was summoned to Milan on June 19, knowing what to expect, Onofrio declined to go and wrote letters claiming his innocence.111 He knew that everything was lost and chose to fight, putting up desperate resistance in the castle of Pradovera in the mountains with a few faithful men. The castle was besieged by the ducal troops. Onofrio managed to escape, but on July 7 he was intercepted and caught by his brother Gian Galeazzo, who happily handed him to the Milanese officials. Two days before, his followers had been met near Grazzano and butchered by the ducal troops. Several survivors, taken prisoner, were immediately hanged in Piacenza.112 Pietro Dal Verme went on to dismantle Onofrio’s remaining castles with an army of 2,000 men. Macerato was probably the toughest: Onofrio’s men proved loyal and fought for their lord and his wife, Maddalena Bevilacqua, but they were no match for the well-equipped and experienced vermeschi.113 When Onofrio was taken to Milan to be locked in the fortress of Porta Romana, a great number of relatives escorted the prisoner, to make more explicit the fact that the whole house of Anguissola had disowned him.114

108 ASMi SC 765, Onofrio Anguissola to Bianca Maria Visconti (27 May 1462, Statto); ibid., Onofrio to Francesco Sforza (6 Jun. 1462, Statto). 109 Ibid., Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (16 Jun. 1462). Martino Anguissola thought (or at least wrote) that Onofrio was “mad” and “out of his mind.” ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (29 Jun. and 3 Jul. 1462). 110 On the Angevin expedition see Ferente, La sfortuna, 85–138. 111 ASMi SC 765, Onofrio Anguissola to Francesco Sforza and to Bianca Maria Visconti (23 Jun. 1462, Statto). 112 Cf. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 217–26; Andreozzi, “La rivolta contadina,” 77–81; Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 107–11. 113 Savy, Seigneurs et condottières, 316–17. 114 Onofrio served almost twelve years in prison. He was executed on February 25, 1474, on order from Galeazzo Maria Sforza in the castle of Binasco. Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina,” 226.

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Closing Remarks The 1462 uprising was not an irrational outburst of violence. Violence played a relevant part in the events, but the bloody episodes were altogether limited to a few cases, particularly during the first days of the uprising. During the revolt, the peasants planned their actions, frequently met in assemblies whose date and place were decided some days in advance, elected representatives and envoys and took care to publicize their achievements.115 The sources speak about “confederations” and reciprocal oaths pledging that they would not abandon one another. These “parliaments,” however, seem to have evolved from spontaneous meetings of huge crowds gathered by word of mouth to councils attended by the consoli of the villages involved, that is, by men who already had bookkeeping and accounting responsibilities within the villages. The peasants acted as communities, not as nondescript crowds composed of individuals.116 Above all, it is clear that from the beginning they were willing to enter into a negotiation with the central government and the prince. The power of the duke was never questioned throughout the whole period of “disorder,” nor do we find any explicit questioning of the social order. “Changing society was never at stake.”117 To cheer the prince constantly shouting: “Duca! Duca!” as other fifteenth-century examples show, should not be considered merely the avatar of the slogan vive le roi sans gabelle, but a basic legal precaution to try to avoid the accusation of acting against the state.118 In the same way, the systematic reference to the situation and to the time of the previous Duke Filippo Maria Visconti was not merely an expression of the traditionalism of the peasantry: it was tantamount to asserting a right.119 There is evidence that the peasants were very concerned with the legitimacy of the actions that they were taking. This is not surprising: “le comunità, infatti, erano profondamente acculturate al diritto.”120 The peasants insisted that the capitoli 115 Similar patterns are described by Boris Porchnev in his groundbreaking work on seventeenth-century France. Boris Porchnev, Lotte contadine e urbane nel “Grand Siècle,” 2nd ed. (Milan: Jaca Book, 1998), 77. First published 1948 by Akademija nauk SSSR. Citations refer to the Jaca Book edition. 116 On the strong institutional character of the rural communities see Della Misericordia, “The rural communities.” 117 See Roland Mousnier, Fureurs paysannes: les paysans dans les révoltes du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1967), 71, 343–44. I quote from Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers, “Patterns of Urban Rebellion in Medieval Flanders,” Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005): 372. 118 Gentile, Fazioni al governo, 283. 119 See Della Misericordia, “‘Per non privarci de nostre raxone.’” 179–184. In general cf. Hugues Neveux and Eva Österberg, “Norms and Values of the Peasantry in the Period of State Formation. A comparative interpretation,” in Resistance, Representation and Community, ed. Peter Blickle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 162. 120 Della Misericordia, “‘Uno officiale per gubernare questo paese.’ Considerazioni a proposito della giustizia dello stato e della comunità a partire dalle valli lombarde nel tardo medioevo,”

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agreed with Corrado Fogliani had to be written and formalized in a notarial act. They wanted to leave permanent traces of the negotiation process, whereas the officials and more generally the Milanese bureaucracy put considerable effort into trying to cover these traces.121 The attitude of the ducal officials and observers towards the peasants was not fully homogeneous, as the terms used to define the peasants and their actions reveal. During the first weeks of the uprising, in the letters sent by the ducal officials and by the lords we find words such as riot (tumulto), protest (rumore) and excess (eccesso), which are not characterized by a specific criminal relevance. This aspect surfaced instead in the references to collective oaths (coniuratione).122 The first occurrence of the word “rebellion” (rebellione) appears in a report sent by Marchese da Varese, and it is significant that people like him, Alessandro da Foligno and Giovan Pietro Cagnola—that is, full-time members of the ducal apparatus and close to the court— were much harsher in describing the peasants (which they called vilanaglia) and their acts.123 The turning point coincided with the arrival in Piacenza of Tommaso Morroni. Humanist, diplomat, courtier, businessman and many other things, he was no lawyer. Yet, from the very beginning of his mission he showed no doubt: the peasants were rebels (rebelli) and must be treated as such. In his view, the mere fact that they had tried to enter negotiations with the duke made them rebels.124 Since his first appearance, the peasants began to be called rebels in the correspondence from Piacenza. The difference is striking between him and Corrado Fogliani, who thought that the peasants, though ignorant and thoughtless, were loyal to the state,125 is striking: and it sums up the distance between the ruthless mentality of the bureaucrat (who incidentally was protecting his own financial interest) and the paternalistic attitude of the experienced military commander and feudal lord. Typically, the hatred of the peasants was directed at the officials in charge of tax collection and their agents,126 but, as far as we know, nobody ever said that the gentiluomini were the natural enemies of the peasants, nor spoke of hacking them to pieces. “It would be wrong to say that communal and feudal structures were

121 122 123 124 125 126

in Medioevo dei poteri. Studi di storia per Giorgio Chittolini, ed. Maria Nadia Covini et. al. (Rome: Viella 2012), 248. Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 106. On a similar kind of “juridical and lexical frame” see Nicolas, La rébellion, 28–37. On coniurationes in urban communities in early sixteenth century Hungary see the chapter by Zoltán Csepregi in this book. ASMi SC 765, Marchese da Varese to Francesco Sforza (3 Feb. 1462). An eloquent summary of his thoughts ibid., Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). Ibid., Corrado Fogliani to Gandolfo da Bologna (4 Feb. 1462). Porchnev, Lotte contadine e urbane, 69, 77, 108; Mousnier, Fureurs paysannes, 118, 331.

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always essentially antagonistic.”127 In this case, the fault of the lords consisted of having “betrayed” the peasants, thus failing to perform their function par excellence—that is, to protect their subjects from military and fiscal threats.128 The uprising started as an anti-fiscal one, but never took a definite anti-feudal color.129 Whether the uprising was somehow inspired by the lords and, if so, to what extent, it is difficult to say.130 There is some circumstantial evidence that at least Gian Galeazzo Anguissola was involved, since his chancellor and his castellan were the leaders of the first significant riot on January 11.131 If on the one hand the landed lords acted ambiguously, on the other hand the peasants, at least in the first weeks of the uprising, show some reluctance to detach themselves from the usual seigneurial and factional horizon. It is true that the peasants shouted: “long live the White!” Still, they wanted the lords to sign the capitoli and, at least until the end of March, they elected their representatives according to their factional allegiance. Peloia himself somehow referred to his “natural” lord Manfredo Landi. In a letter addressed “to Count Manfredo Landi and all you faction chiefs,” probably in the days of the march to Piacenza, the requests of the protesters were very briefly explained to the gentiluomini: significantly, it was signed “Jacopinus Pilizarius cum la Povolaglia.”132 It is also worth remembering that the ducal officials stressed the importance of Landi’s participation in the embassy sent to Milan because he would take Peloia with him, which he did.133 The relationship between lords and peasants is closely related to the problem of the uprising diffusion, both at geographic and social level. The first villages to rise and the majority of the villages that took part in the revolt were under the seigneurial rule of the Anguissola, though villages under the Landi, the Scotti and 127 Peter Blickle, “The Common People and the Process of State Formation: Some Conclusions,” in Resistance, Representation and Community, 329. 128 Gadi Algazi’s model, according to which the protection provided to the peasants by the lords was tantamount to a Mafia racket does not apply to fifteenth-century Lombardy. Gadi Algazi, Herrengewalt und Gewalt der Herren im Späten Mittelalter: Herrschaft, Gegenseitigkeit und Sprachgebrauch (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1996). On the effectiveness provided by seigneurial protection see for instance Chittolini, “Il luogo di Mercato”; Chittolini, “Feudatari e comunità rurali. Secoli XV–XVII,” in Città, comunità e feudi nell’Italia centro-settentrionale (secoli XIV–XVI) (Milan: Unicopli 1996), 233–34; Gentile, “Giustizia, protezione, amicizia: note sul dominio dei Rossi nel Parmense all’inizio del Quattrocento,” in Poteri signorili e feudali, 89–104. On the reciprocity of lord–peasant relations in the early modern Kingdom of Hungary see Katalin Péter’s study. On the igniting role of the betrayal of lords, who did not perform their military duties in the eyes of the rebels in 1514 in Hungary, see Gabriella Erdélyi’s chapter in this volume. 129 In many respects, the similarities to the revolt of the Croquants in early seventeenth-century France are striking. See Porchnev, Lotte contadine e urbane, 55–98. 130 Cf. Mousnier, Fureurs paysannes, 58–62, 325. 131 ASMi SC, Tommaso Morroni and Francesco Maletta to Francesco Sforza (18 Jun. 1462). 132 ASMi Comuni 72 (without date). 133 Carteggio degli oratori mantovani, 145.

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the Arcelli also joined in.134 Most of the communities involved were located on the plain and above all on the hills between the rivers Trebbia and Nure. The communities of the mountains did not join the uprising: neither the high valleys of the Trebbia and the Tidone under the Dal Verme, nor the Marquisate of Pellegrino, nor the Valmòzzola.135 Bardi and Compiano, fiefs held by Manfredo Landi in the mountains of the Val di Ceno and of the Val di Taro, enjoyed substantial fiscal privileges and stayed quiet.136 In the valley of the river Nure, the intermediation with the central government provided by the rural lords worked very well too, and the communities of the valley were backed in their continuous fiscal disobedience by the Nicelli family. In addition to the privileges awarded by the Visconti in 1441, between 1460 and 1461 the communities of Val Nure reached an agreement with the central government which fixed the price for the 122 “horses” and the 500 staia of salt that they were obliged to pay at 4,000 lire instead of the 7,856 lire due.137 The crisis of feudal intermediation was not general:138 such crisis occurred in some specific areas, where the expectations of the peasants regarding the duties of their lords were not fulfilled.139 In the Piacentino it was not always the case. Onofrio Anguissola claimed to have advanced 510 lire on behalf of his men for their salt tax in 1461 and offered to do the same for the current year at a price of four lire per staio, which could partly explain the loyalty of his subjects.140 Moreover, we should not imagine the communities as monoliths. In a plea addressed to the duke (probably in autumn 1462) on behalf of his subjects from Agazzano and Gragnano di Sotto, Francesco Scotti pointed out that they were suffering a great deal because of the actions committed by Peloia and his followers, even if several men “did not share their opinion.”141 Given the fact that the lower hills were so well represented among the insurgents, we can safely assume that the social basis of the uprising has to be found among the small freeholders, the tenants on perpetual lease and a few artisans.142 It is true that the peasants 134 The gentiluomini admitted that each one had some of their friends and partisans involved (“de cadauna parte gli sono stati de loro villani amici et partexani”). ASMi SC 765, Corrado Fogliani to Bianca Maria Visconti (5 Feb. 1462). 135 Andreozzi, Piacenza 1402–1545, 105. 136 Fondo della famiglia Landi. Archivio Doria Landi Pamphilj. Regesti delle pergamene 865– 1625, ed. Renato Vignodelli Rubrichi (Parma: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province Parmensi, 1984), 626–27, 630, 636–39, 642–43, 650, 659. 137 Andreozzi, Nascita di un disordine, 72–99. 138 As it would be in the sixteenth century. Arcangeli, Uomini e feudatario. 139 Cengarle, “La comunità di Pecetto,” 113–14. 140 ASMi SC 765, Onofrio Anguissola to Francesco Maletta (16 Jun. 1462, Statto). 141 ASMi Famiglie 171 (Scotti), Francesco Scotti to Francesco Sforza, without date. 142 “The people who cultivated the lands either as freeholders or as tenant farmers, as a combination of both, or as a symbiosis of farmer and artisan.” Neveux and Österberg, “Norms and Values of the Peasantry,” 155. On the relevant presence of small freeholders in that area still in the late sixteenth-century see the data provided by Marzio A. Romani, La gente, le

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constantly stated that they had taken action out of necessity, because of their “extreme poverty.” Once again, though, their argument should be considered more specific than one would think at first glance, for it sounds like an equivalent to the concept of Hausnotdurft: the excessive taxes put at risk the self-sufficiency of families, thus undermining their dignity.143 The towns of the Piacentino (Castell’Arquato, Castelnuovo, Borgonovo and Fiorenzuola) did not join the uprising. Nevertheless, internal and external tensions are evident. On March 19, a squad of ducal provisionati sent to Castell’Arquato to stop smuggling tried to confiscate some corn from people coming from the mountains. It is not clear where exactly the smugglers were caught, but as the church bells rang “in the whole land (paese),” 600 men attacked the soldiers killing one of them. The episode seems to be relevant, though it is difficult to establish the proportion of burghers and peasants in this case.144 On May 22, the burghers of Fiorenzuola elected the new council and the podestà quite worriedly wrote to Milan to inform the duke that 24 of the previous councillors had been left out, ten of them being members of the council ab antiquo “and the richest and the most learned of the borough.” The podestà excused himself, pointing out that he had felt compelled to ratify the outcome to avoid a riot (scandalo) because he “could see the strong will of the whole popolo.”145 A few days later, having refused to pay the taxes because of their extreme poverty, the burghers were persuaded by the podestà to send envoys to Milan to try to obtain mitigations and to show that “they were not part of Peloia’s company.”146 The alliance between the peasants and the urban crowd was clearly the greatest worry for the ducal officials and for the central government.147 It is worth noticing that in his letters Corrado Fogliani never used derogatory terms to refer to the peasants, whereas his disparagement and fear of the mob are evident. He called the peasants villani, and once rusticarìa: the urban commoners, on the contrary, are always populazo or povolaglia, which at best becomes popolo minuto only

143

144 145 146 147

occupazioni e I redditi del Piacentino (da un estimo della fine del secolo XVI) (Parma: Nuova Step Editrice, 1969). On the concept see Renate Blickle, “Hausnotdurft. Ein Fundamentalrecht in der altständischen Ordnung Bayerns,” in Grund- und Freiheitsrechte von der ständischen zur spätbürgerlichen Gesellschaft, ed. Günter Birtsch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987). ASMn AG 1376, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (19 Mar. 1462). ASMi SC 765, Bongiovanni Amati a Francesco Sforza (22 May 1462). Ibid. (26 May 1462). This theme is obviously a leitmotif in Porchnev, Lotte contadine e urbane. A similar alliance occurred during an anti-fiscal uprising which involved both the territory and the city of Parma in August 1385, though the sources are too scarce to allow analytical comparison. On the episode see Andrea Gamberini “Il contado di fronte alla città,” in Parma medievale. Poteri e istituzioni, ed. Roberto Greci. Vol 3, bk. 1, of Storia di Parma, ed. Domenico Vera (Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2010), 204–07.

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when it is supposed to be under the authority of the guilds. The understanding between the peasants and the urban crowd is self-evident148 and it is very significant that Fogliani did all he could to prevent a meeting between the representatives of both groups, “knowing the situation was serious and dangerous, because [the peasants] are almost the same thing and share the very same opinions with the urban commoners.”149 Martino Anguissola even referred to the capitoli granted “to the community of the crowd and peasants.”150 The behavior of the urban crowd followed a pattern that we recognize as typical after the studies on the French revolts of the seventeenth century: they refused to contribute to the defense of the city, then they seized the city gates and opened them to let the peasants in. Subsequently, they assaulted the prison and freed the convicts, and went on burning down the tax offices and destroying the tax records.151 They showed some degree of organization as well: after the riot, they met in assembly (“el populazo fece consilio”) and elected twelve envoys to negotiate with Corrado Fogliani, to claim their loyalty to the duke and to request to be spared the cost of the ducal troops which were going to be sent to Piacenza.152 The “community of the urban crowd and the peasants,” however, did not survive the arrival of the ducal troops in Piacenza: towards the end of February the city appears to be quiet, aside from some muttering.153 To conclude: was the 1462 uprising in the territory of Piacenza a merely traditionalist one? It probably was not.154 As has been observed by Hugues Neveux and Eva Österberg, “despite appearances, traditionalism did not always bind the peasant to maintain the status quo.” If it was traditionalism, it was a “flexible” one.155 Daniele Andreozzi has argued, with good reason, that during the negotiation process the peasants suggested “a different pattern of territorial organization and disciplining” to the prince, in which their relationship with the

148 Carteggio degli oratori mantovani, 111. 149 “Cognoscendo la cosa grave e pericolosa perché sonno quasi una cosa medesma e de una opinioni cum li populari.” ASMi SC 765, Corrado Fogliani to Bianca Maria Visconti (29 Jan. 1462). 150 “A la comunità de’ populazi e contadini.” ASMn AG 1367, Martino Anguissola to Ludovico Gonzaga (12 Feb. 1462). 151 Cf. Porchnev, Lotte contadine e urbane, 95, 270; Nicolas, La rébellion, 106. 152 ASMi SC 765, Corrado Fogliani to Bianca Maria Sforza (1 Feb. 1462). 153 Ibid., Alessandro da Foligno to Francesco Sforza (18 Feb. 462). On muttering as a specific form of popular subversive speech see Dumolyn and Haemers, “‘A Bad Chicken was Brooding’: Subversive Speech in Late Medieval Flanders”, Past and Present 214 (2012): 56–60. 154 For an interpretation of the uprising as a merely traditionalist one see Biaggi, “La rivolta piacentina:” 226–230. 155 “Rather than limiting their actions, this traditionalism sooner or later allowed them to integrate and to justify all their demands and undertakings.” Neveux and Österberg, “Norms and Values of the Peasantry,” 168.

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center could bypass both the lords and the city.156 Speaking of a different constitutional model would perhaps be an overstatement, but the implications of the peasants’ proposal to take direct charge of tax collection cannot be underestimated. They were undoubtedly asking for self-government: had their request been fulfilled, the communities involved would have actually become a selfregulating universitas, obedient to the duke but in a position even superior to that of the city, which enjoyed privileges, it is true, but not fiscal autonomy. Quite interestingly, the expression used by their envoys to Corrado Fogliani, that they wanted “to be one body and soul with the city,” echoes the well-known organic metaphors which described the relationship between the city and her territory, but only up to a point. One body and soul suggests something rather different from the usual head with its limbs.157 The rural communities of the Piacentino were requesting and promoting something new, as it happened, in those decades, in other areas of the Duchy of Milan.158 The central government, typically, dismissed their aspirations and chose a different path. Nonetheless, the uprising had important consequences. A general decree issued in 1465 made the fief holders equal to the ducal officials, making the feudatories fully responsible for tax collection in their fiefs on behalf of the State. The aims of the decree were essentially twofold: on the one hand the central government tried to eliminate the double fiscal burden imposed on the communities by the simultaneous presence of the lords and of the ducal officials; on the other hand, it strictly subordinated the fief holders to the ducal directives on fiscal matters.159 The 1462 uprising also shows how “values and norms in cities and rural areas did not overlap completely, but a remarkable number of them did coincide.”160 The alliance between the peasants and the urban crowd, however bound to failure, is particularly relevant to the historian of the Verfassung of the late medieval Italian states, for it adds further evidence to the fact that city and countryside are still too often considered two separate worlds, a fortiori expressing very different political cultures. In this sense, the case study of Piacenza suggests the potential of further research on the Southern European Gemeiner Mann.

156 Andreozzi, “La rivolta contadina,” 75–76; Piacenza 1402–1545, 106–07. 157 For such organic metaphors to represent the relationship between city and countryside see a local example in ASPc, Provvigioni e riformagioni 1, registry 3, fol. 143r (2 Feb. 1420, Milan). In general see Marino Berengo, L’Europa delle città. Il volto della società europea tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), 118. 158 On the “wide spectrum” of the aspirations put forward by the alpine communities, with particular reference to the administration of justice, see Della Misericordia, “‘Uno officiale per gubernare questo paese,’” 258–59. 159 Andreozzi, “‘Cum bello modo e senza spesa alcuna’:” 36–37. 160 Blickle, “The Common People,” 332.

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Archival Sources ASMi Archivio di Stato di Milano Famiglie 171 (Scotti) Famiglie 6 (Anguissola) Potenze Sovrane 1625

ASMi SC Archivio di Stato di Milano, Sforzesco, Carteggio interno 762, 763, 764, 765, 769.

ASPc Archivio di Stato di Piacenza Consiglio generale e Anzianato, Provvigioni e Riformagioni.

ASMn AG Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga 1367.

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Del Tredici, Federico. Comunità, nobili e gentiluomini nel contado di Milano del Quattrocento. Milan: Unicopli, 2013. Della Misericordia, Massimo. “La mediazione giudiziaria dei conflitti sociali alla fine del medioevo. Tribunali ecclesiastici e resistenza comunitaria in Valtellina.” In Criminalità e giustizia in Italia e in Germania. Pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo medioevo et età moderna. Edited by Marco Bellabarba, Gerd Schwerhoff, and Andrea Zorzi. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002. – “«Per non privarci de nostre raxone, li siamo stati desobidienti.» Patto, giustizia e resistenza nella cultura politica delle comunità alpine nello stato di Milano (XV secolo).” In Forme della comunicazione politica in Europa (secoli XV–XVIII). Suppliche, gravamina, lettere. Edited by Cecilia Nubola and Andreas Würgler. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004. – Divenire comunità. Comuni rurali, poteri locali, identità sociali e territoriali in Valtellina e nella montagna lombarda del tardo medioevo. Milano: Unicopli, 2006. – “Decidere e agire in comunità nel XV secolo (un aspetto del dibattito politico nel dominio sforzesco).” In Linguaggi politici nell’Italia del Rinascimento. Edited by Andrea Gamberini and Giuseppe Petralia. Rome: Viella, 2007. – “‘Uno officiale per gubernare questo paese.’ Considerazioni a proposito della giustizia dello stato e della comunità a partire dalle valli lombarde nel tardo medioevo.” In Medioevo dei poteri. Studi di storia per Giorgio Chittolini. Edited by Maria Nadia Covini, Massimo Della Misericordia, Andrea Gamberini, and Francesco Somaini. Rome: Viella 2012. – “The Rural Communities.” In The Italian Renaissance State. Edited by Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Dumolyn, Jan and Haemers, Jelle. “Patterns of urban rebellion in Medieval Flanders.” In Journal of Medieval History 31 (2005): 369–93. – “‘A bad chicken was brooding’: subversive speech in late medieval Flanders.” In Past and present 214 (2012): 45–86. Ferente, Serena. La sfortuna di Jacopo Piccinino. Storia dei bracceschi in Italia 1423–1465. Florence: Olschki, 2005. Fondo della famiglia Landi. Archivio Doria Landi Pamphilj. Regesti delle pergamene 865– 1625. Edited by Renato Vignodelli Rubrichi. Parma: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province Parmensi, 1984. Gamberini, Andrea. “Il contado di fronte alla città.” In Parma medievale. Poteri e istituzioni. Edited by Roberto Greci. Vol 3, bk. 1, of Storia di Parma. Edited by Domenico Vera. Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2010. Gentile, Marco. Terra e poteri. Parma e il Parmense nel ducato visconteo all’inizio del Quattrocento. Milan: Unicopli, 2001. – “Giustizia, protezione, amicizia: note sul dominio dei Rossi nel Parmense all’inizio del Quattrocento.” In Poteri signorili e feudali nelle campagne dell’Italia settentrionale fra Tre e Quattrocento: fondamenti di legittimità e forme di esercizio. Edited by Federica Cengarle, Giorgio Chittolini, and Gian Maria Varanini. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2005. – “Aristocrazia signorile e costituzione del ducato visconteo-sforzesco: appunti e problemi di ricerca.” In Noblesse et États princiers en Italie et en France au XVe siècle. Edited by Marco Gentile and Pierre Savy. Rome: École Française de Rome, 2009.

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– Fazioni al governo. Politica e società a Parma nel Quattrocento. Rome: Viella, 2009. – “Factions and Parties: Problems and Perspectives.” In The Italian Renaissance State. Edited by Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Ginatempo, Maria and Sandri, Lucia. L’Italia delle città. Il popolamento urbano tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (secoli XIII–XVI). Florence: Le Lettere, 1989. Lantschner, Patrick. “The ‘Ciompi Revolution’ Constructed: Modern Historians and the Nineteenth-Century Paradigm of Revolution.” Annali di Storia di Firenze 4 (2009): 277– 97. Accessed May 11 2015, doi: 10.13128/Annali_Stor_Firen-9864. Leverotti, Franca. Diplomazia e governo dello stato. I «famigli cavalcanti» di Francesco Sforza 1450–1466 (Pisa: ETS, 1992). – “Gli officiali del ducato sforzesco.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Quaderni 1 (1997): 17–79. Marchi, Gian Paolo. “La schiuma del mondo (testimonianze di una letteratura anticontadina tra Medioevo e Rinascimento).” In I secoli XVIII–XX. Vol. 2, of Uomini e civiltà agraria in territorio veronese. 2 vols. Edited by Giorgio Borelli. Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1982. Martini, Angelo. Manuale di metrologia ossia misure, pesi e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i popoli, Turin: Loescher, 1883. Mousnier, Roland. Fureurs paysannes: les paysans dans les révoltes du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1967. Mucciarelli, Roberta and Piccinni, Gabriella. “Un’Italia senza rivolte? Il conflitto sociale nelle aree mezzadrili.” Annali dell’Istituto Alcide Cervi 16 (1994): 173–206. Muir, Edward. Mad Blood Stirring. Vendetta & Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Neri, Francesco. “I capitoli dei «Paciali» del 1455.” In Pistoia e la Toscana nel Medioevo. Studi per Natale Rauty. Edited by Elena Vannucchi. Pistoia: Società Pistoiese di Storia Patria, 1997. Neveux, Hugues and Österberg, Eva. “Norms and Values of the Peasantry in the Period of State Formation. A comparative interpretation.” In Resistance, Representation and Community. Edited by Peter Blickle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Nicolas, Jean. La rébellion française. Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale 1661– 1789. 2nd ed. Paris: Gallimard, 2008 Poggiali, Cristoforo. Memorie storiche di Piacenza compilate dal proposto Cristoforo Poggiali bibliotecario di sua altezza reale. Vol. 7. Piacenza: Filippo G. Giacopazzi, 1759. Politi, Giorgio. “Crisi e civilizzazione di un’aristocrazia: a proposito di un libro recente.” Studi veneziani 29 (1995): 103–142. Pontieri, Ernesto. “La Calabria a metà del secolo XV e le rivolte di Antonio Centelles.” Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 10 (1924): 5–154. Porchnev, Boris. Lotte contadine e urbane nel “Grand Siècle.” Translated by Francesca Rigotti. 2nd ed. Milan: Jaca Book, 1998. Originally published as Les soulèvements populaires en France au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Flammarion 1972. First published 1948 by Akademija nauk SSSR. Raggio, Osvaldo. “Politica, cultura, archetipi. Il giovedì grasso di Udine (1511).” Quaderni storici 88 (1995): 221–231.

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Ripalta, Antonio da. Annales placentini ab anno MCCCCI ad annum MCCCCLXIII. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 20. Edited by Ludovico Antonio Muratori. Milan: 1731, columns 865–978. Romani, Marzio A. La gente, le occupazioni e I redditi del Piacentino (da un estimo della fine del secolo XVI). Parma: Nuova Step Editrice, 1969. Roveda, Enrico. “I beni comuni nella Bassa fra Ticino e Sesia (secoli XVe XVI).” In Uomini, terre e acque. Studi sull’agricoltura della “Bassa lombarda” tra XV e XVII secolo. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012. Savy, Pierre. Seigneurs et condottières. Les Dal Verme. Appartenances sociales, constructions étatiques et pratiques politiques dans l’Italie de la Renaissance. Rome: École Française de Rome, 2013. Schulze, Winfried. Bäuerlicher Widerstand und Feudale Herrschaft in der frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart – Bad Cannstatt: Fromman-Holzboog, 1980. Thompson, Edward P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76–136. Trenti, Giuseppe. Voci di terre estensi. Glossario del volgare di uso comune (Ferrara – Modena) da documenti e cronache del tempo. Secoli XIV–XVI. Vignola: Fondazione di Vignola, 2008. Vitolo, Giovanni. “Rivolte contadine e brigantaggi nel Mezzogiorno angioino.” Annali dell’Istituto Alcide Cervi 16 (1994): 223–24.

Part II Utopia and Vision: Religious Radicalism

Martin Rothkegel

Institutionalisierte Rebellion Aufsässige Praktiken der Hutterischen Täufer in Mähren

1.

Täufertum und Bauernkrieg

Aus der Überzeugung heraus, daß die Verwirklichung der Freiheit das Ziel sei, auf das die Geschichte der Menschheit sich trotz aller Irrwege und Rückschläge zubewege, legte der liberale Publizist und protestantische Theologe Wilhelm Zimmermann wenige Jahre vor der Revolution von 1848 sein klassisches Werk über den „großen deutschen Bauernkrieg“ von 1525 vor. Gegen eine mehr als dreihundertjährige historiographische Tradition, die im Aufbegehren der Gemeinen „nur die düstere Brand- und Todesfackel“ zu sehen vermochte, rehabilitierte Zimmermann die Bewegung von 1525 als „Kampf der Freiheit gegen menschliche Unterdrückung, des Lichtes gegen die Finsternis“.1 Die Einordnung des Bauernkriegs in das Projekt einer Freiheitsgeschichte des deutschen Volkes hat seit Zimmermann in vieler Hinsicht Forschung und Erinnerungskultur bestimmt.2 Inwiefern haben jedoch die Forderungen der Aufständischen über das Jahr der blutigen Niederlage hinaus eine Wirkung erzielt, inwiefern wurden die Anliegen von 1525 über den Augenblick hinaus weitertradiert? Zwar gibt es im süddeutsch-alpenländischen Raum Beispiele für Verbesserungen der rechtlichen Lage der Bauern nach 1525,3 insgesamt folgte auf die Niederlage und Bestrafung der Aufrührer aber eher eine Stabilisierung und Intensivierung obrigkeitlicher Herrschaftsausübung.4 Der Begriff Freiheit verschwand nach 1525 aus dem politischen Diskurs.5 Eine von der Perspektive der Sieger abweichende Erinnerung 1 Zimermann, Allgemeine Geschichte, 5f. 2 Vgl. Blickle, Der Bauernkrieg, 119–126. 3 Vgl. Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525, 254–271; ders., Von der Leibeigenschaft zu den Menschenrechten, 87–104. 4 Vgl. Hohn, Die rechtlichen Folgen des Bauernkrieges von 1525; Hasselbeck, Die Folgen des deutschen Bauernkriegs. 5 Vgl. Blickle, Von der Leibeigenschaft zu den Menschenrechten, 102.

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an die Ereignisse von 1525 aus der Sicht des „Gemeinen Mannes“ wurde nicht überliefert. Bereits die Zeitgenossen argwöhnten, daß die radikale Programmatik von 1525 in der seit demselben Jahr entstehenden oberdeutschen Täuferbewegung nachwirke und, ins Religiöse gewendet, von den täuferischen Gemeinden und ihren Sendboten weiterverbreitet werde. Bereits während des Bauernkriegs, vor allem aber in den unmittelbar folgenden Jahren formierten sich in mehreren Regionen der Schweiz und des süd- und mitteldeutschen Raums radikale reformatorische Bewegungen und Gruppen, die in Opposition zu den „magisterialen“ Reformatoren und zur Religionspolitik der jeweiligen Obrigkeiten traten.6 Zwar beteuerten die Täufer, der Obrigkeit in allen Dingen untertan zu sein (Römer 13), die nicht dem Wort Gottes widersprechen (Apostelgeschichte 5,29). Dennoch stellten sie grundlegende politische Ordnungsvorstellungen der Vormoderne in Frage: Allein schon durch die Tatsache, daß sie die Erwachsenentaufe praktizierten – also die Zugehörigkeit zur christlichen Religion der freien Entscheidung des Einzelnen anheimstellten –, bestritten sie die Christlichkeit der Gesellschaft als ganzer. Darüber hinaus nahmen die meisten oberdeutschen Täufer (abgesehen von wenigen Ausnahmen wie Balthasar Hubmaier und seinen Anhängern) zwischen 1527 und 1531 streng pazifistische Standpunkte an, die darauf hinausliefen, daß „kein Christ ein Oberkeit und kein Oberkeit ein Christ“7 sein könne – und leugneten damit den Kern des Legitimitäts- und Selbstverständnisses zeitgenössischer Obrigkeiten. In der Wahrnehmung zeitgenössischer Regierungen erschienen die sich rasch ausbreitenden Taufbewegungen daher als ebenso gefährlich wie die aufständischen Bauern. Zur Warnung versandten die Stadträte von Augsburg und Nürnberg 1527 an andere Reichsstände Aufstellungen von „Artikeln der Wiedertäufer“ aufgrund der Verhöraussagen gefangener Täufer. Demnach erwarteten diese, daß innerhalb von zwei Jahren Christus vom Himmel kommen, die Herrschaft der Fürsten vernichten und die Macht den auserwählten Gläubigen übergeben werde, und forderten, „es soll kein gwalt und oberkeit by den cristen“ sein und „das alle guter in der gantzen cristenheit gemeyn sollenn sin“.8 Es lag daher aus Sicht der Obrigkeit nahe, im Täufertum eine nach einem politischen Umsturz strebende Verschwörung zu sehen, ja Wiedertaufe und Aufruhr pauschal gleichzusetzen. Sowohl von den altgläubigen als auch von den evangelischen Obrigkeiten wurden die Täufer ausdrücklich als Aufrührer verfolgt.9 Diese 6 Zum Täufertum vgl. Roth/Stayer, A companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700. 7 Riedemann, Rechenschaft unserer Religion, 113. 8 Krebs/Rott, Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, Bd. VII., I. Teil, 138–144, Nr. 116; vgl. Seebaß, Müntzers Erbe, 125–129. 9 Die Verfolgung der Wiedertaufe als delictum contra fidem mittels der geistlichen Inquisition war durch ein Reichsgesetz von 1529 sogar ausdrücklich ausgeschlossen. Nur indem die

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Sicht des Täufertums verdichtete sich in der Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts zu der Theorie, niemand anders als der Erzbösewicht Thomas Müntzer habe als Urheber der Täufer zu gelten.10 Nachdem die moderne Täuferforschung des 20. Jahrhundert lange bestrebt gewesen war, die Täufer des 16. Jahrhunderts gegen die traditionelle konfessionelle Polemik als eine weltabgewandte religiöse Erneuerungsbewegung darzustellen, der jeder politische Radikalismus fremd gewesen sei, trat die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Bauernkrieg und Täufertum seit den frühen 1970er Jahren wieder in den Vordergrund und bestimmt seither die Diskussion um Ursprünge und Charakter der Bewegung. Kontrovers wird nach wie vor das Verhältnis zwischen dem Zürcher proto-täuferischen Kreis, in dem es im Januar 1525 zur ersten Taufhandlung kam, und den gleichzeitigen Bestrebungen der Bauern im Zürcher Umland nach lokalen „Gemeindereformationen“ beurteilt. Deutlicher greifbar sind die Verbindungen zwischen den aufständischen Bauern im Südschwarzwald und Balthasar Hubmaiers täuferischer Lokalreformation von 1524/25 in der habsburgischen Stadt Waldshut, die mit den Aufständischen ein Schutzbündnis gegen ihren altgläubigen Landesherrn geschlossen hatte.11 Explizit sind die Zusammenhänge mit dem Bauernkrieg und mit Thomas Müntzer im Fall der apokalyptischen Naherwartung und der spiritualistischen Heilslehre des aus Thüringen stammenden Laienpredigers Hans Hut (gestorben am 6. Dezember 1527 im Gefängnis in Augsburg). Hut identifizierte Müntzer und den mit diesem am 27. Mai 1525 bei Mühlhausen hingerichteten Heinrich Pfeiffer als die beiden in Offenbarung 11 erwähnten endzeitlichen „Zeugen“. Mit dem Tod der zwei Zeugen habe eine Zwischenzeit begonnen, in der Gottes Sendboten die in Offenbarung 7 erwähnten 144.000 Auserwählten „versiegeln“ oder taufen sollen, indem sie ihnen ein Wasserkreuz auf die Stirn zeichnen. Zu Pfingsten 1528 werde dann mit einer türkischen Invasion das Gericht an den Gottlosen einsetzen, auf welches die Herrschaft Christi und der Auserwählten folge. Seit dem Sommer 1526 gewannen Hut und seine Emissäre zahlreiche Anhänger in Franken, Thüringen, Bayern, Österreich, Mähren und weiteren Gebieten des mittelund oberdeutschen Raums und spendeten ihnen die Taufe bzw. das „Zeichen“.12 Wiedertaufe als weltliches Verbrechen definiert wurde, war eine effektive Verfolgung auch in den evangelischen Territorien möglich, in denen die mittelalterlichen Institutionen der Ketzergerichtsbarkeit aufgehoben waren. Kühn, Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Bd. 7/2, 1325– 1327, Nr. 153; zur obrigkeitlichen Sicht der Täufer: Wolgast, Stellung der Obrigkeit; Schlachta, Gefahr oder Segen?; Michael Driedger, Anabaptists and the Early Modern State. 10 Vgl. Bullinger, Der Widertöufferen Ursprung; Fast, Heinrich Bullinger, 92–106. 11 Gegen die Annahme eines direkten Zusammenhangs zwischen Bauernkrieg und Entstehung des Täufertums argumentierte Strübind, Eifriger als Zwingli; ausführliche Repliken: Snyder, The birth and evolution of Swiss Anabaptism (1520–1530); ders., Swiss Anabaptism: the beginnings; ders., The evolution of Swiss Anabaptism to 1530. 12 Vgl. Seebaß, Müntzers Erbe; Packull, Mysticism.

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Quantitative Aussagen darüber, wieviele an der Aufstandsbewegung von 1525 beteiligte Frauen und Männer sich in den folgenden Jahren der Hutschen Taufbewegung und den aus dieser entstehenden Täufergemeinden anschlossen, sind aufgrund der Unvollständigkeit des überlieferten Quellenmaterials nicht möglich. Dokumentiert ist lediglich eine begrenzte Anzahl von exemplarischen Einzelfällen. So schloß sich eine ganze Reihe von Personen, die an der Tiroler Aufstandsbewegung unter Michael Gaismair teilgenommen hatten, täuferischen Gemeinden in Mähren an, darunter auch ein Teil von Gaismairs Familie.13

2.

Die „Gemeinde Gottes in Mähren“ der Hutterischen Brüder

Hauptschauplatz der „Ekklesialisierung“ des oberdeutschen Täufertums, also der Formierung und Konsolidierung von Gemeinden, die regelmäßige gottesdienstliche Versammlungen abhielten, Taufe, Abendmahl und Kirchenzucht praktizierten und den Anspruch erhoben, christliche Kirchen nach dem Vorbild des Neuen Testaments zu sein, war die Markgrafschaft Mähren.14 Während in den umliegenden Ländern die blutige Verfolgung der Täufer die Möglichkeit zur Entfaltung täuferischen Gemeindelebens stark einschränkte oder ganz ausschloß, gewährte bis zur Schlacht am Weißen Berge (1620) eine starke Fraktion innerhalb des mährischen Herrenadels verfolgten Glaubensflüchtlingen unterschiedlicher Couleur Schutz und Ansiedlungsmöglichkeiten in den Dörfern und Städten ihrer Grundherrschaften. Im Laufe des Jahres 1528 entstand aus HutAnhängern, die nach Südmähren geflohen waren, um dort das Weltende abzuwarten, angesichts des Ausbleibens der angekündigten endzeitlichen Ereignisse eine täuferische Gemeinde im mährischen Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna). Die „Austerlitzer Brüder“ verstanden sich als die mit apostolischer Vollmacht ausgestattete wahre Kirche und begannen bald mit der Gründung von Tochtergemeinden innerhalb und außerhalb Mährens. Im Prinzip handelte es sich um eine Sammlungsbewegung, die versuchte, die kaum organisierten und zunehmend bedrängten Täufergruppen im oberdeutschen Raums in ein Netzwerk miteinander verbundener Gemeinden umzuformen. Zwischen 1528 und 1531 wurden die Austerlitzer strikte Pazifisten, indem sie – zumindest der Sache nach – die pazifistisch-separatistischen Grundsätze der 1527 von schweizerischen und südwestdeutschen Täufern formulierten „Schleitheimer Artikel“ annahmen.15 13 Zur Hinwendung ehemaliger Teilnehmer der Aufstandsbewegungen von 1525 zum Täufertum vgl. Zschäbitz, Zur mitteldeutschen Wiedertäuferbewegung; Stayer, The German Peasants’ War, 61–92, 165–167; Packull, The Beginnings of Anabaptism in Souther Tyrol; ders., Die Anfänge des Täufertums in Tirol; ders., Hutterite Beginnings, 169–181. 14 Vgl. Rothkegel, Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia. 15 Vgl. Rothkegel, Die Austerlitzer Brüder; ders., Pilgram Marpeck.

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Durch eine Spaltung der Austerlitzer Gemeinde entstand im Winter 1530/31 eine mit den Austerlitzern konkurrierende Gemeinde im nahen Auspitz (Hustopecˇe), aus der unter der Führung des aus Tirol stammenden Hutmachergesellen und selbsternannten „Apostels Jesu Christi“ Jakob Hutter (gest. 1536) die Gemeinschaft der Hutterischen Brüder entstand, die sich bald zur dynamischsten und größten täuferischen „Denomination“ in Mähren entwickelte.16 Die Hutterer entwickelten das von den „Austerlitzer Brüdern“ übernommene Gemeindemodell in mehrfacher Hinsicht weiter. Sie beanspruchten, konsequenter als alle übrigen täuferischen Sekten die urchristlichen Grundsätze der Gewaltlosigkeit (Matthäus 5,38–48) und der Gütergemeinschaft (Apostelgeschichte 2,44–47) zu praktizieren. Die hutterische „Gemeinde Gottes in Mähren“ verstand sich exklusiv als die in der Endzeit wiederaufgerichtete wahre christliche Kirche. Im Land Mähren sahen die Hutterer den in Offenbarung 12,6 erwähnten Ort in der Wüste, an dem das Sonnenweib (die wahre Kirche) eine Zeitlang Ruhe vor dem Drachen (der Verfolgung) finden sollte.17 Daher bildeten die Hutterer in der Regel keine Gemeinden außerhalb Mährens, sondern betrieben in täuferischen (bzw. anderen für die hutterische Botschaft offenen) Kreisen – in Österreich, Süd- und Mitteldeutschland und der Schweiz, zeitweise auch in Norditalien – eine intensive Missionstätigkeit mit dem Ziel, alle wahrhaft Gläubigen zur Auswanderung nach Mähren zu bewegen und dort im Schoß der „Gemeinde Gottes“ zu sammeln. Gegen Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts gehörten der hutterischen Gemeinschaft mindestens 20.000 Personen in 54 Niederlassungen, den sogenannten „Haushaben“ oder „Bruderhöfen“, an. Mit ihrer streng kommunitär organisierten Wirtschaftsform und der auf die Bedürfnisse des mährischen Adels ausgerichteten Produktion hochwertiger Handwerksprodukte und Luxusgüter waren die hutterischen Handwerksbetriebe und Dienstleistungsberufe ökonomisch außerordentlich erfolgreich.18 Die hutterische Mission suchte vor allem Konvertiten aus dem Handwerkerstand zu gewinnen. Die hutterischen Niederlassungen, die teils eigene Quartiere in Kleinstädten und Dörfern bildeten, teils abseits bestehender Siedlungen neu errichtet wurden,19 hatten im Hinblick auf ihr ökonomisches Profil den Charakter von Miniaturstädten. Die in den hutterischen Mikrokosmos integrierten kulturellen Traditionselemente (Technologien, ästhetische Stilprinzipien, Kleidung, Wissens- und Lesestoffe, Organisationsformen) stammten aus der materiellen, ideellen und politischen Kultur des städtischen Handwerkerstandes. Die Sprachform, die in der Gemeinschaft in Wort und Schrift gepflegt wurde, war ein 16 Vgl. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 54–132, 214–257. 17 Vgl. Zieglschmid, Die älteste Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder. 18 Vgl. Pajer, Studie o novokrˇteˇncích, 61–68; Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession und Tradition; Goertz, Religiöser Nonkonformismus. 19 Vgl. Jirˇí Pajer, Studie o novokrˇteˇncích, 29–40.

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frühneuhochdeutsches Schriftdeutsch in bairisch-oberdeutscher Färbung, das sich von den dialektalen Alltagsidiomen der mittel- und oberdeutschen Herkunftsregionen der Konvertiten teilweise deutlich unterschied.20 Die hutterische Wirtschaftsform, Alltagskultur und Religiosität, die handwerkliche Qualifikation und Lesefähigkeit als Regelfall voraussetzten (für die in der Gemeinde aufwachsenden Kinder und Jugendlichen waren Schulbesuch und Handwerkslehre obligatorisch), standen der zeitgenössischen bäuerlichen Lebenswelt denkbar fern. Hutterische Quellen berichten ausdrücklich von den Schwierigkeiten, die entstanden, wenn sich unter den neuankommenden Konvertiten zu viele Personen bäuerlicher Herkunft befanden, die in den Wirtschaftbetrieben der Gemeinde nicht als Arbeitskräfte verwendbar waren.21 Auch wenn in den hutterischen Bruderhöfe demnach keine spezifisch bäuerlichen Traditionen und spezifisch bäuerlichen Anliegen von 1525 weitergewirkt haben dürften, lassen sich einige Aspekte der hutterischen Lebensweise aus der revolutionären Dynamik herleiten, die 1525 über den Bauernstand hinaus auch weitere Schichten der Gesellschaft erreicht hatte. Im Folgenden werden mit der „Herrschaft des Wortes Gottes“, der Gemeinschaft der Güter, dem Bann des Klerus und der Steuerverweigerung gegenüber dem Landesherrn exemplarische Bereiche in den Blick genommen, in denen die Hutterer Akte des Protests und der Rebellion gegen die bestehenden Herrschaftsverhältnisse regelrecht institutionalisiert, d. h. theologisch reflektiert und in dauerhaft praktizierbare Ordnungen umgesetzt hatten.

3.

Kollektivierte Mystik, institutionalisierte Rebellion

Die hutterische „Gemeinde Gottes in Mähren“ verstand sich als der aus den Herrschaftsstrukturen der „Welt“ herausgelöste Herrschaftsbereich des Wortes Gottes. Dies darf nicht im Sinne eines biblizistischen Legalismus mißverstanden werden. Vielmehr verstanden die Hutterer unter dem „lebendigen“ Wort Gottes ein dynamisches Charisma, dessen Träger die von der Gemeinde gewählten Prediger oder „Diener des Wortes“ seien.22 Wenn Melanchthon in einer Polemik von 1536 behauptet hatte, die Täufer lehrten, „Christen sollen kein andere Oberkeit haben denn allein die Diener des Evangelii“, dann traf dies für die Hutterer in der Tat zu.23 20 Vgl. Scheer, Sprachliche Untersuchung; zur sprachlichen Assimilation der Neuankömmlinge vgl. Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession und Tradition, 366–368. 21 Vgl. Plümper, Die Gütergemeinschaft bei den Täufern des 16. Jahrhunderts, 150. 22 Vgl. Rothkegel, Das Verständnis der Heiligen Schrift, 193f, 200–209. 23 Melanchthon, Verlegung etlicher unchristlicher Artikel, 309; ganz ähnlich der österreichische lutherische Politiker Christoph Jörger 1556 in einer handschriftlichen Abhandlung gegen die Hutterer, ediert in: Loesche, Luther, Melanthon und Calvin, 132.

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Die Hutterer genossen auf den Grundherrschaften ihrer adligen Schutzherren eine Art Gaststatus. Vor der Gründung einer hutterischen Niederlassung schloß die Leitung der Gemeinschaft mit dem Grundherrn einen befristeten Vertrag ab, in dem die für den Grundherrn zu erbringenden Leistungen sowie die Höchstzahl der anzusiedelnden Gemeindemitglieder festgelegt waren, jedoch wurden dem Grundherrn nicht die Namen der einzelnen Individuen mitgeteilt. Der Grundherr mußte auf die Ausübung der Gerichtsbarkeit über die Mitglieder der Gemeinschaft verzichten, da die Hutterer beanspruchten, ihre Mitglieder ausschließlich intern und ohne Anwendung von Leibesstrafen zu disziplinieren. Die Mitglieder der Gemeinschaft unterlagen keinen individuellen Untertanenpflichten wie der Fronarbeit (robota), da alle Ansprüche des Grundherrn von der Gemeinschaft als kollektive Pauschalleistungen abgegolten wurden.24 Innerhalb der Gemeinschaft wurde die Familie als Machtstruktur destruiert: Die verheirateten Mitglieder traten das Elternrecht an ihren eigenen Kindern an die Gemeinde ab. Die Namengebung nach der Geburt erfolgte durch die „Diener des Wortes“. Anschließend wurden die Kinder in großen Kinderhäusern gemeinschaftlich erzogen, bis sie durch freiwilligen Entschluß selber Mitglieder der Gemeinschaft werden konnten.25 Es handelte sich bei der hutterischen Gemeinschaft um in sich geschlossene theokratisch-utopische Gemeinwesen, um „platonische Republiken“, wie der zeitgenössische schlesische Chronist Joachim Cureus sich geistreich ausdrückte, indem er damit zugleich auf den böswilligen (und in Wirklichkeit unzutreffenden) Vorwurf anspielte, die Hutterer hätten womöglich auch ihre Weiber gemein.26 Da die Gemeinde in allen rechtlichen und geschäftlichen Beziehungen gegenüber den Grundherren von den „Dienern des Worts“ und den für ökonomische Belange zuständigen „Dienern der Notdurft“ vertreten wurde, kamen gewöhnliche Mitglieder so gut wie überhaupt nicht mehr in direkten Kontakt mit Vertretern der weltlichen Obrigkeit. Ein 1535 verhaftetes Mitglied der protohutterischen Gemeinde von Auspitz gab zu Protokoll: „Zum dritten gefragt, ob er sainer obrigkhait auch gehorsam laist. Darauf er geantwurt: Dhweyll er under ainer obrgkhait seie gesessen, habe er ir alle geburliche gehorsam gethon. Aber yetzt dien er allein Got, dem er sich ganntz ergeben habe.“27 Als der Mährische Landtag im selben Jahr die Ausweisung aller kommunitär lebenden Täufer aus Mähren anordnete, richtete Jakob Hutter ein Schreiben an den mährischen 24 Vgl. Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession, 293–307; Pajer, Studie o novokrˇteˇncích, 69–78. 25 Vgl. Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession, 331–340. 26 Cureus, Gentis Silesiae annales, 281, über die Täufer, „qui deinde in Moraviam profugerunt, ubi invenerunt domicilium ibidemque singularem politiam Platonicam plenam turpitudinis et scelerum constituerunt.“ 27 Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Hochstift Passau, Blechkastenarchiv 38, Bl. 116r (Aussage des Jorg Lang von Etzersweill, Passau, 25. August 1535).

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Landeshauptmann, in dem er erklärte, Gott habe dem mährischen Adel sein Amt zu dem Zweck verliehen, damit ein Zufluchtsort für die wahre Kirche bereitstehe; es stehe dem Adel daher nicht zu, die Auserwählten Gottes aus dem Land zu verweisen: „Wir künnen uns auch das landt und das erdtrich nit lassen verbieten, dann die erd ist des Herren, unnd alles, was darinnen ist, das ist unseres Gottes im himel (Psalm 24).“28 Die Annahme liegt auf der Hand, daß zwischen der Konstruktion der hutterischen Lebenswelt als Herrschaftsraum des Wortes Gottes und dem Schlagwort der Aufständischen von 1525, das Wort Gottes solle Grundlage des Rechts und aller gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen werden, ein Zusammenhang besteht – allerdings wurden von den Hutterern Konsequenzen gezogen, die weit über die Forderungen von 1525 hinausgehen. Eine nachträgliche Zuspitzung und Radikalisierung der Ziele des Bauernkriegs von 1525 liegt auch bei dem von den Hutterern verwirklichten Prinzip der Gütergemeinschaft vor. In den programmatischen Texten der Aufständischen taucht die Forderung nach völliger Abschaffung des Privateigentums noch nicht auf. Erst in dem im Auftrag Herzog Georgs von Sachsen veröffentlichten Bericht über die Aussagen Thomas Müntzers vor seiner Hinrichtung im Mai 1525 findet sich die – aus der Sicht der Sieger höchst belastende – Formel „omnia sunt communia“. Zwar ist es fraglich, inwiefern Müntzer tatsächlich die Gütergemeinschaft gelehrt habe.29 In der Zeit nach der Niederlage findet sich die Forderung, Christen müßten alle Güter gemein haben, dann aber sowohl bei dem von Müntzers Lehre beeinflußten Nürnberger Drucker Hans Hergot und bei Hans Hut (der mit Hergot bekannt war und bei diesem 1524 eine Müntzer-Schrift hatte drucken lassen) als auch bei den frühen Schweizer Täufern, ja, sie stellte neben der Taufe der Gläubigen und den Frage nach der Erlaubtheit des Eides, der Gewalt und der Ausübung obrigkeitlicher Ämter einen der zentralen Diskussionsgegenstände der frühen Täuferbewegung des oberund mitteldeutschen Raums dar.30 Die Hutterer schufen eine künstliche gesellschaftliche Struktur, in der das Ideal der Gütergemeinschaft über einen längeren Zeitraum hinweg tatsächlich praktiziert werden konnte. Darüber hinaus setzten sie die Gütergemeinschaft in einen direkten theologischen Zusammenhang mit ihrem Verständnis vom Weg zum ewigen Seelenheil, nämlich mit Hans Huts Lehre vom Rechtfertigungsprozeß durch das läuternde Erleiden des göttlichen Willens. Die Hutsche Heilslehre, die ihrerseits auf Thomas Müntzer und auf die spätmittelalterliche Mystik zurückgreift, wurde von den Hutterern kollektiviert, ekklesialisiert und operationalisiert: Die kommunitäre Lebensweise der Gemeinde ermöglichte 28 Zieglschmid, Die älteste Chronik, 152. 29 Vgl. Stengel, Omnia sunt communia. 30 Vgl. Seebaß, Müntzers Erbe, 484–488; Stayer, Neue Modelle; Kobelt-Groch, Christliche Gemeinschaft; Stayer, German Peasants’ War, 95–122; Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 33–53; Schelle-Wolff, Zwischen Erwartung und Aufruhr.

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allen Mitglieder die Erfahrung des Loslassens von allem Äußerlichen und des innerlichen Rechtfertigungsprozesses in einem standardisierten Verfahren. Indem die Gemeindemitglieder ihren Privatbesitz zugunsten der Gemeinschaft aufgaben und ihren Willen der Gemeinde unterordneten, wurde der Heilsweg der Gelassenheit für sie konkret erfahrbar. In theologischer Hinsicht war die hutterische Gütergemeinschaft also nicht nur die Restitution einer Lebensform der Jerusalemer Urgemeinde, sie war vor allem die praktische Umsetzung eines „Ofens der Gelassenheit“, in dem die Seele geläutert werde wie das Gold im Schmelzofen (Sirach 2,5).31 Die Herrschaftsrechte, ja sogar die Existenz kirchlicher Institutionen und geistlicher Würdenträger ignorierten die Hutterer demonstrativ. Dies beschränkte sich nicht auf die Weigerung, die der Kirche zustehenden Abgaben zu leisten (dies war in Mähren keineswegs ungewöhnlich, denn auch die adligen Grundherren ließen keine Gelegenheit aus, Zehntzahlungen zurückzuhalten oder nach eigenem Gutdünken zu verwenden32). Darüber hinaus verweigerten die Hutterer den Angehörigen des Klerus jeglichen persönlichen Umgang, Gruß und Anrede, Kauf und Verkauf.33 Grundlegend für die hutterische Praxis der „Absonderung“, d. h. der strengen Meidung des Klerus, war ein Beschluß der Gemeinde von 1535: „weil der bapst, pfaffen, münich, nunnen und alle bauchprediger die grösste ursach der abgötterei, auch des heüchlerischen sündigen gantz verderbten lebens vor Gott seind,“ wurde damals beschlossen, „das die gmain hinfüran inen nit wöll arbeyten, zu kauffen geben oder von inen kauffen, auch nit mit inen essen oder trincken, on besondere wichtige grosse und göttliche ursach gar nichts mit inen zu schaffen haben, weil all ir gwerb und gwinn zum dienst der abgötterei, die darmit zu erhalten, herkombt und darzu geordnet ist.“34 Ein kurioser Fall trat ein, als Franz von Dietrichstein, durch Erbfolge seit 1590 weltlicher Mitbesitzer der Grundherrschaft Nikolsburg mit mehreren größeren und kleineren hutterischen Niederlassungen, 1599 Kardinal und Bischof von Olmütz wurde. Erst nach zähen Verhandlungen erreichte Dietrichstein, daß die Hutterer mit ihm in seiner Eigenschaft als Nikolsburger Erbherr enge geschäftliche und persönliche Beziehungen aufrechterhielten. Die Hutterer bestanden jedoch darauf, Dietrichstein in seiner Eigenschaft als Bischof streng zu meiden.35 Mit der – nach mährischem Landesrecht illegalen, aber vom Adel tolerierten – Praxis der Meidung des Klerus wandten die Hutterer – wie schon die aufständischen Bauern von 1525, die über Klöster und geistliche Herrschaften 31 32 33 34 35

Vgl. Friedmann, Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter II, 175. Vgl. Kamenícˇek, Zemské sneˇmy, Bd. 3, 325, 329, 585f, 598f, 625, 662, 665. Vgl. Riedemann, Rechenschaft unserer Religion, 96–103. Vgl. Zieglschmid, Die älteste Chronik, 145. Vgl. Zieglschmid, Die älteste Chronik, 597–600; Hrubý, Die Wiedertäufer in Mähren, 33–34; Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession, 297–299.

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den „weltlichen Bann“ verhängten36 – das von der mittelalterlichen Kirche entwickelte Instrumentarium der Exkommunikation nun ihrerseits auf die Repräsentanten und Institutionen der katholischen Kirche an. Um eine rebellische, demonstrativ geltendes Recht brechende Praxis handelte es sich auch bei der Verweigerung der Kriegssteuer, nämlich der seit der Schlacht von Mohács alljährlich vom Mährischen Landtag bewilligten Sondersteuer (berna) zum Krieg gegen die Türken. Bei dieser ungewöhnlichen hutterischen Praxis handelte es sich in Wirklichkeit eigentlich nur um eine symbolische Weigerung, denn die Grundherren, die die Steuer eintreiben und an den Landesherrn abführen mußten, verrechneten die Fehlbeträge mit anderen Einkünften, die ihnen von den Hutterern zuflossen. In der hutterischen Apologetik wurde die Steuerverweigerung im pazifistischen Sinne mit dem Grundsatz der strengen Nichtbeteiligung an Kriegen in jeder Form begründet, „daß wir uns nit fremder Sünden teilhaftig machen“.37 Eine vor wenigen Jahren erstmals untersuchte handschriftliche Auslegung des Kapitels 13 des Römerbriefs, die im Januar 1531 von dem Täufer David Burda von Schweinitz (Trhové Sviny in Südböhmen), einem der ersten Leiter der proto-hutterischen Gemeinde in Auspitz, verfaßt wurde, macht allerdings deutlich, daß die Verweigerung der Kriegssteuer primär ein demonstrativer Akt des Ungehorsams gegenüber dem Landesherrn, ja eine demonstrative Bestreitung seiner Legitimität war.38 Entsprechend der Aufforderung Hans Huts, der Türkeninvasion, mit der das Endgericht einsetzen werde, keinen Widerstand entgegenzusetzen, argumentierte David von Schweinitz, der Sultan stehe im Begriff, Europa zu erobern (in der Tat sollten die Türken eben dies im folgenden Jahr 1532 versuchen). Diesem göttlichen Verhängnis dürfe sich der wahre Christ nicht widersetzen, sondern müsse die Unterstützung der von Ferdinand I. betriebenen Türkenrüstung verweigern. Es sei offenbar, daß Kaiser Karl V. und sein Bruder, König Ferdinand I., von Gott verworfen und daher keine legitimen Herrscher mehr seien. Ihnen dürfe man zwar noch Brücken- und Wegezoll zahlen, der für die Reparatur von Straßen und Brücken verwendet wird, nicht aber Steuer, die zum Türkenkrieg verwendet wird. Daher unterscheide der Apostel ausdrücklich, man solle die Steuer zahlen, wem Steuer gebühre, und Zoll, wem Zoll gebühre (Römer 13, 7). Indem die Austerlitzer Gemeinde den beiden Habsburgern Karl und Ferdinand öffentlich Zeugnis gebe, sie seien legitime Herrscher nach Römer 13, denen der Christ Gehorsam schulde, habe sie sich am Heiligen Geist versündigt.

36 Vgl. Vogler, Schlösserartikel und weltlicher Bann. 37 Vgl. Riedemann, Rechenschaft unserer Religion, 116; Chudaska, Peter Riedemann, 292–299. 38 Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Ansbacher Religionsakten 39, Bl. 129r–149v, 154r–172v, 172v–175v; vgl. Rothkegel, Antihabsburgische Opposition.

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In der Tat veröffentlichten die Austerlitzer Brüder im selben Jahr 1531 in Straßburg eine Apologie, in der sie sich einerseits zum Prinzip der Wehrlosigkeit bekannten und andererseits darlegten, Kaiser Karl V. sei das legitime Oberhaupt, dem alle Stände des Reiches Gehorsam schulden.39 Bereits 1531 war diese Argumentation nicht nur gegen die anti-habsburgischen Auspitzer Proto-Hutterer und deren Gesinnungsgenossen innerhalb des Täufertums, sondern auch nach außen gegen die Gründung des Schmalkaldischen Bundes gerichtet. Entsprechend lehnten die Austerlitzer 1546/47 das von den evangelischen Reichsständen behauptete Widerstandsrecht ab, da ein Christ auch dann der von Gott eingesetzten Obrigkeit gehorsam sein müsse, wenn diese ihn verfolge.40 Dagegen betrachteten die Hutterer nur ihre mährischen Schutzherren als legitime Obrigkeiten, denen aufgrund von Römer 13 Gehorsam geschuldet sei, bestritten aber das Herrschaftsrecht Ferdinands I. Ein Text, der in der „Gemeinde Gottes in Mähren“ besonders intensiv überliefert und rezipiert wurde, war – nach der Zahl der erhaltenen Handschriften zu urteilen – der erwähnte Brief Jakob Hutters an den mährischen Landeshauptmann von 1535, in dem Hutter erklärte, Ferdinand I. sei ein „gottloß tirann unnd feindt der göttlichen warhait und gerechtigkait“ und „fürst der finsternus“, aber zugleich das Gerücht zurückwies, er plane mit seinen Anhängern einen bewaffneten Aufstand. Die wahren Christen besäßen keinerlei Waffen und wollten lieber wehrlos sterben, als sich auch nur mit der bloßen Hand gegen einen Angreifer zu verteidigen.41 Die Hutterer gaben ihre schroff anti-habsburgische Haltung unter den Nachfolgern Ferdinands I. allmählich auf, so daß die ursprünglich rebellische Praxis der Steuerverweigerung den Charakter einer ritualisierten Vorschrift einer exzentrischen religiösen Sondergemeinschaft annahm. Analog ist im Fall der Meidung des Klerus an der Übereinkunft mit Franz von Dietrichstein von 1599 ein Wandel von der rebellischen Praxis zur formalen religiösen Vorschrift erkennbar. Auf längere Sicht waren die Täufer im Zeitalter der nach konfessioneller Homogenität strebenden Gesellschaften immer weniger in der Mitte der Gesellschaft verankert und immer weniger in der Lage, Träger einer auf 1525 zurückgehenden obrigkeitskritischen Tradition zu sein.

39 Vgl. „Aufdeckung der Babylonischen Hure“; Packull, Pilgram Marpeck. 40 Vgl. Fast/Seebaß, Briefe und Schriften, 140, 372, 558. 41 Zieglschmid, Die älteste Chronik, 151.

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Quellen Ungedruckte Quellen Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Hochstift Passau, Blechkastenarchiv 38. Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, Ansbacher Religionsakten 39.

Gedruckte Quellen Aufdeckung der Babylonischen Hure (Straßburg 1531), VD16 ZV 135/864, Edition: Laube, Adolf u. a. (Hgg.), Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526–1535), Berlin 1992, 1019–1045. Bullinger, Heinrich, Der Widertöufferen Ursprung, Fürgang, Secten, Wäsen, fürnemmen und gemeine jrer Leer Artickel, Zürich: Christoph Froschauer, 1561, VD16 B 9774, Faksimile Leipzig 1975. Cureus, Joachim, Gentis Silesiae annales, Wittenberg: Johann Krafft d.Ä., Samuel Selfisch d. Ä., 1571, VD16 C 6391. Fast, Heinold/Seebaß, Gottfried (Hgg.), Briefe und Schriften oberdeutscher Täufer 1527– 1555: Das „Kunstbuch“ des Jörg Probst Rotenfelder gen. Maler, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, 78; Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, 17, Gütersloh 2007. Friedmann, Robert (Hg.), Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter II, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 34; Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer 12, Gütersloh 1967. Krebs, Manfred/Rott, Hans Georg (Hgg.), Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, VII. Band: Elsaß, I. Teil, Stadt Straßburg 1522–1532, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, 26, Gütersloh 1959. Kühn, Johannes (bearb. v.), Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Jüngere Reihe: Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., Bd. 7/2, Göttingen 1935. Loesche, Georg, Luther, Melanthon und Calvin in Österreich-Ungarn. Zu Calvins vierter Jahrhundertfeier, Tübingen 1909. Melanchthon, Philipp, Verlegung etlicher unchristlicher Artikel, welche die Widerteuffer fürgeben (1536), in: R. Stupperich (Hg.), Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, 1. Band: Reformatorische Schriften, Gütersloh 1951, 301–322. Riedemann, Peter, Rechenschaft unserer Religion, Lehr und Glaubens, von den Brüdern, so man die Hutterischen nennt, ausgangen [o.O. 1545], Neudruck Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire 1938. Zieglschmid, Andreas Johannes Friedrich (Hg.), Die älteste Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder. Ein Sprachdenkmal aus frühneuhochdeutscher Zeit, Ithaca, New York 1943.

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Forschungsliteratur Blickle, Peter, Der Bauernkrieg. Die Revolution des Gemeinen Mannes, München 32012. – Die Revolution von 1525, München–Wien 21983. – Von der Leibeigenschaft zu den Menschenrechten. Eine Geschichte der Freiheit in Deutschland, München 22006. Chudaska, Andrea, Peter Riedemann. Konfessionsbildendes Täufertum im 16. Jahrhundert, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 76, Gütersloh 2003. Driedger, Michael, Anabaptists and the Early Modern state. A long-term view, in: J. D. Roth/ J. M. Stayer (Eds.), A companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700, Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 6, Leiden–Boston 2007, 507–538. Fast, Heinold, Heinrich Bullinger und die Täufer. Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie und Theologie im 16. Jahrhundert, Schriftenreihe des Mennonitischen Geschichtsvereins 7, Weierhof 1959. Goertz, Hans-Jürgen, Religiöser Nonkonformismus und wirtschaftlicher Erfolg. Die Gütergemeinschaft der Täufer in Mähren — eine neue Deutung, in: Ders., Radikalität der Reformation. Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 93, Göttingen 2007, 343–362. Hasselbeck, Johannes, Die Folgen des deutschen Bauernkriegs im Hochstift Bamberg, Bamberger historische Studien 7; Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Bamberg 14, Bamberg 2012. Hohn, Malte, Die rechtlichen Folgen des Bauernkrieges von 1525. Sanktionen, Ersatzleistungen und Normsetzung nach dem Aufstand, Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte 112, Berlin 2004. Hrubý, Frantisˇek, Die Wiedertäufer in Mähren, Leipzig 1935. Kamenícˇek, Frantisˇek, Zemské sneˇmy a sjezdy moravské. Jejich slozˇení, obor pu˚sobnosti a význam od nastoupení na tru˚n krále Ferdinanda I. azˇ po vydání obnoveného zrˇízení zemského (1526–1628), Bd. 3, Brno 1905. Kobelt-Groch, Marion, Christliche Gemeinschaft als programmatisches Experiment. „Tiroler Landesordnung“ und „Neue Wandlung“, in: H.-J. Goertz, Alles gehört allen. Das Experiment der Gütergemeinschaft vom 16. Jahrhundert bis heute, München 1984, 50– 70. Packull, Werner O., Die Anfänge des Täufertums in Tirol, in: G. Vogler (Hg.), Wegscheiden der Reformation, Weimar 1994, 179–209. – Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation, Baltimore–London 1995. – Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement 1525–1531, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 19, Scottdale, Pennsylvania–Kitchener, Ontario, 1977. – Pilgram Marpeck: Uncovering of the Babylonian Whore and Other Anonymous Anabaptist Tracts, Mennonite Quarterly Review 67, 1993, 351–355. – The Beginnings of Anabaptism in Southern Tyrol, Sixteenth Century Journal 22, 1991, 717–726. Pajer, Jirˇí, Studie o novokrˇteˇncích, Strázˇnice 2006.

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Plümper, Hans-Dieter, Die Gütergemeinschaft bei den Täufern des 16. Jahrhunderts, Göppingen 1972. Roth, John D./Stayer, James M. (Eds.), A companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700, Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 6, Leiden–Boston 2007. Rothkegel, Martin, Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia, in: J. D. Roth/J. M. Stayer (Eds.), A companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700, Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 6, Leiden–Boston 2007, 163–215. – Antihabsburgische Opposition und täuferischer Pazifismus. Die Auslegung von Römer 13 des David Burda aus Schweinitz, 1530/31, Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 69, 2012, 7–44. – Das Verständnis der Heiligen Schrift bei den Täufern in Mähren, in: O. Halama (Hg.), Amica Sponsa Mater. Bible v cˇase reformace, Praha 2014, 177–225. – Die Austerlitzer Brüder: Pilgram Marpecks Gemeinde in Mähren, in: A. Schubert/A. von Schlachta/M. Driedger (Hgg.), Grenzen des Täufertums. Boundaries of Anabaptism. Neue Forschungen, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 209, Gütersloh 2009, 232–270. – Pilgram Marpeck and the Fellows of the Covenant: The Short History of the Rise and Decline of an Anabaptist Denominational Network, Mennonite Quarterly Review 85, 2011, 7–36. Scheer, Herfried, Sprachliche Untersuchung der „Ältesten Chronik der Hutterischen Bru¨ der“, masch. M.A.-Arbeit, University of Alberta 1962. Schelle-Wolff, Carola, Zwischen Erwartung und Aufruhr. Die Flugschrift „Von der newen Wandlung eynes christlichen Lebens“ und der Nürnberger Drucker Hans Hergot, Frankfurt am Main 1996. Schlachta, Astrid von, Gefahr oder Segen? Die Täufer in der politischen Kommunikation, Schriften zur politischen Kommunikation 5, Göttingen 2009. – Hutterische Konfession und Tradition (1578–1619). Etabliertes Leben zwischen Ordnung und Ambivalenz, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abteilung für Abendländische Religionsgeschichte 198, Mainz 2003. Seebaß, Gottfried, Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 73, Gütersloh 2002. Snyder, C. Arnold, Swiss Anabaptism: the beginnings, in: J. D. Roth/J. M. Stayer (Eds.), A companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700, Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition 6, Leiden–Boston 2007, 45–81. – The birth and evolution of Swiss Anabaptism (1520–1530), Mennonite Quarterly Review 80, 2006, 501–645. – The evolution of Swiss Anabaptism to 1530, in: A. Schubert/A. von Schlachta/M. Driedger (Hgg.), Grenzen des Täufertums. Boundaries of Anabaptism. Neue Forschungen, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 209, Gütersloh 2009,147– 167. Stayer, James M. Neue Modelle eines gemeinsamen Lebens. Gütergemeinschaft im Täufertum, in: H.-J. Goertz, Alles gehört allen. Das Experiment der Gütergemeinschaft vom 16. Jahrhundert bis heute, München 1984, 21–49, 234–235. – The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist community of goods, McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of religion 6, Montreal 1991, reprint 1994.

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Stengel, Friedemann, Omnia sunt communia. Gütergemeinschaft bei Thomas Müntzer? Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 102, 2011, 133–174. Strübind, Andrea, Eifriger als Zwingli. Die frühe Täuferbewegung in der Schweiz, Berlin 2003. Vogler, Günter, Schlösserartikel und weltlicher Bann im deutschen Bauernkrieg, in: G. Brendler/A. Laube (Hgg.), Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524/25. Geschichte, Traditionen, Lehren, Berlin 1977, 113–121. Wolgast, Eike, Stellung der Obrigkeit zum Täufertum und Obrigkeitsverständnis der Täufer in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, in: H.-J. Goertz/J. M. Stayer (Hgg.), Radikalität und Dissent im 16. Jahrhundert. Radicalism and Dissent in the Sixteenth Century, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 27, Berlin 2002, 89–120. Zschäbitz, Gerhard, Zur mitteldeutschen Wiedertäuferbewegung nach dem Großen Bauernkrieg, Berlin 1958. Zimermann, Wilhelm, Allgemeine Geschichte des großen Bauernkrieges. Nach handschriftlichen und gedruckten Quellen, T. 1, Stuttgart 1841.

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Falsorum fratrum rebellio Jeno˝ Szu˝cs’s Essays on the Peasant Revolt of György Dózsa 40 Years Later

The topic discussed here belongs much more to the history of the 70s of the twentieth century than to that of the sixteenth century. I have more to say about Jeno˝ Szu˝cs—a highly influential historian in the 1970s and 1980s, one of those most responsible for revival of Hungarian historical studies1 as well as one of the most significant researchers of the 1514 peasant war who has since been partially forgotten—than about the leader of the revolt, György Dózsa, himself. The following grotesque, typically Eastern European story took place not long after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The idea came from the highest circles within the 1970s political leadership, which—just as today—used history for its own political objectives: high-ranking leaders decided to make 1972 a year commemorating Dózsa with an invented date of birth of 500 years previously.2 The classical revolutionary symbols needed to be re-evoked.3 Cultural policy was not in the least disturbed by the fact that Dózsa’s date of birth had been “created” by pure speculation: no tangible data proved that the peasant leader was born in 1472.4 The memorial year, in accordance with the customs of the era, represented a collective commission of sorts for historians: they were expected to write studies yielding new results that could be exploited by politics as well. Presumably even the politicians who had initiated the 500-year anniversary were surprised how seriously the profession took this request. The novelty and brave sincerity of the essays published in the memorial year caused an even bigger shock.5 The quality and quantity 1 Gábor Gyáni, “Szu˝cs Jeno˝, a magányos történetíró,” Forrás 40 (2008): 6, 18. 2 Erzsébet Tatai, “Dózsa ’72. The Visual Representation of György Dózsa in the Middle of the Kádár Era,” (Essay in the present volume), 2015. 3 Gyula Tóth, ed., Dózsa. Magyar költo˝k versei. Dózsa születésének ötszázadik évfordulójára, preface by Ferenc Juhász (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1972); István Nemeskürty, “In signo crucis. Ferencesek és világi papok az 1514-es parasztháborúban,” Vigília 37 (1972): 595−99; Idem, Krónika Dózsa György tetteiro˝l. Híradás a Mohács elo˝tti ido˝kro˝l (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 1972). 4 Sándor Márki, Dósa György (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1913), 17; Gábor Barta, “Georgius Zekelto˝l Dózsa Györgyig,” Századok 109 (1975): 87. 5 Gusztáv Heckenast, ed., Aus der Geschichte der ostmitteleuropäischen Bauernbewegungen im

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of the spiritual upsurge surrounding the question of Dózsa by far exceeded the expectations of those who had commissioned the writings. But the genie was out of the bottle and could not be forced back in. The most influential works connected to the 1972 memorial year were three studies written by Jeno˝ Szu˝cs. He published the first in a historical periodical,6 the second in a popular social-science review7 and the third in a journal of literary criticism.8 As far as the contents of the three studies are concerned, there was some overlap, though they were all basically independent. Pursuant to his peculiar method, Szu˝cs minutely detailed the essence of his ideas in all three studies, but sometimes he concentrated variously on historical theory, the history of ideas and cultural anthropological argumentation. First of all, Jeno˝ Szu˝cs tidied up the mess regarding the sources of the 1514 peasant war. He demonstrated that in the publicly known Dózsa narrative, historical sources have been turned upside down: the least authentic ones have received the most respect, while the most authentic ones have received the least respect. Humanist poets and historians (most of them rather late-born) edited these works according to literary principles,9 building on second- or third-hand sources that have been perceived to be the most authoritative, while primary sources are forgotten. That is why Szu˝cs paid the most attention to documented sources10 and scrupulously criticized literary works in light of the documents. This is how he managed to reconstruct the more realistic sequence of events of the peasant war. Szu˝cs presented a brilliant analysis to prove that at the beginning of events, György Dózsa had not yet become the head of the army of crusaders recruited by Cardinal Tamás Bakócz against the Turks.11 There is no doubt that the famous “Cegléd speech” is pure fiction12 and that Dózsa, in fact, only took the lead of the nationwide peasant war much later, between May 28 and June 6, 1514, following the victory at Nagylak and the occupation of Lippa: “Everything was

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

16−17. Jahrhundert. Vorträge der internationalen wissenschaftlichen Konferenz aus Anlass der 500. Wiederkehr der Geburt von György Dózsa, Budapest, 12−15. September 1972 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1977). Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “A ferences obszervancia és az 1514. évi parasztháború: egy kódex tanúsága,” Levéltári Közlemények 43 (1972): 213−63. Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája,” Valóság 15, fasc. 11 (1972): 12−39. Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409−35. Cf. Gábor Kiss Farkas, “Ambiguity and Paradox in the Humanistic Literature of the Jagellonian Age,” (Essay in the present volume), 2015. Gábor Barta and Antal Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben (Budapest: Gondolat, 1973); cf. Antonius Fekete Nagy et al., eds., Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1979). Gábor Barta, “Georgius Zekelto˝l Dózsa Györgyig,” Századok 109 (1975): 63−88, esp. 70. Cf. Gabriella Erdélyi, “A Dózsa-felkelés arcai: tabuk és emlékezet 1514 mítoszaiban,” in Szökött szerzetesek. Ero˝szak és fiatalok a késo˝ középkorban (Budapest: Libri, 2011), 161−81.

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decided that week. After Dózsa had given up on the Turkish campaign and really declared war on the aristocracy,” writes Szu˝cs.13 Thus, Dózsa did not enter the stage at the beginning, but later, as events began to unfold in the midst of a movement that was continuously changing its objectives and becoming more and more radical. The historian also paid extra attention to the ecclesiastical figures represented in conspicuously high numbers among the leaders of the peasant movement: to the open-minded priest Lo˝rinc, to Ambrus Túrkevei—“an ardent fan” (furibundus)—and his friends, who were considered to be the “ideologists” of the war.14 Szu˝cs’s interest was aroused by the fact that the vast majority of the ecclesiastical figures taking part in the revolt were observant Franciscan friars).15 This is why Szu˝cs extended his research to a codex never studied before: the formulary serving the purposes of the internal written administration of the Hungarian observant Franciscan order (Formularium in usum ordinis fratrum minorum regularis observantiae in Hungaria.).16 This manuscript contains much interesting data on the views of Franciscan friars belonging to the opposition, in contemporary ecclesiastical words “apostates” (that is, friars leaving their convents), who gave revolutionary sermons before and during Dózsa’s revolt. Comparing the data recorded in the history of the Hungarian Franciscan order and the lessons learned from the formulary with the real sequence of events of the peasant war, Szu˝cs concluded that the centers of the revolt correspond to the significant friaries of the observant Franciscan order. The most ferocious battles were indeed fought around Szikszó, Sárospatak, Gyula, Várad (Oradea, Romania) and Csanád (Cenad, Romania) as well as in the lower part of the region between the Danube and Tisza rivers—precisely the area with significant observant monasteries. Starting from the data and observations gained from these micro-philological studies and following brilliant and brave logic, Jeno˝ Szu˝cs formulated his famous theses on the ideology—called “folk crusade concepts”—of the peasant war: he found the roots of this ideology in the deviating trends of Franciscan observance.

13 Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, Nemzet és történelem. Tanulmányok (Budapest: Gondolat, 1974), 642–43. 14 Ibid., 642. 15 Szu˝cs, “A ferences obszervancia,” 216; Idem, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat,” 411; cf. Nemeskürty, “In signo crucis”; Barta and Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben, 61–62. Márta Fata argues in this volume that it was the church historian Ödön Bölcskey who in 1923–24 first proposed the link between the Franciscan order and the peasant revolt. 16 Hungarian National Library, Cod. lat. 432; Antal Molnár, “Formulari francescani della prvincia Ungherese dei frati Minori Osservanti del primo Cinquecento,” in Osservanza francescana e cultura tra Quattrocento e primo Cinquecento. Italia e Ungheria a confront, a cura di Francesca Bartolacci e Roberto Lambertini (Rome: Viella− Istituto Balassi. Accademia d’Ungheria a Roma, 2014), 73−86, 75, esp. 80−81.

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“At this point, micro-philology is also a psychological source,” Szu˝cs stated.17 The question he found most exciting was how an originally anti-Ottoman crusade ideology had transformed into the ideology of the armed revolt against aristocracy. To put it more precisely, Szu˝cs researched the “translation” of the concepts of the crusade against the Turks into the language of propaganda seeking to put an immediate and violent end to social inequalities. In his analysis, Szu˝cs thought to discover this peculiar language in the Franciscan order, especially in the radical mystical and apocalyptic way of speech always existing as a possibility in the observant order. Szu˝cs attached special importance to a circular in which the head of the Franciscan order had condemned the practice of scriptural interpretation found in Hungarian friaries and had criticized the audaciousness of certain friars who “seeking to understand more than would be right, lay certain books in front of their brothers, put on glasses and state several things that come to their mind”.18 Jeno˝ Szu˝cs relied partially on previous research by Tibor Kardos19 and György Székely20 when he tried to provide content to the hard-to-define concept of “Franciscan opposition” derived from mysticalapocalyptical writings well known to Hungarian Franciscans and from the works of two Hungarian Franciscan authors of European significance—Pelbárt Temesvári and Osvát Laskai. It is well known that in the same studies, Szu˝cs— significantly exceeding the issues surrounding the Dózsa revolt—formulated an even bolder hypothesis in which he attributed the reception and spread of evangelical ideas in Hungary to Franciscan apostates, thus creating the muchdisputed theory of “Franciscan Reformation”.21 But let us now confine ourselves to the possibilities of contemporary – that is, 1970s – interpretation and circles of meaning in the studies on Dózsa. Why did Jeno˝ Szu˝cs become an “almost a celebrity historian in Hungary?”22 How is it possible that his texts—among them, the essays on Dózsa—written with complicated philological precision, using difficult and far-stretching chains of conclusions, had a significant effect on wide circles of Hungarian intellectuals, even on those who were not particularly interested in historical studies? The answer seems to be very simple: Jeno˝ Szu˝cs managed to say very important things regarding significant problems. However, if we also ask about the theoretical schemes of international and national examples and the systems of thought he referred to, it is much more difficult to find an answer. 17 Szu˝cs, Nemzet és történelem, 247. 18 Szu˝cs, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat,” 422. 19 Tibor Kardos, “Bemerkungen zur Ideologie des bewaffneten Kampfes in der Dózsa-Revolution,” in Heckenast, ed., Bauernbewegungen, 207−16. 20 György Székely, “Der Dózsa-Aufstand,” in Heckenast, ed., Bauernbewegungen, 21−36. 21 Szu˝cs, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat,” 426−35. 22 Gyáni, “Szu˝cs Jeno˝,” 5.

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The Dózsa studies—due to their topic—indisputably created the necessity of a Marxist interpretation. The term “ideology” (which Szu˝cs uses in the title of one of his studies) was not free of certain Marxist allusions. Of course it was not the revolutionary slogans of the crowds singing Florian Geyer’s song, nor Engels’s The Peasant War in Germany, nor the mechanical social determinism of Bebel and Kautsky that some people thought of while reading Szu˝cs’s essays on Dózsa. Rather, they felt the effect of modern, Marxist historians— still considered up-todate at the time—who still believed in the economic-social determination of the “ideology” of European revolutions. The works of Western European Marxist historians rejecting dogmatism had already been known in Hungary before Jeno˝ Szu˝cs’s appearance. For instance, László Makkai, a researcher of the history of Hungarian Puritanism, had used Christopher Hill’s works on the apocalyptic vision of the English Civil War.23 Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, however, had by this time exceeded “the Marxist vision that had been characteristic of him for a long time,” wrote Gábor Gyáni.24 The works on Dózsa completely lack the analytical techniques of Marxist historians. The author does not see the origin of the peasant revolt in social tensions and economic conditions. He even ignores arguments, still used today, that explain discontent with the growing pains of the peasants, the legalisation of oppression by the seigneurs. Nor do we find the well-known explanation that the aristocracy was afraid of being unable to carry out the spring agricultural tasks and thus decided to prevent the launching of the crusade against the Turks.25 The readers had more reason to notice the reverse of the determinism of Marxism in Szu˝cs’s writings. These texts could be interpreted to mean that the author, once again turning Marxist argumentation “upside down,” tries to explain the sequence of events of the peasant revolution by starting from the “superstructure—the ideology—instead of the “base.” Knowing Jeno˝ Szu˝cs’s important connection to the concepts of Protestantism, many people had reason to believe that the author wanted to find the roots of social revolution in the originally apocalyptic spirit of the Reformation. As is the case with Western European parallels, one could think of historical works studying medieval and pre-modern millenarian movements from such a point of view. The Oxford historian of deep Baptist roots, Marjorie Reeves, already became famous in the 1950s through her writings on the “pre-Reformation” vision of the millenarianism of Joachim of Fiore (1132–1202), abbot of Calabria (Reeves: 1969/1993); these writings were often read by the Hungarian researcher of the Renaissance, 23 László Makkai, A magyar puritánusok harca a feudalizmus ellen (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1952), 9, 17, 88. 24 Gyáni, “Szu˝cs Jeno˝,” 5 25 Ferenc Szakály, and Gábor Barta, “Dózsa népe és a magyar társadalom,” Társadalmi Szemle 27, fasc. 6 (1972): 75–85.

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Imre Bán.26 Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium, published in 1957,27 was less known in Hungary.28 Cohn’s book explained the great social crises of the Middle Ages from the starting point of the messianic spirit of crusades, the faith of “revolutionary flagellants,” sect-like passions and a general despair— with a view of problems in many ways similar to that of Szu˝cs. The works discussing premodern millenarianism by Dame Frances Yates, an English researcher of the Renaissance (in part due to Tibor Klaniczay, the famous Hungarian Renaissance scholar, who was working closely with Jeno˝ Szu˝cs), became popular in Hungary precisely in the 1970s. Yates29 found the explanation for the breakout of the Thirty Years’ War by analyzing the aspirations of intellectuals at the end of the sixteenth century for a “universal Reformation.” The rejection of this reverse determinism probably also appears in recent essays on the history of the Reformation that severely criticize Szu˝cs’s abovementioned theses on “Franciscan Reformation”.30 It is indeed true that despite its originality and cogency, this theory no longer appears to be valid. Even the strictest handling of sources could not prevent Szu˝cs from overemphasizing and misinterpreting certain data. On the other hand, in the 1970s he had no way to know the history of Hungarian Reformation as deeply as recent fundamental research allows. The Hungarian processes of Protestantism evidently did not stem from Franciscan friaries, even though some of the first Hungarian reformers came from the Franciscan order. However, those who condemn Jeno˝ Szu˝cs because of his determinism—of whatever direction—misunderstand him. In the 1970s, he had ceased to believe even in this above-mentioned, reversed social-determinism—neither in his studies on Dózsa nor in any other writings. “1514 in Hungary has a special place in the series of European peasant movements from the point of view of the history of ideas because it only took three short weeks for the ideological motive to exceed the concept of ‘controlled’ feudalism and to reach the thought of a radical transformation of the entire social order in a way that the leitmotiv is not 26 Imre Bán, “Dante és a joachimizmus,” in Eszmék és stílusok (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1976), 21. 27 Cf. Howard Hotson, “Anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism, Apocalypticism, and Millenarianism in Early Modern Europe. A Case Study and Some Methodological Reflection,” in Seeing Things Their Way. Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, ed. Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 91−133, esp. 95–98. 28 Imre Bán, “Chiliastikus és apokaliptikus hiedelmek a reneszánsz korban,” in Költo˝k, eszmék, korszakok, 65−74 (Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 1997), 73. 29 Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). ˝ ze, Apokaliptikus ido˝szemlélet a korai reformáció Magyarországán (1526–1566) 30 Cf. Sándor O (PhD diss. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2011); Zoltán Csepregi, A reformáció nyelve. Tanulmányok a magyarországi reformáció elso˝ negyedszázadának vizsgálata alapján (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2013).

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mystics (although of course there are certain chiliastic traits) and—as far as we know—the principle of common goods does not even appear,” Szu˝cs wrote.31 Thus, in a universal understanding of culture—encompassing the whole of history—Szu˝cs saw ideology as a part of social changes, as a force that forms these changes, but which changes itself in the process. This vision shows meaningful parallels with the view of history of Szu˝cs’s contemporaries from the French Annales School—Duby, Le Goff, Ariès and others.32 It is not by chance that more than a decade later, when Szu˝cs had already become world-famous, the leading figure of Annales, Fernand Braudel, wrote the preface to Szu˝cs’s short book The Three Historical Regions of Europe.33 Szu˝cs presented the ideology of observant Franciscans participating in Dózsa’s peasant revolt as complicated and controversial: This movement started out in the thirteenth century as the inside aim at reforms of a spiritual motive of the Franciscan order (and more extensively, the whole Church) and also appeared as the ardent defender of the authority of a non-spiritual nature of the Church. […] The nature of observance is such that the same soil grew heretic and quasiheretic behaviors and such strong representatives of ecclesia militans—in some respects similar to later Jesuits—as James of the Marches (Giacomo della Marca) and John of Capistrano (Giovanni da Capestrano), both playing a part in Hungarian history,

the historian emphasized.34 Szu˝cs was close to observing that the difference between an inquisitor and an “apostate” heretic is almost unnoticeable: they share the same culture and speak the same “language”; and their interpretation and consideration depends only on the place, time and the person itself. We cannot help but notice the deep skepticism with which Jeno˝ Szu˝cs—in connection with the Dózsa revolt—looked at the link between the intellectual élite and mass movements, between theory and practice. According to Szu˝cs, the typical behavioral pattern of Franciscan observance was the search for balance: “the Observants were in constant struggle with the divergent trends—of different directions—emerging in their own circles”.35 Their whole activity was nothing but a heroic-illusionistic attempt at reconstructing the “broken order.” For Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, the most important historical lesson of Dózsa’s peasant war was the fact that the practice of “revolution” reinterprets, absorbs and suppresses ideologies and ideologists.

31 Szu˝cs, Nemzet és történelem, 618. 32 Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution. The Annales School 1929−89 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). 33 Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, Les trois Europes, trad. par Véronique Charaire, Gábor Klaniczay et Philippe Thureau-Dangin, préf. de Fernand Braudel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985). 34 Idem, Nemzet és történelem, 632. 35 Idem, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat,” 412.

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Jeno˝ Szu˝cs was not a Marxist. But while reading the essays on Dózsa, we cannot forget about the problems of the era in which these texts were written. After the Prague Spring in 1968, significant layers of Hungarian intellectuals were looking for a way out of the hopelessness caused by the evaporation of faith in “kind socialism.” The intellectuals of ’68 were also characterized by the unresolvable ambivalence, the “ideological instability,” the constantly re-emerging breaks that Szu˝cs mentioned in connection with the observant ideologists around Dózsa. In the years following 1968, many Hungarians could identify with the medieval intellectuals who considered themselves reformers, “re-constructors of the broken order,” who were, however, simply “false brothers” in the eyes of power, their restlessness seen as a simple revolt; as you read in the above-mentioned formulary: falsorum fratrum rebellio.

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Hotson, Howard. “Anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism, Apocalypticism, and Millenarianism in Early Modern Europe. A Case Study and Some Methodological Reflection.” In Seeing Things Their Way. Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, edited by Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory, 91–133. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Kardos, Tibor. “Bemerkungen zur Ideologie des bewaffneten Kampfes in der Dózsa-Revolution.” In Heckenast, ed. Bauernbewegungen, 207−16. Kiss Farkas, Gábor. “Ambiguity and Paradox in the Humanistic Literature of the Jagellonian Age.” (Essay in the present volume), 2015. Makkai, László. A magyar puritánusok harca a feudalizmus ellen [The Fight of Hungarian Puritans against Feudalism]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1952. Márki, Sándor. Dósa György [György Dózsa]. Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1913. Molnár, Antal. “Formulari francescani della prvincia Ungherese dei frati Minori Osservanti del primo Cinquecento.” In Osservanza francescana e cultura tra Quattrocento e primo Cinquecento. Italia e Ungheria a confront, a cura di Francesca Bartolacci e Roberto Lambertini, 73−86. Roma: Viella−Istituto Balassi. Accademia d’Ungheria a Roma, 2014. Nemeskürty, István. “In signo crucis. Ferencesek és világi papok az 1514-es parasztháborúban” [In signo crucis. Franciscan Friars and Secular Priests in the Peasant War in 1514]. Vigília 37 (1972): 595−99. – Krónika Dózsa György tetteiro˝l. Híradás a Mohács elo˝tti ido˝kro˝l [Chronicle about the Deeds of György Dózsa. Account on the Times before the Mohács Battle]. Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 1972. ˝ ze, Sándor. “Apokaliptikus ido˝szemlélet a korai reformáció Magyarországán (1526– O 1566)” [Apocalyptic Vision of Time in Hungary at the Early Stage of the Reformation (1526–1566)]. PhD diss., Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2011. Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Repr. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969/1993. Szakály, Ferenc, and Gábor Barta. “Dózsa népe és a magyar társadalom” [The People of György Dózsa and Hungarian Society], Társadalmi Szemle 27, fasc. 6 (1972): 75–85. Székely, György. Der Dózsa-Aufstand, in In Heckenast, ed. Bauernbewegungen, 1977, 21 −36. Szu˝cs, Jeno˝. “A ferences obszervancia és az 1514. évi parasztháború: egy kódex tanúsága” [The Franciscan Observant Movement and the Peasant War of 1514 in Hungary. The Evidence of a Codex]. Levéltári Közlemények 43 (1972): 213−63. – “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája” [The Ideology of Dózsa’s Peasant War], Valóság 15, fasc. 11 (1972): 12−39. In Szu˝cs: Nemzet és történelem, 601−67. In German: ”Die Ideologie des ungarischen Bauernkrieges.” In Heckenast, ed., Bauernbewegungen, 157−87. – Nemzet és történelem. Tanulmányok [Nation and History. Essays]. Budapest: Gondolat, 1974. – “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében” [A Current of Franciscan Opposition in the Background of the Hungarian Peasant War and the Reformation]. Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409−35. – Les trois Europes, trad. par Véronique Charaire, Gábor Klaniczay et Philippe ThureauDangin, préf. de Fernand Braudel. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985.

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Tatai, Erzsébet. “Dózsa ’72. The Visual Representation of György Dózsa in the Middle of the Kádár Era.” (Essay in the present volume), 2015. Tóth, Gyula, ed. Dózsa. Magyar költo˝k versei. Dózsa születésének ötszázadik évfordulójára [György Dózsa. Poems by Hungarian Poets. On the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of György Dózsa], preface by Ferenc Juhász. Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1972. Yates, Frances A. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. London: Routledge–Kegan Paul, 1972.

Zoltán Csepregi

Bund, Bundschuh, Verbundenheit Radikales Gemeinschaftsprinzip in der frühen Reformation Ungarns

Die frühe Reformation hat als ekklesiologisches Experiment eine erstaunliche Vielfalt von Gemeindemodellen hervorgebracht. In der Forschung hat man sich auf diejenigen ekklesiologischen Vorstellungen der Frühzeit konzentriert, wonach jede Einzelgemeinde durch einen eigenen Bischof geleitet wird.1 Einige Texte deuten sogar direkt an, dass die Reformatoren auch eine apostolische Autorität für sich beanspruchten: Sowohl Luther und Zwingli als auch der im mährischen Iglau wirkende Speratus wurden in manchen Fällen als „Apostel“ angeredet.2 Hier wird eine Erscheinung untersucht, die uns aus Thomas Münzers Biografie bekannt sein könnte: Der radikale Reformator vereidigt seine Anhänger sowohl in Allstedt als auch in Mühlhausen (1524–1525), ihn mit Leib, Gut und Leben zu verteidigen, seinerseits aber verpflichtet er sich zu einem lebenslangen Dienst. In den Quellen heißt ein solcher Vertrag oder Bund Bundschuh, wie die Bündnisse der aufständischen Bauer, die dieses Zeichen, den Bundschuh, auch oft auf ihrer Fahne trugen.3 In Dasypodius’ zeitgenössischem Wörterbuch wird Bundschuh direkt als coniuratio ‚Verschwörung‘ wiedergegeben.4 In dieser Studie werde ich sechs Fälle aus der Reformationsgeschichte Ungarns darstellen und interpretieren, um zu zeigen, dass dieses Verhalten keineswegs spezifisch Münzerisch ist und theologisch nicht eindeutig als radikal oder spiritualistisch eingestuft werden kann. Es handelt sich um eine weit verbreitete Bestrebung,

1 Schenner, Iglau, 243; Wriedt, Bischofstitulatur, 73–100. Die Anreden „Evangelist“ und „Prophet“ ersetzen hingegen nur in gehobenem Stil den Predigertitel. 2 WA.B, Bd. 3, 378–381 (Nr. 796); Leupold von Löwenthal, Chronik, 58. Weitere Daten: Csepregi, Anfänge; Csepregi, Reformáció, 437–443. 3 Unter dem historischen Begriff Bundschuh werden die aufständischen Bauern in den Jahren 1493 bis 1517 in Südwestdeutschland verstanden. Bei der Bundschuh-Bewegung handelte es sich um eine Anzahl von lokalen Verschwörungen und geplanten Aufständen. Als Feldzeichen führten die Bauern den Bundschuh, ein für Bauern typisches Schuhwerk aus Leder, das mit einem langen Riemen geschnürt wurde. Er sollte sinnbildlich ausdrücken, dass sich die Bauern gemeinsam gegen die lokalen Obrigkeiten erhoben und auflehnten. 4 DWb, Bd. 2, 522–524.

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welche die ewige gruppendynamische Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Hirten und Herde, Persönlichkeit und Gemeinschaft zu beantworten versucht.

Paulus Speratus: Iglau (Jihlava, Tschechien) 1522 Das erste Beispiel ist insofern ein Grenzfall, als es nicht in Ungarn, sondern im benachbarten, von König Ludwig II. in Personalunion regierten Mähren geschah. Paulus Speratus (1484–1551) verließ Ende 1521 seine Stellung als Domprediger in Würzburg, angeblich, um einen Ruf als Prediger in Ofen (Buda) anzunehmen.5 Im Januar 1522 befand er sich in Wien.6 Die kirchlichen Behörden erlaubten Speratus, am 12. Januar von der Kanzel des Stephansdoms zu predigen. Diese Predigt enthielt scharfe Angriffe gegen das Mönchstum und gegen den Zölibat.7 Der Skandal in Wien zerbrach Speratus’ Hoffnungen auf eine Anstellung in Ofen endgültig, daher zog er nach Norden Richtung Prag. Auf seinem Weg kam er durch Iglau. Hier wurde Speratus auf eine vakante Predigerstelle berufen. Er erhielt bereits am 16. Mai einen Brief von Luther, in dem er als Prediger zu Iglau angeredet wird.8 Wegen seiner wirkungsvollen Predigten kam es bald zu einem Streit mit den Dominikanern, die um die Seelsorge der Gläubigen mit der bisher schlecht besuchten Pfarrkirche konkurrierten. Aufgrund einer Denunziation der Mönche9 wurde am 25. Juli 1522 ein königlicher Befehl in Prag ausgegeben. Darin stand, König Ludwig habe erfahren, dass Speratus das Volk zur Lehre Luthers verführe. Der König befehle daher dem Rat, diesen Irrlehrer aus seiner Stellung zu entfernen. Gleichzeitig ordne er den Bischof von Olmütz an, Speratus vorzuladen.10

5 Zu diesem vgl.: König, Speratus [1], 7–28; König, Speratus [2], 104–138; Rothkegel, Nikolsburger, passim; Brecht, Speratus, 105–133; Csepregi, Reformáció, 129–137. Ich bin Prof. Dr. Martin Rothkegel zu Dank verpflichtet, der mir Einblicke sowohl in seine ungedruckte Prager theologische Dissertation als auch in die dazu gehörende reiche Materialsammlung gewährt hat. 6 Über die Reise von Würzburg nach Wien berichtet Speratus selbst in dem Vorwort zu „Von dem hohen gelübd der tauff“ (Königsberg 1524), Fol. A2r–v, abgedruckt bei: König, Speratus [1], 29f. 7 Erschienen: „Von dem hohen gelübd der tauff“ (Königsberg 1524). Neudruck: König, Speratus [1], 29–63. Über das für Speratus prinzipielle Taufgelübde hinaus bedurfte es keines neuen Gelübdes. Eine andere Versicherung verlangte Speratus nicht. 8 Leupold von Löwenthal, Chronik, 46; WA.B, Bd. 2, 529–531 (Nr. 491). 9 Wie man trotzen sol auffs creutz (1524; VD 16. S 8280). Fol. C1r, abgedruckt bei: König, Speratus [2], 114. 10 Leupold von Löwenthal, Chronik, 47f. Das Predigtverbot wurde auch in der Olmützer Chronik verewigt: „1522. Nach Bartholomaei hat man königliche Briefe auf dem Rathhause vorgelesen wegen Martin Luthers und des Predigers Sohn zu Iglau, welch Letzterer zu Iglau nicht mehr hat predigen dörfen.“ Dudík, Sammel-Chronik, 5.

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Speratus hatte aber bis dahin den Rat für seine theologischen Ansichten gewonnen, gleichzeitig unterstützte er diesen als gelehrter Prediger in seinen Bestrebungen, die Kontrolle über die kirchlichen Institutionen der Stadt auszuüben. Inwiefern der Rat bereits eine bewusst lutherische Position einnahm, ist schwer zu beurteilen, da die Quellen nicht genau erkennen lassen, welche Auffassungen Speratus im Sommer 1522 in Iglau vertrat. Wie gesagt, man stößt hier und auch später bei Speratus auf in der frühen Reformation vorhandene ekklesiologische Vorstellungen, nach denen jede Einzelgemeinde durch ihren eigenen Bischof geleitet werden solle. Diese dürften aus Wittenberg stammen.11 Die heimtückischen Verleumdungen der Bettelmönche sowie die gemeinsamen Interessen weckten Solidarität mit Speratus in der Gemeinde. Mit seinen eigenen Worten ausgedrückt: „Sie wollten mich nicht lassen, schwuren zu Samen“. Speratus spricht auch von einem „Bund“ (und einem „Bundschuh“ bereits vor dem oben erwähnten Münzerischen Vorfall). Jedenfalls hatten sich der Rat und die meisten Bürger, mit Ausnahme von zwanzig oder dreißig Mönchsvätern, im Rathaus versammelt und leisteten einen Schwur, sich nicht vom Evangelium und von Speratus als ihrem rechtmäßigen Seelsorger abbringen zu lassen („wyr wollte ja bey dem evangelio bestehen“). Sie würden ihn nicht fortjagen oder den Behörden ausliefern. Die Zweifel an der Beständigkeit der Haltung der Gemeindeglieder weckten bei Speratus schon damals Befürchtungen. Er kannte die Rolle des Petrus in der Passionsgeschichte nur zu genau. Angesichts der Gefahr hieß es dann tatsächlich bei den Schwachen „Evangelium hin, Evangelium her, wir woelen eyn gnedigen kuonig behalten“. Die Schuld, dass sie es mit Speratus hielten, wurde nunmehr dem Druck des übereilt und unvorsichtig geschaffenen „bundschuchs“ gegeben. Demnach muss der Bundesschluss doch einigermaßen konkret gewesen sein, möglicherweise setzte man ihn schriftlich fest. Die Reformation in Iglau konnte durch einen Bundschuh freilich in den Verdacht geraten, eine Aufstandsbewegung zu sein, was das weitere Vorgehen des Königs dagegen erklären würde. Demnach sei Speratus herausgefordert worden, die in seinem „bischöflichen Ampt“ erfolgte Predigt in der Öffentlichkeit des gedruckten Wortes zu verteidigen.12 König Ludwigs Ankunft in der Markgrafschaft Mähren beschleunigte die Ereignisse. Im April 1523 erschien Speratus in Olmütz, es kam aber weder zu einer Anhörung noch zu einem Prozess. Nach zweiwöchigem vergeblichem

11 Stamm, Bischofsamt, 15–17. Die Titulatur eines Apostels ist, wie oben erwähnt, auch bei Speratus zu beobachten. 12 Wie man trotzen soll auffs creutz. VD 16. S 8280. Fol. C1v–2v, abgedruckt bei: König, Speratus [2], 115, 122.

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Warten wurde Speratus am Ende des Landtags kurzerhand verhaftet und nach zwölfwöchiger Kerkerhaft unter der Auflage entlassen, Mähren zu verlassen.13 Speratus hielt sich im August 1523 noch in Iglau auf.14 Er reiste im September nach Prag und vor dem 11. November – wie andere Glaubensflüchtlinge des Zeitalters – weiter nach Wittenberg, immer noch in der Hoffnung, nach Iglau zurückkehren zu können. In Wittenberg hatte Speratus Gelegenheit, sich als Liederdichter (z. B. Es ist das Heil uns kommen her) und deutscher Übersetzer der lateinischen Werke Luthers hervorzutun.15 1524 ging Speratus von Wittenberg als theologischer Berater des Markgrafen Albrecht von Brandenburg nach Preußen, von wo aus er während der folgenden Jahre den Iglauer Rat immer wieder mit lutherischen Büchern versorgte und zu lutherischen Reformen mahnte.16 Bei dem Rat und den Geistlichen der Pfarrkirche fielen diese Anregungen ihres verbannten „Apostels und Bischofs“ auf fruchtbaren Boden. Speratus forderte den Iglauer Rat nach seiner Entlassung aus der Haft mehrfach auf, sich zu äußern, ob das im Rathaus abgegebene gegenseitige Versprechen noch bindend sei. Der Rat konnte jedoch aus politischen Gründen zu diesem Zeitpunkt nichts für eine Rückkehr von Speratus tun. Im November 1523 wurde die vakante Iglauer Pfarre wieder besetzt. Dem neuen Pfarrer, Simon Schneeweiß,17 war vom Rat zur Auflage gemacht worden, im Falle einer Rückkehr von Speratus diesen predigen zu lassen, was sich allerdings nicht verwirklichen ließ, nicht zuletzt wegen mangelnder Unterstützung in der Bevölkerung für eine Neuanstellung von Speratus.18 Von Wittenberg aus schrieb Speratus zu Neujahr 1524 einen Traktat, in dem er auf seine Trennung von seiner Iglauer Gemeinde einging: „Wie man trotzen sol auffs Creutz widder alle wellt zu stehen bei dem Euangelio an die Igler Paulus Speratus nach der gefencknis zum newen Jar“.19 Speratus will sich nichts vormachen lassen: „Es lest sich hie mit bundschuhen nicht ausrichten.“ Auch wenn die Iglauer ihn aus Angst preisgegeben hätten, ändere dies nichts an seiner Liebe zu ihnen. Er wolle sich allerdings vergewissern, „ob ich noch euer Bischof sey“, 13 Wie man trotzen soll auffs creutz. VD 16. S 8280. Fol. B2v–3r, D2r, abgedruckt bei: König, Speratus [2], 111, 120. 14 Mayer, Chronik, 16. 15 Vgl. die Vorrede zu Von dem hohen gelübd der tauff, abgedruckt bei: König, Speratus [1], 30f. 16 Der Schriftverkehr zwischen Speratus und dem Iglauer Rat dauerte mindestens bis 1532 an. Die einst im Iglauer Stadtarchiv vorhandenen Originalbriefe von Speratus sind abgedruckt in: Schenner, Iglau, 211–255. 17 Leupold von Löwenthal, Chronik, 56, 60; Schenner, Iglau, 1912, 84. Simon Schneeweiß aus Znaim (†1545), Wiener Student und Magister (1510–1518), ab 1523 Pfarrer in Iglau, ab 1529 Hofprediger in Ansbach, ab 1534 Pfarrer, dann Dekan in Crailsheim, Unterzeichner der Schmalkaldischen Artikel (1537), Teilnehmer an den Religionsgesprächen der 1540er Jahre. 18 Leupold von Löwenthal, Chronik, 58; Schenner, Iglau, 251f (Nr. 9). 19 Neudruck: König, Speratus [2], 105–138.

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wozu er doch in allgemeiner Wahl bestellt worden sei. Würde die Gemeinde dazu nicht mehr stehen, wäre auch das Amt beendet. Speratus machte den Iglauern keinen Vorwurf, abtrünnig geworden zu sein. Es hätte eine kleine Zahl von Beständigen und eine solche von Abgefallenen gegeben. Aber viele hätten sich trotz ihres vollmundigen Versprechens von höfischen Mandaten und Mönchen abschrecken lassen. Von jetzt an ging es um die Aufarbeitung des Scheiterns, zu dem es trotz anderen Anscheins bei den meisten gekommen war. Das beim „Bundschuh“ erfolgte Versprechen, „wyr wollte ja bey dem evangelio bestehen“, war offenkundig hinfällig geworden. Das Gebot des Königs ließe sich nicht als Ausrede gebrauchen, denn dieser hätte in dem Fall des Evangeliums nichts zu gebieten. Speratus machte der Gemeinde klar: Es gibt, was das Evangelium anbetrifft, keine Alternative zu Kreuz und Verfolgung.20 Im April 1524, vor seiner Reise nach Preußen, war Speratus zuletzt in Iglau, aber es erfolgte lediglich eine Auflösung des Gelübdes, das ihn an Iglau band.21 Speratus strebte noch jahrelang, selbst als er bereits Bischof in Preußen war, eine Rückkehr in sein Iglauer Amt an und thematisierte diese in seinen Briefen immer wieder. In seiner einseitigen Treue zu Iglau verbarg sich keine Nostalgie oder emotionelle Anhänglichkeit, sondern eine originelle und betont theologische Interpretation des ministerium ecclesiasticum, die alleine schon genügt, Speratus in den Kreis der bedeutenden Reformatoren zu heben.

Neusohl, Schemnitz, Kremnitz, Hodritsch (Banská Bystrica, Banská Sˇtiavnica, Kremnica, Banská Hodrusˇa, Slowakei) 1525 Die Beurteilung der Bruderschaft Corpus Christi in Neusohl und ähnlicher Organisationen in den benachbarten Bergstädten (die Christi-Leib-Bruderschaft in Kremnitz sowie die Liebfrauenbruderschaften in Schemnitz und Hodritsch) führt scheinbar von der Suche nach neuen reformatorischen Gemeinschaftsformen weit weg.22 Bei den Laienbruderschaften ist es in der Regel schwierig, die Funktion der Frömmigkeit und die der Interessengenossenschaft auseinanderzuhalten.23 Die Geschichte, die einer Erläuterung bedarf, ist folgendermaßen

20 Wie man trotzen soll auffs creutz (1524). VD 16. S 8280. Fol. C2v–3r, abgedruckt bei: König, Speratus [2], 116. Vgl. Brecht, Speratus, 116–121. 21 König, Speratus [1], 19. Vgl. Speratus’ Brief datiert aus Iglau vom 26. April 1524: Camers, Johann, Theologicae facultatis […] retaliatio, VD 16. W 2646. Fol. A1v–2r. 22 Csepregi, Evolution. Im Folgenden werden die Laienorganisationen als „Bruderschaft“ und die Priesterorganisationen als „Fraternität“ terminologisch konsequent unterscheidet. 23 Kubinyi, Vallásos társulatok, 125–127; Majorossy, Confraternities.

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zusammenzufassen: Während des nordungarischen Bergarbeiteraufstandes24 entfernten die Bergleute die Truhen der Bruderschaften aus den Kapellen, die als herkömmliche Aufbewahrungsorte dienten, und weigerten sich, für die Zwecke des entsprechenden Altars die gewohnten Zahlungen zu leisten. Das „Brüdergeld“ wurde hingegen zugunsten der Bewegung verwendet. Nach der Niederschlagung des Aufstandes mussten die Truhen an die ursprünglichen Aufbewahrungsorte zurückgebracht werden, und den Mitgliedern der Bruderschaft wurde das Recht entzogen, das „Brüdergeld“ selbst zu verwalten. Die erste Auslegung der Ereignisse ist von der Gegenpartei formuliert worden, nämlich in den Untersuchungsakten der örtlichen Behörden und im beurkundeten Urteilsspruch von Palatin István Werbo˝czy. Gemäß diesen Akten werden die Bergarbeiter des Diebstahls und des Kirchenbruchs angeklagt.25 Anhand von Analogien aus der Reformationsgeschichte wäre auch eine andere Erklärung denkbar, welche die eigenmächtige Geldverwaltung als eine reformatorische Umfunktionierung von althergebrachten kirchlichen Institutionen interpretiert, obwohl dies durch konkrete Quellen kaum belegt werden kann. Aus dieser reformationsgeschichtlichen Interpretation kann man zumindest eine Beobachtung ernst nehmen, nämlich dass der herkömmliche Kultus des Altarsakraments bei den Aufständischen offensichtlich in den Hintergrund tritt und stattdessen neue Gemeinschaftsformen bei den erwähnten Ereignissen eine Rolle spielen. Die eigenartige mittelalterliche Welt der Laienbruderschaften und der althergebrachte religiöse Wortschatz wurden allerdings um neue Elemente ergänzt und mit neuen Farben versehen, wodurch eine interstädtische Organisation in Erscheinung tritt, ein Zusammenschluss der aufgelisteten örtlichen Bruderschaften, die „Einigkeit“ (anikait),26 ein Notbund „mit leib, guett unnd leben“.27 Es gibt auch ein äußeres Sonder- bzw. Erkennungszeichen in der gegenseitigen Anrede: Der Brüdertitel gilt nunmehr nicht nur für die Mitglieder der eigenen, sondern auch für die verbündeten Bruderschaften.28 Als weiteres Identifikationsmittel innerhalb der ganzen Bewegung

24 Zu diesem Thema vgl.: Hammann, Nicolaus von Sabinov; Probszt, Ursachen; Csepregi, Reformáció, 33–38. 25 ETE, Bd. 1, 251–256; Ratkosˇ, Dokumenty, 77, Bd. 35: „Decimo: Propterea ipsi sectores et fraternitas deliberarunt interim, quod ipse Thobias et Swoger Hans vitrici essent, neque obulum neque denarium ad eclesiam dare vellent, in quo eclesia magno patitur defectu. Similimodo plebanus, ex quo se sic non exhibent cum offertoriis et aliis rebus uti prius et dedecus ac scandalum est, quod propter duas personas divinum servicium impediri debet.“ Siehe auch ebd. 119–133, 156–157, 196 (Nr. 72, 86, 119). 26 Ratkosˇ, Dokumenty, 94 (Nr. 47). 27 Ratkosˇ, Dokumenty, 92 (Nr. 45). 28 Ratkosˇ, Dokumenty, 88–91, 102, 140–143 (Nr. 42–44, 54, 78–80). Ratkosˇ sieht auch in Komposita mit dem Element Bruder (Brüderpfennig, Brüdergeld) Neologismen, obwohl deren Gebrauch innerhalb der Bruderschaften üblich war.

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dient der von Paulus geprägte sogenannte apostolische Gruß, „Gnade und Friede“ (Röm 1,7 par) und dessen Varianten.29 Während des nordungarischen Bergarbeiteraufstandes benutzten die Bergleute nämlich unter anderem den apostolischen Gruß, den sie auch als Einleitung ihrer Briefe an ihre Glaubensbrüder verwendeten.30 Aus den Quellen wird deutlich, dass der apostolische Gruß als Identifikationsmittel innerhalb der evangelischen Bewegung dient. In den Schriften, welche die Bergarbeiterbewegung hervorbrachte, bedienen sich fünf Briefautoren eindeutig lutherischer bzw. lutherisch anmutender Eingangs- und Abschiedsformeln, wodurch sie entscheidende Argumente für die Diskussion über die Frage, ob im Bergarbeiteraufstand reformatorische Ideen eine ernstzunehmende Rolle spielten, liefern.

Wolfgang Schustel: Bartfeld (Bardejov, Slowakei) 1528 Auf die Person von Wolfgang Schustel (†1553), Prediger in Bartfeld,31 wurde die Forschung bereits vor hundert Jahren aufmerksam, eine größere Bedeutung wurde ihm jedoch erst in der slowakischen Fachliteratur der 1990er Jahre zugemessen. Vendelín Jankovicˇ und Miloslava Bodnárová entdeckten bei Schustel radikale, sogar anabaptistische Ansichten und schrieben ihm eine wichtige Rolle in der Bartfelder Reformationsgeschichte zu.32 Nach Jankovicˇ und Bodnárová habe Schustel die Beziehung der Gläubigen zu Gott auf einen Akt des Glaubens, der Liebe und der Danksagung durch Gebete und Gesang vereinfacht. Er habe die überlieferten liturgischen Handlungen der römisch-katholischen Kirche wie die Messe, aber auch den Kirchenschmuck, die Heiligenverehrung, das Fasten und den Ablass abgelehnt. Er habe versucht, die Liturgie wesentlich zu vereinfachen und zu revidieren und habe gewisse ikonoklastische Tendenzen in seiner Forderung nach der Entfernung der Seitenaltäre und Monstranzen und nach schlichteren Ornaten und Messgewändern gezeigt.33

29 Z.B.: „Fryd undt anige libe in Christo Iesu zuvoran.“ „Fryd yn Chrysto Jesu bevor.“ 30 In Peter Ratkosˇ’ Ausgabe in insgesamt sieben Fällen: Ratkosˇ, Dokumenty, 88–90, 93, 108 (Nr. 42–44, 47, 60). 31 Zu diesem vgl.: Csepregi, Stöckel; Csepregi, Reformáció, 143–149. 32 Jankovicˇ, Dve postavy; Bodnárová, Reformation. 33 Bodnárová, Reformation, 25f. Außerdem nimmt Bodnárová an, Schustels Forderungen, die er in Bezug auf die Bürgern geltend machte, hätten den geistlich-religiösen Rahmen gesprengt und auch die Wirtschaftstätigkeit der Gläubigen betroffen. Eine dieser Forderungen wäre gewesen, dass der Stadtrat in Bezug auf die Einwohner der Stadt offen auftreten und selbst die Erfüllung seiner Forderungen sichern sollte. In Bodnárovás Augen scheint Schustel ein Befürworter der Magistratsreformation gewesen zu sein, da er an die Laien der Stadt appellierte, die Praxis der Kirche zu reformieren und zu erneuern.

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Aus Schustels Bartfelder Zeit sind zwei fast gleichzeitig vorgelegte Thesenreihen sehr bunten Inhalts mit mehreren Wiederholungen überliefert. Schustel listet zuerst in 14 Punkten die Ursachen seines geplanten Abschiedes auf, dann stellt er ebenfalls in 14 Punkten die Bedingungen seines Dableibens zusammen.34 Dogmatische Fragen kommen in diesen Schriften nicht vor, aber es werden neben finanziellen Forderungen zahlreiche Probleme der Kirchenzucht thematisiert. Schustel tritt in diesem Artikeln gegen die Trinkgelage an den Feiertagen auf und legt dabei großes Gewicht auf die Heiligung des Sonntags, auf den Kirchenbesuch und auf das Anhören des Wort Gottes.35 Eine weitere Eingabe an den Rat aus derselben Zeit enthält in neun Punkten sogar Vorschläge für die städtische Feuerwehr, da Schustel – mit biblischen Zitaten begründet – behauptet, der Prediger sei auch für diese Frage zuständig.36 1528 versuchte Schustel – vergebens – seine Hörer zu überreden, mit ihm einen eidlich besiegelten Bund zu schließen. Er stellte nämlich den Bartfeldern folgende Bedingung: Daß ich anderß nicht hie bleyb, dann yn yeder gelub mir in mein hant solliche articel tzw halten, unnd daß mag geschechen vor dem ersamen rath, also daß auff eyn tag dy gantz gemayn unnd alle tzechen werden versamlet. Unnd der yn solichen articeln wurdt ubertreten, nach der schwärhyt der ubertretung auch leyde dy größ der straff.37

Die moralische Norm, die Schustel in Bartfeld durchsetzen wollte, lässt sich in folgendem asketischem Imperativ zusammenfassen: „last farren, waß do erdisch unnd sinlich ist!“38 Wenn man diese Worte liest, wundert man sich kaum mehr, dass die süße Milch des Evangeliums im Mund der Bartfelder einen sauren Geschmack bekam39 und ihre Beziehungen zum Prediger lockerer wurden. Eindeutig ist, dass der Prediger im Rat und in der Gemeinde nur wenig Rückhalt genoss. Der zuerst nach Krakau und dann nach Wittenberg gereiste Geistliche war sich darüber im Klaren, dass ihn nur zwei oder drei Bürger zurückerwarteten, aber dies hätte ihm genügt, falls der Ruf von Christus selbst kommen würde.40 Das biblische Vorbild, das Schustel auf seinen Abschied von Bartfeld anwendet, trifft genau zu: “Eß ist

Piirainen/Jankovicˇ, Reformationsbriefe, 505–507; Csepregi, Reformáció, 378–380. Csepregi, Reformáció, 378–380. Vgl. ebenda 396. Csepregi, Reformáció, 380–382. Csepregi, Reformáció, 379f (Artikel 10). Csepregi, Reformáció, 393 (26. 03. 1530). Csepregi, Reformáció, 397 (10. 09. 1531): „Und yn mittler tzeyt hab ich betracht, wie euch daß ewangelion ßauwr geschmeckt hat unnd ich vil tzangß unnd haderß mit vil darumb gehabt, darneben vil nach geben, daß wider mein gewissen war, unnd also nichtz oder wenig gepauth.“ 40 Csepregi, Reformáció, 395f (12.03–18. 05. 1531).

34 35 36 37 38 39

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mit euch gangen alß mit den tzw Yherusalem, do sy sich deß wortz Gottes u[n] tugtig machtenn, kerten sich dy xii potten tzw den heyden [Apg 13,46; 18,6].“41

Andreas Fischer: Leutschau, Schwedler und Zeben (Levocˇa, Sˇvedlár, Sabinov, Slowakei) 1529 Die Forschung kennt einen Täufer und Prediger Andreas Fischer, der 1528 in Südmähren als Humanist plötzlich in Erscheinung tritt, 1529 eine abenteuerliche Missionsreise in die Zips unternimmt, 1532 für die Einführung des Sabbats kämpft, bis 1535 in der Nikolsburger Täuferkirche als Prediger wirkt und vor 1542 in Oberungarn eines gewaltsamen Todes stirbt.42 Daniel Liechty stellte als Erster fest, dass der aus ungarischen Quellen bestens bekannte Sabbater und Täufer Andreas Fischer mit einem gleichnamigen Wiener Studenten identisch ist. Weitere Quellen über Andreas Fischer wurden von Martin Rothkegel in den Archiven von Olmütz und Iglau entdeckt. Fischer wurde 1511 Kanoniker im Dom von Olmütz. Von 1519 bis 1521 und im Jahr 1523 hatte er das Amt des Generalvikars der Diözese Olmütz inne. Es gibt also einen Humanisten und Kleriker, dessen Universitätslaufbahn in Wien von 1498 bis 1511 und dessen kirchliche Laufbahn von 1511 bis 1523 hervorragend dokumentiert ist. Solange keine anderen, zu neuen Erkenntnissen führenden Quellen entdeckt werden, kann die Hypothese Martin Rothkegels akzeptiert werden, nach der es sich hier um ein und dieselbe Person handelt.43 Der zeitgenössische Leutschauer Chronist und Ratsherr Conrad Spervogel († nach 1537) berichtet,44 dass ein gewisser Andreas Fischer, „eyn lutterist von Martino Lutter“, im März 1529 in Leutschau erschienen sei. Dieser Andreas Fischer sammelte bei Hausversammlungen in Leutschau eine Anhängerschar um sich und predigte im Städtchen Schwedler sogar öffentlich in der Kirche. Am 13. Mai wurde Fischer zusammen mit seiner Gemahlin, die ihn begleitete, auf Befehl des Hauptmanns Johann Katzianer verhaftet und als Lutheraner zum Tode verurteilt. Merkwürdigerweise überlebte Fischer jedoch die auf den 25. Juni 1529 angesetzte Vollstreckung des Urteils und entkam, seine Frau dagegen wurde ertränkt.

41 42 43 44

Csepregi, Reformáció, 396 (05. 07. 1531). Rothkegel, Andreas Fischer, 340; Csepregi, Reformáció, 187–193. Rothkegel, Andreas Fischer, 332f. Diarium des Conrad Spervogel, Autograph im Evangelischen Archiv Leutschau. Vgl. Sˇopko, Kódexy, 137–139 (Nr. 137). Eine Abschrift des 18. Jahrhunderts befindet sich in Budapest (OSzK, Fol. Lat. 3108). Auszüge gedruckt in: Hain, Chronica, 40–42; Csepregi, Reformáció, 382–390. Die Fischer betreffenden Passagen sind (sehr fehlerhaft) abgedruckt bei: Liechty, Andreas Fischer, 114–121. Vgl. Rothkegel, Andreas Fischer, 325f.

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Im Juli 1529 tauchte Fischer wieder in Leutschau und Schwedler auf. Er taufte in Schwedler, wo er den Rat auf seiner Seite hatte, öffentlich mehr als siebzig oder achtzig Personen, darunter auch einige Leutschauer. (Spätestens an diesem Punkt des Spervogelschen Berichts wird deutlich, dass Fischer kein Lutheraner, wie der altgläubige Spervogel anfänglich meinte, sondern ein Täufer war.) Fischer besaß auch in Leutschau eine nicht unbedeutende Anhängerschaft. Am 10. November 1529 heiratete Fischer eine Leutschauer Bürgerstochter. Die Bürgerschaft von Schwedler leistete Fischer sogar ein Versprechen, ihn gegen die von Seiten des Zipser Burghauptmanns Christoph Perner drohende Verhaftung zu schützen. (Hier lässt sich ein Bund oder ein Bundschuh zwischen dem Prediger und seinen Hörern erkennen). Jedoch erschien bereits am 16. November 1529 ein bewaffneter Trupp Perners in Schwedler. Fischer begab sich auf die Flucht. Er wollte, wie der Leutschauer Rat in Erfahrung brachte, trotz des Winters nach Krakau ziehen und von dort nach Mähren. Fischers Weg führte jedoch über das Städtchen Zeben, wo er öffentlich predigte und großen Erfolg beim Rat und bei der Bürgerschaft hatte.45 Eine weitere oberungarische Quelle, in der eine Erwähnung von Andreas Fischer erhalten blieb, ist das Protokollbuch der Zipser Fraternität. Das Dokument wurde von dem später lutherisch gewordenen Leutschauer Pfarrer Georg Moller († 1558) angefertigt, folglich ist es als Matricula Molleriana bekannt geworden.46 Dort finden sich zwei Einträge, in denen davon die Rede ist, dass dem Lutheraner Georg Leudischit (auch Leudischer; zu seiner Person siehe das folgende Kapitel) 1542 dasselbe Schicksal gedroht habe wie dem Wiedertäuferprediger Andreas Fischer, den der Ritter Franz Bebek von den Mauern der Burg Krásna Hôrka hätte stürzen lassen.47 Aus den Angaben Mollers lässt sich darauf schließen, dass Fischer vor 1542 in Krásna Hôrka den Tod gefunden hatte.

Georg Leudischit: Mühlenbach (Mlynica, Slowakei) 1543–1544 Georg Leudischit († nach 1558) musste keine besonders steile Karriere machen, um ein Krakauer Magister sowie Kanoniker und Vikar des Zipser Kapitels zu werden. Diese Chancen waren durch seinen Leutschauer familiären Hintergrund und sein weiteres soziales Beziehungsnetz gegeben. Es ist jedoch schwer zu beurteilen, ob die 45 Hain, Chronica, 42. Zur Frühzeit der Reformation in Leutschau (für die Spervogels Diarium die Hauptquelle darstellt): Bodnárová, Reformation, 28f. 46 Matricula Molleriana, Original in der Lyzealbibliothek Käsmark. Abschriften des 18. Jahrhunderts in Budapest (OSzK, Fol. Lat. 2331; Fol. Lat. 2110; Fol. Lat. 2086/2). Andreas Fischer betreffende Auszüge abgedruckt in: Thury, Adatok, 412; ETE, Bd. 2, 389–461, 391, 407, 417. Vgl. Rothkegel, Andreas Fischer, 326; Vízkelety, Fraternitas. 47 Thury, Adatok, 412; ETE, Bd. 2, 407, 417.

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Zips tatsächlich durch Leudischit reformiert wurde – wie es die heilige Überlieferung der Zipser Lutheraner postuliert. Seine mehrere Jahrzehnte währende Präsenz hatte sicher einen Einfluss auf das Geschehen, auch seine sture Eigenwilligkeit mag viele beeindruckt haben, aber sein Engagement für die lutherische Lehre und seine moralisch beispielhafte Lebensführung, die ihm von vielen seiner Biographen attestiert wird,48 kann durch Quellen kaum belegt werden.49 Die bereits erwähnte Matricula Molleriana, das Zipser Fraternitätsprotokoll, berichtet von der Wahl Georg Leudischits zum Pfarrer in Mühlenbach, wo die Pfarre verwaist war.50 Auf die vakante Pfarrstelle wählte die Mühlenbacher Gemeinde Georg Leudischit, der sich bei der Adelsfamilie Görgey in Toppertz (Toporec, Slowakei) aufhielt. Der Zipser Burghauptmann Georg Pauschner empfahl ihn ebenfalls (Mühlenbach gehörte nämlich zur Herrschaft der Zipser Burg). Aber die Nachbarpfarrer – in Deutschendorf, Fölk und Georgenberg (Poprad, Velˇká, Spisˇská Sobota, Slowakei) – wandten sich an den Senior Georg Moller, um die Wahl von Leudischit zu verhindern, indem sie die Rechtmäßigkeit des Verfahrens in Zweifel zogen.51 Der Senior bedrängte den Propst Johannes Horváth von Lomnitz, die Zustimmung zur Wahl zu verweigern. Deshalb wagte Leudischit am Ende nicht, die angebotene Stelle anzunehmen. Nach zwei vergeblichen Versuchen, die Pfarre in Mühlenbach zu besetzen,52 wandten sich die Mühlenbacher wieder an Leudischit, der das Angebot unter dem Schutz von Pauschner schließlich annahm. Der Senior tolerierte die Beförderung von Leudischit nicht und griff den Propst scharf an. Die Fronten erstarrten. Die Bürger und der Burghauptmann hielten entschieden an ihrem Kandidaten fest, der Senior protestierte seinerseits energisch und der Propst versuchte unschlüssig, zwischen den Lagern zu vermitteln. Leudischit gab unter diesen Umständen die Pfarre auf und kehrte in das sichere Toppertz zurück. Er konnte auch nichts anderes tun, denn sein Patron Pauschner kam in der Nacht vom 27. April 1543 durch eine Schießpulverexplosion im Turm der Zipser Burg tragisch ums Leben.53 Außerdem kam das Mandat von König Ferdinand I. (1526– 48 Veselý, Leudischer, 80: „Wir können unsere Bewunderung ausdrücken über seinen Mut und Eifer, seine Unnachgiebigkeit und seinen ungebrochenen Willen. Er war zwar sehr starrköpfig, aber nie zum Schaden der Sache, um die es ging. Er hatte feste Grundsätze und einen weiten Horizont. Seine Begeisterung half, die Reformation in der Zips, wenn auch über winklige Wege, in Leutschau, Michelsdorf, Käsmark, Toppertz, Leibitz, Mühlenbach, Zipser Neudorf, Kreutzdorf und Neere/Strázˇky zu verbreiten.“ 49 Csepregi, Reformáció, 200–208. 50 Thury, Adatok, 396f; ETE, Bd. 2, 400f. 51 Matricula Molleriana, p. 308; ETE, Bd. 2, 407. 52 Thury, Adatok, 398–400; ETE, Bd. 2, 401–403. Des Zipser Priestermangels gedenkt auch die Leutschauer Chronik, Hain, Chronica, 85: „Anno 1541. Diaconi nulli in toto Scepusio sed qvilibet Parochus ipsemet concionatus est ob tempora bellicosa et reformationem Evangelicam.“ 53 Thury, Adatok, 400f.

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1564, Kaiser: 1558–1564) vom 21. April 1543 an die Fraternität,54 die den häretischen Predigern mit Brachialgewalt und Ausrottung drohte. Aber die Mühlenbacher wollten auf Leudischit nicht verzichten. Die Bürger sandten eine Bittschrift an den Propst, Leudischit mit dem Amt des Pfarrerverwesers zu beauftragen. Der Propst stimmte letztlich dem Gesuch zu, aber nur bis zur Ankunft des Obergespans Johannes Thurzó, d. h. für die Dauer eines Vierteljahres. So nahm Leudischit diese Stelle an und verärgerte wieder den Senior Moller und die drei Nachbarpfarrer, die sich vorgenommen hatten, Leudischit auf jede nur erdenkbare Weise zu vertreiben. Sie gewannen auch den Vikar des Kapitels, Magister Martin, für ihr Ziel, den häretischen Leudischit zu beseitigen, bevor dieser die ganze Umgebung anstecke. Der Vikar drängte den Senior, dass er entschiedener gegen diesen Hauptlutheraner (archilutteranus) vorgehen solle.55 Der Vikar Martin gab den drei Nachbarpfarrern den Befehl,56 Leudischit den Kredenzbrief des Kapitels abzunehmen, damit man ihm anschließend die Ausübung kirchlicher Funktionen verbieten könne. So begab sich eine Deputation der besagten Pfarrer zum Mühlenbacher Bürgermeister und las ihm den Brief des Vikars vor. Das erzürnte den Bürgermeister, der verärgert auf den Tisch schlug und sagte: Wir haben nicht einen boshaften Lügner für die Pfarre präsentiert, sondern einen frommen und ehrhaften Mann. Das Beglaubigungsschreiben wird um keinen Preis herausgegeben. Ah, ihr, die 24 Pfarrer wollt uns willkürlich einen Pfarrer aufdrängen? Nicht der wird bei uns Pfarrer, den ihr wollt, sondern der, den wir uns gewählt haben!

Auch die Verhandlung, die diese Deputation mit Leudischit führte, erreichte ihr Ziel nicht. Leudischit fertigte sie damit ab, er habe vom Propst die Erlaubnis erhalten, ein Vierteljahr die Mühlenbacher Gemeinde zu verwalten, und so gelte die Anordnung des Vikars für ihn nicht. Er bleibe in der Pfarre, bis der Obergespan Thurzó, der ihn gewisslich im Namen des Königs konfirmieren werde, zurückkomme.57 Nach dem Misserfolg der Pfarrerdeputation berief Senior Moller sofort eine Versammlung der Fraternität ein. Bei dieser Gelegenheit las er den Brief König Ferdinands gegen die „räuberischen Lutheraner“ (contra latrones lutheranos) vom 21. April 1543 vor und rief die Pfarrer auf, alle Konkubinen aus ihrer näheren Umgebung zu entfernen, denn das gebe Leudischit die Möglichkeit, sie anzuprangern. In einem Brief vom 5. Juni 1543 griff der Senior den Propst scharf an und warf 54 Matricula Molleriana, p. 304; Ribini, Memorabilia, 56–58; Thury, Adatok, 401f; ETE, Bd. 2, 403f. 55 Thury, Adatok, 404; ETE, Bd. 2, 408. 56 Thury, Adatok, 404f; ETE, Bd. 2, 408f (30. 05. 1543). 57 ETE, Bd. 2, 409.

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ihm vor, dass er diesem Ketzer die Leitung von Mühlenbach überlassen habe, und forderte die Entfernung dieses gefährlichen Verbreiters der Pest (pestifer).58 Der Propst antwortete dem Senior kurz und bündig, das Wahlrecht stehe zwar den Mühlenbachern zu, er habe ihnen aber nicht befohlen, Leudischit zu wählen.59 Daraufhin antwortete der Senior dem Propst in einem umfangreichen Brief, in dem er das ganze Sündenregister von Leudischit anführte.60 Aber obwohl man Leudischit mitleidlos anfiel, kam man mit dem Ansinnen seiner Entfernung nicht weiter, weil er erneut einen mächtigen Beschützer im neuen Zipser Burghauptmann Miklós Bornemisza hatte, der schriftlich den Propst Horvath und den Senior Moller aufforderte, den Fall Leudischit mit größerer Geduld, bedacht und sachlich zu verhandeln. Denn Leudischit verkünde keine neue Lehre, sondern das reine Evangelium, das auch Christus und die Apostel verkündigt hätten. Leudischit sei kein Schwärmer, auch kein Wiedertäufer, seine Lehre sei nicht schädlich. Man solle ihn unter rechten Schutz stellen, damit das Wort Gottes besser in den Herzen wurzele und Früchte trage. Denn Christus verspreche: Wer sich nur zu ihm vor den Menschen bekennt, zu dem wolle auch er selbst sich bekennen. Wer ihn aber verleugne, den wolle er selbst auch verleugnen vor seinem himmlischen Vater und dessen Engeln (Mt 10,32–33).61 In der Zips herrschte ein Wirrwarr. Die Pfarrer waren sich nicht sicher, wem sie eigentlich zu gehorchen hatten. Selbst der Senior, der Sache müde und überdrüssig, kannte sich nicht mehr aus. Nach 16-jährigem Wirken dankte Moller am 9. Mai 1544 von seinem Seniorenamt ab.62 Im selben Jahr starb einer von Leudischits Hauptfeinden, der Pfarrer von Fölk. Das Seniorat konnte man lange nicht besetzen, der erste Kandidat lehnte ab, dann wurde ausgerechnet Leudischit gewählt, den seine alten Gegner allerdings daran hinderten, das Amt zu übernehmen .63 Das Geschehen nahm nun einen schnellen Lauf. Am 9. Dezember 1544 heiratete der Zipser Propst und am 16. Dezember resignierte er seine Präpositur.64 In der Fraternität kam es zu einem Umbruch. Die Leutschauer Chronik von Caspar Hain datiert die Reformation der Stadt nicht umsonst auf das Jahr 1544,65 obwohl es nicht wortwörtlich zu verstehen ist, dass die 24 Pfarrer von einem Jahr zu anderem lutherisch geworden seien. 58 59 60 61 62

Matricula Molleriana, p. 311–313; Thury, Adatok, 405f; ETE, Bd. 2, 410f. Matricula Molleriana p. 315; Thury, Adatok, 409 (06. 06. 1543). Matricula Molleriana p. 315–317; Thury, Adatok, 409–411; ETE, Bd. 2, 413–415 (12. 06. 1543). Matricula Molleriana p. 319; Thury, Adatok, 411f; ETE, Bd. 2, 416f (08. 06. 1543). Matricula Molleriana p. 398. Zum Senior wurde zuerst Georg von Leibitz (ebd. p. 399) und nach ihm Anton Toppertzer, Poprader Pfarrer, am 07. 07. 1545 (ebd. p. 410). 63 Pirhalla, Szepesi, 200. 64 Matricula Molleriana p. 401f; ETE, Bd. 2, 420–422; Hain, Chronica, 92: „Anno 1544. Dominus Johannes Horwath de Lumnitza qui ab anno 1529 Praepositus Capituli S. Martini Scepusiensis fuit, Praeposituram dimisit, et duxit in Uxorem Civis Leuchoviensis Filiam.“ 65 Hain, Chronica, 85, 92. Ribini, Memorabilia, 67–70; ETE, Bd. 4, 522–524.

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Und was geschah mit Leudischit nach der Wende von 1544? Infolge der erwähnten Ereignisse hörten die Angriffe gegen ihn ganz selbstverständlich auf. Im November 1547 hielt die Fraternität der 24 königlichen Pfarrer der Zips ihre Versammlung in Mühlenbach bei Leudischit.66 Das war für ihn und auch für die Gemeinde, die viel Leid erfahren hatte, eine ungeahnte Ehre. Als der Pfarrer in Zipser Neudorf (Spisˇská Nová Ves, Slowakei) sein Amt aufgab, wählte man an seine Stelle Georg Leudischit, der im Jahre 1548 dort eintraf.67 Márton Pirhalla fand im Archiv des Zipser Kapitels einen Beleg dafür,68 dass Georg Leudischit 1558 Pfarrer in Kreutzdorf und in Michelsdorf (Krízˇová Ves, Strázˇe pod Tatrami, Slowakei) und dort Senior des Niederpoprader Contuberniums war. Leudischits Eintreffen in Michelsdorf fällt in die Zeit, als sich die Herrschaft von Neere (Strázˇky, Slowakei) bereits im Besitz von Marko Horváth Stansith von Gradetz, dem Burghauptmann und erfolgreichen Verteidiger von Szigetvár, befand. Dieser hatte die Herrschaft am 8. September 1556 von König Ferdinand erhalten.69 Es ist möglich, dass der neue Besitzer den erprobten Pfarrer auf seine Besitztümer einlud, denn die ganze Laufbahn von Leudischit bezeugt, dass er sich immer der Gunst weltlicher Patronatsherren erfreute, die ihn in Schutz nahmen. Von seinen theologischen Kenntnissen ist keine Quelle überliefert, aber als hochgebildeter, weitgereister Mann, der sich in höfischen Kreisen bewegte, wusste er vor den Herren aufzutreten, sich mit ihnen zu verständigen und sich ihren Gewohnheiten anzupassen. Eine wiederholte Beschwerde in Senior Mollers Erzählung ist, Leudischit habe mit den Mühlenbachern ein Pakt geschlossen, der besage, dass er auf die Pfarrmühle verzichte, falls er einen Ruf zum Pfarrer erhalte. In den Augen des Seniors galt dieser Schritt als bewiesene Simonie, und zweifelsohne schuf er dadurch einen gefährlichen Präzedenzfall, dass er einerseits die finanziellen Grundlagen der Pfarren gefährdete, andererseits den Prozess der Pfarrerwahl und Pfarrenbesetzung zu einer Art Feilschen oder Versteigerung reduzierte. Das Letztere wäre dem Propst, der zuständigen kirchlichen Obrigkeit, keineswegs

66 Matricula Molleriana p. 420. 67 Eine Abschrift der Matricula Molleriana im Evangelischen Archiv Leutschau, mit der erklärenden Bemerkung von späterer Hand (p. 427): „Georgius de Iglo parochus est Georgius Leudisc [!] successor Laurentii Hilbrandi, qui an. 1548 mortuus et die Ioanis Baptistae sepultus est teste protocollo Igloviensi anni 1591.“ Siehe: Veselý, Leudischer, 79, Anm. 42. 68 Pirhalla, Szepesi, 192, Anm. 3 (unter der Signatur: „Prot. 1562, Nr. IV., fol. 148a–151b“): „Ego Georg. Lewdyschetth, homo Sexagenarius, Sacerdos triginta quattuor annorum, Pastor animarum in Nere, senior fraternitatis Inferior Popradtth fateor Bona conscientia fide mea Christiana Mediante, quod tricesimam lewchoviens ab anno Dnj 15 (sic 1528) usque ad annum Dnj 1530 Scio, Novi et Intellexi.“ 69 Pirhalla, Szepesi, 192. Marko Horváth wurde am 08. 09. 1556 mit seinen ersten Besitzungen in der Zips belehnt. Weber, Stansith-Horvath, 16.

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zuwider gewesen. Er hätte die Bestätigung sicherlich dem großzügigsten Bewerber zugestanden. Auch wenn die Matricula Molleriana zuverlässig und glaubwürdig über den die Pfarrmühle betreffenden Pakt berichtet, bietet sich für das Ereignis eine andere Auslegung an, die u. a. durch die Beobachtung untermauert wird, dass die Mühlenbacher so zäh zu ihrem Kandidaten hielten und alles Mögliche versuchten, ihn auf der Pfarre einzuführen. Der Mühlenbacher Pakt kann Bünden, die in den oben dargestellten Ereignissen vorkamen, ähnlich gewesen sein, d. h. es ging bei dem Pakt nicht einfach um die Einkommen aus der Mühle, sondern vielmehr um einen gegenseitigen, schriftlich festgesetzten, eidlich festgeschriebenen und mit Leib, Gut und Leben garantierten Bund zwischen Pfarrer und Gemeinde. In diesem hypothetischen Fall wäre Mollers inquisitorischer Eifer wohl berechtigt gewesen, denn die reformatorischen Pakte und Bunde fielen in der Tat unter das Urteil von Umsturz und Aufruhr. Das Beispiel des Georg Leudischit, der in Krakau magistrierte, im Zipser Kapitel ein Kanonikat erlangte und später zum Erzketzer der Priesterbruderschaft wurde, weist auf den Typen des humanistischen Kanonikers hin, der sich – nach dem Wittenberger Muster von Andreas Karlstadt-Bodenstein – zum radikalen Reformator entwickelte. Das obige Beispiel verdeutlicht anschaulich die Laufbahn von einem gesellschaftlich anerkannten, kulturell gehobenen mittleren kirchlichen Status hin zur Verbreitung der damals revolutionären theologischen Ansichten und zur Ausübung der sich daraus ergebenden kirchlichen Handlungen. (Der Typ des sich radikalisierenden humanistischen Kanonikers könnte als Alternative die Gültigkeit der bisherigen reformationsgeschichtlichen Modelle relativieren.) Es hängt wahrscheinlich von der Interpretation des Mühlenbacher Bundschuhs ab, ob Leudischit wirklich als radikaler Reformator eingestuft werden kann.

Erlau (Eger, Ungarn) 1561–1562 Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Erlauer Bekenntnisses70 bilden die Widmungen der beiden gedruckten Auflagen sowie der Briefwechsel des Antonius Verantius (1504–1573), Bischof zu Erlau. Der Bischof hatte sich am 21. Februar 1560 an den König Ungarns, Kaiser Ferdinand I., mit der ernsten Beschuldigung gewandt, dass die Soldaten der wichtigen Grenzfestung Erlau nicht nur häretisch gesinnt, sondern auch Feinde des Königs und des Landes seien.71 In

70 Csepregi, Reformáció, 349–359; Bucsay/Csepregi, Confessio catholica, 1–8. 71 Verancsics, Összes munkái, Bd. 8, 144–151 (Nr. 45). Siehe auch ebd. Nr. 51, 58, 61–63, 65–66,

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der Tat hatten sich die Kriegsleute mit den Bewohnern der Stadt und der Umgebung (des sogenannten Erlautals) in einer Konföderation ad foedus Dei custodiendum (‚zur Verteidigung des Bundes von Gott‘ laut Titelblatt des Erstdruckes) 72 vereinigt, gemäß der sie lieber die Festung verlassen, als sich ihren reformatorischen Prediger hätten nehmen lassen. Am 24. Dezember 1561 erschien nun die königliche Untersuchungskommission in Erlau. Die Soldaten erklärten auch vor den Abgesandten Ferdinands, dass weder sie noch ihre Geistlichen Häretiker seien, sie wollten aber eher Erlau verlassen als zulassen, dass Bischof Verantius ihre Prediger vertreibe. Um die Anklage der Häresie zu entkräften, sollten sie der Kommission ihr Bekenntnis vorlegen. Dieses wurde für sie auf ihre Bitte hin in Debreczin (Debrecen, Ungarn) anhand von mindestens drei Vorlagen sehr schnell zusammengestellt. Die Schrift sollte den Beweis erbringen, dass ihr Glaube in engster Kontinuität mit der Heiligen Schrift und der altchristlichen Orthodoxie stehe, daher der Titel: Confessio Catholica. Vor der Einreichung leisteten die Soldaten und die Bürger von Erlau und Umgebung einander den Eid auf dieses Bekenntnis. Sie richteten an die Herrscher König Ferdinand und Kronprinz Maximilian (Kaiser: 1564–1576) die Bitte, zu erlauben, dass die Verbündeten in ihrem wahren und katholischen Glauben verbleiben und solche Seelenhirten ernähren und haben dürfen, die sie mit dem reinsten Gottesworte speisen.73 Die Confessio Catholica von Erlau und Debreczin (1562) war also trotz ihrer formalen Unausgereiftheit in vollem politisch-rechtlichem Sinne zu einem Bekenntnis geworden. Die Geschichte von Erlau enthält alle Elemente (Bund, schriftlicher Vertrag, Schwur, lebenslanger Verbund), die uns aus den deutlich früheren Fällen der ungarischen Bundschuhtradition geläufig sind. Eine besondere Bedeutung wird dem Bündnis der Erlauer Soldaten durch die Tatsache zugemessen, dass alle früheren Erscheinungen des reformatorischen Bundes (von Speratus bis Leudischit) in einer deutschsprachigen Umgebung vorkamen. In der Grenzfestung

68, 71, 80. Die Widmungen: Kiss, Zsinatok, 73–83. Weitere Literatur zur bisher wenig geforschten Erlauer Reformation: Nagy, Adalékok; Szabó, Egyház. 72 Confessio catholica de praecipuis fidei articulis exhibita, sacratissimo et catholico Romanorum imperatori Ferdinando, et filio sue i. maiestatis d. regi Maximiliano, ab universo exercitu equitum et peditum s. r. m. a nobilibus item et incolis totius vallis Agrinae, in nomine Sanctae Trinitatis ad foedus Dei custodien[dum] iuramento fidei copulatorum et decertantium pro vera fide et religione, in Christo ex Scripturis Sacris fundata. Anno MDLXII. Debrecini. Huic confessioni subscripserunt Debrecien[sis] et locorum vicinorum ecclesiae. Edition: Bucsay/Csepregi, Confessio catholica. 73 Die auf den 06. 02. 1562 datierte Widmung des Erstdrucks ist auch zu finden in: Lampe/ Debreceni Ember, Historia, 119–121.

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Erlau zeigte sich dieselbe Gemeinschaftsform jedoch in einem rein ungarischen Milieu, d. h. sie überschritt eine wichtige Sprachgrenze im Königreich Ungarn.74

Fazit Es ist recht unterschiedlich, wie gut sich die obigen Geschehnisse durch konkrete Daten belegen lassen: Manchmal kam das Bündnis zwischen den Interessierten nicht einmal zustande (Schustel) oder sein Zustandekommen fußte nur auf einer Hypothese (Leudischit). In Erlau ist nicht einmal der Name des beteiligten Predigers bekannt, dagegen liest man bei Speratus ausgereifte theologische Reflexionen über Bund, Treue und Abfall. Der Quellenmangel kann dadurch kompensiert werden, dass uns diese sechs untersuchten, sich räumlich und zeitlich nahen Geschichten parallel vorliegen und die fehlenden Motive sich gegenseitig, in analoger Weise ergänzen lassen. Die gemeinsame Lehre soll anhand einiger Glieder der deutschen Wortfamilie BINDEN zusammengefasst werden.

Bund Es ist eine fruchtbare Idee, die biblische Bundestheologie auf die Kirchenorganisation anzuwenden. Dank den bilder- und facettenreichen biblischen Parallelen konnte keine Richtung der radikaleren Reformation (der Anabaptismus oder Spiritualismus) dieses gemeinschaftsorganisatorische Prinzip ausschließlich für sich beanspruchen. Das symbiotische Modell vom Gemeindeaufbau (samt seinen Vor- und Nachteilen) bildet das eine Extrem auf jener Skala, deren Gegenpol eine pflichtmäßige, zeitgebundene Rotation der Geistlichen ist.

74 Die Sprachgrenzen stellten nämlich für die Verbreitung der reformatorischen Richtungen große Hindernisse dar und verhinderten oft eine gegenseitige Einflussnahme. Bekanntermaßen haben reformatorische Ideen erst nach der Schlacht von Mohács gegen die Osmanen 1526 – als eine theologische Reaktion auf die katastrophale Niederlage – die deutsch-ungarische Sprachgrenze überschritten. In Ungarn lässt es sich auch für eine spätere Epoche nachweisen, dass sich in den theologischen Auseinandersetzungen des ausgehenden 16. Jahrhunderts auch eindeutig ethnische Vorurteile zum Wort meldeten und damit eine Konfessionalisierung entlang der deutsch-ungarischen und slowakisch-ungarischen Sprachgrenzen beschleunigten.

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Bundschuh In jedem Bündnis auf Leben und Tod lässt sich eindeutig ein gesellschaftlich-politischer Nonkonformismus und eine ideologische Dissidenz – sogar wider den Willen der Beteiligten – verspüren. Der Bund führt automatisch zu feindlichen, manchmal auch gewalttätigen Reaktionen der Behörden oder der Umgebung. Der Verlauf des Konflikts hängt immer von den realen Machtverhältnissen ab: Einmal weicht die Gemeinde aus (Speratus), einmal der Prediger (Fischer), manchmal halten beiden Seiten durch (Leudischit, die Erlauer). Diese Erscheinungen fußen erkennbar auf einer realistischen Beurteilung der gegebenen Lage oder Gefahr.

Verbundenheit In den untersuchten Fällen ist der Ruf (vocatio) ein gegenseitiges, ernstzunehmendes Abkommen. Es ist natürlich möglich, das Abkommen – wie alle Verträge und Zugeständnisse – zu kündigen, aufzulösen und zu widerrufen, aber nur in gegenseitigem Einvernehmen. Nach der Auffassung von Speratus ist ein solches Verhältnis und eine solche Zusammengehörigkeit nicht nur eine juristische und moralische Frage, sondern auch eine seelsorgerliche und pastorale Aufgabe.

Literatur Ungedruckte Quellen Matricula Molleriana = Matricula seu diarium et connotatio rerum memorabilium in Scepusio, Autograph von Senior Georg Moller und seinen Nachfolgern (1528–1584) in der Lyzealbibliothek Käsmark OSzK = Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (Ungarische Nationalbibliothek) Budapest, Handschriftenabteilung

Gedruckte Quellen Bucsay, Mihály/Csepregi, Zoltán, Confessio catholica von Eger und Debrecen, 1562, in: Andreas Mühling/Peter Opitz (Hg.), Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften, Bd. II/2: 1562– 1569, Neukirchen 2009, 1–165 (Nr. 58). Dudík, Beda (Hg.), Olmützer Sammel-Chronik vom Jahre 1432 bis 1656, Brünn 1858. DWb = Grimm, Jacob und Wilhelm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, Bd. 2, Leipzig 1860, Reprint: München 1991.

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ETE = Bunyitay, Vince et alii (Hg.), Egyháztörténelmi emlékek a magyarországi hitújítás korából, Bd. 1–5, Budapest 1902–1912. Hain, Caspar, Zipserische oder Leütschaverische Chronica vndt Zeit-beschreibung = Hain Gáspar Lo˝csei krónikája, Bd. 1–3, Lo˝cse 1910–1913. König, Hans-Joachim, Aus dem Leben des Schwaben Paulus Speratus [1], BWKG 62, 1962, 7–63. — Aus dem Leben des Schwaben Paulus Speratus [2], BWKG 63, 1963, 104–138. Lampe, Friedrich Adolf/Debreceni Ember, Pál, Historia Ecclesiae Reformatae in Hungaria, Utrecht 1728. Leupold von Löwenthal, Martin, Chronik der königlichen Stadt Iglau (1402–1607), Hg. Christian d’Elvert, Quellen-Schriften zur Geschichte Mährens und Österr.-Schlesiens 1. Sektion: Chroniken I/2, Brünn 1861. Ratkosˇ, Peter, Dokumenty k baníckemu povstaniu na Slovensku (1525–1526), Bratislava 1957. Ribini, Ioannes, Memorabilia Augustanae Confessionis in Regno Hungariae a Ferdinando I. usque ad III., Posonii 1787. Schenner, Ferdinand, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Reformation in Iglau, I–IV, Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für die Geschichte Mährens und Schlesiens 15, 1911, 222–255; 16, 1912, 84–102, 374–406; 17, 1913, 114–159. Thury, Etele, Adatok a szepességi reformáczió történetéhez. Moller György lo˝csei plébános naplójából, 1542–1543, Történelmi Tár 28, 1905, 377–417. Verancsics, Antal, Összes munkái, Bd. 8, Monumenta Hungariae Historica. Scriptores 19, Pest 1868. WA.B = Luther, Martin, Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel, Bd. 1–18, Weimar 1930–1985.

Forschungsliteratur Bodnárová, Miloslava, Die Reformation in den ostslowakischen königlichen Städten in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, in: Karl Schwarz/Peter Sˇvorc (Hg.), Die Reformation und ihre Wirkungsgeschichte in der Slowakei, Kirchen- und konfessionsgeschichtliche Beiträge, STKG 2,14, Wien 1996, 22–35. Brecht, Martin, Erinnerung an Paul Speratus (1484–1551), ein enger Anhänger Luthers in den Anfängen der Reformation, ARG 94, 2003, 105–133. Csepregi, Zoltán, Die Anfänge der Reformation im Königreich Ungarn bis 1548, in: Vincenc Rajsˇp/Karl W. Schwarz/Bogusław Dybas´/Christian Gastgeber (Hg.), Die Reformation in Mitteleuropa = Reformacija v srednji Evropi. Prispevki ob 500-letnici rojstva Primozˇa Trubarja, 2008, Mitteleuropäische wissenschaftliche Bibliothek = Srednjeevropska znanstvena knjizˇnica 4, Wien/Ljubljana 2011, 127–147. – A bártfai reformáció Stöckel elo˝tt, in: Peter Kónya (Hg.), Leonard Stöckel a reformácia v strednej Európe, Acta Collegii Evangelici Presˇoviensis 11, Presˇov 2011, 169–186. – A reformáció nyelve. Tanulmányok a magyarországi reformáció elso˝ negyedszázadának vizsgálata alapján, Humanizmus és reformáció 34, Budapest 2013.

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– The evolution of the language of the Reformation in Hungary (1522–1526), Hungarian Historical Review 2, 2013, Nr. 1, 3–34. Hammann, Gustav, Mag. Nicolaus von Sabinov. Ein Beitrag über den Humanismus und die frühe Reformation in der Slowakei, ZOF 16, 1967, 25–44. Jankovicˇ, Vendelín, Dve postavy zo zacˇiatkov reformácie v Bardejove [Wolfgang Schustel, Michal Radasˇin], Historický cˇasopis 38, 1990, 639–650. Kiss, Áron (Hg.), A XVI. században tartott magyar református zsinatok végzései, Budapest 1881. Kubinyi, András, Vallásos társulatok a késo˝ középkori Magyarországon, Magyar Egyháztörténeti Vázlatok 10, Bd. 1–2, 1998, 123–134, in: Kubinyi, András, Fo˝papok, egyházi intézmények és vallásosság a középkori Magyarországon, METEM Könyvek 22, Budapest 1999, 341–352. Liechty, Daniel, Andreas Fischer and the Sabbatarian Anabaptists. An Early Reformation Episode in East Central Europe, SAMH 29, Scottdale, PA/Kitchener, Ontario 1988. Majorossy, Judit, Late Medieval Confraternities in Preßburg, in: Nathalie Kruppa/Leszek Zygner (Hg.), Pfarreien in Mitteleuropa im Mittelalter. Deutschland, Polen, Tschechien und Ungarn im Vergleich, VMPIG 238, Göttingen 2008, 339–362. Mayer, Anton, Die älteste Iglauer Chronik (1547), Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Geschichte Mährens und Schlesiens 40, 1938, 3–22, 41–56. Nagy, József, Adalékok a XVI. századi egri reformációhoz, Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis Nova Series 14, 1978. 333–347. Piirainen, Ilpo Tapani/Jankovicˇ, Vendelín, Reformationsbriefe aus Bardejov/Bartfeld. Ein Beitrag zum Frühneuhochdeutschen in der Slowakei, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 92, 1991, 501–511. Pirhalla, Márton, A szepesi prépostság vázlatos története kezdetéto˝l a püspökség felállításáig, Lo˝cse 1899. Probszt, Günther, Die sozialen Ursachen des ungarischen Bergarbeiteraufstandes von 1525/26, ZOF 10, 1961, 401–432. Rothkegel, Martin, Andreas Fischer. Neue Forschungen zur Biographie eines bekannten Unbekannten, JGPrÖ 121, 2005, 325–351. – Die Nikolsburger Reformation, 1526–1535. Vom Humanismus zum Sabbatarismus, Diss. theol., Prag 2000. Sˇopko, Július, Kódexy a neúplne zachované rukopisy v slovenských knihovnách = Codices ac fragmenta codicum bibliothecarum Slovaciae. Kódexy slovenskej provenience = Codices, qui in bibliothecis Slovaciae asservantur ac olim asservabantur, Bd. 3, Martin 1986. Stamm, Heinz-Meinolf, Luthers Berufung auf die Vorstellungen des Hieronymus vom Bischofsamt, in: Martin Brecht (Hg.), Martin Luther und das Bischofsamt, Stuttgart 1990, 15–26. Szabó, János Gyo˝zo˝, Egyház és reformáció Egerben 1553–1595, Annales Musei Agriensis 15, 1977, 103–165. Veselý, Daniel, Georg Leudischer – ein lutherischer Prediger in der Zips, in: Karl Schwarz/ Peter Sˇvorc (Hg.), Die Reformation und ihre Wirkungsgeschichte in der Slowakei. Kirchen- und konfessionsgeschichtliche Beiträge, STKG 2,14, Wien 1996, 67–79. Vízkelety, András, Die Fraternitas XXIV plebanorum civitatum regalium in Oberungarn und der Handschriftenbestand Zipser Pfarreibibliotheken, in: Nathalie Kruppa/Leszek

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Zygner (Hg.), Pfarreien in Mitteleuropa im Mittelalter. Deutschland, Polen, Tschechien und Ungarn im Vergleich, VMPIG 238, Göttingen 2008, 327–338. Weber, Samuel, Gregor Stansith-Horvath de Gradec und seine Familie, Käsmark 1896. Wriedt, Markus, Luthers Gebrauch der Bischofstitulatur in seinen Briefen, in: Martin Brecht (Hg.), Martin Luther und das Bischofsamt, Stuttgart 1990, 73–100.

Part III Unfinished Pasts: Early Modern Narratives of Revolts

Farkas Gábor Kiss

Ambiguity and Paradox in the Humanistic Literature of the Jagiellonian Age

The Stauromachia (1519) by Stephanus Taurinus, the most important contemporary literary account of the Dózsa revolt (1514), has been the subject of a complete reevaluation in recent years.1 Despite its substantial length, clearly definable social and courtly context and literary environment, the intention of the author in writing the text remains a riddle. Unlike many panegyrics of his contemporaries, which celebrate the virtues and victories of rulers and aristocrats using the topoi of praise and blame in the epideictic and demonstrative genre of rhetoric, the message of this epic poem remains hard to decode. Several scholars – including László Szörényi and László Jankovits – have recently called attention to the subversive, pessimistic, ironical or paradoxical overtones both in its overt authorial judgments about the pravity of the nobles, and in the intertextual relationship to its most direct poetic sources, the Pharsalia by Lucan, and the Battle of Frogs and Mice attributed to Homer.2 The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to call attention to the ironical and satirical inspiration of several other humanistic works of the Jagiellonian age, in the context of which the lack of a clearly definable moral good in the poetic landscape seems to be rather the standard than the exception; and second, if we accept the validity of these reinterpretations, we might have to rethink the social framework behind the traditional understanding of patron-client relationships that surrounded humanistic literary activities. Multiple meanings of literary works might have served multiple social functions: when authors reinvented such ancient genres as fictitious orations, dialogues, paradoxical praises 1 I am referring both to the original print and to the critical edition: Stephanus Taurinus Olomucensis, Stauromachia id est Cruciatorum servile bellum (Vienna: Singrenius, 1519) and Stephanus Taurinus Olomucensis, Stauromachia id est Cruciatorum servile bellum, ed. Ladislaus Juhász (Budapest: Egyetemi, 1944). 2 László Jankovits and László Szörényi, “A megíratlan és a megírt magyar tárgyú eposz: 1519: Megjelenik Stephanus Taurinus Stauromachiája,” in A magyar irodalom történetei. 1. köt. A kezdetekto˝l 1800-ig, ed. László Jankovits and Géza Orlovszky (Budapest: Gondolat, 2007), 195– 203, and László Szörényi, “L’influenza della Farsaglia di Lucano sull’epopea tardoumanista latina in Ungheria (Stephanus Taurinus: Stauromachia),” Neohelicon 27 (2000), 97–111.

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or even epic poems, they had not only rhetoric and literary aims in sight, but they were also keen on leaving the door open to contradicting interpretations, which might have helped their social advancement. Taurinus was not only a contemporary of the events, but stood in the service of two aristocrats who played an important role in the history of the peasant revolt, and his direct involvement in the course of events would exclude the possibility of a neutral standpoint in his epic. First, he was hired by Cardinal Tamás Bakócz, the Archbishop of Esztergom, as a secretary in 1511, and he lived through the entire following course of events as a member of his retinue—the journey of Bakócz to Rome, the unsuccessful papal election, their return to Hungary and the outbreak of the rebellion.3 From 1517, Taurinus’s second patron became Ferenc Várdai, the Bishop of Transylvania, who personally participated in the suppression of the peasant uprising with his own troops. There can be no question that the immediate social context of his epic poem would not let Taurinus express any other opinion of the peasant rebellion, than that of scorn, disdain and abomination. Georg von Brandenburg, the dedicatee of the Stauromachia, suffered financial losses because of the turn of events, which are also mentioned by Taurinus in his dedication.4 Similarly, he refers to the uprising as plebeius furor (“plebeian rage”) in the dedication, a portion of the text in which he speaks outside of his role as an epic narrator.5 Being a protegé of Bakócz and later a client of Francis Várdai, and dedicating his work to Georg von Brandenburg, Taurinus obviously had to agree with the political and ideological stance of his patrons. But how can we then insert Taurinus’s independent poetic voice into the wider social context of patronage relationships existing in the Stauromachia? One of the responses to this question is given by the writing process of the work. Although the book was given to the press by the author himself in the spring of 1519, there remained many incongruencies in the narration that betray a certain lack of unity. In the first canto, after the account that a “good spirit” (eudaemon) prompted 3 Taurinus left for Vienna in May 1514, but returned to Hungary probably already at the end of that month, as he was present at a royal council on May 28, 1514. See Sándor V. Kovács “A Dózsa-háború humanista eposza,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 63 (1959): 456. 4 “Nam [Ioannes Thurzo] ea tempestate illustrissimam dominationem tuam nonnihil damni ab iisdem perpessam fuisse audiverat.” Taurinus, Stauromachia, 1944, 1. 5 The personal participation of Taurinus in the events is mentioned in the description of journey with the Archbishop of Rome: “cuius ad Utriculos flavas traiecimus undas” (I, 137) and “post patulum campum montes transcendimus altos” (I, 143; Tuscan Apennines), “Vidimus et magno Laurentia condita sumptu // Delubra” (I, 147148) and back (“Sic illo tandem discessimus…”; “hinc Dravum resolutum navibus imus,” I, 172, 176). The plural first-person account of this passage (I, 104–80) suggests that it might have been conceived originally as a hodoeporicon in the manner of the Odeporicon of Richardus Bartholinus (Vienna, 1515). At the end of the poem, “the author” prays for the lucky rule of Louis II to the holy kings of Hungary, but the speaker remains here inside his role as an epic narrator (“Vos precor, o divi reges, coelica regum // Numina…” V, 475–76).

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Cardinal Bakócz to travel to Rome, where the virtuous Pope Julius II soon died and his throne was occupied by Pope Leo X, we find a poetic itinerary, a hodoeporicon. Here Taurinus starts to speak in the first-person plural, falling out of his role as an epic narrator that was inaugurated by the invocation at the beginning of the poem. Through forty-three lines (I, 137–80), he recounts the troubles experienced on the way home, the crossing of the Apennines (I, 143), the visit to Narni, Loretto and Ancona, the tempest which they survived in the Adriatic Sea and their landing near Senj on the Croatian coast (I, 139–167).6 Taurinus made hardly any references to the papal aspirations of Cardinal Bakócz (I, 100) and fell completely silent on the Crusade entrusted to Bakócz, which could have been seen as part of the causal chain of events leading to the peasant rebellion.7 Instead, Taurinus included in his epic poem this travel account, which might be the remnant of an earlier hodoeporicon that emerged from the retinue of Bakócz during and after the trip to Rome. When he penned this portion of the poem, the eulogy to Pope Julius II (I, 104–15) and the praise of Leo X (I, 120–28) might have been considered relevant, whereas they might have become anachronistic by 1519, five years after the publication of the Iulius exclusus de coelis. Similarly, the fifth canto shows signs of later redactional work: all the protagonists of the first four cantos (the king, Bakócz, János Bornemisza) disappear from this part and their place is taken by Ferenc Várdai and János Szapolyai, the two heroes extolled in the first line of the last canto.8 This lack of narrative unity might have been caused by the changes in Taurinus’s epic concept: what was first conceived as a hodoeporicon praising Cardinal Bakócz in the first canto became an epic poem exonerating the cardinal (second to fourth cantos) and finally turned into a praise of his new, Transylvanian patrons at the end of the poem. Furthermore, we might better understand Taurinus’s paradoxical stance on the peasant war if we consider his approach to this historical event as a literary creation within an ancient poetic genre with set rules. Although, according to the prologue, 6 Cf. Vilmos Fraknói, Erdo˝di Bakócz Tamás élete (Budapest: MTA, 1889), 142. 7 Taurinus made no reference whatsoever to the Bakócz’s papal ambitions and that he had arrived back to Hungary with a papal bull proclaiming a crusade, which thwarted the ongoing peace negotiations with the Turks. As Fodor and Dávid suggest, Bakócz called off the crusade after the truce with the Turks was finally made, which ultimately led to the outbreak of the peasant rebellion. See Pál Fodor and Géza Dávid, “Magyar–török béketárgyalások 1512–14-ben,” Történelmi Szemle 36, no. 3–4 (1994): 193–225. The Stauromachia mentions only that Pope Leo X gave Bakócz some vaguely named “honores,” which were accepted by Bakócz against his will (I, 129–30: “Decretos iterum Thomae Leo praebet honores / Quos ille invitus vix tandem assumpsit…”) and the text of the poem remains completely silent about his role in the crusade, which turned into a peasant rebellion. On the figure of Dózsa in the Stauromachia, see also Gabriella Erdélyi, “Tales of a Peasant Revolt. Taboos and Memories of 1514 in Hungary,” in Memory before Modernity: Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe, ed. Erika Kuijpers et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 99. 8 V. Kovács, A Dózsa-háború, 461.

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Johannes Thurzó asked him to compose a short historical compendium on the Dózsa Rebellion in Breslau, Taurinus purportedly chose a completely different, literary genre.9 Epic poetry has always considered the protagonists of any story as figures governed and guided by divine intervention, whose fate is determined on a transcendental level rather than as independent human agents with free will. The storyline of epic poems, which follow the ancient Greco-Roman generic rules, is directed by a divine mechane, a master plan of the gods, or a God, to which human characters react differently according to their personal moral qualities or their luck. Without taking into account this generic framework for the Stauromachia, we might misunderstand Taurinus’s motives and intentions in the description of the events and figures of the peasant war. In the universe of the Stauromachia, the chain of events is launched by three different agents on three different levels. First, God and the stars rule history: God, who is often called Deus astripotens (I, 395; I, 453; V, 456), is the only entity capable of ruling the stars, but he does not directly interfere in events, whereas the stars often give a foresight of things to come. Stars trigger the epic action, as the ominous Saturn is the ultimate cause of all the troubles caused by the peasants (I, 33) and the disappearance of the bad constellation leads to the end of the fight (V, 438–43). The second main reason for the peasant war in the literary account of Taurinus are the two capital sins, avarice and luxury, which gave moral foundation to the bloodshed (I, 58–75; II, 57–82).10 Third, the most important direct cause of the peasant war is Dózsa, or Zeglius according to the name given to his literary figure by Taurinus. Zeglius is directed by one single goal in the entire epic: to cause more destruction and to incite arbitrary bloodshed and uncontrolled terror wherever he appears. The epic action of the first four cantos in which Cardinal Bakócz is present is based on the rhetorical opposition of peace and war. The cardinal is the representative of peace, which he propagates through his every word: he is addressed as Pacis auctor (“the creator of peace”) by György Szatmári in the account of his entrée into Buda (I, 279) and at the beginning of the fourth canto Bakócz attacks in his poetic oration not the peasantry or Dózsa, but the war itself (IV, 6–8). On the other hand, Zeglius flies to Buda as a Fury (I, 347–48, “pernicibus alis advolat”—“he flies with swift wings”); and he convinces his followers, the peasants, simply by his appearance to opt for war instead of peace (I, 432).11 His journey to the Kunság region of Hungary escalated into bloodshed

9 Taurinus, Stauromachia, 1944. 1.: “[ J. Th.] stimulabat, ut tam initium, quam exitum plebei furoris huiusmodi caeteraque id genus omnia, quo fieri posset compendiosius, conscriberem.” 10 In the description of the latter Taurinus follows the fifth satire of Juvenal. 11 Ibid., 14: “Postponenda putant pacem dominosque perosi.” Taurinus’s biased presentation of the historical facts is even more evident if contrasted with the fact that Dózsa joined the

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without reason (I, 459–66), and his only message is war (“Evocat in bellum crudele,” I, 481), at least according to the epic account of Taurinus. Consequently, the peasantry becomes a tool and a symbol of the war („[bella] duros in nos, nostramque salutem // Spirasse agricolas, belli portenta crudelis” II, 25– 26—“the wars have inspired the strong peasants against us and our life as portents of the cruel war”) and Zeglius fills everything with Mars (III, 339). This heavy-handed opposition between Bakócz, the ambassador of peace on one side, and Zeglius, the agent of war, on the other was played out by Taurinus in order to cut all historical connections between the cardinal and the genesis of the peasant war, which broke out basically spontaneously after the furious incitement of Zeglius, at least according to the humanistic literary account. Taurinus’s relationship to the peasantry is defined by the same opposition of moral good and evil, but the role of peasants is different from Zeglius’s epic function.12 Although they are often characterized by negative expressions, the most important quality of the peasantry is not evil, but stupidity. Taurinus’s image of society consists of three classes differentiated as servi, civica turba, and regis curia/heroes—the serfs, the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy around the king’s court.13 In this social system, the peasants act as mindless servants and they are called pecus servile (III, 327)—“servile flock.” It is because of their mindless obedience that Zeglius can direct them with his evil will: “And when Zeglius deluded their souls with his persuasion, they all assented to sin” (“Atque ubi persuasos animos elusit, iniquo / Assensere omnes sceleri,” II, 207–08). At the turning point of the events, in the fourth canto, when the new constellation of the stars turns the luck of warfare, and János Bornemisza holds a menacing speech, an unnamed peasant excuses himself by saying that “we have started this war against our will and participated by constraint.”14 Allegorically, even Jupiter tries to return them to good sense: at the end of the epic, he offers Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, the possibility to help the “wretched peasantry” (plebs misella, V, 374), whom the main God sympathetically refers to as “my own laborers” (agricolis meis). Pallas nevertheless turns down the offer and Iuno asks for revenge, thus making retaliation inevitable. Taurinus’s wording and his general epic conception show that the peasants are sinful, but mindless: the origin of their sin can be traced back to Zeglius, and the peasant war is not a social conflict, but the struggle of war against peace. crusading peasant forces only at a later stage. See Gábor Barta, “Georgius Zekelto˝l Dózsa Györgyig,” Századok 109 (1975): 63–88. 12 See also Gábor Klaniczay, “Images and designations for rebellious peasants in late medieval Hungary,” in The man of many devices who wandered full many ways. Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, ed. Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebo˝k (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 119. 13 See Taurinus, Stauromachia, I, 541–46. 14 “Inviti bellum hoc partesque timore / fecimus” (Ibid., IV, 160–61).

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It is clear from the beginning of the poem that the reader is supposed to see the origin of all evil in Zeglius. He appears in the first canto as a “cunning” (dissimulans animum), “malignant” (promptus ad omne nefas), “obnoxious and unfaithful” (artemque nocendi edoctus, violare fidem) nobleman, who came to Buda with the single objective of causing trouble (I, 341–71).15 Some elements of his description deserve special attention: first, the details of Dózsa’s characteristics are derived from the depiction of Flavius Rufinus, an Eastern Roman consul who betrayed the Western Roman army of Stilicho and was therefore attacked by the late Roman poet Claudian in a short epic. The typological parallel between Rufinus and Zeglius is clear: just as Rufinus was supposed to help the Western Roman Stilicho in his efforts against the Visigoths of Alaric, though he diverted his troops from the final battle, Zeglius similarly betrayed the antibarbaric, anti-pagan crusading enterprise of the Christian nobles. Zeglius’s mischievous intentions are instigated by the hellish Muse of the poem, Megaera, similarly inspired by the In Rufinum of Claudian, where the Fury Alecto and the Vices conspire to send Megaera to infiltrate the mind of Rufinus. From this point of view, Zeglius’s figure in the Stauromachia unites the features of the literary characters of Rufinus and Megaera herself: Zeglius is not only the executor of the will of the Hell’s Devils, but he himself is the cause of the troubles—he himself is diabolic. Megaera is the Muse of Taurinus (I, 23), but not the cause of events: the real cause lies in the wicked personality of Dózsa, who is characterized by the same words, as Megaera, the devilish teacher of sins in Claudian’s epic.16 The other important typological parallel for the figure of Zeglius is Catiline: as was shown by V. Kovács a long time ago, this rebellious speech delivered at Cegléd (and often cited in the 1940s and 1950s as an example proto-communist thought) is in fact an exact poetic rephrasing of the oration of Catiline as it was rendered by Sallustius in the Conspiration of Catiline.17 In general, Taurinus repeatedly denotes all peasants in his text as monstra,18 “monstrous creatures” (monstrosis 15 The description stems from the first canto of Claudian’s In Rufinum. The works of Claudian were published in Vienna in 1510 by Johannes Camers (VD16 C4032). The margin notes applied by Taurinus to his own work resemble those in most this edition, as they employ similar rhetoric terminology in structuring the poem. The parallels in Claudian’s In Rufinum have already been cited by Zoltán Császár, A Stauromachia antik és humanista forrásai (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1937), 10, though he did not analyze them. 16 Cf. Claud. in Ruf. I, 97–100 (Meque [sc. Megaeram] etiam tradente dolos artesque nocendi / Edidicit: simulare fidem sensusque minaces, / Protegere et blando fraudem praetexere risu, / Plenus saevitiae lucrique cupidine fervens) and Taur. Staur. I, 349–56. (“Promptus ad omne nefas, cunctorum Lerna malorum, // Thesaurus scelerum, gestusque artemque nocendi // Edoctus, violare fidem sensusque minaces // Cognatam, et ficto fraudem praetexere risu…”) 17 V. Kovács, Sándor, “Taurinus és Sallustius Catiliná-ja,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 60 (1956): 319–22. 18 Gábor Klaniczay, “Images,” 119. But, as it has been noted by Ferenc Csonka, the first Hungarian translator of Taurinus’s epic, László Geréb has clearly misunderstood the text to

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caedibus, III, 186), although these descriptions seem to strike a much milder tone than those applied to Dózsa. While Dózsa is the arch-evil himself, the peasants often seem to be only the victims of his misleading rhetoric. Nevertheless, Taurinus is not an exception to the rule that not a single contemporary historical source shows a completely positive attitude toward the peasants. On the other hand, it is clear that the message of the Stauromachia is not unambiguous. Szörényi is correct to state that we must move beyond the question of pro- or anti-peasant attitudes reflected in the poem: the real question is whether there are identifiable subversive patterns under the narrative surface of the story. Most of the signs of the author’s ambiguous attitude to the history of the uprising can be revealed if we examine the intertextual motifs of the text. As is well-known, the title itself is modeled on the War of Frogs and Mice, the Batrachomyomachia, a mock epic generally attributed to Homer at the time of Taurinus, and a popular school text around 1510 at the University of Vienna, where two editions have been published.19 The protagonists of the original story, the frogs and the mice, were not enemies, as the war breaks out by accident: the careless Frog King invites a mouse to his home, but he forgets that the mouse is travelling on his shoulder while he is swimming home through a lake. The mice protest the drowning of this innocent mouse, but the king denies the entire incident. A large-scale war breaks out between the two species, which is almost won by the mice, but Zeus sends the armored troops of crabs to aid the frogs at the last moment and finally the mice retreat. A simple allegorical reading of this subtext could easily translate the main actors of Bakócz and his retinue as frogs, the peasants as mice, and the Transylvanian forces as crabs (especially if we think of the description of the armored Transylvanian forces against the weaponless— inermes—peasants). This intertextual reference to the Batrachomyomachia becomes an even stronger clue to the interpretation of the Stauromachia if we examine it in the context of the contemporary Viennese understanding of Homer’s mock epic. On November 30, 1504, Augustinus Moravus, a friend of Conrad Celtis and a patron the point that his translation is unusable. His errors include two phrases that denigrate the rebellious peasants more than it was intended by Taurinus: it is not the Hungarian peasants who imagine themselves as Pannonian Neros, but they think that they have already defeated the Pannonian Neros, i. e., the aristocrats, and “teneram frontem perfricare” means simply to lose one’s sense of shame (an expression used by Juvenal) and not “to scratch the feebleminded forehead.” Ferenc Csonka, “A Dózsa-forradalom elso˝ eposzának fordítása: fordítói tévedések a Paraszti háborúban,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 76 (1972): 664–65. 19 One edition was prepared by Joachim Vadian, a teacher (probably) and a friend of Taurinus, while the other one, which shows clear signs of Erasmianism in its dedication, was published by Bartholomaeus Pannonius. Farkas Gábor Kiss, “A Békaegérharc Bécsben a 16. század kezdetén: jegyzetek a copia oktatásáról,” in Magistrae discipuli. Tanulmányok Madas Edit tiszteletére, ed. Elo˝d Nemerkényi (Budapest: Argumentum, 2009), 167–74.

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of Taurinus, wrote a letter to Celtis discussing his latest literary-dramatic production, the Triumphus de Boemis. The soldiers of Emperor Maximilian I won a minor battle against the Czechs at Wenzenberg in 1504, and the Viennese “archhumanist” celebrated this victory with a short triumphal panegyric. Nevertheless, it was too much of a flattery for Augustine’s taste: as he claimed, one could hardly speak of a victory suiting a classical epic form, when a 14,000-strong German cavalry confronted 1,000 Czech infantry soldiers.20 Despite his discontent with Celtis’s treatment of the subject, he asked his Viennese friend to send him the poem, which he ironically called “pugnae huius ludicrum” – “a joke of a battle” or “this battle-play” (ludicrum referring both to a ridiculous event and to a comic play) – especially because he recently read a comparable poem, the Battle of Frogs and Mice, the Batrachomyomachia from a Sicilian poet,21 which one could easily adapt to this event.22 Thus, according to Augustinus, this battle was rather a farce that would suit only a mock poem, not a heroic epic.23 Although we cannot prove that the idea of representing the peasant war as a derivative of a mock epic, the Batrachomyomachia was directly taken over from him by Taurinus, this note from Augustinus’s letter shows that even regular warfare in less than equal circumstances could be reinterpreted using the generic patterns of pseudo-Homer’s mock epic. Another often-quoted intertextual reference, which might be called subversive, is the overwhelming presence of Lucan’s Pharsalia in the epic diction of the Stauromachia. Lucan was the favorite epic poet of Joachim Vadianus, the author of the De poetica et carminis ratione (1518), who exerted great influence on Taurinus, his (probably) pupil and friend through his teaching. Taurinus 20 Despite Augustinus’s reservations, Riccardo Bartolini described the battle scene in heroic terms in his courtly epic Austrias. De bello Norico. See Elisabeth Klecker, “Kaiser Maximilians Homer,” Wiener Studien 107–108 (1994–1995): 613–37. 21 It is not clear whether Augustinus referred to a contemporary poem or the mock epic attributed to Homer. The adjective Siculus (“Sicilian”) suggests that he meant the Croacus seu de bello ranarum et murium of Elysius Calentius (Luigi Gallucci), a Neapolitan poet active in Calabria and Puglia, which was written around 1448 and first published in Rome in 1503. Cf. Elisius Calentius, Opuscula Elisii Calentii Poetae Clarissimi (Rome: Ioannes de Besicken, 1503) and Elisio Calenzio, La guerra delle ranocchie. Croaco, ed. Liliana Monti Sabia (Naples: Loffredo, 2008). 22 Conrad Celtis, Der Briefwechsel des Konrad Celtis, ed. Hans Rupprich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1934), 576: “Obsecro tamen ut pugnae huius ludicrum mihi mittas. Legi enim his diebus non inelegantis cuiusdam poetae Siculi Batrachomyomachiam, cui triumphus hic Rodilardorum cum Pisophagio egregio quadrare videbitur.” The names with which Augustinus refers to the mice and frogs seem to have been derived from the De bello ranarum Croacus libellus of Elisio Calenzio. See Elisius Calentius, Opuscula, a1v-b6r. 23 Interestingly, Augustinus himself occasionally referred to his malignant enemies in the court elite as mures palatinos (“the mice in the palace”), Celtis, Briefwechsel, 566: “Nosti enim mures palatinos, quam vafri sint ad aucupanda beneficia, quamque me facile vel crimine laesae maiestatis reum arguere possint vel agere mecum ex iure manu consertum.”

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stresses the importance of Lucan’s Pharsalian epic in his dedication, too, calling it the single most influential text for his poem – a claim that has been justified by philological research. Lucan shows ambiguous attitude toward his heroes, Caesar, Pompey and Cato the Younger: Pompey and Cato the Younger represent traditional Roman values and morality, while Caesar impersonates the rebellious, mischievous and subversive powers, which ultimately win in the conflict due to the adventurous, immoral character of Caesar, who always acts with readiness (speed) and never fails to take a risk. Dózsa’s figure in Taurinus’s epic is constructed from Caesar’s temerity, audacity and immorality on one hand, and from the Stoic virtuosity of Cato the Young on the other, as Dózsa faces death, and delivers his magnificent final speech in the fifth book of the poem. Lucan’s ambiguity, his moral distrust in Caesar’s party, and his low esteem of Pompey’s leadership skills seem to be reflected in Taurinus’s representation of the first part of conflict until the arrival of the Transylvanian troops. Just like Lucan, he seems to suggest that neither side is the good side and that events are shaped by an irreversible and malicious fate. Third, the title leaf of the work, engraved especially for this publication (thus probably inspired by the author), accentuates the pivotal moment of the war, the gruesome execution of Dózsa, the only occasion in the history of the entire uprising that has been judged ambiguously by contemporary humanists. Several researchers (including Marianna D. Birnbaum and Paul Freedman) have called attention to the similarities between this depiction and the late medieval iconography of the Passion of Christ, while the metal crown has been related to the martyrdom of Saint Christopher.24 Perhaps even Taurinus hid this parallel in his text, when he wrote that the torturers of Zeglius mocked the peasant-king after putting the crown on his head, applying the very same word (illudere) which the Gospel used for the mocking of Christ.25 Such a hagiographic context would definitely elevate the merits of Dózsa and his army. We find almost contemporary examples in which the parody of passion is used to shed positive light on the suffering victim: a case in point is the passion of Martin Luther, Passio Doctoris Martini Lutheri, which appeared shortly after the Diet of Worms in

24 Marianna D. Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary in 1514? The Dózsa-Passion,” in European Iconography East and West: Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference, ed. György E. Szo˝nyi (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 91–108; Paul Freedman, “Representations of peasant and seigneurial fury in late medieval and early modern Europe,” Temas medievales 19 (2011): 79–82. See also Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 272–74; Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69–70. 25 Compare Taurinus, Stauromachia, V, 155: “descito illudunt regi” with Mt 27, 29: “et plectentes coronam de spinis, posuerunt super caput ejus, et arundinem in dextera ejus. Et genu flexo ante eum, illudebant ei, dicentes : Ave rex Judæorum.”

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152126 and represented Luther as the innocent, Christ-like victim of the process at the Diet, “who suffered by the Papists, and resurrected in the Christian hearts.”27 However, we should not forget that mock passion narratives were a popular genre in late medieval East Central Europe earlier as well. Two accounts are known from Bohemia from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which consciously parallel the execution of criminals in one case and the anti-Jewish pogrom of Prague in the other case with the Biblical narrative of the Passion. The Passio raptorum (“Passion of the Thieves”) uses Biblical elements to adorn the style of a narrative about the execution of 56 thieves who were captured near Brno in 1401. Another, still earlier narrative, Passio Judaeorum Pragensium secundum Iesˇkonem Rusticum quadratum (“Passion of the Jews of Prague according to Johnny the Peasant”), tells the story of 1389 pogrom in Prague, following the Gospels even in its title. This text, which a prominent German literary historian, Burghart Wachinger, characterized as belonging to the “darkest types of texts” (einer der finsternsten Texte des Mittelalters),28 consciously overturns the passion narrative and metes out revenge on the Jews of Prague for the Passion of Christ. The pogrom, which took place precisely on Easter, is described by putting the words of the suffering Christ into the mouth of Jews, while Christian pursuers slander the victims of the pogrom with the words used by the crowd in the Gospels.29 The cases of the Brno thieves and of the Prague Jews clearly demonstrate that the meaning of a parodistic Passion might also be a contrafactum – an imitation with an opposite conclusion, to use a medieval poetic term. Thus, it cannot be claimed that the reenactment of the Passion in the trial of Dózsa, especially in its visual representations, would necessarily bestow the aura and benefits of Christ’s suffering on the peasants.

26 Johannes Schilling: Passio Doctoris Martini Lutheri (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1989). (Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 57.). The Latin text was also published in Vienna in 1521 (VD16 ZV 22257). 27 “Lutherus passus est sub papistis, resurrexit in pectoribus Christianis,” Ibid. a8r. See also Burghart Wachinger, “Die Passion Christi und die Literatur. Beobachtungen an den Rändern der Passionsliteratur,” in Die Passion Christi in Literatur und Kunst des Spätmittelalters, ed. Walter Haug and Burghart Wachinger (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 4–5. 28 Wachinger, “Die Passion Christi”. Cf. also Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales. The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 29 See Frantisˇek Sˇujan, “Passio raptorum de Slapanicz secundum Bartoss tortorem Brunnensem,” Sborník historický 3 (1885): 245–52, 301–03; Eva Steinová, “Jews and Christ interchanged: discursive strategies in the Passio Iudeorum Pragensium,” Graeco-Latina Brunensia 17 (2012): 93–106; Passio Iudeorum Pragensium: Kritická edícia Pasˇijí prazˇských zˇidov, ed. Eva Steinova (MA thesis, Brno, 2010). Accessed on Dec 1, 2014, http://is.muni.cz/th/180028/ ff_m/; and Lucie Dolezˇalová, “Passion and Passion: Intertextual Narratives from Late Medieval Bohemia between Typology, History and Parody,” in La typologie biblique comme forme de pensée médiévale, ed. Marek Thue Kretschmer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 245–65.

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In sum, the representation of the Dózsa rebellion by Taurinus seems to be paradoxical. Of course, we do not have to suppose that every reader of the epic could have been aware of the poetic sources behind the speeches of Dózsa. We could regard them as nothing else than poetic embellishments used by Taurinus to authenticate his Classical Latin style. But even then, there remains a significant contradiction between the fierce Caesar- and Rufinus-like figure of Dózsa at the beginning and his stance as a Stoic hero at the end of the epic; and the choice of the War of the Frogs and Mice as a guiding light to the structure of the poem almost certainly defines the point of view of Taurinus. Where the modern reader would expect a panegyric of the winning party, we receive an evil anti-hero with diabolic intentions, who still proclaims his eternal fame in the moment of his death, suffering with pride and with Stoic endurance. This scene of torture and pain, to which even the woodcut of the title page calls attention by rendering it the symbolic climax of the entire story, provides the reader with the description of Zeglius’s defiance. As he says, his eternal fame will survive and “they will sing of me with great praise of the Huns all over the world, as the small king of peasants” (regulus agricolum) (V, 139–40). Previously, he announces with a similar audacity that his own Stauromachia will live as long as the fame of the poem about him survives.30 Thus, Zeglius identifies his role as the author of the events with Taurinus’s role as the author of the text, which demonstrates a strange affinity between Zeglius’s and Taurinus’s epic characters. Sándor V. Kovács tried to solve this paradox in his pioneering study in 1959 by claiming that Taurinus needed to avoid siding only with the Hungarian aristocracy in order to maintain a false semblance of neutrality and historical veracity. According to V. Kovács, “an entirely dismal characterization of Dózsa would have damaged the sense of realism in the epic,”31 which was announced in

30 As Zeglius—and not Taurinus—says: “Quantum grandoloqui durabunt vatis honores / Tantum, crede mihi, mea vivet stauromachia” (II, 199–200). In this passage, Taurinus played with the ancient poetic tradition of sphragis in which the author invokes his own work and puts his trademark on it. One of the most famous examples is the sphragis of Lucan’s Pharsalia, which is verbally paraphrased here (cf. Pharsalia, 9, 983–86.). Taurinus subverts Lucan’s idea: whereas Lucan addressed Caesar and told him that their common Pharsalia (Pharsalia nostra) will live forever, in the Stauromachia it is Zeglius, the protagonist, who speaks out of the epic text and proclaims the eternal fame of the work, which he considers his own, although it was written by Taurinus (mea vivet Stauromachia—“my Stauromachia will live”). 31 V. Kovács, “A Dózsa-háború,” 463. In fact, Taurinus does not speak about realism in the dedication. The term “servato historiae decoro” (Taurinus, Stauromachi, 1944, 3), which he uses to describe his objective, suggests only that his changes on the historical facts do not transgress the limits of decency. We can cite Erasmus as a parallel: he suggested in the De duplici copia verborum et rerum that when using fictitious prosopopoeia one should keep decency in the description. Erasmus Roterodamus, De duplici copia verborum et rerum, Ed. Betty E. Knott (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing, 1988), 212: “personam hominis

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the dedication. But did Taurinus nevertheless aim at a balanced, impartial representation of the historical events? I doubt it. Zeglius is evil down to the bone, sent to the earth by Hell, where he descends back when he dies. How much realism can we expect from the description of how he is taken in front of the three mythological judges of Hell who send him to Cocytus? How realistic is Taurinus’s poetically vivid idea that the servants of Hell’s judges have to tie up the body of Dózsa with steel shackles because its dismembered pieces are falling apart and bitten out? 32 Panegyric and epic poetry need no historical veracity and the intended evil of Dózsa’s figure was obvious from the beginning. If Taurinus simply follows the recipe of Claudian, who sends Rufinus back to Hell without furnishing him with any virtues, he could have simply handled Dózsa as the ultimate evil without any positive connotations. The question is why Taurinus did not do so. In my opinion, the answer lies in the popularity of ambiguous speech in many of the humanistic texts in this period, the most important model of which is Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly published in 1509. As is well known, Erasmus uses the figure of Folly in order to create a paradoxical and ironic mode of speech in which every human vice becomes a virtue. Folly praises all human professions for their foolishness and aimlessness, thus creating a sphere of free speech in which traditional medieval vanity literature mixes with contemporary social criticism against monks, theologians, and worldly authority. At the same time, we must not forget that the speaker of the Praise of Folly is Folly herself, thus every word of her social criticism can be taken as a lie as well. The technique of using paradoxical statements along with fictive citations and vaguely attributed opinion was often employed by Erasmus in his letter exchanges in order to express potentially dangerous political or theological statements.33 Sándor V. Kovács still doubted a stronger Erasmian influence on the work of Taurinus in his fundamental study,34 as he has found no direct proof of the presence of the Erasmus in Taurinus— which can be otherwise found in the works of several contemporary humanists in Hungary. Actually we do not have to go further than the dedication in order to find an undeniable sign of Erasmus in the Stauromachia. As Taurinus describes why he neglected serious studies and chose instead to write an epic poem on the peasant war, he says apologetically that a serious sickness prevented him from continuing his legal studies, hence he decided to take a sip of water from the procul absentis aut iam olim defuncti loquentem facimus servato decoro”). The principle of rhetoric decorum, not that of historical realism. 32 “Discissi et laniati dentibus artus // aeternis chalybum nodis artantur…” (V, 250–51). 33 On this aspect of his epistolary, see Lisa Jardine, “Concentric circles: confected correspondence and the Opus epistolarum Erasmi,” in: ea., Erasmus, man of letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 147–74. 34 V. Kovács, “A Dózsa-háború,” 457–58.

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sacred fountain of the Muses.35 Although some details and the choice of words were modified by Taurinus and some Erasmian adages were added to the Erasmian text, the story remained the same in the main lines. A tiny detail of this paraphrase of Erasmus reveals even the working method of Taurinus. When Taurinus transforms the expression “iuxta Plinium perire ratus omne id temporis, quod studio non impertiatur” (“thinking – following Pliny – that all my time is wasted that is not spent on study”), he choses a typical Roman expression, “ego autem in Plinii sententiam pedibus iturus” (“I, going with my feet in the opinion of Pliny”), recalling the habit of Roman senators who voted by gathering at several spots in the Roman senate. Erasmus included this expression in his Adagia and it was used in the explanation of the text of Sallust’s Conspiration of Catiline at the University of Vienna, where it was published in 1511, as is revealed by surviving annotated copies of the lecture texts.36 A tiny note here refers even to the “proverbs”—here the Adagia of Erasmus. Even two copies survive with more or less the same lecture notes and these notes also demonstrate that irony was part of the interpretation of texts, as both call attention to the irony hiding in the words of Marcus Cato against Caesar in the Sallustian text. While the presence of irony is no surprise in a rhetoric analysis of Sallust, these examples call attention to the fact that the rhetorical schooling taught students like Taurinus to express an opinion obliquely, contrary to the literal meaning of the text. Obviously, these Erasmian influences did not inspire a completely critical approach to the nobility or to the worldly authority in Hungary, but it was obvious to the contemporary readers that Taurinus scolded both the nobility and the peasantry. As Ulrich Fabri, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Vienna, clearly says in his paratextual poem: Crimina nobilium, quae sunt, plebisque prophanae Carpit nunc turbas, aeris inde sitim.37

(“He [Taurinus] blames now the sins of the nobles, which are present, then the revolt of the corrupt mob, and then the greed of money.”)

35 Farkas Gábor Kiss, “Constructing the Image of a Humanist Scholar: Latin Dedications in Hungary and the use of Adages (1460–1526),” in Cui dono lepidum novum?Dedicating Latin Works and Motets in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Ignace Bossuyt and Demmy Verbeke (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2008), 155–56. 36 Caius Sallustius Crispus, De coniuratione Catilinae et bello Iugurthino historiae (Vienna: Singrenius, 1511), D3v: to the sentence”pedibus iturus in sententiam Tiberii” the manuscript commentary adds: “Eras. in pro[verbiis]: pedibus in sentenciam discedere, A[ulus] Gel[llius] li.” 3. ca. 18. The two copies mentioned here are kept in the Library of the Eötvös University under the shelf mark Ant. 0502. and Ant. 0505. The copy Ant. 0502 was annotated by the Viennese student Johannes Wiert. 37 Taurinus, Stauromachia, 1519, 4v.

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Erasmus’s Folly has taught local humanists how to express their opinion obliquely, with ambiguity, without clearly defining the objective reference of their speech. The paradoxical appearance of fictive figures in political and social statements had important precedents by the time the Stauromachia was published. The author of the Apologia regis Wladislai (Apology of King Vladislaus),38 written in opposition to Queen Beatrix, is Udis, i. e., the well-known Outis, or Nobody of Homer’s Odyssey. Udis—or Nobody—speaks up against the infertile Beatrix in defense of the annulment of her marriage with King Vladislaus, claiming that even the gods of the pagan mythology stand on his side. The author, who seems to have known Greek quite well and cited Sophocles in Greek, used a wide rhetoric répertoire. Even King Ladislaus V Postumus steps forward out of the grave in the form of a prosopopoeia in order to protest against an ignoble royal line of descent,39 and Udis-Nobody tried to charm his public in Rome with a fictitious literary frame with which the local audience might have been familiar from the pasquillades. While the Apologia regis Wladislai hid only the identity of the author by letting Nobody speak, more intricate ambiguity is evoked in two contemporary works. In the comedy called Gryllus, written by Bartholomaeus Frankfordensis, a schoolmaster in Buda in 1519 (the very same year when Taurinus’s epic was published), the protagonist Gryllus is a parasite, who earns his bread by flattering and dropping useful information to his patron just as any humanistic poet would do.40 After he reveals how the son of his patron was abducted, he gets beaten and receives no award for finding the lost son. Significantly, he recites a monologue that recalls the main statements of The Praise of Folly: “pro sapiente quisque morionem agitat”—everybody is acting like a fool instead of a wise man. While most earlier and later school dramas have a moral lesson to teach to the students, Gryllus is lacking exactly this clear, undisputable moral lesson and emphasizes the stupidity and vanity of the world. 38 Edited (with many mistakes) in Udis, “Apologia regis Wladislai,” in Roszner Ervin, Régi magyar házassági jog (Budapest: Franklin, 1887), 452–79. Vilmos Fraknói attributed this work to Johann Filipec (Vilmos Fraknói, “II. Ulászló királlyá választása [The Election of King Vladislaus II],” Századok 19 (1885): 5). It is noteworthy, that both known manuscripts (Munich, BSB, clm 24106, 7r; Prague, National Library, I. D. 3., 98r) contain a work by Augustinus Moravus who was in Padua at the time of writing (1492) and the author of Udis had excellent knowledge of Greek, just as Augustinus. More recently, Miriam Hlavacˇková attributed this work to Anton Sánkfalvy, though without any serious reason: Miriam Hlavacˇková, “A diplomat in the service of the Kings of Hungary. The activity of the Bishop of ˇ asopis 58 (2010): 15– Nitra, Antony of Sˇankovce at the end of the Middle Ages,” Historický C 35. 39 Udis, Apologia, 478. (“Si Ladislaus adolescens ab inferis revocatus de suo genere gloriari posset.”) 40 For the text, see Bartholomaeus Frankfordinus Pannonius, Opera quae supersunt, ed. Anna Vargha (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1945).

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We find yet another example of ambiguous attitude in a work of Valentinus Cybeleius, a canon of Pécs, who wrote a declamation on a popular subject in the Renaissance, the Praise and Blame of Wine and Water in 1517.41 This declamation belongs to the deliberative genre of rhetoric, as it is suggested also by the subtitle of this work, in which both the pros and cons of drinking wine and water are listed.42 The genre of declamation was often used with a comical tone at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In Bologna, Filippo Beroaldo the Elder published a popular declamation on the comparative merits of a drunkard, a womanizer and a gambler,43 which became an international success and it was translated into both English and German. Antonio Urceo Codro, another professor of rhetoric at the University of Bologna, transformed this genre into a comic and rhetoric satura mixing philological subjects with moralizing themes, which he called “sermons” (sermones).44 Valentinus Cybeleius, who studied in Bologna under Giovan Battista Pio, Filippo Beroaldo’s most eminent student, imitated the satirical tone of his masters in his own declamation, as he started his short literary piece with a scene of bathos, a comical rhetoric device. According to his account, they were about to start a discussion on the various kinds of accents using Aldus Manutius’s work as a point of departure,45 while just chatting in the house of Michael, canon of Pécs. This elevated subject was suddenly dropped when they changed topic and decided to start a discussion on the comparative merits of wine and water. Significantly, the dispute is situated in Pécs, in the court of György Szatmári, the bishop, who was the patron of Valentinus. Interestingly, a contemporary Venetian dispatch (by Alvise Bon) notes about the bishop in 1519 that “he often gets drunk, because that is the typical habit of Hungarians, who become often drunk. Then they sleep four hours after lunch to get rid of the effects of wine. There is no shame here in getting drunk, because they work here

41 Valentinus Cybeleius Varasdiensis, Opera. Carmina et Opusculum de laudibus et vituperio vini et aquae, ed. Mária Révész (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1939). On the flaws of this edition, see Ibolya Bellus, “Megjegyzések Valentinus Cybeleius Opusculumának szövegéhez,” Magyar Könyvszemle 107 (1991), 120–23. 42 “…quatenus utraque secundum suos gradus vel ad laudem vel vituperium tendunt inseruntur.” 43 Filippo Beroaldo, Declamatio ebriosi, scortatoris et aleatoris (Bononiae: Benedictus Hectoris, 1499). 44 Antonio Urceo Codro, Orationes seu Sermones (Bologna: Ioannes Antonius Platonides Benedictus, 1502). See also W. S. Blanchard, “O miseri philologi: Codro Urceo’s Satire on Professionalism and Its Context,” Journal of Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 91–122. 45 When Valentinus speaks of the ten kinds of accents, he refers to Aldus Manutius’s Institutiones grammaticae. Cf. Aldus Manutius, Institutionum grammaticarum libri IV (Paris: Stephanus, 1531), 341.

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in the morning and not after lunch.”46 If Alvise Bon’s information is correct, Valentine’s choice of topic seems to be atypical for a client-patron relationship and the ambiguity of the message might seem surprising if the text is interpreted within its direct social context. What is common in all these cases is that the literary character of the written text, its fictional framing and the use of poetic allusions allowed a greater ambiguity of meaning, which in turn created a previously unprecedented richness of possible interpretations. We know that several humanists of the age – most significantly Erasmus – used this strategy consciously when trying to convey ambiguous, equivocal messages to their audience. These humanistic models of fictional framing provided models for redefining the rules of communication between the patron and the humanist client. They allowed the construction of messages that might have been perceived as ambiguous, especially in highly educated literary circles such as that of Bishop Johann Thurzó and his friends in Neisse.47 Such ambiguities were not necessarily inspired by a need for the freedom of speech. Rather, the career of Taurinus, who changed patrons repeatedly in his lifetime, teaches us that humanists were confronted with the need to present their works in new political and social environments and in front of new patrons and freshly acquired friends. Intertextual models could be used to create tension between the intended meaning of the text and the context of the imitated original, and several literary genres (as declamation, or dialogue) were capable of conveying a nuanced, variegated meaning to the audience. In all these cases, literary framing gave opportunity to the authors to leave the exact intention of the work and the position of the author open.

Bibliography Primary Sources Balogh, István. Velencei diplomaták Magyarországról (1500–1526) [Venetian Diplomats on Hungary (1500–1526]. Szeged: Private edition, 1929. Beroaldo, Filippo. Declamatio ebriosi, scortatoris et aleatoris. Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris, 1497. Calentius, Elisius. Opuscula Elisii Calentii Poetae Clarissimi. Rome: Ioannes de Besicken, 1503. 46 Balogh István, Velencei diplomaták Magyarországról (1500–1526) (Szeged: private edition, 1929), 29. 47 On Johann Thurzó and his court, see Martin Rothkegel, Der lateinische Briefwechsel des Olmützer Bischofs Stanislaus Thurzó. Ein ostmitteleuropäische Humanistenkorrespondenz der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007), 67–68.

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Calenzio, Elisio. La guerra delle ranocchie: Croaco. Edited by Liliana Monti Sabia. Naples: Loffredo, 2008. Celtis, Conrad. Der Briefwechsel des Konrad Celtis. Edited by Hans Rupprich. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1934. Codro, Antonio Urceo. Orationes seu Sermones. Bologna: Ioannes Antonius Platonides Benedictus, 1502. Cybeleius Varasdiensis, Valentinus. Opera. Carmina et Opusculum de laudibus et vituperio vini et aquae. Ed. Mária Révész. Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1939. Erasmus Roterodamus. De duplici copia verborum et rerum. Edited by Betty E. Knott. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing, 1988. Frankfordinus Pannonius, Bartholomaeus. Opera quae supersunt. Edited by Anna Vargha. Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1945. Manutius, Aldus. Institutionum grammaticarum libri IV. Paris: Stephanus, 1531. Rothkegel, Martin. Der lateinische Briefwechsel des Olmützer Bischofs Stanislaus Thurzó. Ein ostmitteleuropäische Humanistenkorrespondenz der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2006. Sallustius Crispus, Caius. De coniuratione Catilinae et bello Iugurthino historiae. Vienna: Singrenius, 1511. Eötvös University Library, Budapest, Ant. 0502. Schilling, Johannes, ed. Passio Doctoris Martini Lutheri. Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1989. Steinová, Eva, ed. “Passio Iudeorum Pragensium: Kritická edícia Pasˇijí prazˇských zˇidov,” MA thesis. Brno: 2010. Accessed on Dec 1, 2014. http://is.muni.cz/th/180028/ff_m/. Sˇujan, Frantisˇek. “Passio raptorum de Slapanicz secundum Bartoss tortorem Brunnensem.” Sborník historický 3 (1885): 245–52, 301–03. Taurinus Olomucensis, Stephanus. Stauromachia id est Cruciatorum servile bellum. Vienna: Singrenius, 1519. Taurinus Olomucensis, Stephanus. Stauromachia id est Cruciatorum servile bellum. Edited by. L. Juhász. Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1944. Udis. “Apologia regis Wladislai.” In Ervin Roszner. Régi magyar házassági jog [Old Hungarian Marriage Law]. Budapest: Franklin, 1887, 452–79. Vadianus, Joachim. “De poetica et carminis ratione.” Bd. 1. Kritische Ausgabe. Edited by Peter Schäffer. Munich: Fink, 1973.

Secondary Literature Barta, Gábor. “Georgius Zekelto˝l Dózsa Györgyig” [From Georgius Zekel to György Dózsa]. Századok 109 (1975): 63–88. Bellus, Ibolya. “Megjegyzések Valentinus Cybeleius Opusculumának szövegéhez” [Comments Regarding the Text of Valentinus Cybeleius Opusculuma]. Magyar Könyvszemle 107 (1991): 120–23. Birnbaum, Marianna D. “A Mock Calvary in 1514? The Dózsa-Passion.” In European Iconography East and West: Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference, edited by György E. Szo˝nyi, 91–108. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Blanchard, W. S. “O miseri philologi: Codro Urceo’s Satire on Professionalism and Its Context.” Journal of Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 91–122.

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Császár, Zoltán. A Stauromachia antik és humanista forrásai [The Ancient and Humanist Sources of The Stauromachia]. Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1937. Csonka, Ferenc. “A Dózsa-forradalom elso˝ eposzának fordítása: fordítói tévedések a Paraszti háborúban” [The Translation of the First Epic of the Dózsa Revolution. Translation Errors in the Peasant War]. Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 76 (1972): 653–80. – “A Stauromachia utóélete a magyar irodalomban” [The Afterlife of the Stauromachia in Hungarian Literature]. In Klaniczay-Emlékkönyv. Tanulmányok Klaniczay Tibor emlékére [Klaniczay Memorial Book. Studies in Memory of Tibor Klaniczay], edited by J. Jankovics, 143–67. Budapest: Balassi, 1994. Dolezˇalová, Lucie. “Passion and Passion: Intertextual Narratives from Late Medieval Bohemia between Typology, History and Parody.” In La typologie biblique comme forme de pensée medievale, edited by Marek Thue Kretschmer, 245–65. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Fodor, Pál, and Géza Dávid. “Magyar–török béketárgyalások, 1512–1514-ben” [Hungarian-Turkish Peace Negotiations, 1512–1514]. Történelmi Szemle 36 (1994): 193–226. Fraknói, Vilmos. “Ulászló királlyá választása” [Election of Ulászló II as King]. Századok 19 (1885): 1–20, 97–115, 193–211. – Erdo˝di Bakócz Tamás élete [Life of Tamás Erdo˝di Bakócz]. Budapest: MTA, 1889. Freedman, Paul. Images of the Medieval Peasant. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999. – “Representations of Peasant and Seigneurial Fury in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Temas medievales 19 ( 2011): 79–82. Hlavacˇková, Miriam. “A Diplomat in the Service of the Kings of Hungary. The Activity of the Bishop of Nitra, Antony of Sˇankovce, at the End of the Middle Ages.” Historický ˇ asopis 58 (2010): 15–35. C Housley, Norman. Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Jankovits, László and László Szörényi. “A megíratlan és a megírt magyar tárgyú eposz 1519: Megjelenik Stephanus Taurinus Stauromachiája” [The Unwritten and Written Epic with a Hungarian Theme. 1519: The Stauromachia of Stephanus Taurinus is Published]. A magyar irodalom történetei. 1. köt, A kezdetekto˝l 1800-ig [Histories of Hungarian Literature, Vol 1. From the Beginning to 1800], edited by László Jankovits and Géza Orlovszky, 195–203. Budapest: Gondolat kiadói Kör, 2007. Jardine, Lisa. “Concentric Circles: Confected Correspondence and the Opus epistolarum Erasmi.” In Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print, 147–74. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Kiss, Farkas Gábor. “Constructing the Image of a Humanist Scholar: Latin Dedications in Hungary and the use of Adages (1460–1526).” In Cui dono lepidum novum? Dedicating Latin Works and Motets in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Ignace Bossuyt and Demmy Verbeke, 141–59. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2008. – “A Békaegérharc Bécsben a 16. század kezdetén: jegyzetek a copia oktatásáról” [The Batrachomyomachia in Vienna at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century: Notes on Teaching of the Copia]. In Magistrae discipuli. Tanulmányok Madas Edit tiszteletére [Magistrae discipuli. Studies in Honor of Edit Madas], edited by Elo˝d Nemerkényi, 167– 74. Budapest: Argumentum, 2009. – “Janus Pannonius Guarino-panegyricusa az egyetemi oktatásban” [The Guarino-panegyricusa of Janus Pannonius in University Instruction]. Lymbus 9 (2011): 17–41.

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Klaniczay, Gábor. “Images and Designations for Rebellious Peasants in Late Medieval Hungary.” In The man of Many Devices Who Wandered Full Many Ways. Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, edited by Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebo˝k. Budapest: CEU Press 1999, 115–27. Klecker, Elisabeth. “Kaiser Maximilians Homer.” Wiener Studien 107–108 (1994–1995): 613–37. Knauer, Georg N. “Iter per miscellanea: Homer’s Batrachomyomachia and Johannes Reuchlin.” In The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, edited by Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, 23–36. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Rubin, Miri. Gentile Tales. The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Steinová, Eva. “Jews and Christ Interchanged: Discursive Strategies in the Passio Iudeorum Pragensium.” Graeco-Latina Brunensia 17 (2012): 93–106. Szörényi, László. “L’influenza della Farsaglia di Lucano sull’epopea tardoumanista latina in Ungheria (Stephanus Taurinus: Stauromachia)” Neohelicon 27 (2000): 97–111. V. Kovács, Sándor. “Taurinus és Sallustius Catiliná-ja” [The Catilina of Taurinus and Sallustius]. Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 60 (1956): 319–22. – “A Dózsa-háború humanista eposza” [The Humanist Epic of the Dózsa War]. Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 63 (1959): 451–73. Wachinger, Burghart. “Die Passion Christi und die Literatur. Beobachtungen an den Rändern der Passionsliteratur.” In: Die Passion Christi in Literatur und Kunst des Spätmittelalters, edited by Walter Haug and Burghart Wachinger, 1–20. Tübingen: De Gruyter, 1993.

László Szörényi

Das Epos „Matthiados carmina heroica“ von Ioannes Bocatius (Kaschau, 1614)

Der Dichter, Geschichtsschreiber und Politiker Ioannes (oder Johannes) Bocatius – mit deutschem Namen Johann Bock – wurde am 25. Dezember 1569 als Sohn eines deutschen Vaters und einer serbischen Mutter in der Stadt Vetzschau in der Provinz Lausitz (lateinisch: Lusatia) geboren. Er studierte in Dresden, dann in Iglau. Am letzteren Ort studierte er bei Professor Miklós Gäbel, dem er – als dieser im Jahre 1590 nach Kremnitz (ungarisch: Körmöcbánya, slowakisch: Kremnica) gerufen wurde – nach Ungarn folgte. 1592 kehrte er zwar für kurze Zeit nach Deutschland zurück, 1593 war er allerdings bereits in Eperies (ungarisch: Eperjes, slowakisch: Presˇov) Lehrer, vom folgenden Jahr an Schuldirektor und hielt sich auch in Schemnitz (ungarisch: Selmecbánya, slowakisch: Banska Sˇtiavnica) auf. 1596 erwarb er an der Universität Wittenberg den Magistergrad. Von Rudolf II. erhielt er zuerst den Titel „poeta laureatusi,“ 1598 wurde er dann in den Adelsstand erhoben. Von 1599 an war er in Kaschau (ungarisch: Kassa, slowakisch: Kosˇice) für ein halbes Jahr Rektor, dann dreimal Stadtschreiber. Und zweimal wurde er zum Bürgermeister gewählt. Während seines Aufenthalts in Kaschau erschien im Jahre 1599 sein bekanntestes Werk „Hungaridos libri poematum V.“ (Bartfeld, ungarisch: Bártfa, slowakisch: Bardejov). In diesem warnt er die Völker Westeuropas mit dem bekanntesten Topos der Turcica-Fachliteratur: Wenn sie nicht helfen, dann werden sie die nächsten Opfer der türkischen Eroberung sein. Im Jahre 1604 nahm sich der Hauptmann von Ostungarn Barbiano di Belgioioso – einen Befehl des Kaisers erzwingend – mit Gewalt die Hauptkirche von Kaschau von den Protestanten zurück. Bocatius und andere Führer der Stadt protestierten erfolglos am Prager Hof. Infolge der Geschehnisse ließ Bocatius die Stadttore vor Belgioioso, der in Kaschau Zuflucht sucht, verschließen und öffnete sie erst István Bocskai, dem sich gegen den Kaiser erhebenden ungarischen Potentaten, der kurze Zeit zum Fürsten von Siebenbürgen, dann zum Fürsten von ganz Ungarn gewählt wurde. 1605 nahm er an den Verhandlungen von Rákosmezo˝ zwischen dem türkischen Großwesir und Bocskai teil und in November am Landtag von Karpfen (ungarisch: Korpona, slowakisch: Krupina). Damit begann sein Leidensweg. Da er gut Deutsch und Latein sprach und kein Aristokrat war (also ohne Aufsehen zu erwecken reisen

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konnte), wurde er mit der heiklen Aufgabe betraut, als Gesandter zu den deutschen Reichskurfürsten zu gehen und die gegen den Kaiser gerichteten antiungarischen Verleumdungen zu dementieren. Ein bezahlter Spion haftete sich an seine Fersen. Während der Reise ließ ihn Rudolf II. gefangen nehmen und in den Weißen Turm des Prager Hradschin sperren. Die ungarischen Städte und die ungarische Aristokratie betrieben gleichermaßen seine Freilassung – aber ohne Erfolg. Auch seine Frau versuchte alles, um seine Freilassung zu erreichen. Schließlich, nach einer fünfjährigen schweren Haft, entkam er am 1. Dezember 1610. Die Einzelheiten sind bis heute im Dunklen. (Es ist vorstellbar, dass ihm der damals ebenfalls in Prag internierte ehemalige Fürst von Siebenbürgen Zsigmond Báthory behilflich war.) 1611 erhielt er von Palatin György Thurzó einen Schutzbrief und die Stadt Kaschau verpflichtete ihn zu einem Treueschwur, nahm ihn aber wieder in die Reihen der Bürger auf. Von da an erhielt er aber keinerlei städtische Ämter und Würden mehr. Ab 1613 war er Direktor der Kaschauer Schule. 1618 legte er dieses Amt nieder und wurde zum Geschichtsschreiber des Siebenbürger Fürsten Gábor Bethlen. Als der Fürst nach Ausbruch des Dreißigjährigen Krieges gegen die Habsburger in den Kampf zog, folgte Bocatius ihm in sein Lager. Dabei verstarb er plötzlich am 12. November 1621 – aus ungeklärten Gründen – in mährischen Ungarisch Brod (tschechisch: Uherský Brod).1 Bocatius griff in seinem riesigen dichterischen Lebenswerk nicht nur unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Janustradition auf die Anfänge des ungarischen Humanismus des Hunyadi-Zeitalters zurück, sondern er gelangte – wie dies die jetzt zu behandelnde Matthiados carmina heroica beweist2 – auf der Spur des Matthiaskults zurückgehend auch zum italienischen Humanisten Alessandro Cortesi (lateinisch lautet sein Name Alexander Cortesius), den er für den Ur-Initiator aller MatthiasLobpreisungen und – übertragen – aller historischer Epen mit ungarischen Themen hielt, und aus dessen Namen er gar ein griechisches Wort schuf: χορτισιάζειν („auf die Art und Weise Cortesis dichten“).3 Im Vorwort, das auf zwölf Strophen geplant war, das vor der als wirkliches Vergilius’sches Werk gedachten Dichtung verfasst wurde, das als bescheidenes empfehlendes kleines Vorwort (Praefatiuncula dedicatoria) bezeichnet wurde und das an den Kaschauer Hauptmann Zsigmond Forgách gerichtet war,4 verherrlicht er aber nicht nur das aus dem 15. Jahrhundert stammende dichterische Musterbild des Italieners, den er allerdings für einen ungarischen Untertanen hielt und mit Blick auf den auf alle Fälle notwendig war, möglichst nachdrücklich eine enge Parallel zwischen dem Ersten, also Matthias Hunyadi, und dem Zweiten, also Matthias von Habsburg, zu ziehen, 1 Über die Biographie des Dichters s. Csonka, Ioannis Bocatii, 9–28; cf. Bocatius, Öt év börtönben. 2 Bocatius, Opera quae exstant omnia, 750–802. 3 Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 750. 4 Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 750f.

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sondern er verherrlichte auch einen lebenden ungarischen Zeitgenossen, Illés Berger (Elias Berger, 1562–1644).5 Er hob nachdrücklich hervor, dass gerade diese Art der Dichtung – also das Heldenepos – sein oberstes Ziel sei, weil nur ein Mann, der von einem Dichter, der in dieser Gattung schöpferisch tätig sei, besungen werde, die Horatius’sche Zielsetzung erreichen könne, nämlich unsterblich zu werden. Als Gegenstand wählte er also König Matthias II. In der zuerst auf Holländisch, dann 2009 in ungarischer Übersetzung erschienen Monografie („Az ismeretlen korona“, also „Die unbekannte Krone“) des jungen Forschers Kees Teszelszky hat dieser bewiesen, dass Elias Berger aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach Matthias II., also früher nur Erzherzog Matthias bzw. die höchste Verbindungsperson zwischen dem Statthalter Ungarns und der ungarischen Aristokratie war, der als bekränzter Dichter und als königlicher Geschichtsschreiber in seinen lateinischsprachigen Vers- und Prosawerken jene Ideologie formte, mit deren Hilfe Matthias schließlich die Oberhand über seinen älteren Bruder, den in Prag residierenden Kaiser und König Rudolf, gewann, und sich schließlich 1608 mit Erfolg die ungarische Krone, mit der er schließlich in Preßburg gekrönt wurde, verschaffte. (Sein diesbezügliches Hauptwerk ist die 1608 in Wien herausgegebene Abhandlung über den Ursprung, Peregrination und Rückkehr der Heiligen Krone, die Teszelszky auch übersetzte.) 6 Bocatius macht auf alle Fälle in seinem kleinen Vorwort die sich verbergende Natur Bergers fühlbar, als er dessen Familiennamen aus dem deutschen Verb „bergen“ (also verbergen) ableitet.7 Er gestaltet die epische Handlung auch durch eine riesige Zahl von lyrischen Elementen bunt und seine Sprache archaisiert kraftvoll. Dem wird auch durch die Verwendung einer Rechtschreibung, die an Ennius oder Plautus erinnert, und von hauptsächlich aus dem Griechischen stammenden Wörtern Nachdruck verliehen. Daneben ist er auch den exotischsten mythologischen Rätseln angetan. Das I. Buch besteht aus 763 Hexametern und trägt den Titel „Agonalia“.8 (Die Idee zu diesem Titel stammt aus „Fasti“ von Ovid bzw. aus „Saturnalia“ von Macrobius.) Die erste Einheit (Vers 1 bis 18) schildert die schrecklichen Leiden, in die der Fünfzehnjährige Krieg – den die ausländische Fachliteratur zumeist als den „Langen Türkenkriegs Rudolfs“ zu bezeichnen pflegt – Ungarn stürzte, und zwar als Angriff der von Bellona und Erinnys geführten Ungeheuer. Umschrieben gesteht er auch ein, dass sich auch ein Teil der ungarischen inneren Kräfte der türkischen Barbarei als Verbündete angeschlossen hätten. Die nächste Einheit (fünf Zeilen) verurteilt jene eigentümliche ungarische Gemütsverfassung, gemäß der die einander gegenüberstehenden Parteien sich gegenseitig als Verräter qua5 6 7 8

Cf. Szörényi, L’epopea di Elia Berger, 535–543. Teszelszky, Az ismeretlen korona, 143–163. Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 751: „Nilne nobis tu Bergere? Quid cum nominis omine occultas?“ Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 751–770.

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lifizieren. Aber auch er selbst hat nicht den Mut, dem Übel zu entrinnen. Anders ausgedrückt: Auch als Person, die im Ausland geboren ist, fühlte er sich als Ungar! Danach (Vers 24 bis 33) vergleicht er den Krieg mit einem mit Homer’schen Gleichnis verwüstenden, alles verzehrenden Waldbrand bzw. mit einer unaufhaltsamen Flut, und anschließend macht er in einem vierzeiligen Teil die Abwesenheit des Hofes im Ausland als Hauptfaktor für die Unsicherheit verantwortlich, bzw. die Tatsache, dass Rudolf nicht einmal gewillt war, Prag zu verlassen. Der darauf folgende Teil (Vers 38 bis 63) charakterisiert den eigentümlichen Krieg in Ungarn mit den antiken Beispielen von Tugend und Schuld. Dann (Vers 69 bis 94) stellt er den Segen des Friedens den riesigen, durch den Krieg hervorgerufenen Verbrechen gegenüber. Anschließend spricht er erstmals seine Haupthelden Matthias an! Mit der Umkehrung eines von Ovid übernommenen Gleichnisses vergleicht er ihn mit einem Hirsch, dem es gelang, dem Netz der Jäger zu entkommen. Gerade deshalb müsse er eigentlich über ihn das Epos des Friedens schreiben, und dies sei eine Aufgabe, die auch die Fähigkeiten Homers übersteigen würden, Virgil würde sie aber mit Freuden auf sich nehmen. Das Verdienst von Matthias sei eigentlich der Sieg ohne Blutvergießen, der Triumphzug ohne Zerstörung, die Rettung der Bürger. Zu dieser außerordentlichen und ungewöhnlichen Aufgabe ersucht er um die Hilfe von Muse und Apollo (Vers 95 bis 234). Dann hebt er – nicht in chronologischer Reihenfolge, sondern nur unter Hervorhebung der Hauptmomente – diejenigen Ereignisse des Langen Krieges hervor, bei denen auch Matthias eine herausragende Rolle spielt (bis 178). Und dann blickt er auf die andere Seite, er lässt den gerissenen Sultan selbst zu Wort kommen. Auch er strebt nach Frieden, aber natürlich deshalb, um für später neue Kraft zu sammeln. Aus seinem Munde haben das Lob der „Vorsichtigkeit“ Rudolfs bzw. die Verdammung der aus seinem Blickwinkel unzuverlässigen ungarischen und siebenbürgischen Verbündeten natürlich einen negativen Sinn. Das Endergebnis ist schließlich auch das, dass er – wenn auch zähneknirschend – gezwungen ist, den christlichen Feind um Frieden zu bitten (Vers 179–224). Es folgt ein langer Kriegsrat. Zuerst erhalten die kriegsbefürwortenden Ungarn, die blutrünstig hetzen, das Wort. Sie beklagen lediglich die leere kaiserliche Kasse, sie vertrauen aber auf die Hilfe des mit den Türken im Krieg stehenden Persiens (Vers 225–299). Dann erheben die Anhänger des Friedens ihre Stimme. Sie verurteilen ihre kriegsbefürwortenden Gegner mit einem Wort griechischer Herkunft als Wolfsfisch oder als großmäuligen Fisch, sie brandmarken sie in übertragenem Sinne – so verwendete Plautus dieses Wort – als Zuhälter. Sie halten sich für gute Kapitäne und sehen den Ausweg in einem Bündnis mit den österreichischen, mährischen und ungarischen Ständen (Vers 300–338). Dann folgt die ungezügelte und wilde Hajduckenrede; es ist sprachlich besonders aufregend, wenn sich ungarische Schimpfwörter wie „deutschfreundlich“ oder „Verräter“ in den lateinischen Text mischen, ganz zu schweigen von „Ziegen-

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bock“, was eine ziemlich respektlose Bezeichnung ist, alleine schon deshalb, weil der Ziegenbock das – bei allen Möglichkeiten dargestellte – Sternkreiszeichen von Kaiser Rudolf und so auch sein Wappentier war. Es ist eine ausgezeichnete dichterische Lösung, dass Bocatius auch das Schimpfwort von Belgiojoso in den Mund des Hajduckenführers legt, den die Ungarn nur als Barbel (also Barbier) János ( Johannes) verspotten und der seit der denkwürdigen Kaschauer Kirchenbesetzung der meistverschworene Feind Bocatius’ war. Er erwähnt aber noch György Székely, also auch den Aufstand des christlichen Heeres Dózsas, als furchterregende Vision, also die mögliche Ausrottung der Adeligen. (Diesen Redner schlagen die anderen auf alle Fälle nieder.) Bocatius erinnerte nicht zufällig an Dózsa, denn auch am Ende des Vorworts ermahnt er mit einer eindeutigen Umschreibung, dass das Jahr der Abfassung des Werkes, als 1614, der 100. Jahrestag des schrecklichen Bauernkriegs ist! 9 Der Titel des zweiten Liedes ist „Triumphus“ und besteht aus 1180 Zeilen.10 Es beginnt mit dem zweiten Hilfeersuchen. Er ersucht zum Singen der Friedenspalme, also des Siegeszeichen, Apollo dadurch um Hilfe, dass dieser anstelle des bisher verwendeten Cembalo die neuen Saiten auf der Laute des Dichters stimmen soll. Er erwähnt erneut Hunyadi, also Matthias I., unter dessen Patronat Cortesius mit seiner wagemutigen Stimme an sein dichterisches Werk ging, während sein Hauch derjenige des erhabenen Maro war und er mit seiner Kunst auch an ihn heranreichte. Seine jetzige Aufgabe ist aber noch schwieriger als bei seinem dichterischen Vorgänger, weswegen die gesteigerte Hilfe Gottes und der Musen notwendig ist. (Es ist zu bemerken, dass Bocatius mit dem Hinweis auf Matthias Corvinus bzw. mit seiner Lobpreisung, die die Akzeptanz und Heroisierung von Matthias II. gleichsam fundiert, bereits früher begann, und zwar damals, als er 1611 – König und Kaiser Matthias II. gewidmet – das von Galeotto Marzio über König Matthias verfasste Buch herausgab, das dieser umbrische Humanist, der bei mehreren Gelegenheiten lange Zeit am Hofe von Matthias verbrachte, über die tapferen und geistreichen Handlungen und Taten des Königs schrieb, und das bereits damals, 1563, im Druck des Humanisten Zsigmond Torda von Gyalu erschien.) In der ersten umfangreichen Einführung der Handlung des Gesangs lobpreist er die Werke des Friedens in diesem außergewöhnlichen Triumphzug. Der gewöhnlich siegreiche Kriegsgott Mars wird hier zu Apollo. Er verweist eindeutig darauf, dass er bei der Niederschrift auch Werke der Bildenden Kunst – ganz offensichtlich Stiche – verwendet habe. Da Rudolf 9 Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 751: „Dignare tuo lumine, Comes Illustrissime, puppam hanc, in meo quadromestri vel ulterius fotam puerperio. Deus ille coeli et iste soli te, tuam, caetera et vestram Maria-Franciscam. Dabam meae domi Dominica: Nemo potest dominis pariter servire suobus. Quod erat pridie tertii tui comitatus Epperiessini solenniter adepti. Anno 1614, quo ante c[entum] crucigeri nebulones domiti et mancipati.“ 10 Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 770–799.

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genau am Tage des ungarischen heiligen Königs, am Tage des Heiligen Ladislaus (László), am 27. Juli, den Ungarn bzw. Matthias die Krone zurückgab, schafft dies für Bocatius eine Gelegenheit für einen historischen Überblick, angefangen vom ersten, noch heidnischen König Attila bzw. vom ersten christlichen Herrscher, dem Heiligen Stephan (István), bis zur Gegenwart, also bis zum bald zu krönenden Aeneas Austrius, also bis zu Matthias. Bei seinem Namen hebt er nur Andreas II. aus der Vergangenheit hervor, da er das Apostolische Doppelkreuz ins ungarische Wappen einfügte. Den größten Teil dieses Gesangs macht die detaillierte Darstellung des Triumphzuges aus, der für Matthias und die mit ihm und mit der Krone triumphal zurückkehrenden ungarischen, mährischen und österreichischen Truppen in Wien veranstaltet wurde. Aufgrund meiner bisherigen Forschungen ist es mir noch nicht gelungen, das Bild bzw. die Stichreihe zu finden, dessen bzw. deren Hersteller Bocatius auch benennt (Strauss), und der vermutlich einen ganz monumentalen Zug, der viele Triumphbögen, Kulissen, Bühnen, Embleme usw. erforderte, plante. Bocatius war natürlich nicht zugegen, denn er saß währenddessen im Gefängnis und bemerkt daher auch scharf, dass Matthias – da man ihn seine Lage verschwieg – ihn nicht habe begnadigen können bzw. nicht vom uralten Recht und Brauch der Freilassung habe Gebrauch machen können. Aus der Dichtung können wir auch ersehen, dass der materielle Unterstützer der ganzen Reihe von Feierlichen – mit heutigen Worten: ihr Sponsor – Lazarus Henckel von Donnersmarck der Ältere war, der aus der Zips, aus Leutscheu (ungarisch: Lo˝cse, slowakisch Levocˇa) stammte, den adeligen Vornamen von Donnersmarkt (ungarisch Szepescsütörtökhely, slowakisch: Spisˇský Sˇtvrtok) erhielt, Kopf einer steinreichen Familie war und der – als materieller Hauptunterstützer des Kaiserhauses – zusammen mit seiner Familie protestantisch bleiben durfte. (Meiner Meinung nach spielte die großzügige Geste der Finanzierung der Wiener Feierlichkeiten unbedingt eine Rolle darin, dass Matthias im folgenden Jahr (1609) Henckel in den Rang eines Barons erhob.) Vom dritten Gesang „Coronatio“ blieben nur anderthalb Zeilen erhalten, danach folgen astrologische, zahlenmystische und bildliche Verse, die Matthias lobpreisen bzw. die Bedeutung des mit den Türken geschlossenen Friedens bekräftigen. Und der Schlussvers des Bandes ist eine Erklärung der berühmten Parole von Kaiser Rudolf (Amat victoria curam), die mit einer geschickten Rabulistik auf Matthias verwendet wird.11 11 Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 801f.: „Otia non quaerit, sed amat victoria curam, / Post Martem vigil armorum custosque triumphi. / Nec minor est virtus, quam vincere, parta tueri. / Rex hoc Matthias docet invictissimus armis. // Quid grus irrequieta pedem notat ista lapillum / Se sopitam oblita gerit, requiescat út alis / Tamquam sub clypeo caput hic mos nempe dynastis, / Haec cura usque bonis voctoribus, omnia cautis. // O felix, pacis qui tempore bella revolvens, / Ingenteisque animo dux concipit anxia curas / Corda, adverseum omnis ventura pericula

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Zum Schluss der Erörterung der Struktur und Handlung des Epos müssen wir einen Augenblick auf das kurze Vorwort zurückkommen, auf dessen zweiten Teil, der der Benennung der literarischen Muster folgt. Aus diesem können wir nämlich verstehen, warum es Bocatius für notwendig, ja für unverzichtbar erachtete, sechs Jahre nach Wiedererlangung der Krone bzw. nach der Krönung von Mattias II. die damaligen Ereignisse als aktuell erneut vor Augen zu führen. Den Schlüssel sehe ich hier in der Person des Mäzens des Werkes, Zsigmond Forgách, Kaschauer Hauptmann und Landesrichter. Im erwähnten „Vorwörtchen“ spricht ihn Bocatius nämlich so an: „Warum auch bin ich selbst derart vorbereitet (ich kehre dahin zurück, von wo ich ausgegangen bin), das siehst Du, gnädiger Herr Graf, selbst; ich mit meinem Gesang, der nämlich an ein Gänse-Geschrei mit meiner ganzen Kraft erinnert (das ist natürlich eine Anspielung auf das einstige Geschrei der Gänse, die das römische Kapitol retteten), soll jenen mich grob und ungehobelt angreifenden, aus dem Scythien stammenden und mich mit bedrohlicher Absicht ohne Muse (diese Wort schreibt er auf Griechisch) verfolgenden Ungeheuern entgegentreten, auch dann, wenn ich als Einäugiger nur ein Führer unter Blinden bin, ich mich aber auch nicht von jeglichem triumphalen Sieger davon abhalten lasse, dass auch ich in Triumphgeschrei ausbreche, und, wenn auch aus der Ferne, dem Triumphzug folge.“12 Meiner Meinung nach geht es hier um mehr, als um die ständige vorwurfsvolle Beschwörung jener Nachteile Bocatius’, die ihn nach seiner Flucht und Wiederaufnahme in der Kreis der Kaschauer Bürger daran hinderten, seine Laufbahn fortzusetzen. Vielmehr geht es darum, dass der Palatin, der protestantische Thurzó, eine langwierigen Kampf gegen den katholischen und außerordentlich hitzköpfigen Zsigmond Forgách führte. Damals ermutigte Forgách nämlich den Siebenbürger István Kendi zu einer Erhebung gegen Gábor Báthory und dann zu einem erfolglosen Feldzug, bei dem die Hälfte der Armee des königlichen Ungarn vernichtet wurde. Der Landtag von 1613 musste erneut mit großer Kraft die Gesetze von 1608 beschützen! (D. h. den Wiener Frieden, der zwischen Bocskai und – nominell – Rudolf, in Wirklichkeit Matthias, zustand kam bzw. den Friedensvertrag von Zsitvatorok mit den Türken.) Thurzó musste ständig seinen eigenen Kompetenzbereich als Palatin, der einen Eckstein der ständischen causas. / Tela minus praevisa nocent. Palamedias hoc vult. // Otia post bellum generosa negotia tractant, / Emendant moreis, ius dicunt, arma reformant. / Cum Themide alma Ceres, Bacchusque recrescere gaudent. / Et quaeramus, amat quare victoria curas? // Victor amat curas indefessosque laboreis / Pro regno populisque, focos defensat et aras, / Assertoque paterque suis verissimus oris. / Hoc rex Austriacis, Moravis et, maxime, es Hunnis. // Caesarii, hoc emblema ducis fratrisque Rudolphi, / Successoris item sceptri triplicisque coronae.“ 12 Bocatius, Öt év börtönben, 751: „Quid sim ipse animatus (redeo, unde digressus), C[omes] Illustrissime, vides; qui pro virili conto meo anserino adgrassantibus ruditatis et cruditatis, e Scythia oriundis, et nos anhelantibus, αμούσοις monstris resistere satago, luscus inter caecos capitaneus, ab nemine victore triumphante prohibendus dicere IO et a longe pompam comitari.“

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Verfassung des Landes bildete, verteidigen. Und in Verbindung mit Forgách erlitt er nicht nur einmal eine Niederlage, auch dann noch, als der Landtag Forgách wegen seines törichten Feldzugs in Siebenbürgen gründliche Vorwürfe machte. Im Hintergrund stand natürlich Kardinal Khlesl, der allmächtige Minister von Matthias II., der ständig versuchte, den schwachen König in eine absolutistische Richtung zu drängen. Es ist auch kein Zufall, dass am Ende dieser in das kleine Vorwort eingefügten Empfehlung Bocatius auch das Entstehungsdatum des Werks bzw. die Tatsache verbirgt, dass er das Manuskript am Vorabend der dritten Einsetzung von Forgách als Obergespan des Komitats Sáros vollendete. Das Manuskript datiert er auf den Beginn der auf diesen Sonntag angesetzten Heiligen Evangelischen Liturgie: Niemand darf gleichzeitig zwei Herren dienen (Matthäus VI, 24). Dieser symbolisch zu verstehende Satz verweist darauf, dass gerade im Sommer 1614 die angespannteste Situation vorherrschte; Matthias berief die als schicksalsentscheidend angesehene Beratung, ob der nicht den Frieden mit den Türken brechen solle, nach Linz, also außerhalb des Gebiets Ungarns, ein. Gábor Bethlen, der Fürst von Siebenbürgen, wollte dies um jeden Preis verhindern. Der bestimmte Sonntag, der gemäß dem neuen Kalender in diesem Jahr auf den 24. August fiel, hielt gerade jenen Augenblick fest, als die Politik Bethlens erstmals mit der von Bocatius und der Mehrheit der ungarischen Stände für richtig befundenen Innen- und Außenpolitik zusammenfiel. Wir können auch sagen, dass in diesem Jahr, also im Jahre 1614, als sogar zwei türkische Gesandte vertrieben wurden und der Wind des Krieges blies, der Entschluss, der ihn später zum Geschichtsschreiber des Fürsten machte, in Bocatius zu reifen begann. Er stellt deshalb das Verhalten des vormaligen Matthias’ im Jahre 1608, der gegenüber Rudolf damals erreichte, dass die Heilige Krone nach Ungarn zurückgelangte, dem Auftreten des zögerlichen Matthias’ II. entgegen, so, wie er dies mit einem Berger-Zitat nachdrücklich unterstreicht (aus dem oben erwähnten und ideologisch besonders bedeutungsvollen Werk von Illés Berger: Jubilaeus de origine, errore et restitutione S. Coronae Hungariae, Wien 1608):

Quod penes Hungaricae custodia fida Coronae.13 Neben dieser historischen Lehre ist es jedoch vom Gesichtspunkt der ungarischen epischen Dichtung eine in besonderem Maße zu berücksichtigende Tatsache, dass der größte ungarische Eposdichter, Miklós Zrínyi, die hier angeführte, ja sogar als Musterbeispiel ausgeschriebene und Matthias Hunyadi lob-

13 Bocatius, Ioannes, 751.

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preisende Dichtung des von Bocatius nachdrücklich hervorgehobenen Cortesius später außerordentlich gründlich instrumentalisierte.14 Ende 2014/Anfang 2015 erschien zu meiner größten Freude ein bisher unbekanntes und sehr wichtiges Werk von Ioannes Bocatius in einer Ausgabe von Kees Teszelszky und Gergely Tóth.15 Das Werk ist in drei Exemplaren erhalten geblieben, wobei man über das in Wien vorhandele Exemplar bereits früher Bescheid wusste, es aber nicht publizierte. Das Münchener wurde von Márton Zászkaliczky und das Exemplar von Biella von Tamás Kruppa gefunden. Ein heute in Wien aufbewahrtes Manuskript des Werkes wurde von den kaiserlichen Behörden bei der Verhaftung des Kaschauer Oberrichters, der als Gesandter Bocskais auf Reisen war, beschlagnahmt. Zweck des satirischen Dialogs war es, die Argumente der kaiserlichen Propaganda und der Propaganda Bocskais zu vergleichen sowie als Kontext auch die Argumente der päpstlichen Diplomatie, des vorsichtigen polnischen Standpunktes und der Bocskai unterstützenden Türken zu präsentieren, und zwar so, dass die als Zielgruppe betrachteten deutschen protestantischen Kurfürsten alle Aspekte der komplizierten Angelegenheiten kennenlernen konnten. Es handelt sich um einen – als Pendant zum Homer’schen Froschmäusekrieg – in ironischem, entschieden Erasmus’schem Tonfall vorgestellten Dialog, der sich in Kaschau zwischen einem ungarischen, einem deutschen, einem polnischen, einem türkischen, einem italienischen und einem siebenbürgischen Gesprächspartner abspielt. Der deutsche Sprecher verteidigt natürlich sämtliche anti-ungarische Maßnahmen der Kaiserlichen bis zum Äußersten und schmäht im Allgemeinen die Ungarn, wobei er sämtliche nationalen Topoi der nationalen Charakterologie gegen sie aufführt. Im Mittelteil des aus drei Dialogen bestehenden Werks erklärt dieser Deutsche beispielsweise, dass die Christen von Amts wegen mit ihrem Herz auch das Joch der Tyrannen ertragen müssten. Bis dahin habe die Nemesis nämlich alle Aufruhr schnell vergolten. Unter seinen Beispielen befinden sich an erster Stelle der in Deutschland zur Zeit von Karl V. ausgebrochene Bauernaufstand, an zweiter Stelle die niederösterreichische Bauernerhebung Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts und an dritter Stelle: György Dózsa! Ich zitiere: „Quamdiu gessit imperium rusticitas vestra sub auspiciis quondam Georgii Zekel, similiter, ut nunc, omnia confundens et sacra prophanis commiscens? (Wie lange haben Eure Bauern unter der Führung von weiland György Székely, der – so wie jetzt – alles umgestürzt hat und dem nichts heilig war, die Macht in Händen gehalten?).“16 Der sprechende deutsche Diskussionspartner, der hier also geradewegs als Sprachrohr für die 14 Vgl. Szörényi, Hunok és jezsuiták, 25–33, 151–155. 15 Bocatius, Hungaroteutomachia vel colloquim. 16 Das Zitat ist von dem deutschen Diskussionspartner im Colloquim des Autors; Bocatius, Hungaroteutomachia vel colloquim, 158–159.

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kaiserliche Politik benutzt wird, vergleicht hier den Bocskai-Aufstand mit dem Bauernkrieg unter György Dózsa!

Literatur Bocatius, Johannes, Hungaroteutomachia vel colloquim de bello nunc inter Caesareos et Hungaros excitato, Magyarnémetharc, avagy beszélgetés a császáriak és a magyarok között most fellángolt háborúról [Hungaroteutomachia vel colloquim de bello nunc inter Caesareos et Hungaros excitato, ungarisch-deutscher Kampf oder ein Gespräch zwischen den Kaiserlichen und den Ungarn über den jetzt entfachten Krieg]. Veröffentlicht und mit einer Begleitstudie versehen von Teszelszky, Kees/Tóth, Gergely, ELTE BTK Lehrstuhl für Mittelalterliche und Frühneuzeitliche Ungarische Geschichte – Wissenschaftsverein für die Erinnerungen an Transsylvanien, Budapest, 2014. Bocatius, Ioannes, Opera quae exstant omnia, Poetica, 2, edidit Csonka, Franciscus, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1990, Nr. 16., 750–802. Bocatius, János, Öt év börtönben [1606–1610], übertragen von Csonka, Ferenc, Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1985, 187–243. Csonka, Franciscus, Vita Ioannis Bocatii, in: Bocatius, Ioannes, Opera quae exstant omnia, Poetica, 1, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1990, I, 9–28. Szörényi, László, Hunok és jezsuiták, Fejezetek a magyarországi latin ho˝sepika történetébo˝l, AmfipressZ, Budapest, 1993. – L’epopea di Elia Berger sulla Santa Croce e la storia ungherese, In: Acta Conventus NeoLatini Cantabrigiensis, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of NeoLatin Studies, Cambridge 30–July-5 August 2000, General editor Schnur, Rhoda, Edited by Charlet, Jean Louis/Rosa, Lucia Gualda/Hofmann, Heinz/Hosington, Brenda/Rodrígez Peregrina, Elena/Truman, Ronald, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, Arizona, 2003, 535–543. Teszelszky, Kees, Az ismeretlen korona. Jelentések, szimbólumok és nemzeti identitás, Bencés Kiadó, Pannonhalma, 2009.

Gabriella Erdélyi

The Memory War of the Dózsa Revolt in Hungary

The primary aim of this study is to explore the process of myth-making in the decades following the largest peasant revolt of Hungarian history. The analysis is based on recently explored sources, namely the subsequent autobiographical narratives of participants, both of rebels and of the nobility, aiming to justify their participation in the bloody war. Whereas the voices of the victors of the 1514 revolt are quite familiar to historians, these stories, cast in the form of petitions of pardon to the pope, provide a rare opportunity to hear the voices of the losing side. Research on collective violence often focuses on the motivation of agents and the relation between social status and the willingness to participate in a revolt.1 Historical scholarship on the events of 1514 has also been concerned primarily with such issues.2 Examining the petitions of the participants, however, provides us with a different perspective and makes it possible to construct a ‘bottom up’ narrative of the revolt.3 The story of Kelemen Canimich, an ordinary priest from South Hungary, was addressed to Pope Leo X in April 1515:

1 Clark McPhail, The myth of the madding crowd (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991). 2 See the chapter on the social and economic standing of the peasantry in Gábor Barta and Antal Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben (Budapest: Gondolat, 1977), 42−59. Ferenc Szakály argues that observant Franciscans joined the peasants because of their own peasant origins. Szakály, Mezo˝város és reformáció. Tanulmányok a korai magyar polgárosodás történetéhez (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 1995), 7−32. The present study was prepared within the framework of a research project funded by the Hungarian National Research Fund (OTKA-81435) and is the revised, in some aspects further developed and generally updated version of the paper (“Tales of a peasant revolt: taboos and memories of 1514 in Hungary”) published in Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe, ed. Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller, and Jasper van der Steen (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 93–110. 3 See the landmark study by John Keegan, who first produced a battle narrative focussing on the experiences of common soldiers based on narrative sources. John Keegan, The face of battle. A study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme (London: Penguin, 1976). More recently on the culture of total war see Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 1914−1918: Understanding the Great War (London: Profile Books, 2002).

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When he [Clemens] was notary of a captain in the army of Tamás, the cardinal-primate and legate of the Holy See, and a crusade was declared […] against the infidels, out of ignorance and because of the cowardice of the captain, he [Clemens] forged letters in the name of the Hungarian King and the Cardinal which were sent to the Christian faithful so that they should join the fight against the Turks. When many Christians had gathered […], out of fear of the captain, and since he could not escape the peril of death otherwise, he took part in numerous battles, fights, pillaging, rape, arson and the murder of laymen and even clerics, which they perpetrated against Christians with the captain’s troops.4

The story as Kelemen told it six months after the events seems to be quite incongruous: why and how did he and his captain end up fighting against Christians if they originally summoned an army to take up arms against the Ottoman forces? Yet it made sense, nevertheless. The revolt had developed in response to a call for a crusade in 1514, in which peasants were ordered by pope and king to fight the ‘infidel’ Ottomans. When the nobility had tried to stop their peasants from leaving home during the busy summer season, the ‘rustici cruciati’ had turned against their ‘infidel’ landlords. As the events unfolded, György Dózsa (in contemporary sources known as György Székely), a Sekler lesser noblemen and soldier in the anti-Ottoman border fortresses, emerged—under yer unclarified circumstances—as the leader of the peasants. The rebellion was supported by many simple priests, who together with a new generation of Observant Franciscan friars had forged documents and used their preaching as an ideological tool to turn the war against the pagans into a war against the nobility. The uprising was put down in August 1514 by royal forces, and its military leaders were brutally and theatrically executed.5 Priest Kelemen was one of the thousands of ordinary priests who had joined the rebels, and the first among fifteen who, in the decade up to 1525, asked for the pope’s absolution from the office of the Apostolic Penitentiary for partaking in warfare. By the fifteenth century the Penitentiary had become the chief and the cheapest route to both the salvation of souls and justice on earth in Renaissance Rome, handling violations of canon law ranging from irregular clerical ordinances and marriages to such heinous crimes as murder, sodomy or sacrilege.6

4 Archivio Poenitentiaria Apostolica, Registra Matrimonialium et Diversorum [hereafter: APA], vol. 59, fols 72r−v (7 April, 1515, Bachiensis diocesis). 5 On the political and military history of the revolt see Barta and Fekete-Nagy, Parasztháború. On its leader, György Dózsa see: Gábor Barta, “Georgius Zekelto˝l Dózsa Györgyig,” Századok 109 (1975): 63–88. On the manifold relations of the Hungarian province of Observant Franciscans to the revolt see: Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “A ferences obszervancia és az 1514. évi parasztháború. Egy kódex tanúsága,” Levéltári Közlemények 43 (1972): 213–63, and Idem, “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája,” Valóság (1972) no. 11, 12–38. 6 On the office paraszt-háborújának of the Apostolic Penitentiary see most recently: Kirsi Sa-

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The petitioners discussed here, all of them clergymen, needed the papal pardon of their war crimes in order to repair their infringement of canonical rules and regain their clerical status.7 Although their stories were clearly influenced both by the procedure of issuing a pardon, which involved the transcription of a petition by a professional proctor who followed a prescribed protocol, and also by the legal demands to which they had to conform, petitioners were unquestionably the authors of their own narratives. While their accounts were intended to be efficacious, they also had to be authentic and truthful since the content was subsequently checked and had to be ratified by witnesses. As documents soliciting the benevolence of the pope, it was also essential that they be formulated very humbly and respectfully.8 Additional force could be given to their stories if the supplicant went to Rome to present his petition to the Curia in person. Significantly, all the lesser clerics discussed here were prepared to invest the time and money to undertake such a trip, which suggests that these petitions were primarily a response to the risk of being reported to the diocesan authorities by local competitors; the rivalry among a growing mass of poor clerics for ecclesiastical offices was intense.9 The autobiographical narratives constructed after the events enable us to explore the processing of the experience of collective violence. It has been observed that in the twentieth century collective violence tended to be followed by silence, with violent events becoming a taboo subject and only much later followed by a ‘wave of speech’. Such a wave of speech can be interpreted either as a form of individual or collective therapy or as an attempt to stake a claim to monopoly over a ‘true’ version of events. In the verbal battle to establish authority over the past, the ‘possession’ of the dead and claims to martyrdom are essential weapons.10

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lonen and Ludwig Schmugge, A sip from the ‘Well of Grace’. Medieval texts from the Apostolic Penitentiary (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). The so-called “irregularitas ex delicto” was an impediment of priestly ordination. Willibald M. Plöchl, Geschichte des Kirchenrechts (Vienna and Munich: Verlag Herold, 1955), vol. 2, 290. In this respect, the scenario of papal pardoning was very similar to the process of royal clemency in sixteenth-century France. Cf. Claude Gauvard, “Le roi de France et l’opinion publique à l’époque de Charles VI,” in Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur and Charles Pietri, eds., Culture et idéologie dans la genèse de l’État moderne (Paris and Rome: École française de Rome, 1985), 353−66.; Hélène Millet, ed., Suppliques et requêtes: Gouvernement par la grâce en Occident (XIIe–XVe siècle) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2003); Natalie Zemon Davis: Fiction in the archives. Pardon tales and their tellers in sixteenth-century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), esp. 57−59. On the market of small benefices and the rivalry among lesser clergy in late- medieval Hungary see Gabriella Erdélyi, Szökött szerzetesek. Ero˝szak és fiatalok a késo˝ középkorban [Runaway Friars. Violence and Youth in Late Medieval Hungary] (Budapest: Libri, 2011), 97−113, with further literature on the European context. On the phase of repression followed by an outburst of speaking in the aftermath of the 1956 revolution in Hungary, see György Kövér, “Források, értelmezések, történelmek”, in idem, A felhalmozás íve (Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2002), 391.

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Generally speaking, war memories of the late medieval and early modern period are difficult to get at, due to the limited availability of sources as well as to the different structure of the public sphere. The memories of the Thirty Years’ War seem to be an exception to this rule, perhaps because in the war’s immediate aftermath the events became a major source of contestation between Catholics and Protestants. Eventually, it was the Lutherans who succeeded in monopolizing the commemoration of the war: the annual commemorations turned into a celebration of their victory over their Catholic opponents. By the nineteenth century, however, the military Festkultur that flourished in the multiconfessional cities of Southern Germany was domesticated and turned into a celebration of peace. Framed as a cultural memory the Thirty Years’ War became a constitutive part of national identity.11 The memory of the 1514 revolt developed quite differently. Most recently there has been the rather robust claim that the revolt constitutes ‘the unspoken trauma of Hungarian history, which was turned into a taboo right after the event and has remained so ever since’.12 Instead of offering a historical-psychological evaluation of the type inherent in this statement, I will apply a sociological approach to cultural trauma by seeking to reconstruct processes of remembering and forgetting after the 1514 peasant revolt. This sociological approach rests on the premise that the events themselves may become traumatic only subsequently, under the impact of narratives forged by historical agents sharing an interest in the making of trauma.13 To judge whether this was the case we need to ask who were the agents of trauma (or the dramatization of memory) and what was at stake for them. In the first part of the study, I will briefly outline the dynamics of the memory war that followed the dramatic events of the revolt and address the question of how personal memory and identity formation interacted with public stories in petitions. In what ways did individual and collective memories shape representations of the violence? In the second part, I will sketch the later memories of the uprising in early modern cultural memory in Hungary and abroad.

11 Hilmar Sack, Der Krieg in den Köpfen. Die Erinnerung and den Dreißigjährigen Krieg in der deutschen Krisenerfahrung zwischen Julirevolution und deutschem Krieg (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2008). I use the distinction between communicative and cultural memory introduced by Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2007), 48−55. 12 Katalin Péter, A reformáció: kényszer vagy választás (Budapest: Európa, 2004), 73. 13 Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Toward a theory of cultural trauma”, in Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. Cultural trauma and collective identity (Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 2004), 1−30; Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding meaning in memory: a methodological critique of collective memory studies”, History and Theory 41 (2002): 179−97, esp. 186−7.

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Two Myths of Just War in Contest The petition of Priest Kelemen makes no mention of the revolt, but isolates and portrays the events as the outcome of a personal exchange between him and the cardinal: Since, however, Holy Father, the petitioner was warned by the cardinal to desist from his acts [that is: illegal recruiting], he was excommunicated for his obstinacy, […] which he regretted and regrets now. […] He therefore asks to be absolved for homicide and other excesses and sins in return for due penitence and also to be suspended from divine services for a time. He would like though to keep his priestly office and benefices under the condition that he exercises penitence in front of the cardinal and humbly requests his forgiveness.

As we have seen, Kelemens’ effort to conceal the uprising and his role in it involves an incongruous story, starting with a proclamation of a crusade against the Ottomans and ending with Christians killing Christians. It is so peculiar that one suspects that Kelemen Canimich was one of the illegal preachers of the crusade who organized the uprising. His dissimulation may reflect the defensive reorganization of his personal identity under the impact of the new social realities, which he must have perceived to be menacing. He composed his story in the aftermath of the uprising in a very tense situation dominated by anger and fear. Inevitably, his version of events was grounded in the brutal execution of the peasant leaders and the decree of the National Diet ordering the search for and execution of all rebels, who were called ‘public malefactors,’ the murderers of noblemen and the rapists of virgins.14 Characterizing the reaction of the frightened nobility, one sixteenth-century chronicler of the events noted that ‘the Hungarian landlords behaved ruthlessly with the poor, oppressed the crusaders in many different ways.’15 However, petitions from subsequent years reveal that the rebel memories of the revolt were only temporarily suppressed. As the bloody wave of noble revenge came to an end and the anticipated mass executions did not follow, former rebels could resurface and present themselves publicly in the emerging memory war over the monopoly of legitimate violence and just war. We can witness the fabrication of the rebel myths penned by lesser priests from villages and markettowns situated in the heartland of the rebellion. The war of interpretations evolved around the issue of who was responsible for the outbreak of the war as the aggressor and who acted only out of self-defence. “During the time of the crusaders” he raised arms together with other noblemen to defend himself—wrote 14 Corpus Juris Hungarici. Magyar Törvénytár 1000−1526, ed. Dezso˝ Márkus (Budapest: Franklin Társulat, 1899), anno 1514/art. no. 4, 13, 14, 33. 15 1504−1566 Memoria Rerum, ed. József Bessenyei (Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1981), 17.

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István Deák, the tutor of the son of Gergely Pöstyéni, the steward of Várad (Oradea, Romania).16 In the clash between war and peace,the moral good sided obviously with the representatives of the latter. In the dramatic story of the priest Benedek of Nagyhatvan, written in 1519, the opposing protagonists are the crusaders and the nobility: When a crusade against the infidels was declared in Hungary , and he himself took up the cross with many others, a conflict and quarrel erupted between the nobles and the crusaders, in course of which the nobles attacked the crusaders. To defend themselves, he needed to take up arms too with his fellow crusaders.17

In the story of Miklós of Bihar, the chantry-priest of the parish church of the market town Bihar (Biharia, in Romania), he was yet a layman when he recruited the crusaders to gather for the “honorable campaign in order to hunt down the enemies of the Christian faith and their temerity,” which was however eventually thwarted by the assault of the nobility.18 By attacking the crusaders as they were preparing to fight the natural enemies of Christianity, the nobles had taken the place of the Ottomans and had themselves become infidelis. This chain of thought must have appeared familiar in the papal Curia since it borrowed its central concepts from the papal bull declaring the crusade against the Turks. Both Pope Leo X and the crusaders spoke of a ‘holy’ and ‘praiseworthy crusade.’19 The pope had promised the remission of all sins for participants and supporters of the war while threatening absentees and those obstructing the war with excommunication on earth and eternal damnation in hell. The peasants could thus interpret the revolt as the realization of the papal curse and replace the infidelis Turks with the infidelis landlords.20 Of course, this version of events counter16 „cum alias dictus orator tempore cruciferorum in partibus illis tunc vigentium unacum nobilibus huiusmodi provincie in quodam illorum conflictu interesset et in huiusmodi cruciferorum vim vi repellendo et se necessarie defendendo nec alias mortis periculum evitare valens absque alia eiusdem oratoris culpa quandam religiosum et alterum secularem in eodem conflictu existentes percussit et vulneravit, quorum aliter videlicet secularis ab humanis decessit, si vero religiosus huiusmodi decesserit nec ne, ignorat”. APA vol. 70, fol. 358v (1523). Gergely Pöstyéni governed the vacant bishopric of Várad and directed the fight against the rebels in Bihar County. His performance was rewarded by János Szapolyai, then already as elected King of Hungary, by appointing him his lord chief justice (iudex curiae regiae) in 1527. Sándor Márki, Dósa György 1470–1514 (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1913), 357–58. György Szerémi claimed to have been himself the tutor of Ferenc, son of Gergely Pöstyéni, following which after 1514 he served as the court chaplain of Ferenc Perényi, bishop of Transylvania, in Várad (Szerémi, Magyarország romlásáról, 17, 161). István Deák must have been the tutor of Ferenc before him. 17 APA vol. 64, fols 111r−v (19 April 1523). 18 Ibid., vol. 70, fols 358v−59r (2 April 1523, Waradiensis diocesis). 19 Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV, ed. Antonius Fekete Nagy et al. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1979), 47. 20 Szu˝cs, “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája,” 12−38.

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manded the plot in the official stories of the ruling elite, in which the label infidelis had connotations of rebellion and treason and is used instead to as an attribute for the peasantry.21 The voices of the verbal battle emerged in the geographical centres of the revolt (Abaúj and Zemplén Counties, the border region of Békés and Bihar Counties, the area around the city of Csanád, Bodrog and Bács Counties). The parties disputed who had been the aggressor, who had had to defend themselves, and which party had been (more) ruthless. On both sides, the dramatization of events climaxed in a conspiracy theory: After he had recruited many crusaders against the enemies of the Christian faith, and when they were ready for launching this honorable expedition—suddenly, at the instigation of the enemy of humankind—the nobles attacked the crusaders. When the crusaders realized the betrayal of the nobility, they bravely started to defend themselves in order to save their lives.

This quote is taken from one of the rebel narratives by the above mentioned Miklós of Bihar.22 In this account, penned in 1523, the conflict is no longer attributed to the discord between the crusaders and the nobility but rather to the treachery of the latter. A very different conspiracy theory is elaborated in the counter-narrative of a noble participant, Dénes Kascach in 1525: When his most reverend eminence, Cardinal Tamás, was sent as legate to Hungary in order to launch a crusade with royal permission and apostolic authority, some ignorant rebels and troublemakers rebelled against him and his followers, and took up the cross in order to kill his eminence and his followers. […] Among them was the royal captain, György Székely, too. […] When he [the captain] discovered the fraud, he turned at once against the aggressors and rebels.23

The story of Dénes is modelled upon the plot developed in a humanist epic poem about the revolt, written in the cardinal’s court closely following the events, and published in Vienna, in 1519 with the title Stauromachia id est Cruciatorum Servile Bellum.24 In Stephanus Taurinus’s humanist tale, events which had orig21 See the exhaustive analysis concerning the characterization of the rebellious peasant in the different genres and sources produced in the sixteenth century by Gábor Klaniczay, “Images and designations for rebellious peasants in late medieval Hungary” , in The man of many devices, who wandered full many ways… Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, ed. Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebo˝k (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), 115−27. 22 APA vol. 70, fols 358v–59r. 23 Ibid., vol. 73, fols 157r−58r (3 January, 1525, Wesprimiensis diocesis). 24 Stephanus Taurinus Olomucensis, Stauromachia id est cruciatorum servile bellum. Servilis belli pannonici libri V, ed. Ladislaus Juhász (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1944). In Hungarian translation: István Taurinus, Paraszti háború, trans. László Geréb (Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1972). Taurinus belonged to the entourage of Cardinal Bakócz but later became the vicar of Ferenc Várdai, Bishop of Transylvania, who was the vice–legate entrusted by Bakócz to gather the army for the crusade in Transylvania. See below Várdai’s petition to the pope

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inally occurred in various locations and had very complex causes were all subsumed in one easily comprehensible conspiracy theory. It presents the crusaders as determined from the outset to exterminate the entire nobility under the pretext of the crusade led by a fraudulent and power-thirsty leader, Dózsa, “who is hiding the fraud in his falsely feigned smile […] and incites the serfs to take arms.”25 Both in the humanist story and in the petition of the nobleman Dénes Kaschach the honest and good crusaders, who are identified with ecclesiastical and secular authorities, fight against the fraudulent crusaders. Therefore, even if it is difficult to ascertain the activities of Kaschach during the revolt, his narrative seems to have been forged in one of the centres of the memory war in 1525.

Representations of Violence: Private and Public Perspectives The conspiracy theory on the noble side is repeated in the autobiographical account by another cleric, Gergely Koppándi, from the landed nobility of Transylvania, who wrote in 1520: Many peasants gathered under the pretext of a crusade in the Kingdom of Hungary and revolted against the nobility with the intention to destroy them totally. Then, on royal orders he took up arms with the barons and nobles to destroy this huge peasant army. After they had defeated the peasants, he imprisoned forty peasants by the law of war, and considering the brutality the peasants had committed against nobles and clergymen, he made a peasant sit on a trunk and nailed his genitals and his buttocks to the trunk with iron nails, so that by punishing him, others would be terrified and deterred.26

The narrator obviously derived a strange pleasure from the detailed account which he volunteered here of the torturing of the peasant. Within the context of the memory war such details may seem surprising since they run counter to usual practice. When petitioners claimed in their formal written statements that they had committed legitimate violence, they refrained from any explicit, let alone literal, depiction of precisely what they had done. Instead, the legitimacy of their act was underpinned by brief references to the brutality of the enemy. The powerful, on their part, accounted for their bloody retribution simply with reference to their defence of the patria and their right to wage war.27 Our noble cleric after the revolt. For an in-depth analysis of this epic poem see Farkas Gábor Kiss’s chapter in this volume. 25 Both Taurinus and Dénes Kaschach use the word fraus. Taurinus, Stauromachia, 12 (line 352). 26 APA vol. 66, fols 52r−v (28 March, 1520, Transylvaniensis diocesis). Gergely probably describes one of the last battles fought at the castle of Bihar ( July 1514) with the army of Pál Tomori, castellan of Fogaras (Fa˘ga˘ras in Romania), who was his patron. ˙ ˙ argued that “alias atrocissima rabie illius rusticane thy27 For example Ferenc, canon of Vác rannidis in Regno Hungarie vigente” he fought “pro domestica libertate conservanda,” APA

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was more talkative: it was possible for him to speak about his own extreme violence. The volubility of Koppándi is comprehensible when viewed in its contemporary context. In the late medieval culture of honour and the ritual processes of conflict negotiation which involved rites of both violence and law, there was much room for extreme but legitimate violence.28 Koppándi depicted his violence as an act of law enforcement by arguing that he took part in a defensive war under royal orders and that he captured and punished the rebels in accordance with what was common wartime practice. In a similar vein, in subsequent petitions to the pope those fighting a just war against the infidel Turks readily and extensively recounted their savage deeds.29 The sexual torture, mutilation and dehumanization of the enemy served to exert power over the body of the rebels and, in this way, symbolically restore the social order.30 Rather than being brutal, Koppándi was being just. Furthermore, his story is a textual representation of the late medieval theatre of horror where public execution and the cruelties of warfare were the regulated and accepted sites of representing the body in pain.31 We read the naturalistic portrayal of the execution of the “peasant king” Dózsa in the humanist epos: “The lymph burst forth abundantly from his broken skull, his brain bubbling out through his ears, mouth, and nose.”32 In 1514 a pamphlet entitled “the Hungarians’crusade and the extreme cruelty committed on both sides” appeared in Rome.33 In its pages, the pious peasants who deemed themselves “followers of the cross” are transformed into “savage pagans” after they collectively rape noble-

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vol. 63, fols 74r−v (1518); Ferenc, bishop of Transylvania: “conflictibus et bellis iustis pro defensione patrie […] armatus interfuit”. Ibid., vol. 59, fol. 424r (1515). See the anthropological approaches towards violence, both interpersonal and collective, as well as the studies of legal anthropology: Daniel Lord Smail, The consumption of justice: emotions, publicity, and legal culture in Marseille, 1264−1423 (Ithaca, N.Y−London: Cornell University Press, 2003); Stuart Carroll, Cultures of violence: interpersonal violence in historical perspective (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). As did the Transylvanian nobleman Péter Berekszói: once “exercitum penes mare contra infideles haberet dictus exponens in dicto exercitu fuit et ibidem quamplures turcos […] viros et mulieres cum parvulis manu propria interfecit, quandam etiam mulierem puerum lactantem manu propria interfecit et puerum etiam mortuum exinde credit.” APA vol. 3, fols 397v−98r (1452). Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence” in idem, Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 152−88. Péter Tóth G. “A fájdalom metaforái. A testi fájdalom, a kegyetlenség és a vértanúság látványa a kora újkori Magyarországon” in Mikrokozmosz−makrokozmosz. Vallásetnológiai fogalmak tudományközi megközelítésben, in Éva Pócs (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2001), 319−72, with further literature. Taurinus, Paraszti háború, 65. Janus Vitalis Panormitanus, De Ungarorum Cruciata facto anno 1514. et de infanda saevitia utrinque patrata, Roma 1514. Edited in Monumenta rusticorum, 242−45.

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women, but the climax of the story is the “brutal, but well-deserved” death of the peasant leaders: The leaders were immediately taken, and their naked bodies tied with irons to long stakes and burned alive on fire, some of them put on the cross, others skinned and left alive for some days. Some were quartered and fed to the dogs.34

The staging of their torture had a moral, spiritual and aesthetic value in a communicative space distinct from the memory war. Moreover, reports such as these were trying to meet the increasing demand of an international public for news and entertainment.35 A pamphlet series published in German cities as the events unfolded during 1514 ended with an image of the peasant king crowned with a redhot iron crown, being roasted on his throne and eaten by his fellows while listening to a Te Deum laudamus.36 The author promised a second issue to update readers on the continuing fight on the battlefield, but this never appeared, as – we might guess – the appetite for horror of the readership was already well satisfied. With regard to the Hungarian battle of words, we have seen how participants on either side, rebels and the powerful alike, fabricated conspiracy theories, transforming very varied individual motives and chaotic happenings into a linear and logical sequence of events. A process of smoothing personal and public memories into basic stories that made normative claims and aimed to shape the experience of those in the present and future alike seems to have been well underway, but it was still tied to the original setting of events. The accounts of those participants who remained outsiders to the subsequent memory war, however, have a very different narrative structure. Since ‘outsider stories’ were not influenced by retrospective schemes of explanation and communal mythmaking, they remained far closer to the horizon of authentic individual experience of chaos and brutality. Experiences are portrayed through the lens of the direct participant: drifting with the crowd having no idea whatsoever about what was in fact happening to them. This may be realistic in the sense articulated by some theorists of collective violence, who argue that the majority are in the dark about what is going on around them and cannot foresee its possible consequences.37 In these accounts, the revolt is presented merely as the background to personal vicissitudes and as the reason of individual hardships. Imre Wolconz, a cleric student from the diocese of Zagreb confessed that “when his 34 Ibid., 245. 35 Péter Tóth G. “A lator teste és a lator test. A bu˝nösség kultúrája a kora újkori Magyarországon és a büntetés-emlékeztetés problémája (vázlat),” Korall 5−6 (2001): 141−62, here 150. 36 Zeckel Jorg, Die auffrur so geschehen ist im Vngerlandt mit dem creutzern vnnd auch darbey wie man der creutzer haubtman hat gefangen vnnd getoedt [1514]. Edited in Monumenta rusticorum, no. 227. 37 This is called the irrational theory of collective violence, see McPhail, The myth.

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adopted father was forced to join the formidable army of the crusaders […], since he, driven by filial love and solicitude, did not want to leave his father, he also joined the army. As he was, however, a literate man, which the captain of the troops also knew, he was commissioned to compose letters of recruit sent out to parish priests. In fear of death and not daring to deny compliance, he wrote these letters.”38 The motive of joining the crusaders under force, which is a plausible rhetorical element, is repeated six times in these accounts. Three times this is further embellished by episodes describing the way they finally escaped from peasant troops, which enhances the credibility of the claim that they had joined the peasants earlier only out of fear. András Sokovich of Obedszentkereszt (Krizˇ, Croatia), a cleric from Slavonia, remembered “that some peasants in the market town of Halas, in the diocese of Csanád, where he was a student at the time, forced him and some of his fellows to join the peasant army under the threat of being impaled. As he could not evade death otherwise, he stayed with the peasants for three days, during which time the peasants impaled a lot of their enemies, in other words the noblemen of the kingdom.”39 The participation of students (scolaris)—young clerics learning in parish and chapter schools—in the revolt is a plausible circumstantial detail of these stories: the retributive legislation of the National Diet prohibited not only to peasants and hajdús to wear arms, but the unbeneficed clergy and the students too.40 The severity of the cruciati with people who were reluctant to join them, which followed also from the ideas of the papal bull, is also richly evidenced. Refusal to join the crusaders was punished by death and demolition of house.41 The Dominican friar, György of Bodony, also decided to fight together with the peasants in order to evade being impaled. “He lived as a true friar in the convent of Boró, where he merited the title of the prefect, when a crusade erupted which turned into a rupture and conflict between the nobility and the people (plebei). In this turmoil, he was forced by the commoners to join them, otherwise he would have been impaled and executed with brutality.”42 After joining the peasant army, a long sequence of his vicissitudes began. “As he could not dodge the perils otherwise, he stayed with them for eight days, without killing anyone with his own hands, and since he saw their cruelty and was unable to take part in their horrible manslaughters, he escaped secretely and returned to his convent. The peasants got so enraged by his escape that they led their troops against the friary in order to 38 APA vol. 66, fols 24v−25r. (1520). 39 Ibid., vol. 63, fols 206v−7r (9 May, 1518, Zagrabiensis diocesis). Halas is a village in Keve County (in Serbia). 40 Magyar Törvénytár, 1514/60 article. 41 Szu˝cs, “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája,” 34, 36. 42 APA vol. 62, fols 57v−58r (5 April, 1517, Quinqueecclesiensis diocesis). Boró is today Borovo in Croatia, known for having an Augustinian mendicant friary. The Dominican convent is yet unidentified.

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impale him anonymously and execute him brutally. The friars of the convent realized the imminent danger and secured a little boat for him, with which he fled on the river Danube during night. When the cruciati broke into the convent and the sacristy searching for him in vain, they tied and detained the provost instead. Finally, they killed another friar instead of him.”43 Similar fugitive adventures formed the backbone of the individual vicissitudes of another clergyman from Southern Hungary, the Priest Benedek of Pellérd. “He served once in the village of Kétsoprony, in the diocese of Várad, when some crusaders led him by force to the infamous György Székely, the head and captain of the tyranny of peasants, […] and he was ordered to fight with them or else die.”44 He followed them to Nagylak, and after the crusaders had captured the castle there he escaped from them and joined the nobility, together with whom he defended the chapter of Arad (in Romania today). “When they had to give up fighting and leave the chapter fortress due to famine and lack of food, he once again fell into the hands of the crusaders.”45 The authors of these ‘outsider accounts’ were all active participants of the revolt one way or the other: they joined the war on either side usually under pressure, as they confessed, then fled or stayed, were shooting or composing letters. The biographical framework and life-like perplexity of their accounts, compared to the narratives constructed by either the cruciati or the powerful, cannot be accounted for by the fact that they were written more closely in time to the events themselves. Their narratives were not so much influenced by the events of the revolt but by the situation of the narrators at the time of story-telling, in this case by the fact that they remained outsiders to the subsequent memory war. András Sokovich and Imre Wolconz, both Slavonian clerics, stayed only temporarily in the focal points of the revolt during their studies. Sokovith was a student in Halas in Keve County, to where the revolt seems to have spreaded from its centres in Csanád and BácsSzerém, but afterwards he probably returned to Slavonia. Benedek of Pellérd, who came from Pécs, which was left intact by the war, was serving for a time as a priest in the village of Mezo˝kétsoprony in Békés County, which was one of the well-known centres of the war. The Friar György of Bodony, who also came from the eastern regions of Baranya, was always on the move after 1514, as he recalled: he tried to escape his involuntary past as a crusader spent in one of the centres of the revolt by fleeing to the friary of Gyo˝r in Western Hungary, from where he moved on to Vienna. He returned to Western Hungary a year later in 1515–16, thinking prob43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., vol. 63, fols 38r−39r (27 March, 1518). 45 Nagylak was besieged by the army led by Dózsa between 22−24 May 2014, from where they proceeded eastwards on the banks of the River Maros to Arad, where the market town surrendered to them, but the clergy of the chapter took up arms. They were starved. BartaFekete Nagy, Parasztháború, 85, 97.

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ably that the past turmoil had been already settled. His plan was thwarted though when the Dominicans of Vasvár refused his entry “due to the fear of the crusaders.” When the friars of Németújvár (Güssing, Austria) also closed their gate before him, he went to the bishop of Veszprém, who gave him license to take off the friar’s habit and minister as a secular priest for two years. When the episcopal license expired, in April 1517 he requested the pope personally in Rome to prolonge it. The scenes of his wanderings, Vienna and Western Hungary lay far away from the centres of the revolt. In sum, all of these narrators participated in the military conflict, yet they remained outsiders of the battle of words aiming to legitimize subsequently the war acts. In contrast to them, the revolt-myths of the rebelles emerged where the revolt earlier broke out: in Bács (the story of Priest Kelemen Canimich), in Bihar (the story of the Priest Miklós of Bihar) and the region of Eger (the story of Priest Benedek of Nagyhatvan). The myths of the ruling elite, on the other hand, emerged in the territories where the military conflicts unfolded, which coincide with the headquarters and fields of action of the bishop-generals active in putting down the revolt. The Transylvanian cleric and nobleman, Gergely Koppándi, who was with the general Pál Tomori defeating the peasant army at Bihar, served as the parish priest of Ludas near Torda a few months following his petition, and in 1522 he was canon of Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia, Romania). In other words, he was member of the court of Ferenc Várdai, the bishop of Transylvania (1512–24),46 where Taurinus wrote his epic poem about the revolt, in which the bishop featured as the hero suppressing the rebellion.47 Another example to this is the Priest Dénes Kaschach, who wrote his petition to the pope from the surroundings of the town Veszprém, from where Péter Beriszló, the bishop of Veszprém and Ban of Slavonia commanded the noble troops against the insurgents. In conclusion, the comparison of the accounts by neutral outsiders as opposed to the public stories of the memory war permits some generalizations about their differences in the representations of violence. Outsiders of the memory war remembered themselves participating in collective violence but denied having killed anyone personally, which suggests that it was possible to preserve the coherence of personal identity at the expense of making a taboo of interpersonal violence (a memory practice that has also been observed in individual memories of World War I).48 The denial of committing interpersonal violence resulted in rather absurd and incredible narratives. The Priest Benedek of Pellérd, for example argued that although he was shooting the crusaders from the besieged 46 MNL OL DL 36402; DL 36400; DL 67263. 47 Taurinus was active as vicar (1517−18) in the same episcopal court. See his lines about Várdai: Taurinus, Paraszti háború, 61−62. 48 Audoin, Rouzeau and Becker, 1914−1918, 39.

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chapter of Arad, he did not kill anyone. And after he had been captured by the crusaders, he killed no nobleman, because he aimed at the walls or in void on purpose.49 As the above story by Gergely Koppándi demonstrates, interpersonal violence, however, resurfaced in the memory war, in which competing group identities were at stake and when there were political arguments to justify the use of extreme violence even outside the context of the normal suspension of everyday norms in wartime. Given the barbarity of the enemy, war is frequently idealized and presented publicly as a fight of civilization against barbarity.50 In the blood-thirsty ‘public history’ of the pamphlets, however, both parties were rendered as extremely cruel. Secondly, the centres of the memory war overlap with the intellectual and military centres of the revolt. Interestingly, these were exactly the same regions that in earlier decades had produced the bulk of long-distance pilgrims and where the evangelical teachings in following decades met with a quick and intense response.51 These paradoxical coincidences can most probably be explained, as Jeno˝ Szu˝cs has proposed, with reference to the presence of Observant Franciscans, whose friaries show a similar geographical distribution.52 This finding, in turn, suggests that the popular public sphere of the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries was strongly shaped by the activity and preaching of these Observant Franciscan friars, which ranged from exhortations to take up the cross to anti-noble sermons and the spreading of spiritualist, messianic ideas.

György Dózsa, the Martyr In the 1520s, it was in the same places, and simultaneous with the memory war about the 1514 Revolt, that the first investigative campaigns against ‘heretics’ began. It is remarkable and surprising that during these inquests, the charge of heresy was never reinforced by identifying the accused as rebels, as Katalin Péter has noted.53 This decoupling is all the more remarkable since during the time of the bloody retribution for the peasant revolt of 1525 in Germany, the figure of the rebel and the Lutheran were totally fused. For example, a Würzburg pastor was 49 APA, vol. 63, fols 38r−39r (27 March, 1518). 50 For the modern analogue see again ibid., 116. 51 The regions in question are the Abaúj and Zemplén counties in the North-East; Csanád, Békés and Bihar counties in the Great Plain; and Bács-Bodrog in the South along the Danube. Cf. Eniko˝ Csukovits, Középkori magyar zarándokok (Budapest: MTA TTI, 2003), 188, and Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Ferences ellenzéki áramlat a magyar parasztháború és reformáció hátterében,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 78 (1974): 409−35, here 426. 52 Szu˝cs, “A ferences obszervancia”, 243−4. 53 Péter, A reformáció, 72−73.

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put in prison by a landowner in 1525 because ‘he preached the tenets of Luther and a rebellion’ and was therefore considered a dangerous person ‘liable to make the ordinary folk rebel in the future’.54 From the perspective of Catholic and Lutheran authorities alike, the German Lutheran was considered to be an insubordinate subject. In Hungary, by contrast, the identities of rebel and Lutheran were not coterminous because the revolt was not instrumentalized in the construction of Catholic and Protestant identities. Instead of the figure of the rebel, the extreme brutality of the death of the ‘peasant king’ Dózsa later came to epitomize memories of the revolt. By that time, they were already disconnected from the original sites where the events had occurred. Thus, Miklós Istvánffy, an early seventeenth-century chronicler at the court of the Habsburg king, introduced his lengthy description of the execution as follows: I shudder at the thought of enumerating the horrible, extreme and unprecedented punishments of these miserable people. Since even if they deserved this terrible torture and death, it would nevertheless have rather suited pious Christians to subdue such a cruel massacre by piety and compassion.55

Looking at it from a century’s distance, the experience of the theatre of horror of public executions seems to have undergone a profound shift. The image of the peasant leader sitting silently with a red-hot crown on his head and watching the execution of his brother while awaiting being quartered, displayed publicly, and finally devoured by his starved fellow-rebels continued to be reproduced in word and image (Fig. 1 and 2). It seems that this image persisted in the consciousness of the aristocracy and nobility since they were familiar with historical chronicles of the revolt and occasionally commissioned such texts.56 The memory of the revolt could thus be used to mobilize the paralyzed nobility in times of crisis. The aristocratic political leader, Palatine Miklós Esterházy (1625–45) exhorted the nobility in 1632 with the following words: You should remember the peasants’ attack in the time of king Ladislaus, which caused huge bloodshed and the country’s devastation. Those who have ever read the chronicles about it, will possibly know […] that we will have to follow the example of János Szapolyai [who put down the revolt and ordered the executions] when acting against the peasants, not letting the traitors go and searching after them all possible ways.57 54 Robert W. Scribner and Tom Scott, eds., The German Peasants’ War. A history in documents (London−New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1991), document no. 149. 55 Nicolaus Istvánffy, Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis libri XXXIV (Colonia Agrippina, 1622). Istvánffy Miklós magyarok dolgairól írt históriája Tállyai Pál XVII. századi fordításában, ed. Péter Benits, vol. I/1. (Budapest: Balassi, 2001), 141−2. 56 István Monok, A mu˝velt arisztokrata. A magyarországi fo˝nemesség olvasmányai a XVI–XVII. században (Budapest−Eger: Kossuth, 2012), passim. 57 Letter of Esterházy to the nobility of Sáros County, 31 March, 1632. Published in János

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Esterházy was a man of his word. The leader of the 1632 peasant revolt, Péter Császár was tortured and his body quartered.58 From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the ritual retributions for peasant revolts and other political rebellions became public occasions for remembering 1514.59 The public execution of early modern rebels reminded spectators of the sacralised death of Dózsa staging the passion of Christ and the ritual of holy communion.60 I would go so far as to speculate that the nobility’s perceptions included even the Dózsa-Christ analogue.61 For them, the sufferings of the peasant rebel must have represented the deserved penance for the sins of his fellows, whose redemption in the afterlife must have seemed natural for them as well. The contemporary chronicler, György Szerémi, a native of the region where the execution happened, recorded that György Dózsa soon after his death was venerated as the “second Saint George of Macedonia, the martyr” and the place of his execution became a site of pilgrimage.62 The above-mentioned chronicler Istvánffy commented on the execution of the leader Matija Gubec of the Croatian peasant revolt in 1573: Tearing dreadfully with burning pliers and crowned with a burning iron-crown and finally cut into four in the manner of thieves, he received the due punishment for his crime and usurpation of the royal title; he was punished with such severity, so that the elderly, who are still alive, would remember with horror the unfortunate assault of György Székely Dózsa who had wanted to extirpate the nobility.63

58 59 60

61 62

63

Reizner, “A Császár-féle Felso˝-Magyarországi 1631−1632. évi pórlázadás okmánytára,” Történelmi Tár 11 (1888), 128. László Makkai, A felso˝tiszavidéki parasztfelkelés 1631–1632 (Budapest: Mu˝velt Nép, 1954). For further examples see Tóth, “A fájdalom metaforái,” 352−3, 359−60. On the parallels between the iconography of Christ’s Passion and that of the Dózsa execution see Marianna D. Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary in 1514? The Dózsa-Passion,” in European Iconography East and West: Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference, ed. György E. Szo˝nyi (Brill: Leiden, 1996), 91–108. See also Paul Freedman, “Representations of peasant and seigneurial fury in late medieval and early modern Europe,” Temas medievales 19 (2011): 79–82. The association of Christ’s martyrdom with Dózsa’s death was first suggested by István Nemeskürty in 1983, Önfia vágta sebét (Budapest: Magveto˝, 1983), 164–6. On the reading of contemporary mock passion narratives and of humanist narratives of Dózsa’s death see Gábor Kiss Farkas’s study in this volume. Georgius Sirmiensis, De Perditione Regni Hungariae, trans. into Hungarian by László Juhász (Monumenta Hungarica V), (Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1961), 68. Cf. Dávid Csorba, Mohács – egy „mesemondó” szemével: Emlékezeti rétegek Szerémi György Epistolájában (Nyíregyháza: Móricz Zsigmond Kulturális Egyesület, 2012), 54. Istvánffy Miklós magyarok dolgairól, 485. For a detailed comparative analysis of the execution of Gubec and Dózsa see the chapter by Natasˇa Sˇtefanec in this volume.

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Conclusions The ruling elite, who had learned to fear the peasants in 1514, engineered the staging of the dramatic memorialization of the Revolt and then of its stigmatization in subsequent centuries. Public executions were designed to deter crime and to legitimate power by reminding people of the consequences of rebellion and making them recoil from any repetition. We do not know how ordinary folk responded. If early modern spectators remembered, identified with and experienced the pain when it was displayed on stage, as several scholars have suggested, they may have felt that this suffering contributed to their purification and salvation.64 In terms of the psychological concepts current today, the repeated recollection and staging of such painful events would have hindered mental healing and we would expect the pre-modern practice of public execution as a commemorative ritual to have worsened any collective traumas. But if ‘nations can [freely] repress [and forget] with psychological impunity’,65 as Iwona IrwinZarecka has recently argued, we may have to conclude that the self-image of early modern society in Hungary was in fact stabilized by the cultivation in text, image and ritual of the martyr Dózsa and his crown of thorns.66

Archival Sources Archivio Poenitentiaria Apostolica, Registra Matrimonialium et Diversorum Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (The National Archives of Hungary, MNL OL), Mohács elo˝tti gyu˝jtemény (Pre-Mohács Collection) DLDF

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Fig 1. The execution of Dózsa on the front page of Stephanus Taurinus, Stauromachia (Vindobonae, 1519). With the permission of the National Széchényi Library (Budapest), Régi Nyomtatványok Tára (Collection of Old Prints) Apponyi Hungarica, no. 137.

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Fig 2. The execution of Dózsa in Paul Ricaut, Die Neu eröffnete Ottomanische Pforte (Augsburg, 1694) vol. 2, p. 106. Library and Information Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Oriental Collection.

Gergely Tóth

Caught in the Web of Interpretations The 1514 Peasant War in Early Modern Hungarian Historiography

My study is about the early modern historiographical reception of the Dózsa revolt, although its twentieth-century historiography is worthy of attention as well. The reason for this is that although the revolt was considered a historical event of supreme importance—as a result of which in the second half of the twentieth century our knowledge about the peasant war was essentially enhanced due to source publications and studies reconstructing the events—its memory was deformed by heavily political aspects of the historical research that affect us even today and are part of our topic here. That is why this study starts with a historiographical introduction of the Dózsa revolt, focusing largely on the Marxist historical concept, followed by an investigation of the remembrance of the event in the early modern period. History of Hungarian peasant movements, among them that of the Dózsa revolt, became emphasized research topics after 1945 and its historiographical reception also started to attract scholars.1 The importance of this issue for the Rákosi regime is demonstrated by the volume compiled by László Geréb in 1950 on the “literature” of the peasant wars between 1437 and 1514.2 The book contained parts of relevant works by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors with brief editorial introductions giving a characterization of the respective work and its author. However, neither György Székely, the author of the introductory essay, nor László Geréb attempted to subject the sources to serious criticism. More precisely, their criticism was merely ideological, examining how the authors related to peasant movements without dealing with the authenticity and integrity of each work. This is mirrored in a study by György Székely in 1961. Without criticism, the author accepted and analyzed the Dózsa speeches described by sixteenth-century authors, namely Tubero, Taurinus and Brutus, that 1 For the German and Croatian comparison see the studies of Márta Fata and Natasˇa Sˇtefanec in the present volume. 2 László Geréb, ed., A magyar parasztháborúk irodalma. 1437–1514, foreword by György Székely (Budapest: Hungária, 1950).

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is, the “Cegléd speech,” though it was in fact made up by Sándor Márki, who traced the fictive orations of Dózsa envisioned by humanist scholars to this imaginary speech.3 Several other works of similar quality and approach were published in this era, notably including two essays on the historiography of the revolt by Béla Bellér.4 The breakthrough in the field of criticism towards the humanist sources was achieved through the famous study on the ideology of the peasant war by Jeno˝ Szu˝cs. As Szu˝cs pointed out, until then the narratives of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources were the norm, therefore they had a very strong impact on Hungarian historiography as well as “Hungarian historical popular thinking.” Nevertheless, in terms of source value, in his opinion humanist historiography “is located in the very last place.” Szu˝cs even made a hierarchical list of sources on the peasant war in 1514, placing humanists on the bottom. He also briefly assessed each author (Taurinus, Tubero, Iovius, Brutus, Istvánffy), rejecting their reliability in every case.5 As a general statement on the authors he says: “their pen was moved not so much by the ‘fact,’ but rather the ‘composition’ and the effort to ‘identify’ the motivations, correlations and causal connections behind the events even if they had precious little resource data as a basis.”6 Another important aspect of Szu˝cs’s study in relation to our topic is that it put an end to the legend of the above-mentioned Cegléd speech and in general all the fictive orations by Dózsa. Among other things, in his argumentation Szu˝cs pointed out that none of the elements of the rebels’ ideology as defined by primary sources (letters of crusade leaders, contemporary accounts, etc.) can be found within these fictitious humanist orations. That is why, as he put it, these speeches can be excluded from the sources “with reason.”7 In commemoration of the Dózsa year of 1972, Gábor Barta and Antal FeketeNagy published a book on the peasant war that has remained the most significant summary of the revolt.8 It contains no separate historiographical chapter, but the authors paid close attention to earnestly review each of the narratives of humanist scholars based on collected primary sources and not much later published 3 György Székely, “A Dózsa-parasztháború ideológiájához,” Századok 95 (1961): 473–506, esp. 479–80 et passim. See the theory of the „Cegléd speech” in Sándor Márki, Dósa György (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1913), 182–87. 4 Béla Bellér, “A Dózsa-parasztháború és az egyházi történetírás,” Vigilia 37 (1972): 599–603; Idem, “A Dózsa-parasztháború történeti-politikai koncepciója és történeti képe 1945 elo˝tti történetírásunkban,” Történelmi Szemle 17 (1974): 289–325. 5 Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája,” in Nemzet és történelem. Tanulmányok, ed. Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, Társadalomtudományi Könyvtár (Budapest: Gondolat, 1974), 601–68, esp. 607– 09, 612. 6 Ibid., 608–09. 7 Ibid., 662–64. 8 Gábor Barta–Antal Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben (Budapest: Gondolat, 1973).

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in a critical edition by Fekete-Nagy.9 This way weighed in the balances and found “wanting” were—to mention but the most important ones—the Telegdi speech written about by Istvánffy (the alleged speech given by treasurer János Telegdi at the royal council where in a Cassandra role he advised against initiating the crusade that later resulted in the peasant revolt);10 the “siege” by the peasant army of the episcopal town Csanád told by Iovius, Brutus and Istvánffy; the figure of priest Lo˝rinc, Dózsa’s lieutenant, assembled as a composite of several people; the tale of the deeds of peasant leader Antal Nagy; the story of the battle of Gubacs in which where several events were combined into one as well; the so called “battle” of Temesvár (Timis¸oara, Romania) (where the peasant armies quite possibly immediately withdrew after having faced the forces of the Transylvanian Voivod, János Szapolyai); and of course the above-mentioned fiction of the Cegléd speech.11 After a long silence, in 2009 Gabriella Erdélyi brought the results of new research into the analysis of the revolt’s reception: using a group of sources previously not investigated from this point of view, petitions written to the office of the Sacra Poenitentiaria Apostolica in Rome, Erdélyi wrote about the early interpretations and myths of the revolt.12 Her studies highlighted several important aspects and notions: based in part on research by Katalin Péter, Erdélyi mentioned the issue of making something taboo and the phenomenon of a “posterior war of interpretation for the monopolization of the events.” In connection to this problem, using the German parallel (the remembrance of the Peace of Westphalia), Erdélyi points out that the reason why 1514 was not built into the contemporary cultural memory was that it did not serve as a tool in the confessional rivalry.13 On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the revolt, “the changing image of Dózsa” was investigated by Ignác Romsics, namely how the approach towards the leader of the peasant revolt changed during the centuries in historiography and public memory.14 Romsics’s work indicates how the old inclinations live on in

9 Antonius Fekete Nagy et al., eds., Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1979). 10 However, recently Norbert C. Tóth has concluded that the Telegdi speech was authentic, though not precisely as indicated in Istvánffy’s work. See Norbert C. Tóth, “Vita a keresztes hadjárat kihirdetéséro˝l. Országgyu˝lés 1514 márciusában,” Erdélyi Múzeum 77, no. 1. (2015): 14–26., esp. 22–23. 11 See Barta–Fekete Nagy, 1973. 29–31, 99–100, 111–14, 149–50, 156–60, 201–04, 274–77. 12 Gabriella Erdélyi, “A Dózsa-felkelés arcai: tabuk és emlékezet 1514 mítoszaiban,” Történelmi Szemle 51 (2009): 461–80. See also Erdélyi’s study in the present volume. 13 Ibid., 461–63. 14 Ignác Romsics, “Székely Dózsa György,” Rubicon 24, no. 3. (2014): 4–29. The section on historiography: ibid., 11–29.

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Hungarian historiography: he keeps asking which historian “supported” the peasants and which was “against them.” Discarding this tendency in this study I attempt to identify classical patterns that served as antitypes for humanist authors, because this is the only way to interpret these works with the aim of separating historical and fictitious narratives. Furthermore I explain that not only antique authors but other factors, like confessional and political orientation played roles in the formation of the narratives of various authors and therefore the picture is not at all as simple as we earlier thought. Finally, regarding the eighteenth century, I investigate how, in the process of becoming more scientific and “critical,” Hungarian historiography came to cope with the peasant war and drew closer to gaining an understanding of this event.

Dózsa as Catiline: the Peasant Revolt in Humanist Historiography Ironically speaking, the Dózsa revolt had the misfortune of coinciding with the age of humanist historical writing. Thus, its earliest reception—which is always of utmost importance due to the closeness to the event—bears the usual humanist characteristics: in these works, medieval characters dress in classical costumes, give scholarly rhetorical speeches and their gestures and behavior are frequently reminiscent of the heroes of antiquity. But the historiographers of the era went even further in using ancient paragons: they not only imitated style and language, but also recounted the events by borrowing keywords, arguments and narrative techniques of the respective Greek and Roman historical pieces. Sallust’s Coniuratio Catilinae was a self-evident source for contemporary writers who wished to present a revolt. The famous work enjoyed tremendous popularity during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This popularity was rooted in its clear, easily understandable prose and especially its complex message. In Catiline Sallust glorifies the institutions of the early Roman republic, declares the moral supremacy of freedom and at the same time describes the corruption and demoralization of this institutional system of which, in his interpretation, the Catiline conspiracy provided an indication; finally Sallust gets to the conclusion (or an allusive conclusion) that a “strong man” (Cato and Cicero) and a powerful central government will be able to save the respublica. Sallust’s work could be applied to and justify various historical situations and phenomena. Even in fourteenth-century Padua and Florence, sinking into party conflicts, historians like Mussato and Villani discovered the work in which they hoped to find the causes of crisis and later the humanists of Florence (Bruni, Bracciolini) cited its seventh and eighth chapters as arguments supporting their own city republic system and concept of freedom. But it could also be utilized as an example against any kind of revolt: the history of the Pazzi conspiracy whose

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leaders wanted to remove the Medici from the leadership of Florence was written by Poliziano based on Catiline; of course neither the notion of freedom nor crisis phenomena are mentioned by the pro-Medici historian. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, in the midst of political crisis, the work was interpreted as a study on the causes of decline, the hunger of politicians for power and money; and, in addition, the political view of Machiavelli was greatly formed by the disillusioned and cynical approach of Sallust towards political conflicts of Rome in the era of the late republic. Beyond the Alps the republican vision of Catiline was almost totally ignored; it was used rather as a political handbook, even as an argument for monarchic and absolutist form of state. In the foreword for the translation of Sallust’s works in 1575, Jérôme Chomedey, who served the king of France, concluded from Catiline that monarchy has more tools for subduing rebellion than the republic. Lipsius also utilized sentences from Sallust’s works to illustrate the benefits of monarchy (order, severity, the ruler’s grace). The interpretational horizon of Catiline is therefore bafflingly wide, but, as I stated above, it is so because the whole biography of the Roman republic is embedded into it and everyone could pick their favorite paragraphs from the text. At any rate, it can be said in general that the Roman historian, along with his “apprentice” Tacitus, who later became more popular than his master, was a reference point of early modern literature regarding state theories, since Catiline or Jugurtha unveiled the machinations of political players in the late republic with the same sincerity as Tacitus later did with arcana imperii.15 The Dózsa revolt could not escape the attraction of the Catiline type of interpretation either. It was proved previously that in his humanist epic (1519) Stephanus Taurinus (Stieröxel) modeled the figure and ideas of Dózsa partly on Sallust’s Catiline, though some epic antitypes (Vergilius, Lucanus, etc.) are much more important for Taurinus.16 In the history of the era by Dalmatian histor15 For more on this topic see Patricia J. Osmond, “Princeps Historiae Romanae. Sallust in Renaissance Political Thought,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 40 (1995): 101– 43, esp. 101–30. See also Gian Biagio Conte, Latin Literature: a History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 244; Jacob Burckhardt, “Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien,” in idem, Das Geschichtswerk, vol. 1 of 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 2007), 365–760, esp. 401; Michael von Albrecht, A római irodalom története, transl. Ibolya Tar, vol 1 of 2 (Budapest: Balassi, 2003–2004), 343. The Catilina edition I used: Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Gai Sallusti Crispi libri de Catilinae coniuratione et de bello Iugurthino, ed. Rudolfus Dietsch (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1882) 1–37 (Cited as: Sall. Cat. Cited by chapter numbers). 16 Taurinus’ work: Stephanus Taurinus, Stauromachia, id est cruciatorum servile bellum (Viennae: Singrenius, 1519). Its critical edition: Stephanus Taurinus Olomucensis, Stauromachia, id est cruciatorum servile bellum. (Servilis belli Pannonici libri V), ed. Ladislaus Juhász, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Medii Recentisque Aevorum Saec. XVI. (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1944). (Cited as: Taurinus 1944.) For Taurinus’ sources in general see Zoltán Császár, A Stauromachia antik és humanista forrásai, (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1937.) The influence of Sallust in the work was illustrated with several examples (though not always

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iographer Ludovicus Tubero (1459–1527) and in his narrative on the peasant war there are Sallustian signs as well,17 like when Dózsa presented himself in front of the king quietis et otii impatiens, that is, “unable to bear boredom and donothing torpor”: the “pestilent” otium as the hotbed of debauchery is a Sallustian keyword.18 As for its structure, Dózsa’s excellently formed incendiary oration also corresponds to the speech of Catiline, which has similar intentions.19 But the ultimate reorchestration of the Dózsa revolt originates from a proper Italian humanist, Paulus Iovius (Paolo Giovio, 1483–1552), who frequently touches upon Hungarian events in his great history of the age.20 In view of Sallust’s abovementioned, deeply rooted Italian popularity, it is hardly surprising that Iovius read Catiline; it is also understandable that in that critical period of Italian history he, too, was attracted by the “dark” side of the work, the depiction of a declining state.21 For him it was seemingly quite natural to explain the outbreak of the Dózsa revolt on the grounds of statements from the work of Sallust. Jeno˝ Szu˝cs was perfectly right in saying that looking for the “reasons” was something humanists liked to do very much and they did not let the lack of sources get in their way. It is worth illustrating in a table what Iovius wrote and its origins in Sallust’s work.

17

18

19 20

21

persuasively) by Sándor V. Kovács, “Taurinus és Sallustius ‘Catiliná’-ja,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 60 (1956): 319–22. See also László Szörényi, “Neolatin Dózsa-eposz – homéroszi paródia és lucanusi történeti irónia,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 104 (2000): 281–93; László Jankovits and László Szörényi, “A megíratlan és a megírt magyar tárgyú eposz: 1519: Megjelenik Stephanus Taurinus Stauromachiája,” in A magyar irodalom történetei. 1. köt. A kezdetekto˝l 1800-ig, ed. László Jankovits, Géza Orlovszky (Budapest: Gondolat, 2007), 195– 203. For Taurinus and his relationship with Sallust’s works see also Gábor Kiss Farkas’s study in the present volume. The influence of Sallust on Tubero in other aspects was revealed by László Blazovich and Erzsébet Sz. Galánthai, “Bevezeto˝,” in Ludovicus Tubero, Kortörténeti feljegyzések (Magyarország), ed. László Blazovich and Erzsébet Sz. Galánthai, Szegedi Középkortörténeti Könyvtár 4 (Szeged: Szegedi Középkorász Mu˝hely, 1994), 20, 42, 48. See the quoted text in Ludovicus Tubero, Commentariorum de rebus, quae temporibus eius… gestae sunt, libri XI (Francofurti: Marnius–haeredes Aubrii, 1603), 288. See the notion of otium in Sallust on a quite acentuated spot Sall. Cat., 10. See also Albrecht, A római irodalom, 337. See L. Tubero, Commentariorum, 289–92, and Sall. Cat., 20. The structure of the oration is also occasionally reminiscent of Sallust here, e. g., when the revolt is called coniuratio, that is, “conspiracy” in the speech of Dózsa. See Tubero, Commentariorum, 291. Recently for his person see T. C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio. The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). The edition of Iovius’ work that I have used: Paulus Iovius, Historiarum sui temporis tomus I(–II.) (Lutetiae: Vascosanus, 1558–1560). For the influences of Sallust on the work of Iovius in other respects see T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio, 268. et passim. For sixteenth-century Italian interpretations of Catilina see P. J. Osmond, “Princeps Historiae Romanae,” 112–13.

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Sallustius: Coniuratio Catilinae

Iovius, P.: Historiarum sui temporis tom. I.

1) Qui labores, pericula, dubias atque asperas res facile toleraverant, iis otium divitiaeque, optanda alias, oneri miseriaeque fuere… Namque avaritia fidem, probitatem ceterasque artis bonas subvortit … (Cat. 10.)

…complures reguli… qui… otio atque avaritiae se corrumpendos dederant… (f. 125v.)

2) Sed ubi labore atque iustitia res publica Matthia vita functo, atque extincta cum eo crevit, reges magni bello domiti, nationes militia… (ibid.) ferae et populi ingentes vi subacti, Carthago, aemula imperii Romani, ab stirpe interiit, cuncta maria terraeque patebant, saevire fortuna ac miscere omnia coepit. Qui labores, pericula, dubias atque asperas res facile toleraverant … (ibid.) 3) Catilina … fuit magna vi et animi et corporis, sed ingenio malo pravoque […] Corpus patiens inediae, algoris, vigiliae supra quam cuiquam credibile est. Animus audax, subdolus, varius … (Cat. 5.)

…Georgium quendam Sechelum, virum fortem, intrepidum, omnis sceleris audentem, nec ignarum militiae, super haec, nobilitatis hostem acerrimum. (f. 126v)

4) (Catiline’s speech before the final battle:) Itaque contione advocata huiusce modi orationem habuit … diutius in his locis esse, si maxume animus ferat, frumenti atque aliarum rerum egestas prohibet; quocumque ire placet, ferro iter aperiundum est … Si haec relinquere voltis, audacia opus est; nemo nisi victor pace bellum mutavit. (Cat. 58.)

(Dózsa’s speech before the “battle” of Temesvár:) Inde advocata contione brevissime docet… nihil iam commeatus, nihil spei, nihil denique consilii in castris superesse praeter unam virtutem atque audaciam… (f. 128r)

5) Ipse [Petreius] equo circumiens Ex adverso vayvoda nulla magis ad milites unumquemque nominans adpellat, cohortatione usus, quam ut inermes hortatur, rogat, ut meminerint se contra sceleratosque latrones despicerent… (ibid.) latrones inermis pro patria, pro liberis, pro aris atque focis suis certare. (Cat. 59.)

Even when listing the reasons for the peasant war Iovius follows Sallust. In his writings, contemporary Hungarian nobility (reguli) had given itself over to otium and avaritia, that is, to sloth and avarice, exactly like the late Republican nobilitas in Sallust (see the first pair of quotes above). Moreover, Iovius established a marked caesura: the death of King Matthias Corvinus, from which time the crisis of the military affairs leads to a general crisis, similarly to the preface of Coniuratio Catilinae in which Sallust defines the destruction of Carthage as the turning point (2). The characterization of Dózsa—brave, unscrupulous, wellbuilt – also reminds us of Sallust’s Catiline (3). Finally, the two speeches formulated by the opposing parties before the decisive battle are overt borrowings.

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Dózsa—after having summoned the military assembly (in both places: advocata contione!)—points out the lack of food and encourages his men to aspire for the sole option of victory and audacia (audacity), just like Catiline in the Roman author’s work (4). In one certain place of the text, John Szapolyai, the leader of the army arriving to defeat Dózsa, says exactly the same words as Petreius, military tribune of the Republican army in Sallust: both refer to the rebels as inermes latrones (5)! Let us address the issue of “the battle of Temesvár” separately. As I mentioned earlier, previous research has already found out that there was probably no regular battle, since the cavalry of Szapolyai, led by Péter Petrovics (the voivod’s nephew), captured György Dózsa when he was reconnoitering the area. That is said by the contemporary György Szerémi and other reliable sources also support this version.22 However, the myth of the battle began to take shape quite early. In his work published in 1519, Taurinus at first tells us that the peasant army immediately ran away as the voivod’s forces arrived, but later he still envisions Dózsa fighting furiously among battle formations in fierce melee combat—a strange and spectacular contradiction, although not for an epic author, for no epic hero can simply be captured.23 In Tubero’s narrative a kind of duel takes place between Dózsa and Petrovics in which Dózsa is defeated and captured, resulting in the retreat or surrender of the peasant army.24 (It is perhaps worth noting here that the name of Peter Petrovich was distorted into Petreius by Tubero: if it is not a coincidence, then we are dealing with a very witty reference.) 25 Therefore in the works of these authors the actual fact (with Dózsa captured the peasant army flees without battle) is mixed with certain fictitious elements and embellishments (though Tubero’s information may even be authentic). On the contrary, Iovius radically transforms the image of the battle: all that matters to him is to be as close as possible to the Sallustian antitype. That is why he delineates the battle order of the two armies, imagining a proper military engagement, saying that for a while the outcome of the conflict was questionable.26 These methods of Iovius inspired several followers: first of all, another excellent Italian humanist, Giovanni Michele Bruto (1517–92, also known as Brutus), the court historiographer of István Báthory (Prince of Transylvania and King of Poland), adopted the ready-made pattern, using the notions and arguments of Coniuratio Catilinae for the description of the peasant war. Brutus 22 23 24 25

Barta and Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben, 201–05. S. Taurinus, Stauromachia (Servilis belli Pannonici libri V), V, 57–115. L. Tubero, Commentariorum, 292–93. See ibid. Tubero also knew the father of the Croatian Petrovics and gave his place of origin (Pozˇega) as well, thus it is hardly a mistake or typo, but rather the usual humanist Latinization of names, which is here, of course, even more interesting as a result of the “sameness” of names with the tribune who defeated Catiline. 26 Iovius, Historiarum sui temporis I, 128r. cf. Sall. Cat. 59–60.

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undoubtedly followed Iovius: generally he used the work often and even referred to him in the respective part.27 He differs from his predecessor mainly in the fact that from slightly more source material he penned an enormously bulky story of 150 pages. Its backbone, however, consists of certain basic notions of Sallust’s work: Brutus even surpassed Iovius, and true to his style, intensified imitation to the extreme. This phenomenon is also worthy of illustration in some examples. Sallustius: Coniuratio Catilinae

Brutus J. M.: History of Hungary I.

Diuturnum otium Ungaros perdiderat, cum per multos iam annos inerti segnitia languentes, ab omni belli cura infamis et importuna pax (eos) avocasset… (324) …atque insignia exempla ferebantur superbiae, crudelitatis, atque avaritiae, quae in miseram plebem plerique e nobilitate edebant… (265) 2) Ambitio multos mortalis falsos fieri Accedebat ad ceteras caussas, nonnullorum e principibus ambitio non ferenda, subegit … Haec primo paulatim crescere, interdum vindicari; post, ubi contagio quasi maximarum civitatum, regnorum pestilentia invasit, civitas inmutata, communis pestis… (249) imperium ex iustissumo atque optumo crudele intolerandumque factum.” (Cat. 10) 1) Qui labores, pericula, dubias atque asperas res facile toleraverant, iis otium divitiaeque, optanda alias, oneri miseriaeque fuere … Namque avaritia fidem, probitatem ceterasque artis bonas subvortit … (Cat. 10)

3) “…inertia et mollitia animi alius alium exspectantes cunctamini.” (Cat. 52, from Cato’s speech)

“…emollitum quasi pestilenti, et dira tabe, longo inertiae malo, nativum illud, atque invictum maiorum robur…” (271–72)

4) Catilina … fuit magna vi et animi et corporis, sed ingenio malo pravoque … Corpus patiens inediae, algoris, vigiliae supra quam cuiquam credibile est. Animus audax, subdolus, varius … Vastus animus inmoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat. Hunc post dominationem L. Sullae lubido maxuma invaserat rei publicae capiundae. (Cat. 5)

(about Dózsa:) …unius hominis incredibilis audacia scelusque… Inde homo barbarus cupiditate animi, cuius impotens erat, atque ambitione elatus… per hanc armorum occasionem temerario ausu ad principatum animum adiecit. (299, 301– 02.)

Avaritia and otium are apparently recurrent expressions in the characterization of the Hungarian nobility. In the case of the latter, Brutus follows Sallust even 27 János Mihály Brutus, Magyar históriája (1490–1552), ed. Ferenc Toldy, I–III, Monumenta Historica II, Scriptores 12–14 (Eggenberger, Pest–Budapest, 1863–1876), I, 385–86. For Brutus’ person see Vilmos Fraknói, “Brutus Mihály, Báthory István udvari történetírója,” Századok 21 (1887): 793–97; Emma Bartoniek, Fejezetek a XVI–XVII. századi magyarországi történetírás történetébo˝l (Budapest: n.p., 1975), 252–56. For the description of the peasant war, Brutus mostly used Tubero, Iovius, in some places the story of Cuspinianus, and the delineation of the rebellion found in Verancsics’ heritage. See Lajos János Kovács, “Brutus magyar történetének forrásai,” Századok 50 (1916): 42–61 (first part), 128–59 (second part), here: 54–58.

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more closely than Iovius: here otium is caused by the same peace and lack of fear from external enemy as in the work of the Roman historiographer (first pair of quotes), together with another golden Sallustian word—ambitio—which also contributed to the fall of the Republic in the eyes of the Roman historian—and to the fall of Hungary for Brutus (2). The debauchery of the nobility culminates in inertia, mollitia and libido, that is, inertia, sluggishness and lust— exactly what Cato criticized in his fellow senators in Sallust (3). As for Dózsa, he is more of a Catiline than Catiline himself: he is characterized by adventurousness, strength and blackguardism, and is similarly infected with cupiditas and ambitio (4). Such components can only lead to revolt—according to humanist logic, at least. The most important and remarkable narrative on the peasant war was written by the last great Hungarian humanist author, the above-mentioned Miklós Istvánffy (1538–1615), who recorded the events in his extensive work on the era, Historiae. He utilized the whole previous historiographical tradition: there are traces of Taurinus, Tubero, Jovius and Brutus in his work.28 As for the “deep structure” of the narrative, he also adopted Ioviusian and Sallustian models; being as scholarly humanist, he not only followed the Italian master, but also went further with the Sallustian transformation of the story. His narration of the event adds up to an entire “book” in the Historiae, but in contrast with Brutus’ meandering interpretation, it is a tight, readable text: a veritable work of art within a true Hungarian Coniuratio Catilinae, even in its structure. Evidently Istvánffy was a skilled architect of the narrative: he brilliantly dramatizes by making use of the opportunities lying in fictional speeches. In the form of orations, he contrasts the opinions of the papal legate Tamás Bakócz, of the above mentioned royal treasurer, István Telegdy (who appears in the role of Cassandra), of the Priest Lo˝rinc, who wishes to instigate György Dózsa to action and his realistic brother, Gergely Dózsa. The structures of these speech pairs are definitely reminiscent of the Cato-Caesar speeches in Coniuratio Catilinae.29 But this moralizing, pessimistic Sallustian approach to history also appears in his narrative, as do the above keywords. A few examples of these:

28 Istvánffy’s work: Nicolaus Isthvanfi, Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis libri XXXIV (Hieratus, Coloniae Agrippinae, 1622). More recently for the author see Gábor Nagy, “‘Tu patriae, illa tuis vivet in historiis’. Elo˝készület egy új Isthvánffi Miklós életrajzhoz,” Századok 142 (2008): 1209–48. For the utilization of the above-mentioned authors see Henrik Fodor, Istvánffy Miklós Históriájának forrásai. (II. Ulászló kora.) (Pécs: Dunántúl Nyomda, 1940), 42–47. For Istvánffy’s sources and source usage in general see also Emma Bartoniek, Fejezetek, 348–52. 29 See the orations in Nicolaus Isthvanfi, Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis, 63–65, 66–67.

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Sallustius: Coniuratio Catilinae

Istvánffy: Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis

1) Incitabant [sc. Catilinam] praeterea corrupti civitatis mores, quos pessuma ac divorsa inter se mala, luxuria atque avaritia, vexabant. (Cat. 5) Qui labores, pericula, dubias atque asperas res facile toleraverant, iis otium divitiaeque optanda alias, oneri miseriaeque fuere … Namque avaritia fidem, probitatem ceterasque artis bonas subvortit … (Cat. 10)

…Pannoniam patriam, ea tempestate foris quidem otio, domi autem luxu et avaritia principum foede laborantem … (62)

2) Catilina… fuit magna vi et animi et corporis, sed ingenio malo pravoque. Corpus patiens inediae, algoris, vigiliae supra quam cuiquam credibile est. Animus audax, subdolus, varius … Vastus animus inmoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat. Hunc post dominationem Lucii Sullae lubido maxuma invaserat rei publicae capiundae. (Cat. 5)

At Georgius… seu regis inertiae contemptu, nobilitatisque odio, seu rerum novarum cupiditate, vel aliis de causis depravato animo … (67)

Ceterum senatorum magna pars, qui otio et avaritia corrupti regnum praedae loco habebant … (63)

As the above quotations indicate, according to Istvánffy nobles are tainted with sloth and luxury (luxus)—another Sallustian fundamental notion—as well as avarice (due to external peace and the resulting otium): that is why the initiative of Bakócz is approved and they send peasants in place of themselves against the Turks (first pair of quotations). The characterization of Dózsa is spectacularly reminiscent of Catiline: his soul is depraved and corrupted (pravus-depravatus) and he continuously craves things (cupiebat-cupiditate) that upset the existing order (2). In Istvánffy’s case it is worth mentioning separately the narrative on the “battle” of Temesvár, as it is he who “stylizes” the entire episode to the greatest degree, faithfully following the guideline of classical battle descriptions, especially of Catiline. The textual proof of these parallels are: Sallustius: Coniuratio Catilinae

Istvánffy: Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis

1) Ipse [Petreius] equo circumiens unumquemque nominans adpellat, hortatur, rogat, ut meminerint se contra latrones inermis pro patria, pro liberis, pro aris atque focis suis certare … (Cat. 59)

Ex adverso Vayvoda suos quam brevissime cohortatus, meminissent, inquiebat, quam multos insontes […] pessimi latrones inaudita morte sustulissent. (72)

2) [Catilina] G. Manlium in dextra, Faesulanum quendam in sinistra parte curare iubet. Ipse cum libertis et colonis propter aquilam adsistit … (Cat. 59)

Pari modo in partibus agrestium factum est: ita ut Georgius mediam aciem teneret, Gezo eius frater et legatus ac Laurentius presbyter duobus extremis cornibus praeessent. (ibid.) … ut victoria in ancipiti esset. (ibid.)

3) … maxuma vi certatur. (Cat. 60)

234 4) Petreius ubi videt Catilinam, contra ac ratus erat, magna vi tendere, cohortem praetoriam in medios hostis inducit eosque perturbatos atque alios alibi resistentis interficit. (Cat. 60)

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Ad extremum Vayvoda praetorianum militem et Siculos equites et limitaneos equis armisque validiores ac usu armorum causaeque aequitate superiores immittit, quorum gladiis quum plurimi occumberent, plures vulneribus debilitarentur, vacillare aliquantum ac loco pelli coepere. (ibid.)

Evidently the pre-battle orations of Petreius and Szapolyai show several resemblances (first pair of quotations), though here the influence of Iovius is also strongly apparent: the army is deployed similarly by Catiline and Dózsa (2) and an evenly fought battle ensues (3), later Szapolyai sends praetorianus miles (“aulic soldiers”) to make the decisive push the same way as Petreius did with the cohors praetoria, the commander’s bodyguard unit. The latter “scene” is especially interesting. Is it presumable that this event of the “battle” is also merely made up by Istvánffy based on Sallust? I believe the answer is yes, even if Istvánffy complements “praetorians” with Szekler and the cavalry of frontier forts (Siculos equites et limitaneos equis armisque validiores). His word usage is too reminiscent of Catiline and it is also strange that it is from Istvánffy’s pen that such a minute detail appears for the first time, almost a hundred years after the revolt. The description by Istvánffy of course met a measure of doubt by researchers previously: based on the above, now I think that the sources he drew on are clear.

Beyond Humanist Style: Distortions, Biases, Omissions It might seem an innocent humanist game to follow the Sallustian model, but there is more to that. In the case of Iovius and Istvánffy (Brutus will be discussed later), it was a comfortable solution to lay the blame on the avaricious and sluggish nobility in order to avoid what was for them a sensitive issue: the Dózsa revolt was able to unfold because Pope Leo X proclaimed a crusade against the Ottomans in 1513, and Bakócz as papal legate in the king’s council made sure that a bull promising absolution to the participants be declared in Hungary. Iovius, who owed his professorship at the University of Rome to Leo X,30 practically leaves out the pope and papal role from the narration of events, running through the bull as if it were some marginal circumstance, though makes a score of Tamás Bakócz by giving a detailed report on the nobility’s charges against him: the whole misfortune was caused by him, he is avaricious and had been a bad counselor to the king etc.31 Surely he has not forgotten that during the papal election of 1513 Bakócz had been the rival of his patron (later Leo X). 30 Cf. T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio, 14–15. 31 Iovius, Historiarum sui temporis, I., 128v.

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As for Istvánffy, the intransigent Catholic aristocrat loyal to the king to the bitter end, he supports Bakócz and portrays him as a statesman worrying about his country; though he mentions the charges against him elaborated below, he is unwavering in his opinion.32Instead, he points out that the pope had given Bakócz a bull of the crusade because the papal treasury was empty, so he could not help by other means.33 Thus, despite a slight difference between Iovius and Istvánffy, both of them find their scapegoat in the avaricious, slothful, peasant-exploiting nobility and blur the significance of the crusade. According to Istvánffy, religion was merely a pretext for the peasantry.34 Brutus, who depicts the revolt in a more true-to-life fashion, also adopts this narrative, partly from his own conviction and experience: he writes that he saw with his own eyes that in Hungary and Poland nobles treat peasants as slaves.35 However, this is projecting a later state of affairs onto the beginning of the sixteenth century. Characteristically, György Szerémi, who wrote in simple Latin, had a modest education and witnessed the events at close quarters, does not write about a terribly oppressive nobility when recounting the Dózsa revolt.36 This was not the case according to the latest research either.37 Therefore it seems that finding the cause in the exploitative, avaricious, slothful nobility and the resulting misery of the peasantry is a humanist topos. At the same time, certain writers placed the emphasis on different aspects. The Dalmatian Ludovicus Tubero, in spite of being a Benedictine abbot and, later, vicar to the Archbishop of Ragusa, attacked both Bakócz and the corrupt papal court. The former because Bakócz had asked for both a legatine commission in order to compensate for the money he had spent on bribes during the papal elections as well as for an absolution bull from Leo X; the latter because everything, even the papacy, can be bought and sold there.38 Tubero’s charges against 32 Bakócz worrying for the homeland: N. Istvánffy, ibid., 62; charges against him: ibid. 33 Ibid., 63. 34 “Convenere ad castra brevi tempore plurimi variae sortis mortales religionis praetextu compluribus locis …” Ibid., 65. 35 “Manet ad hunc usque diem hic in Ungaria mos, et in vicina Polonia… ut ex infima plebe homines a potentioribus servorum loco habentur, in his maxime, qui habitant in pagis, et agrorum cultura victum quaerunt …” János Mihály Brutus, Magyar históriája, I, 249. 36 Szerémi’s rather meandering narrative indicates mostly that the devil was raised by the idleness of nobles, that is, their staying away from the crusade, and the letter of Archbishop Bakócz ordering the campaign to stop. György Szerémi, Magyarország romlásáról, trans. László Erdélyi László, revised by László Juhász, intr. and notes by György Székely (Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1979), 74–75. 37 Cf. Barta and Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben, 277; Pál Engel, Gyula Kristó, and András Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526 (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), 361. 38 Charges against Bakócz: “… et quo Thomas cardinalis pecuniam, quam Romae absumpserat, in Hungaria resarciret (nempe dum Romae pontificatum ambit… sine ingenti sumptu ibi agere nequiverat) impetrata a Pontifice Romano Leone X. legatione Apostolica, re nunquam

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Bakócz can probably be linked to his affiliation with clerics opposing the cardinal.39 The criticism of the papal court was rooted in his own convictions. The notable Hungarian humanist who converted to Lutheranism, János Zsámboky (Sambucus),40 published a curious insinuation in his supplement to Ransanus and Bonfini: according to this, the pope thought that the new sultan, Selim, was first planning an attack on Italy, so Pope Leo X bribed some Hungarian nobles in order to prevent Hungarians from signing a peace agreement with the Ottomans.41 But not to leave Bakócz unpunished, he is compared to Giuliano Cesarini, the cardinal who urged Vladislaus I of Hungary to break the peace with the Ottomans, thus driving him to defeat at Várna (it would be a recurrent Protestant charge).42 Perhaps even more importantly, Zsámboky re-

39

40

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42

non quaestuaria et lucrosa, regressus in Hungariam, coepit Hungaros hortari, pollicendo peccatorum purgationem …” See Tubero, Commentariorum, 288; criticism of the papal court: “Eo enim mores Romanae Ecclesiae devenere, ut, qui Cardinalium opibus instructior est, is ad Pontificium munus obeundum magis idoneus existimetur.” Ibid. Tubero was connected with Archbishops of Kalocsa Péter Váradi and, later, Gergely Frangepán, Archdeacon of Bács Bernát Bánffy as well as with Péter Beriszló, Ban of Croatia. Almost all of them were in conflict with Tamás Bakócz and his family. For Tubero’s connection with these persons see László Blazovich and Erzsébet Sz. Galánthai, “Bevezeto˝,” 9–12; for the conflicts see Vilmos Fraknói, Erdo˝di Bakócz Tamás élete, Magyar Történelmi Életrajzok (Budapest: Méhner, 1889), 35, 62–64, 67–68 (on the clashes between Bakócz and Péter Váradi), 192–95 (on the armed conflict with the Frangepáns); on the conflict of Beriszló and Bakócz see András Kubinyi, “Beriszló Péter és budai szereplése,” Budapest régiségei 20 (1962): 125–36, esp. 128–29. On Zsámboky more recently see Gábor Almási, The Uses of Humanism. Johannes Sambucus (1531–1584), Andreas Dudith (1533–1589), and the Republic of Letters in East Central Europe (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2009) esp. 145–235. On his Lutheranism and Nicodemism see ibid. 337–43. “[Thomas Cardinalis] a Leone igitur X. Pontifice (qui Solyum [! Selymum] Italiam aggredi prius, quam Ungariam constituisse intellexerat, ideoque corruptis quibusdam Ungariae proceribus, ne cum Solymo [! Selymo] pax fieret, impedierat, totius christianitatis auxilia pollicitus) diplomata aufert … Petrus Ransanus: Epitome rerum Ungaricarum… una cum appendice quadam, opera Ioannis Sambuci … Hofhalter, Viennae Austriae, 1558. f. lxvi. (index xxxvii). The same charge is repeated by him in his commentaries to Bonfini published in 1568 and in 1581. Antonius Bonfinius, Rerum Ungaricarum decades quatuor cum dimidia […] Ioannis Sambuci […] opera […] (Basileae: Oporinus, 1568), 753; Idem, Rerum Ungaricarum decades quatuor cum dimidia. His accessere Ioan. Sambuci aliquot appendices et alia […] (Francofurti: Wechel, 1581), 736. On Zsámboky’s editorial work, his editions of Ransanus and Bonfini in particular see Almási, The Uses of Humanism, 172–75; Gábor Almási and Gábor Kiss Farkas, “Szöveggondozás és kapcsolatápolás. Zsámboky János életmu˝ve a reneszánsz filológia tükrében,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 117 (2013): 627–91., esp. 669– 71. “Ut igitur olim per Iulianum cardinalem contra Amuratem factum, sic praesul (Bakócz) a Leone decimo …” See Bonfinius, Rerum Ungaricarum decades (1581), 736. Cf. Gergely Tóth, Lutheránus országtörténet újsztoikus keretben: Révay Péter Monarchiája, in Clio inter arma. Tanulmányok a 16–18. századi magyarországi történetírásról. A Kosáry Domokos 100. születésnapjának emlékére rendezett konferencia elo˝adásai, ed. Gergely Tóth (Budapest: MTA BTK TTI, 2014), 117–47, esp. 136.

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marked that peasants had also been angry at the nobility because they continued to believe in eternal grace, in the legitimacy of their fight43—although this contradicts Istvánffy’s statement that religion was merely a pretext. Historians from Transylvania or connected to the area also expressed strong criticism of Bakócz and the pope. Gáspár Heltai—who most probably used extensions written by Zsámboky to Ransanus or Bonfini for the description of the events—reproaches Bakócz and the nobility for being stingy because they asked for a bull promising absolution instead of raising an army themselves. The description is full of further interesting details: Heltai knows that Bakócz proclaimed the bull “by friars,” namely the Franciscans;44 he claims that Vladislaus shut his eyes to the roguery of peasants thinking that it would restrain the arrogance of the nobles; according to him the nobles promised Szapolyai that they make him king if he subdued the rebels; and finally, he calls the crusaders a bulcsós had (“absolution army”) with some Protestant sarcasm towards the undertaking.45 The above-mentioned Johannes Michael Brutus had to leave his homeland because of his Protestant faith,46 so it is not surprising that many times he wrote disapprovingly about the papacy and the Catholic Church. Enumerating the reasons behind the peasant war was an excellent opportunity to do so. He, too, gives a lengthy account on the responsibilities of the pope and the legate: Leo X is guilty because, instigated by sycophants, he decided to proclaim a crusade, though providing no substantial help whatsoever; Bakócz is guilty too, because he wanted to become pope and when he failed to achieve this objective, he seized the opportunity to go home and pushed the bull’s declaration through the council; and finally, Brutus considers the entire institution of the crusade to be evil because in the course of participating in it people easily commit all kinds of horrendous crimes in the hope of absolution.47 43 “Varie turbulenterque ab eis re coepta, optimis quibusque medio sublatis, spe nihil minus veniae scelerum perpetuae retenta, suae libidini paene satis indulsere …” A. Bonfinius, Rerum Ungaricarum decades (1581), 736. 44 For the role of Franciscans in the revolt see Jeno˝ Szu˝cs, “Dózsa parasztháborújának ideológiája,” 625–41. See also the study of Pál Ács in the present volume. 45 Gáspár Heltai, Krónika az magyaroknak dolgairól, ed. Margit Kulcsár, foreword by Péter Kulcsár, Bibliotheca Historica (Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1981), 446–47. More recently on the chronicle and Heltai’s historiography see Zsombor Tóth, “A Heltai Galaxis. Írás/tudás, mentalitás és tradíció Heltai Gáspár történetírói munkásságában,” in idem, A történelmem terhe. Antropológiai szempontok a kora újkori magyar írásbeliség textusainak értelmezéséhez (Kolozsvár: Komp-Press–Korunk Baráti Társaság, 2006), 82–118. 46 The most detailed account of the issue until now: Vilmos Fraknói, “Brutus Mihály, Báthory István udvari történetírója,” 794–96. 47 About the guilt of the pope: “Hoc [bellum cruciatum] quidem Leo sibi finxerat animo, et sua sponte studio gloriae incensus, et assentatorum vocibus inflatus, quorum greges alebat …” János Mihály Brutus, Magyar históriája, 278. About Bakócz’s guilt: “Ergo cardinalis legatus, per eorum factionem, quibus bellum geri placebat, frustra melioribus dissentientibus, qui

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Count Péter Révay (1568–1622), an important political figure during the first two decades of the century, represented the Protestant viewpoint as well. Lutheran, yet loyal to the Habsburgs, he was worried about the unfolding CounterReformation in Hungary and was especially troubled by the activities of Cardinal Péter Pázmány, who was steering the movement. Therefore, in his account of Hungary’s history, he condemned the clergy’s participation in politics wherever he could, and, of course, did not spare Tamás Bakócz either.48 He adopted the account of Tubero that Bakócz had been spending money in Rome for his papal election and asked for a papal bull in order to cover his expenses.49Furthermore, following Zsámboky and Brutus, he generally condemned the institutions of crusade and papal absolution: he asserted that this deed does not please God and that such a war can hardly bring about absolution.50 Nevertheless, it is a new element that Révay—perhaps for the first time—discussed those sets of laws that were made against the peasantry during the diet of autumn 1514.51 The Calvinist János Nadányi (1643–1707) wrote a brief history of Hungary during his studies in the Netherlands when he was 19-years-old in the abridged style of “Florus” country histories, named for the famous historiographer of the Roman Empire. He followed in Zsámboky’s footsteps when he recounted the peasants’ revolt and incriminated the pope, stating that he only persuaded Bakócz to start a crusade because by doing so Italy could escape an Ottoman attack.52 His opinion on the

48 49

50

51 52

certam inde pestem et ruinam Ungaris protendebant, pontificis edictum promulgare constituit …” Ibid., 277. On the dangerousness and destructiveness of the crusade: “Saepe hoc maiorum memoria animadversum, qua de re non semel egimus, sed nullo umquam tempore, quam nostra, et patrum memoria magis; nullum haberi acrius telum, nulla arma, nullum fortius, violentius, saevius tormentum expugnandis imperitorum animis, quam iis in speciem obiectam religionem; nullum adeo immane facinus, nullum scelus, parricidium adeo atrox, nullum truculentum, quod non is alacri animo suscipiat, cui persuasum sit, eo sibi Deum propitiari, placari iratum, scelera et malefacta expiari.” Ibid., 304–05. See this in more detail Gergely Tóth, “Lutheránus országtörténet,” 133–37. “In hac votorum diversitate supervenit Thomas cardinalis Roma, qui sub mortem Iulii secundi ambibat pontificatum, sed spe frustratus, ut dispendia pecuniaria ibidem facta resarciret, Hungaros obtenta cruciata (ut vocant) sacra, ad bellum Turcis inferendum incitat, erectoque sacrae militiae signo bellum promulgare constituit.” Petrus de Rewa, De monarchia et sacra Corona regni Hungariae centuriae septem […] (Francofurti: Götzius, 1659), 62. Révay mocks the institution of the crusade and the absolution with a characteristically fine pun (grata gratuita): “… unde nata seditio rusticana ostendit, quam grata gratuita illa militia Deo fuerit, et quantum ad sublationem delictorum (quo nomine illa colligi praetendebatur) momenti attulerit.” Ibid. See ibid. “Nam Thomas Strigoniensis praesul papae instinctu, ne Italiae suae cladibus pax Hungarica staret, validam in Turcos contraxit manum; quae pace cum Selymo firmata nullius erat usus.” Johannis Nadányi, Florus Hungaricus – Nadányi János, A magyar Florus, ed. László Havas et al., AGAΘA 11 (Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 2001), 226.

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crusades is expressed in a brief comment: he thinks that the massacre in itself shows how “saintly” those who took up the cross had been.53 As far as I know, a synthesis in the Catholic spirit in the seventeenth century has been compiled only by Gergely Petho˝, a distinguished Slavonian aristocrat. Written in Hungarian, this chronicle speaks no evil against the Pope and Tamás Bakócz when presenting the revolt, unlike against crusaders and—somewhat paradoxically—János Szapolyai, who put down the revolt and would later become the rival of Ferdinand Habsburg in the struggle for the Hungarian throne, an evidently negative character for the pro-Habsburg Petho˝.54 The most memorable part of his account is that Szapolyai could not set eyes on the Host and the Chalice during the Elevation for two years because of his brutalities towards peasants. This is borrowed from Istvánffy, but the predecessor mentions it somewhere else; therefore, it is Petho˝’s “merit” that he placed this medieval sort of detail into the description of the revolt.55 The consequence of the above is that a “Catholic” and a “Protestant” interpretation of the Dózsa revolt began to take shape, based mainly on works by historian predecessors from the sixteenth century.

Slight Shift and Misconceptions Living On In Eighteenth-Century Historiography In the eighteenth century scholars of the Jesuit order successfully took control over the telling of Hungarian history. Results of Bollandist source criticism reached Hungarian monastic quarters as well, and the first serious chronologies, archontologies, diploma archives, primary text collections and new syntheses were written about the history of the country. Nonetheless, it is the historical reception of the Dózsa revolt itself that highlights how painfully slowly the exploration of the past progressed despite some serious results. Humanist narratives still dominated the description of events with the same denominational biases as before. What is more, there were precious few new sources or fresh, innovative statements. The above statement is brilliantly illustrated by Márton Szentiványi, member of the Society of Jesus and diligent collector of data at the turn of the century. In his collections of data that include almost all segments of science, he made a 53 “Feruntur uno quadrimestri septuaginta hominum millia occisa: ut facile aestimare possis, qualis ista cruciatorum (ita iam appellabantur) sanctitas, vita.” Ibid. 54 Gergely Pettho˝, Rövid magyar cronica, (Vienna: Cosmerovius, 660), Q3r. For the work and its author more recently see Levente Nagy, “Petho˝ Gergely Rövid magyar krónikája és a költo˝ Zrínyi Miklós,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 102 (1998): 285–300. 55 Ibid., Q3v.

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thorough examination of Hungarian history. However, Szentiványi discusses the Dózsa revolt in detail only once: when listing the good deeds (!) of popes and the Church towards Hungary. The 1513 papal bull is also included, and though he admits the crusade ended badly “due to the evilness and wickedness of its leader,” he asserts that the good deeds of the pope cannot be doubted.56 Sámuel Timon, another Jesuit, did not delve deeper into the subject. Although in his Hungarian historical chronologies (1715, 1736) he did mention the events of the peasant war, his chronology is only an extract of Istvánffy’s (and Petho˝’s). He neither used nor published a single new document, albeit in other cases he frequently and successfully drew on the charters collected by Jesuit predecessors.57 As for the role of the cardinal, though he mentions the charges against Bakócz—he had read in Istvánffy—he declares that he does not wish to do justice in the matter.58 The excellent Lutheran historian Mátyás Bél (1684–1749) wrote extensively on the peasant war in two instances: in the descriptions of Pest and Temesvár. Unfortunately he also failed to venture beyond humanist sources, therefore he could not contribute anything new to their knowledge. Still, there are some remarkable characteristics worth mentioning. The first is Bél’s diplomatic silence regarding the charges against Bakócz: on this account he even surpassed the Jesuit Timon. The explanation is that Bél, vicar of the Evangelical congregation in Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia), could publish his great work with the support of the monarch, but in return it was censored by the Hungarian Royal Chancery. Very soon this authority made it clear that Church affairs are not something he can interfere with in his work. The most important message in this was that he was not allowed to write on Protestant churches or express criticism towards the Roman Catholic Church.59 Undoubtedly this must have been the reason for Bél’s caution. The other particularity was that in connection with the story he often quotes Stauromachia by Taurinus, a work which was not utilized previously by historiographers. However, Bél identifies the poetic exaggeration of the epic, and where Taurinus differs from Istvánffy in the description of the events, he favors

56 Martinus Szentivany, Curiosiora et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea. Decadis tertiae pars prima, (Tyrnaviae: Typis Academicis, 1702), 183–84. 57 For this recently see Gergely Tóth, “A magyar történetírás kritikája és megújításának programja az 1740-es évekbo˝l. Bél Mátyás és a ‘Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum’,” Történelmi Szemle 55, no. 4 (2013): 593–617, esp. 611. 58 Samuel Timon, Synopsis novae chronologicae regnorum Hungariae, Croatiae, Dalmatiae etc. […] Pars 3. A Mathia Corvino inchoata et ad annum M.D. XXVI. perducta (Tyrnaviae: Typis Academicis, 1715), 116–17, on Bakócz: 115–16. In his subsequent chronology he recites almost word by word what he wrote in Synopsis. See idem., Epitome chronologica rerum Hungaricarum […] (Cassoviae: Typis Academicis, 1736), 102–03, about Bakócz: 102. 59 Tóth, “A magyar történetírás kritikája,” 613.

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the latter in looking for the true version.60 Thus some initiative of source criticism is perceptible in his work, but it was still far from satisfactory. György Pray (1723–1800), the most significant historian of the era – also a Jesuit – wrote two lengthy country histories. Annales regum Hungariae at last included new sources in the research in describing the antecedents of the peasant war (letters from the Holy See and King Vladislaus II), but mostly did so in order to contradict Brutus, who criticized Pope Iulius V and Leo X. Besides, Pray mentions several instances when popes sent subsidies to the Hungarians against the Ottomans—again in order to refute the claim of the sixteenth-century historiographer about priests and popes in Rome, living in luxury and making only promises instead of action concerning the fight against the Ottomans.61 As for the peasant war itself, he follows the humanist canon – most of all Istvánffy – very closely, with all its distortions and mistakes.62 In his later work (Historia regum Hungariae), Pray recounted the revolt much more thoroughly. Based on foreign narrators and data from diplomas, he investigated the international situation in more detail: he knew about Szapolyai’s Bulgarian campaign in 1513 and drew attention to the fact that in the same year Vladislaus II, King of Hungary, concluded an armistice with the Ottomans,63 though in fact only negotiations were taking place and an Ottoman attack against the Dalmatian city Knin in February 1514 presented a real threat and a good reason to proclaim the bull for the Hungarian ruling élite.64 At last he abandoned the Sallustian commonplace of mentioning the avarice and sloth of the nobility and did not extenuate the guilt or whitewash decisions of the pope, or the responsibility of Bakócz.65 For the description of the revolt he used letters from crusaders, thus he was able to name several peasant leaders. From their arbitrary titles (principes et campi ductores) he drew the (correct) conclusion that peasants elected their leaders themselves.66 He also knew about György Dózsa’s Cegléd 60 About the causes of the revolt and the events near Pest see Matthias Bel, Notitia Hungariae novae historico geographica, vol. 3 of 5 (Viennae Austriae: Straubius, 1735–1749), 49–55; On the siege of Temesvár see [Matthias Bel:] Comitatus Temesiensis, Manuscript, Esztergomi Fo˝székesegyházi Könyvtár, Hist., I, mmm, 58–66. 61 Georgius Pray, Annales regum Hungariae […] Pars IV. […] (Vindobonae: Kaliwoda, 1767), 344–49. 62 Ibid., 348–57. About the narrative by Pray see also Béla Bellér, “A Dózsa-parasztháború történeti-politikai koncepciója és történeti képe 1945 elo˝tti történetírásunkban,” Történelmi Szemle 17 (1974): 289–325, esp. 291–92. 63 Georgius Pray, Historia regum Hungariae […] Pars II. […] (Budae, 1801), 557–59. 64 Cf. Norbert C. Tóth, “Vita a keresztes hadjárat kihirdetéséro˝l,” 21. 65 The description of the events is opened by this terse notice: “Interea Strigoniensis Acrhiepiscopus Roma reversus nihil subsidiorum praeter facultatem promulgandi per regnum cruciatam expeditionem retulit.” Ibid., 559–60. This statement is not too flattering with regard to the pope or Bakócz. 66 Ibid., 561. For the letter by Tamás Aszalói Kecskés and Lo˝rinc Megyaszói Mészáros dated May

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Declaration—perhaps supported by the source compilation of Wagner67—and, though in a negative tone, he points out an important feature of the document, namely that Dózsa considered himself a vassal of the king only (Regis Hung. tantummodo subditus) and not that of the nobles, he adds as an explanation.68 Another step forward is the acknowledgement of the presence of priests in the rebel army.69 Thereby he corrected the earlier image in multiple regards and, aided by original documents, he came closer to knowing the real events, after (and besides) the bombastic phrases and empty stylization of humanist historiographers. It is a pity that correction came so late and was not too radical either. István Katona, a contemporary of Pray, was even less successful in reconstructing the events of the peasant war. In his huge national history, Historia critica, he practically copied the work of Istvánffy, and then peppered it at some places with data and published letters from Pray’s earlier work, Annales.70 There is hardly any novelty here: a more detailed list on the types of support by the popes to the king of Hungary against the Ottomans, to refute Brutus’ statements, thus obviously following the idea of his contemporary.71 To include two documents, the above-mentioned Cegléd Declaration and a letter by Vladislaus II to Sáros County dated June 4, 1514, from the source compilations by Wagner was a correct decision on his part.72 Another positive result is that based on the Cegléd Declaration, in which Dózsa identifies himself simply as strenuus miles, he denied Tubero’s statement about Dózsa’s election as king by his followers: furthermore, Katona expressed rightful criticism towards the narrative of the Dalmatian historiographer with regard to several other issues, too.73 These are but rare and brief glimpses of source criticism, already cultivated at a high level in eighteenth-

67 68 69 70 71 72 73

1514 see Monumenta rusticorum, no. 49; for the letter by Ferenc Liszkai Bagoly dated May 31, 1514 see ibid., 45. Letters concerning the peasant war collected by Pray were posthumously published in his work Epistolae procerum, see Georgius Pray, Epistolae procerum regni Hungariae. Pars I. […] (Posonii: Belnay, 1806), 83–91. (The above-mentioned two letters are not included here, but the declaration by Dózsa is there. On the latter, see below.) See Carolus Wagner, Analecta Scepusii sacri et profani. Pars IV. […] (Posonii et Cassoviae: Landerer, 1778), 34–35. Pray, Historia regum Hungariae, 561–62. Ibid., 561. Stephanus Katona, Historia critica regum Hungariae stirpis mixtae […]. Tomulus XI. ordine XVIII (Budae: n.p., 1792), 653–57, 684–748. Ibid., 697. Ibid., 720–21, 726–29. For the Cegléd declaration in Wagner’s work see note 67. For the letter sent to Sáros County see Carolus Wagner, Diplomatarium Comitatus Sarosiensis […] (Posonii et Cassoviae: Landerer, 1780), 22–24. Stephanus Katona, Historia critica, 747. The denial of election to king by the Cegléd Declaration proved to be so correct that later the statement of the humanist author was rejected partly on the same grounds by Sándor Márki and Gábor Barta. See Barta and Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború 1514-ben, 277.

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century Western Europe, and of Katona’s undeniable (but rarely used) ability to thoroughly match his published sources.74

Conclusion The first part of my study sought to prove that the reception of the Dózsa revolt in the interpretation of humanist authors was significantly influenced by classical traditions of historiography, namely Catiline by Sallust. The imitation of the Sallustian pattern resulted in the topos of debauched, avaricious and wasteful nobility, the figure of Dózsa, as the “corrupted child” of the age, ambitious and unscrupulous, the series of “Cegléd speeches” or the tradition of the “battle” of Temesvár. Therefore the connection of central elements of humanist narratives with historical facts reconstructed from primary sources is incidental and general (is it a historical fact or just a stereotype that nobility in the age of Vladislaus II was avaricious and debauched?), but from the viewpoint of posterity they were sublimed to historical reality by the dramatized story and solidly constructed, persuasive argumentation of humanist authors. The survival of humanist tradition was aided by the fact that even at the end of the eighteenth century archival materials were hardly used for the topic by Hungarian historiographers, and only Pray turned earnestly to foreign sources. Confessional bias – having appeared even in humanist authors – was characteristic at the end of this era as well, hardly a surprise in the age of counterreformation and in the eighteenth-century historical context of limitations against Protestant churches. This bias, or prism, was further aggravated by the fact that at this time historiography was mostly cultivated by the Jesuit order. These two factors, namely the lack of source criticism and historiography organized along confessional lines, had a decisive effect in conserving the above-analyzed humanist topoi in the reception of the Dózsa revolt. The effect of the authors being Catholic was also decisive in the long-lasting disappearance of the religious factor in the story of the crusade, declared by the pope and turned into a rebellion, which made continuity with the humanist tradition easier until the twentieth century.

74 György Szabados, “Katona István történetírói ido˝szeru˝ségéro˝l,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 112 (2008): 679–99; Idem, “Jezsuita ‘sikertörténet’ (1644–1811). A magyar történettudomány konzervatív megteremto˝iro˝l,” in Clio inter arma, 203–26, esp. 214–25.

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Part IV Modern Images: Revolt Representations in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Natasˇa Sˇtefanec

Why Did Gubec Have to Die Dózsa’s Death? Historical Representations of the Croatian Peasant Rebellion of 1573 and of Its Leader’s Public Execution

From the nineteenth century to the present day peasant uprisings, especially the great peasant rebellion1 that took place in 1573, have been among the few obligatory themes in narratives of Croatian history. Hundreds of monographs, articles and source editions, published especially from the 1950s until the 1980s, make it the most extensively researched topic in Croatian early modern history.2 Moreover, Matija Gubec is still the most commonly cited historical figure when it comes to naming streets and squares in Croatia, where 362 streets and squares are named after him according to the research published in 2007.3 At the same time, highly important national heroes such as members of the Zrinski and Frankopan families have a total of 125 streets and squares named after them. The Dózsa uprising was only sporadically mentioned in Croatian historiography even though it had tangible legal and socioeconomic consequences in the Croatian–

1 I will use the term rebellion (buna), which is widespread in Croatian historiography and public usage. Terms like uprising (ustanak) or revolt (revolt) are used only exceptionally with reference to the events of 1573. 2 See thorough reviews of historiography on the 1573 peasant rebellion in Jaroslav Sˇidak, Kroz pet stoljec´a hrvatske povijesti (Zagreb: Sˇkolska knjiga, 1981), 13−60; and Jaroslav Sˇidak, “Seljacˇka buna g. 1573. u historiografiji,” Radovi 5 (1973): 7−30. See also other articles published after the conference on the 1573 rebellion in the volume 5 of Radovi Instituta za hrvatsku povijest Sveucˇilisˇta u Zagrebu, edited in 1973 by Ivan Kampusˇ (further Radovi 5). See also: Borislav Grgin, “Osvrt na misˇljenja novije hrvatske historiografije o uzrocima, vodstvu i ˇ icˇko, programu velike seljacˇke bune 1572−3,” Historijski zbornik 44/1 (1991): 193−99; Branko C “Susedgradsko-stubicˇko vlastelinstvo nakon seljacˇke bune (1574−1650)” (MA thesis, University of Zagreb, 2005), 24−40; and Branimir Brgles. Bibliografija priloga o seljacˇkoj buni 1573. godine, accessed March 9, 2015, http://www.historiografija.hr/dokumenti/brgles_seljakka_buna.pdf. 3 Slaven Letica, Let iznad kukavicˇjeg gnijezda (Zagreb: Jesenski i Turk, 2007), 268−302; research was conducted by Maja Trogrlic´. The numbers are as follows: Matija Gubec (362); Vladimir Nazor (306); Stjepan Radic´ (265); Josip Jelacˇic´ (211); Ljudevit Gaj (204); Ante Starcˇevic´ (203); August Sˇenoa (182); Nikola Tesla (128); Tin Ujevic´ (122); Alojzije Stepinac (119); Antun Gustav Matosˇ (117); Antun Mihanovic´ (116); Ivan Goran Kovacˇic´ (112); Josip Juraj Strossmayer (110); and Josip Kozarac (103), etc.

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Slavonian Kingdom and despite the fact that Dózsa’s legendary death obviously served as a model for Gubec’s death.4 In researching the persona of Matija Gubec, historical debates revolved around four main issues: first, his leadership or, more precisely, his position among the main leaders of the rebellion; second, the course of his activities before and during the rebellion; third, his name and scarce biographical details; and, fourth, his death. In the present study I do not aim to address the main plot or to explore less investigated sidelines of the 1573 rebellion. Instead, in order to offer some comparative material for discussion on the ideological usage of the Dózsa’s uprising and death, first I will briefly delineate the main stages in the development of explanatory models of the 1573 rebellion and point to its political and public uses and ideological functions. Arguably, while the ideological framework for the narration of Gubec’s role in the rebellion and his death was changing, the brutality of the execution was not systematically approached from the perspective of cultural history or the history of violence. Gubec’s death has been presented from totally opposite moral and ideological standpoints over the past five centuries, from deserved punishment to martyrdom. Still, stages of his torture and execution were not analyzed from the perspective of the history of penal and coercion systems or the history of the body. Therefore, in the second part, I will focus on the presentation of Gubec’s death and question the motives and symbolism behind the course and methods of his torture and execution.

The Phases of Historical Representation and Ideological Usage of the 1573 Rebellion A. The 1573 rebellion was introduced into historiography by several important contemporaries of Gubec. It was long believed that the first account of the rebellion was provided by the court historian Miklós Istvánffy.5 Only much later 4 Josip Hartinger briefly mentions Dózsa’s uprising and Dózsa’s execution in relation to Gubec’s execution. Josip Hartinger, Hrvatsko-slovenska seljacˇka buna godine 1573 (Osijek, 1911), 16. This practice has continued. Ivo Vukcevich shortly juxtaposed the sentences of Dózsa and Gubec, likewise without deeper analysis. Ivo Vukcevich, Croatia 2: Ludwig von Gaj Opposes Croatia’s Hungarian Heritage (XLIBRIS, 2013), 125−29, especially 129. 5 Miklós Istvánffy, Historiarum de rebus Ungaricis libri XXXIV ab anno 1490. ad annum 1605 (Cologne: n.p. 1622). Istvánffy’s account was published in the edition of sources on the great peasant rebellion: Franjo Racˇki, “Gradja za poviest hrvatsko-slovenske seljacˇke bune god. 1573.” Starine JAZU VII (1875): 164–322; Franjo Racˇki. “Dopunak gradje za poviest hrvatskoslovenske seljacˇke bune god. 1573. i nekoliko izprava o hrv. poturici Franji Filipovic´u,” Starine JAZU VIII (1876): 243−52. For Istvánffy’s account see: Racˇki, “Gradja,” 215−18. For part of Istvánffy’s description in Croatian translation see Jaroslav Sˇidak, Historijska cˇitanka za hrvatsku povijest (Zagreb: Sˇkolska knjiga, 1952), 123−26.

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did Ferdo Sˇisˇic´ use Rövid magyar kronika (published in 1660) by Pettho˝ Gergely de Gerse (c. 1570–1629) as a more reliable source. Pettho˝ was a local landowner whose father was an eyewitness to the events.6 Although Istvánffy’s history was published only in 1622, he lived on an estate near Stubica when the events took place. Istvánffy was not an eyewitness to Gubec’s execution, but in general he was rather well-informed, fairly reliable and a politically important person. His account was a long-lasting success used by the majority of early modern authors, either fully or in some abbreviated version. Istvánffy’s account was made especially popular through the widely read handbook for Christians First Sin of Our Father Adam (Pervi otca nasˇega Adama greh, 1674), written in the Croatian language by the Jesuit Juraj Habdelic´. Moreover, influential Croatian chroniclers used Istvánffy as their main source – notably Juraj Rattkay in 16527 and Baltazar Adam Krcˇelic´ in 1770.8 Johan Weikhard von Valvasor’s longer history of the rebellion derived from new sources in 1689 and Pavao Ritter Vitezovic´’s succinct description of Gubec’s rebellion in 1696, which he did not base on Valvasor’s work, were not very influential.9 Istvánffy’s account remained “the grand narrative,” deeply entrenched in both popular and élite narrative traditions.10 Istvánffy was noticeably malignant towards peasants,11 accusing them of brazen, reckless and wild behavior, characterizing them as villains, criminal scum and human waste. Though reproaching overzealous actions against the peasants after the rebellion, Istvánffy was of the opinion that peasants deserved the punishments for their malicious and treacherous behavior.12 Rattkay continued the denunciation referring to peasants as the “criminal mob.” In a meager ten lines on the 1573 rebellion, Rattkay asserted that their irrational and irresponsible behavior justly ended with the “taming of the peasant’s arrogance.” Actually early modern chroniclers and writers, who were mostly noblemen, only sporadically and marginally noted that the rebellion had been provoked by the 6 Ferdo Sˇisˇic´, “Seljacˇka buna od 1573,” Jugoslavenska njiva 7 (1923): I−3/89–94, 4/170–73, 5/ 204–05, 6/235–41. 7 Juraj Rattkay, Spomen na kraljeve i banove Kraljevstava Dalmacije, Hrvatske i Slavonije (Zagreb: Hrvatski institute za povijest, 2001), 220, 338. For more on Rattkay’s political program and construction of history see the extensive introductory study to Rattkay’s book by Sándor Bene (pp. 4−103). 8 Baltazar Adam Krcˇelic´, Povijest Stolne crkve zagrebacˇke, trans. Zlatko Sˇesˇelj (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 1994), 283−84. 9 Johan Weikhard von Valvasor, Die Ehre des Herzogthums Krain IV (Nürnberg, 1689), 484−85; Pavao Ritter Vitezovic´. Kronika aliti spomen vsega sveta vikov (Zagreb: ArTresor naklada, 2015, 1696). 10 Sˇidak, “Kroz pet,” 13−16. 11 Peasants involved in the 1573 rebellion were mostly serfs. 12 For Istvánffy’s account quoted in the edition of sources on the 1573 rebellion see Racˇki, “Gradja,” 215−18; Sˇidak, “Historijska cˇitanka,” 123−26. Quotation from his work can be found in Gabriella Erdélyi’s study in the present volume.

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mistreatment of peasants. In the 1670s, the Jesuit Habdelic´ remarked that one should pay more attention not to overburden peasants since it could end in disorder, but at the same time he highlighted divine legitimacy of noble supremacy and peasant subordination. The stance toward peasant disobedience was unanimous: peasants were punished as they deserved. Similar contemporary attitudes of local noblemen provide an insight into the mindset that made Gubec’s execution possible and acceptable. B. In the middle of the nineteenth century Ivan Kukuljevic´ Sakcinski introduced new research results (along with some contagious fabrications regarding the place of execution), giving impetus to a new approach to the 1573 rebellion and early modern uprisings.13 In studies following Kukuljevic´, chapters on the 1573 rebellion grew in size and one could distinguish new ideological approaches to social unrest in general. It was now more readily accepted that mistreatment and excessive burdens induced peasants to rebel. Often cited was the paragraph from Anton Vrancˇic´’s/Antal Verancsics’s 1573 letter to the Emperor stating that the nobility takes care of its cattle in a better and more honorable way than it takes care of its serfs.14 Early historians started to use historical narratives for educational and propaganda purposes, working intensely on the construction of the Croatian nation and state. Institutions and laws in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, its ban/viceroy, nobility and diet, as well as selected heroes and warriors were interpreted by historians as pillars in the homogenization of the Croatian people.15 Historiography was designed to help in the long struggle for independence from Hungarian, German and other foreign domination. The first echelon of nineteenth-century historians like Sˇime Ljubic´, Tadija Smicˇiklas, Matija Mesic´ and their influential successors such as Vjekoslav Klaic´ and Ferdo Sˇisˇic´ moderately included lower social strata into the national political narrative, mostly through such events as social unrest. Their narrative often consisted of rather impartial and comprehensive paraphrasing of sources ending with the short theme: the 1573 rebellion was bad for the country because thousands of peasants who were needed to till the land and help in anti-Ottoman defense were eventually 13 Ivan Kukuljevic´ Sakcinski, Dogad¯aji Medvedgrada (Zagreb: Narodna tiskarnica Lj. Gaja, 1854). 14 For the letter from Antun Vrancˇic´ to Emperor Maximilian II (February 23, 1573) see Vjekoslav Klaic´, Povijest Hrvata, vol. V (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1973, 1911), 358, 628. 15 On the Croatian case see the following monumental work: Stjepan Antoljak, Hrvatska historiografija do 1918, 2 vols (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1992), II, 13−39 et passim. On similar regional cases see Monika Baar, Historians and Nationalism. East Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chapter “Romantic Historiography in the Service of Nation Building.” On the construction of national memory and nation in France, analyzed also through the creation of the cult of the Great Men (Canon of Great Frenchmen), see David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France. Inventing Nationalism, 1680−1800 (Cambridge, Massachusetts–London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 107−39.

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killed.16 This lamentation became very popular in subsequent political discourse and historiography.17 All in all, the 1573 rebellion started to figure more prominently in historiography, with increased understanding of peasant conditions. But how could one reconcile the peasantry and the nobility within the framework of newly emerging Croatian national history? The easiest way to avoid the separation of the nation along pre-modern social divisions (that is nobility versus serfs) was to pinpoint “wicked,” even “mad” noblemen who should take the blame for the nobility, thus leaving families like Drasˇkovic´ and Zrinski and the institutions of ban and diet largely unblemished. It was well suited for historians, politicians and writers—all active participants in the construction of group memories and identities.18 Numerous studies on memory and identity (that gained in importance beginning in the 1970s) clearly showed how fluid notions memory and identity are.19 As John R. Gillis would sum up: “we are constantly revising our memories to suit our current identities; or, if memory has its politics, so too does identity.”20 Thus, the perception of peasants and Gubec was modified. C. The perception of peasants and Gubec was further modified in the following decades, significantly to the benefit of peasants. Those who considerably contributed to this modification were widely read writers such as August Sˇenoa (Seljacˇka buna, 1877) or Mirko Bogovic´ (Matija Gubec kralj seljacˇki, 1859) who presented Gubec as a romantic hero.21 On a purely political level, the Illyrian Party (National Party from 16 For a similar trend in the evaluation of the Dózsa rebellion, considered as a direct prelude to the fatal defeat against the Ottomans at Mohács in 1526, in nineteenth-century Hungarian historiography and literature see the study by Gergely Tóth and Márton Szilágyi in the present volume. See also: Antoljak, “Hrvatska historiografija.” 17 Tade Smicˇiklas presented a basic (though sometimes inaccurate) narrative with the following conclusion “The nobility tramped upon their poor serfs too much … with the rebellion Croatia lost many thousand heroic fists needed for defense against the Turks. Even more workforce was lost.” Tade Smicˇiklas, Poviest Hrvatska. Dio drugi od godine 1526−1848 (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1879), 64−69, citation 68−69. For a similar stance see also Hartinger, “Hrvatsko-slovenska,” 169; and Klaic´ “Povijest Hrvata,” 357, 377−78. 18 Hartinger pointed to several cruel individuals among the nobility such as Matija Keglevic´, Franjo Tahy and the widow of Ban Petar Erdo˝dy. Hartinger, “Hrvatsko-Slovenska,” 169. However, “the poor peasant was not defeated by the noble army… . He was killed by winter, bad weapons and even worse discipline.” Hartinger, “Hrvatsko-slovenska,” 166−68. Josip Nagy, rather neutral in terms of placing guilt on one particular class, still sees Franjo Tahy (“whose cruelty became madness”) as the main culprit. Josip Nagy, Historijska pozadina ”Seljacˇke bune” (Zagreb: Minerva, 1932), 12, 14. 19 See the introduction by Maja Brkljacˇic´ and Sandra Prlenda: Maja Brkljacˇic´ and Sandra Prlenda, “Zasˇto pamc´enje i sjec´anje?,” in Kultura pamc´enja i historija, ed. Maja Brkljacˇic´ and Sandra Prlenda (Zagreb: Golden Marketing–Tehnicˇka knjiga, 2006), 7−18 et passim. 20 John R. Gillis, “Memory and Identity: the History of a Relationship,” in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, ed. idem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 3. 21 Miroslav Sˇicel, “Tema seljacˇke bune u hrvatskoj knjizˇevnosti 19. stoljec´a,“ Radovi 5 (1973): 215−26.

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1843) led by Ljudevit Gaj, Ivan Kukuljevic´ Sakcinski and Ivan Mazˇuranic´, the Croatian Party of Rights led by Ante Starcˇevic´ (1861) and the Croatian Peasant Party (1904) led by brothers Antun and Stjepan Radic´ (later Vladko Macˇek) as well as other national parties started to use the tradition, the folklore and the myths related to the 1573 rebellion in order to proclaim and popularize their political programs. In the course of doing this, they attempted to artificially reconcile the conflicting early modern social strata in the framework of imagined national unity and to present their political parties as carriers and promoters of positive and appealing attributes that were inherited from chosen noblemen, serfs and peasants: heroism; bravery; honesty; martyrdom; pride; dignity; and so on.22 The Croatian Party of Rights accentuated selected courageous chapters from early modern Croatian history. The issue of fierce noble suppression of the 1573 rebellion was approached tactically: nobility had every right to react, while peasants remained loyal towards the king and did not endanger the social and legal system. The Croatian Peasant Party insisted on the positive and progressive role played by early modern peasants, asserting that they had fought for their ancient human rights (stare pravice), human dignity, freedom and equality, thus anticipating the glorious French Revolution. For example, Antun Jirousˇek’s short presentation of the 1573 rebellion finishes with the exemplary words: Gubec gave his life for peasant rights, for the general justice of humanity, while the mortal sweat of the peasant executioner Tahy springs even today from his gravestone. The grand struggle of Croatian and Slavonian peasants for freedom, justice and equality was prevented by Croatian and Slovenian noblemen and only the French revolution provided what the peasants fought for, namely freedom, equality of all people before the law and the feeling of brotherhood.23

Rudolf Herceg, the ideologist of the peasant movement led by Stjepan Radic´, presented the rebellion in a similar tone: “Gubec died and ‘ancient rights’ died with him… .What he wanted 350 years ago, we have to accomplish today.”24 Similar notions were communicated by Josip Predavec, one of the leaders of the Croatian Peasant Party, Petar Grgec, and others.25 Already in 1912 and 1913, the 1573 rebellion and Matija Gubec were introduced in school textbooks outside Croatia, in Serbia and

22 On the same process in East Central European political discourses see: Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopecˇek, eds., Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770– 1945, vol. II. National Romanticism. The Formation of National Movements (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007). 23 Antun Jirousˇek, Velika seljacˇka buna godine 1573 (Zagreb: Seljacˇka sloga, 1941, 1926), 30−32. 24 Rudolf Herceg, “Matija Gubec,” in Mala knjizˇnica seljacˇke sloge (Zagreb: Seljacˇka sloga, 1941, 1922), 5. 25 Josip Predavec published his articles in the journal Obzor and in the following book: Josip Predavec, Selo i seljaci (Zagreb: Tipografija d.d., 1934). See also Sˇidak, “Kroz pet,” 27; and Petar Grgec, Matija Gubec, borac i mucˇenik za prava hrvatskih seljaka (Zagreb: Domagoj, 1936).

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Slovenia, as analyzed by Jelavich.26 Peasants were attributed noble virtues like honor, bravery, even foresight. Their claims were seen as justified, even progressive, though still somewhat unbefitting and inappropriate in intensity. Even the ideology of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) presented Matija Gubec as a peasant fighter, hero and martyr, exemplary of Ustasˇa spirit.27 D. These approaches were refurbished by communist intellectuals and politicians appraising peasants and Matija Gubec in particular.28 Elements of Peasant Party ideology were appropriated into the new ideological system, as extensively elaborated by Snjezˇana Koren. This was evident in school programs and textbooks discussing Matija Gubec and related events.29 Beginning in the 1930s, peasant revolts were increasingly interpreted (in both historiography and politics) as a consequence of an ancient and long-lasting clash of two social and economic classes. For example, Tito used Gubec in his speeches, while numerous Partisan units were named after Matija Gubec during the Second World War. Gubec and Tito were viewed as two righteous freedom fighters from Zagorje region.30 According to the historian Milan Durman: The rebellion was historically doomed to fail. In its final consequences it was directed against feudalism as a social system, and in those times it was too early for such an attempt. Proclamations for which the Croatian peasant fought would surface only with the French Revolution and this was the very substance of the rebellion. People take destiny in its own hands, introduce the democratization of state burdens, abolish exploitation of the majority by the minority of privileged classes and take care of the collective defense of its own borders… Only a peasant could honestly and devotedly defend his country.31

ˇ ulinovic´ adaSimilar interpretation was reinforced beginning in 1945. Ferdo C mantly emphasized the class character of the 1573 rebellion. It “had no national or religious but distinctly class character and its revolutionary nature makes it the first among all our social movements in the feudal epoch in Croatia.”32 Though 26 Charles Jelavich, Juzˇnoslavenski nacionalizmi. Jugoslavensko ujedinjenje i udzˇbenici prije 1914 (Zagreb: Globus – Sˇkolska knjiga, 1992), 97, 201, 227, 238. 27 Ivan Jelic´, “O znacˇenju tradicije velike seljacˇke bune 1573. u povijesti komunisticˇkog pokreta i revolucije u Hrvatskoj,“ Radovi 5 (1973): 327. 28 See article by Ivan Jelic´ on the 1573 rebellion in the history of the communist movement (from 1973) in which he presents the higher purpose of 1573 tradition as “our tradition” accomplished in the union of workers and peasants: Jelic´, “O znacˇenju,” 340 et passim. 29 Snjezˇana Koren, Politika povijesti u Jugoslaviji (1945−1960). Komunisticˇka partija Jugoslavije, nastava povijesti, historiografija (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2012), 128−29, 136, 171−72. 30 Jelic´, “O znacˇenju,“ 332−39 et passim. 31 Milan Durman, Hrvatska seljacˇka buna 1573 (Zagreb: Zadruzˇna sˇtamparija, 1936), 148−49. In his extensive study Durman provided new facts and interpretation and dedicated one chapter to Matija Gubec (chapter on Gubec 117−25). Durman, “Hrvatska seljacˇka,” 153. ˇ ulinovic´, Seljacˇke bune u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb: Seljacˇka sloga, 1951), 11−12, 21−22, 32 Ferdo C citation 71.

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generally more refined in rendering opinions, Stjepan Antoljak took a similar ideological approach (“material conditions for the overturn of feudalism were not ripe”) and pathos (“victory of the defeated is maybe the most elevated mystery of history”), stressing the anti-feudal and national character of the peasant’s fight. To Antoljak, the rebellion was historically more important than the uprising of Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan. They alone put their swords back in their sheaths and surrendered to their executioner. It surmounts … the unserious and ill–considered step of Eugen Kvaternik. True, it ended … in bloody defeat and terrible ordeal. But this defeat hit the peasants in a physical sense only. The democratic idea of his social emancipation did not die with them, because the time arrived when the descendants of those who killed Gubec in a dreadful way honor his memory.33

According to Rudolf Bic´anic´, peasants rebelled against exploitation and the feudal system in general and the rebellion had some progressive bourgeoiscapitalist elements (serfs practiced trade, some rebels were prosperous, some were artisans).34 The day of the death of Matija Gubec (February 15), commemorated in Croatia from the 1920s, when the impetus was given by the Croatian Peasant Party, continued to be commemorated in the 1950s, even at the Yugoslav level. Gubec was presented as a “fighter for the rights of the working folk.”35 Obviously, peasant dissatisfaction and rebellion gained additional importance after the Second World War in all Yugoslav lands. From the 1950s to the 1980s historians produced a copious number of studies and provided rather thorough reconstruction of events. Plenty of new research was introduced by Josip Adamcˇek.36 To be fair, this great swing forward came also as a consequence of the rising importance of social and economic history in Europe.37 Also, Croatian 33 Stjepan Antoljak, Bune pucˇana i seljaka u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1956), 143−45. 34 Rudolf Bic´anic´, Pocˇeci kapitalizma u hrvatskoj ekonomici i politici (Zagreb: Sˇkolska knjiga, 1952), 5−21, especially 11−21. See also Jelic´, “O znacˇenju,” 327−41. See Sˇidak on interpretation of Julijan Vladimirovicˇ Bromlej: Sˇidak, “Kroz pet,” 28−33. 35 Koren, “Politika povijesti,” 385−87, 403−04, 417 (citation), 418, 440, 448−49. On the building of the French nation through the use of festivals beginning already in the eighteenth century see Bell, “The Cult,” 165−68. 36 Selection from Adamcˇek’s studies: Josip Adamcˇek, “Susjedgradsko-stubicˇko vlastelinstvo uocˇi seljacˇke bune 1573,” Historijski zbornik XIX–XX (1966−67): 141−94; Josip Adamcˇek, “Prilozi povijesti seljacˇke bune 1573,” Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta, Odsjek za povijest 6 (1968): 51−96; Josip Adamcˇek. Seljacˇka buna 1573 (Zagreb: Odbor za proslavu 400. godisˇnjice seljacˇke bune 1573. u Donjoj Stubici, 1968); Josip Adamcˇek, “Seljacˇki kralj Gubec-beg,” Nastava povijesti 4 (1972): 1−7; and Josip Adamcˇek, “Seljacˇka buna 1573,“ in Drusˇtveni razvoj u Hrvatskoj od 16. stoljec´a do pocˇetka 20. stoljec´a, ed. Mirjana Gross (Zagreb: SNL, 1981), 41 −58. 37 The methodological and theoretical contributions of Peter Blickle on the German Peasant War, or the revolution of 1525, and his concepts of the ordinary man (Gemeiner Mann) and communalism (Kommunalismus) were not sufficiently discussed and tested in the Croatian

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historiography was not limited to the context of class struggle, as the case of Nada Klaic´ clearly demonstrates.38 However, in contrast to Istvánffy’s account, the nobility was often perceived as a backward and decadent social element and noblemen as obstinate and self-righteous obstacles to progressive social changes. The death and execution of Gubec were still presented in factual terms, without culturally oriented analysis. Though poets found an inspiration in it, the death was not analyzed per se.39 E. From the 1990s and the Croatian War of Independence research on social unrest dwindled. Such topics were partly stigmatized as associated to communist and socialist ideology and partly avoided on the grounds that they had already been well researched. Cultural historians also rarely tackled the issue. Nobility came into the spotlight again within the context of family history, the history of state-making, cultural history and so on. Though the focus of research shifted, the 1573 rebellion continued to play a prominent role in history textbooks and popular culture. Explanatory models in textbooks from the 1990s have largely imitated nineteenthcentury positions, providing rather curt narratives, isolating good and bad individuals and avoiding class-struggle explanation patterns. Though “contaminated” with excessive ideological content after the Second World War, Gubec continued to maintain a high moral standing as a fighter for the rights of the ordinary man. The memorial to Matija Gubec in Gornja Stubica along with the Museum of Peasant Revolts, somewhat ironically located in the Baroque castle of the counts Orsˇic´, are open to visitors from its establishment in 1973. In his paradigmatic article “Gubec as Post-Icon: Interpretation and Dispersion of a Historical Character in Popular Culture,” Tomislav Oroz provided a clear presentation of how Gubec has been used and (re)interpreted from the 1960s until today according to various practices of popular culture. Actually, Gubec was politically and historically omnipresent, becoming a potent reference point in public life—a (post)icon.40 According to Oroz, popular usage emerged already in the socialist period and extended into the post-socialist period, when the theme of Gubec lost a great amount of its political burden, instead gaining additional currency in cultural circles and practices. Some of the latter were trying to recreate and represent the past, while others were criticizing (allegedly anti-demcase. On the fundamental concepts see Peter Blickle, Der Bauernkrieg. Die Revolution des Gemeinen Mannes (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1998), 41−54, 97−103. 38 Nada Klaic´, Drusˇtvena previranja i bune u Hrvatskoj u XVI i XVII stoljec´u (Belgrade: Nolit, 1976), 73−118. 39 Koren, “Politika povijesti,” 418. Well-known use of the 1573 rebellion motives (as well as Dózsa’s uprising motives) in poetry see in: Miroslav Krlezˇa, Balade Petrice Kerempuha: with Drawings by Krsto Hegedusˇic´ (Zagreb: Zora, 1956). 40 Tomislav Oroz, “Matija Gubec kao post-ikona. Interpretacije i disperzije povijesne licˇnosti u popularnoj kulturi,” in Horror-porno-ennui. Kulturne prakse postsocijalizma, edited by Ines Prica and Tea Sˇkokic´ (Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2011), 243−72.

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ocratic) government policies and some were addressing numerous social injustices of the era of democratic transition. All were using Matija Gubec as a symbol of justice, freedom and dignity.41 In comparison to Istvánffy’s account, Gubec was placed on the opposite side of the moral and emotional spectrum in the 1990s. Gubec’s life and death, especially the public construct of Matija Gubec as the superhero and his publicly unaccepted identity as Ambroz Gubec serve as excellent examples of the distinction between memory (as a primitive or holy form) and history – as introduced by Pierre Nora.42 Istvánffy’s account of Gubec’s conviction and execution can serve to illustrate the long-lasting impact that the so-called institutionalized memory (or trained memory), produced exclusively by the élites, exercised from the medieval period until deep into the nineteenth century.43

Gubec’s Torture and Execution: A Possible Explanatory Model Gubec and the 1573 rebellion had received their share of attention in politics, the public sphere and historiography, although some topics, like the bloody resolution of the 1573 rebellion, remain to be further investigated. In public and political discourse as well as in historiography, Gubec’s torture and execution, described in several factual sequences, was usually evoked to produce compassion and emotion needed to strengthen various ideological positions. But why was he executed in such a ruthless fashion? Is it self-evident or was there a contemporary political and ideological usage of specific execution procedures in place? Should his death send a more precise message to contemporaries than a simple declaration of reinstated noble supremacy?

41 Oroz examines important cases from the socialist period (from 1963 until 1974 comic-book creator Ivica Bednjanec published 23 comic books based on themes from the 1573 rebellion, while Vatroslav Mimica directed a famous movie Anno domini 1573 in 1975 and I. Krajacˇ, M. Prohaska and K. Metikosˇ created the first Yugoslav rock-opera, Gubec beg, in 1975) and the post-socialist period (the music group Legen and its influential 2000 album Seljacˇka buna, citizens initiative Grad¯anska inicijativa Matija Gubec – otpor prostoru politicˇke diskrecije from 2005, society Druzˇba vitezova zlatnog kalezˇa from 2004, the festival Gupcˇeva buna 1573, etc.). Oroz, “Matija Gubec,” 250−69. 42 Pierre Nora, ”Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,“ Representations 26 (Spring, 1989): 7−24; Brkljacˇic´ and Prlenda, “Kultura pamc´enja,” 21−44. 43 See the exemplary article by David Cressy, “National Memory in Early Modern England,” in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, edited by John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 61−73. See also Philippe Braunstein, “Towards Intimacy: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in A History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby (Cambridge, Massachusetts–London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 619−20.

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Although it has been long acknowledged by historical scholarship and school textbooks that Ilija Gregoric´ was the foremost military leader of the rebellion and that the Gubec in question was actually “Ambroz Gubec called Matija,” in public discourse and public memory Matija Gubec remains the epitome of the 1573 rebellion.44 I argue that such a resistant subsequent representation of Gubec’s undisputed leadership was due to the centuries-long early modern tradition of the rebellion tale and, even more, to Gubec’s haunting and frequently narrated death. As one of the most resilient narratives from an entire body of literature and memory on Croatian early modern peasant uprisings it deserves more attention. In elaborating on Gubec I will not examine in depth Dózsa’s torture and death.45 However, I intend to provide comparative perspective on execution procedures and historiography in those two cases. Dózsa’s torture and death some sixty years before the 1573 rebellion was notorious throughout the Kingdom of Hungary, as confirmed by Istvánffy, who also viewed Dózsa’s uprising as a malicious and wicked undertaking.46 Élite political circles recalled Dózsa’s uprising with utmost fear and dread, while the punishment for the rebellion leaders was considered well-deserved. György Dózsa was crowned with a red-hot iron crown, his flesh was pinched with red-hot pincers, his accomplices had to eat his flesh and/or were killed in front of him. He was eventually burned alive, allegedly on a red-hot iron throne,47 his body quartered and sent to various parts of the kingdom as a warning.48

44 Adamcˇek established that sources only mention ( Jambrek) Ambroz Gubec, while the name Matija is considered to be Istvánffy’s invention, maybe given in association with the righteous and brave king Matthias Corvinus. Adamcˇek, “Prilozi povijesti,” 51−59. Moreover, Ambroz Gubec was only one of the leaders. The main military leader was Ilija Gregoric´. Most historians have agreed with this conclusion. See Radovi 5, 187, 104−05, 212; Sˇidak, “Kroz pet,” 39; Klaic´, “Drusˇtvena previranja,” 98−100; Trpimir Macan, Povijest hrvatskoga naroda (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska – Sˇkolska knjiga, 1992), 200−02; and Mladen Sˇvab, “Ambroz Gubec,” in Hrvatski biografski leksikon (Zagreb: LZ “Miroslav Krlezˇa,” 2002). 45 On Dózsa’s death see Marianna D. Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary in 1514? The Dózsa Passion,” in European Iconography East and West: Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference June 9−12, 1993, ed. György Endre Szo˝nyi (Leiden–New York–Cologne: Brill, 1995), 91−108. 46 In the opinion of Istvánffy, Dózsa was the most heinous and evil man of all people: “vel eo nomine graviore irrogato supplicio, quod adhuc compluriom senum animos, qui in vivis essent, infaustae ac diris omnibus devovendae Georgii Siculii, in excidium nobilitatis initae rebellionis memoria, non sine horrore subiret, qui olim omnium mortalium corruptissimus et depravatissimus.” Racˇki, “Gradja,” 218. 47 Freedman accepts the heated iron throne as a fact, although it seems to have been a later invention. See Paul H. Freedman, “Atrocities and Executions of the Peasant Rebel Leaders in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in At the Edge of the Law. Socially Unacceptable and Illegal Behaviour in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, edited by Suzana Miljan and Gerhard Jaritz (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 2012), 73−81, here 71; Same in Paul Freedman, “Representations of Peasant and Seigneurial Fury in Late Medieval

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Gubec’s torture and death were similar. Istvánffy provided a factual account that endured for a long period of time: Andrija Pasanec, Gubec’s second in command, was first killed in front of Gubec, after which Gubec was (deservedly) tortured with red-hot iron pincers, crowned with red-hot iron crown and quartered as a bandit.49 Stories on Gubec’s final days offered by various authors differ only to a minor degree with regard to inconsequential details. I will sum up the relevant phases of Gubec’s downfall. First, already during the rebellion Gubec was allegedly elected peasant king, which was important for the later adjudication of his punishment. Second, contrary to some leaders who were sent as far as Vienna and Ljubljana for interrogation, Gubec and several of those who fought alongside him were not put on trial, but escorted from the battlefield directly to Zagreb. They were kept imprisoned for days. Third, the ban and bishop Juraj Drasˇkovic´ wrote the following to the king and the archduke on February 11, 1573: “One of them called Gubec Beg, who was recently proclaimed king, we will crown, if your Holy Majesty permits, with the red-hot iron crown, as an example to others.”50 Fourth, allegedly not awaiting royal approval, on February 15 Gubec was brought in front of the crowd, crowned with red-hot iron crown, tortured by being pinched with red-hot iron pincers in front of a gathered crowd and, finally, quartered. There are slight differences in the narration of the course of events, though the punishment methods in sources and historiography are identical. Klaic´, for example, repeated Istvánffy’s account.51 Sˇisˇic´ developed the theme somewhat, producing new observations on the issue.52 Sˇisˇic´ stated that Gubec was killed on Carnival (fasˇnik) Sunday, February 15, with the purpose of providing a spectacle to the citizens of Zagreb. He presumed that he was first crowned with a

48

49 50

51 52

and Early Modern Europe,” Temas medievales [online] 19, no. 1 (2011), accessed May 16, 2015. See also Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary,” 94; and Ignác Romsics, ”Székely Dózsa György. Haramia és/vagy népvezér?” Rubicon 24 (2014): 4−29. László Kontler, Povijest Mad¯arske: tisuc´u godina u srednjoj Europi (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2007), 140−41; Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák, and Tibor Frank, eds., A History of Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 79. On the death of Gubec (and Dózsa) see also reports of early modern writers and chroniclers summed up in Durman, “Hrvatska seljacˇka,” 132−37. Racˇki, “Gradja,” 217−18. Ban Juraj Drasˇkovic´ addressed a couple of letters to the Emperor Maximilian II and Archduke Charles. Racˇki, “Gradja,” 211−13; and Sˇidak, “Historijska cˇitanka,” 122−23. Jobst Joseph Thurn reported the following to the Carniolan estates on February 16: “Sonsten bericht mich gedachts H. de Gregorianicz vom Adl ainer, das man der Paurn gewesnen Khayser und Künig am näctverschinen Sontag zu Agram mit eysnen glüenden Cronnen gekhrönnt haben sole.” Racˇki, “Gradja,” 244−45. Klaic´, “Povijest Hrvata,” 376. Ferdo Sˇisˇic´, “Znacˇaj hrvatske seljacˇke bune 1573,” Novosti Easter edition (1936), Durman, ”Hrvatska seljacˇka,” 135−37.

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slightly warmed iron crown – probably the iron muzzle used for cattle, as in Dózsa’s case. According to Sˇisˇic´, if Gubec was crowned with a red-hot iron crown it would immediately kill him, but the purpose of the punishment was a long, sadistic torture which had to keep the victim alive as long as possible. He reasons, rather convincingly, that after the “crowning” he was dragged through the city streets as his torturers pinched his flesh with red-hot iron pincers. Sˇisˇic´ states that this was done in order to present the victim to the crowd and to enable the crowd to ridicule him as the Carnival peasant king, whereas the muzzle served to enhance the mocking intention. Subsequently, he was hauled to the execution place, where he was quartered in the way dissenters were punished.53 In most cases historians briefly stated that the act of crowning with a red-hot iron crown was a straightforward symbolic retribution for the usurpation of the leading role in the rebellion (peasant king), while Sˇisˇic´ also emphasized the Carnival context.54 Ivan Kukuljevic´ Sakcinski spiced up the account with some imaginary details on Gubec’s execution on St. Marcus square in Zagreb: Gubec, “who was known to be elected the king of peasants,” was “tied to the chair55 at that place where even today there are four flat stones” fastened to the ground. This detail was further ingrained into public memory in the popular synthesis of Croatian history by Tade Smicˇiklas.56 It became deeply rooted despite the fact that Vjekoslav Klaic´ attributed the entire story to new tradition and Josip Horvat ( Jutarnji list, February 17, 1936) denounced Kukuljevic´’s assertions claiming that four stones originated from the statue removed in 1895—some 40 years after Kukuljevic´’ writing.57 Additional folk tales and traditions on Gubec’s resurrection developed as well, though are of no consequence here.58 Why did Gubec have to die and how it was supposed to be done? István Werbo˝czy’s Tripartitum (1517), the first collection of customary law in the Kingdom of Hungary, lists what was considered the taint of infidelity (nota infidelitatis) for which both the head and the inheritance were lost, the latter even for sons and kinsmen. First on the long list is lèse-majesté, or plot against the 53 Sˇisˇic´, “Znacˇaj”; Sˇisˇic´ also cited verbatim in Durman, “Hrvatska seljacˇka,” 134−37. 54 With regard to the Dózsa case see the study by Farkas Gábor Kiss in the present volume regarding mock passion narratives of the time, with special reference to the title leaf of Taurinus’s Stauromachia. 55 Maybe the invention of a chair at St. Mark’s square is prompted by some later accounts of Dózsa’s death on a red-hot iron throne. See footnote 48. 56 Kukuljevic´ Sakcinski, “Dogad¯aji,” 70. See also: Smicˇiklas, “Poviest Hrvatska,” 68−69. 57 Klaic´, “Povijest Hrvata,” 376. Some recent writers also claim that later legends invented the iron throne and Gubec’s execution on St. Mark’s square in an attempt to attribute the act of execution to the citizens of Gradec (Zagreb). Hrvoje Gracˇanin, Kratka povijest Hrvatske za mlade I (Zagreb: SysPrint, 2006), 221−22. 58 On the well-known legend claiming that Gubec did not actually die and would return with his army see Ivan Krstitelj Tkalcˇic´, Hrvatska povjesnica (Zagreb: Brzotisak Dragutina Albrechta, 1861); Klaic´, “Povijest Hrvata,” 376; and Durman, “Hrvatska seljacˇka,” 125.

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prince. The second are various rebellions or: “when someone openly rises against or opposes the public order of the king and the crown” (I 14:2). According to the Tripartitum, if the judicial trial failed to achieve peaceful resolution, the accused was punished by the capital sentence of beheading, though one has to keep in mind that in the case of the taint of infidelity Tripartitum discussed mainly legal procedures related to people with possessions. Among the latter, persons of every rank and sex, including women and ecclesiastics, could be subjected to capital punishment in the case of the taint of infidelity.59 In the early modern period there were numerous instances of unrest and rebellion in parts of Croatia–Slavonia which was administered by the ban (Zivilkroatien), and on the Military Border, which was administered by the Aulic War Councils in Vienna and Graz.60 Often, though not always, the revolts included armed conflict, murder and bloody retributions between the conflicting parties. In some cases the leaders were sentenced to death, which was usually carried out through decapitation, as envisaged by the Tripartitum. In some cases there were more drastic punishments, like quartering, especially in the case of prominent rebels and bandits. Sometimes the punishments were more lenient, such as incarceration, mutilation or even pardon and peaceful settlement. In seventeenth-century Zivilkroatien there was a tendency toward non-violent settlement of issues following rebellions. It was still not the result of a change in the penal system, but a consequence of the growing recognition that the rebellion of serfs was often justified, of the vicinity of the Military Border inhabited by free men and of the creation of a specific culture of conflict (or conflict resolution) and the need of the nobility to avoid excess retribution in depopulated areas.61 More gentle forms of punishment were generally introduced in Europe only in the eighteenth century (on principles of human punishment) as a result of numerous complex shifts in the understanding of crime and punishment as ex-

59 Stephen Werbo˝czy, The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary in Three Parts (1517), ed. and trans. J.M. Bak, P. Banyó, and M. Rady (Idyllwild–Budapest: Charles Schlacks– CEU, 2005), 66−69. The nobility had the right of resistance from 1222 if the prince violated the liberties of the nobles, which is confirmed in Tripartitum. Werbo˝czy, “The Customary Law,” 2005, 56−57. For a discussion on the taint of infidelity and related sentences for various categories of people see Werbo˝czy, “The Customary Law,” 2005, 300−07, 316−17, 330−31, 346−57 et passim. On the cases of treason see also Vladimir Mazˇuranic´, Prinosi za hrvatski pravno-povjestni rjecˇnik, vol. 1 (Zagreb: Informator: 1908−1922), 442−43, 755. 60 For an overview of uprisings that took place in the area of Zivilkroatien (Croatia-Slavonia ruled by the ban), and in the area of the Croatian and Slavonian Military Border, in the early modern period see Natasˇa Sˇtefanec, “Soziale Unruhen im Königreich Dalmatien, Kroatien und Slawonien (16.−18. Jahrhundert),” in Die Stimme der ewigen Verlierer? Aufstände, Revolten und Revolutionen in den österreichischen Ländern (ca. 1450−1815), edited by Peter Rauscher and Martin Scheutz (Vienna–Munich: Böhlau–Oldenbourg, 2013), 177−200. 61 Sˇtefanec, “Soziale Unruhen,” 186−89.

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tensively analyzed by Michel Foucault.62 In the Military Border, where the population was armed and therefore more dangerous, rebellions often, though not always, ended with the swift execution of its leaders.63 Drastic punishments and reprisals seen in the case of the 1573 rebellion (and in the case of the 1755 rebellion)—which included hanging of rebels on trees along roads, extensive executions, beheading, physical torture and mutilation, as well as prolonged, staged torture and execution procedures (as applied to Gubec and his colleagues) —were actually atypical and exceptional within the array of possible punishments for uprisings in early modern Croatia–Slavonia. They ensued when the noble strata feared that the social order and their privileged social position were at stake. In 1573, Ban Drasˇkovic´ and the noble army were frightened by the many rebellious peasant soldiers burning castles and attacking noblemen. At the beginning of the 1755 rebellion Baltazar Adam Krcˇelic´ spoke about the great fear and anxiety experienced by the nobility when in less than a week dozens of noble castles were burned and plundered. In both cases large noble armies were assembled to suppress the revolts, and in both cases the retribution was deemed inappropriate by the royal court.64 Both Gubec and Dózsa were rebels, obviously guilty of treason according to Werbo˝czy’s previously cited article from the Tripartitum (1517).65 Still, their elaborate punishments were evidently an anomaly of sorts.66 As Paul Freedman remarks in the case of Dózsa, specific elements of torture and execution used in Dózsa’s case were known and employed throughout medieval and early modern Europe, but “the complicated iconography of Dózsa’s execution was more a pastiche of already-established elements of savagery, reversal and mockery than a ceremony invented for the occasion.”67 Birnbaum brings further details in her analysis of Dózsa’s death, confirming the complexity of the event.68 Gubec’s execution mimicked Dózsa’s execution to some degree, though it was also improvised for this specific occasion. Gubec’s punishment did not follow any written instruction, legally sanctioned manual or established pattern in the penal

62 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin Books, 1991, 19771), 75, 104−31 et passim. 63 Josip Adamcˇek, Bune i otpori (Zagreb–Ljubljana: Globus, 1987), 90, 195, 241 et passim; Zˇeljko Holjevac and Nenad Moacˇanin, Hrvatsko-slavonska vojna krajina i Hrvati pod vlasˇc´u Osmanskog Carstva u ranome novom vijeku (Zagreb: Leykam International, 2007), 66−68 et passim. 64 Sˇidak, “Historijska cˇitanka,” 118−26, 149−59, 125 (on fear in 1573), 153−54 (on fear in 1755). 65 Werbo˝czy, “The Customary Law,” 66−67 (see I 14:2). 66 Dózsa’s execution has a significant presence on the internet, where, for example, it is ranked among the “Top 10 Historic Brutal Executions” and similar bizarre lists. 67 Freedman. “Atrocities and Executions,” 76; Same in Freedman, “Representations.” 68 Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary,” 94−96 et passim.

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system of the Kingdom of Hungary.69 In the case of Gubec and Andrija Pasanec there was actually no trial, while other leaders (Ilija Gregoric´, Mihajlo Gusˇetic´, etc.) went through regular interrogation and trial. The execution phases seemed rather arbitrary. However, their symbolic meaning could be partially decoded in comparison to Western European punishment patterns for the same offence. As already established in extensive and influential studies by Michel Foucault, Richard van Dülmen, Richard J. Evans and Jürgen Martschukats, the punishment system in Europe prior to the eighteenth century, before the transition to the modern system based on control, repression and correction, had several main characteristics.70 I will briefly present these as a prerequisite for my further elaboration of sixteenth-century conditions and will not undertake a complex discussion opened by the authors cited above regarding the understanding of capital punishment and general changes in the penal system before and after the eighteenth century. In the pre-modern system, punishment was intended to reestablish damaged public order, a divine order of things. It was also designed to sufficiently frighten the spectator. Torture was an integral part of the judicial process on the grounds that it would not only provide the truth about the crime, but also serve as a cleansing process for the soul of the perpetrator, leading him first to recognition, then to repentance and, finally, to salvation – usually as part of a public spectacle. In the Christian view, extreme physical pain and suffering compounded a viable path to salvation: when the body suffers, one is forced to turn to the spiritual realm. Pain was seen as punishment and a key to salvation. It was presumed that the cause of criminal behavior was either ingrained human sinfulness or seduction by the devil, while justice, law and order were provided and protected by God and the ruler. In stark contrast to modern concepts, trial and judicial torture were managed in secret. On the other hand, proclamation of guilt and the nature of the crime, as well as torture during execution and death, were public – also in contrast to the modern era. Execution was a political ritual, a ceremony projecting noble and princely power and conveying notions of social honor and dishonor that were ingrained in pre-modern society. The executioner was the leader of the spectacle. He was expected to know the craft, to follow fixed steps, to appease and control the accused and to provide order at the execution 69 Freedman offers a one-paragraph view of Gubec’s end. Freedman. “Atrocities and Executions,” 77; Same in Freedman, “Representations.” 70 Foucault, “Discipline and Punish”; Richard van Dülmen, Theater des Schrekens. Gerichtspraxix und Strafrituale in der Frühen Neuzeit (C.H. Beck: Munich, 2010, 1985); Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution. Capital Punishment in Germany 1600−1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Jürgen Martschukat, Inszeniertes Töten. Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2000). The above studies also challenge the influential book by Norbert Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation, 2 vols. (Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1939).

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scene. Spectators had to be present to witness and confirm that procedure was followed and proper punishment adjudicated and executed. It restored order for the entire community and protected it from crime and evil. Prescribed ritual could reenact and reestablish order. The priest was present during torture and he usually accompanied the accused to the execution site (later on the physician was introduced, as Foucault remarked). In the pre-modern period one thought less about the perpetrator, his motives and possible subjective explanations for the crime. The focus was instead on the very act of crime and what it did to the community and to the established and accepted world order. The goal in the premodern period was to heal the community and restore order. It was done by hurting the body, not the life, as was the case later, because the life was, after all, considered eternal. The body was hurt in spectacle, by inflicting horrible wounds and intense pain, also unlike in the modern period. However, punishments were not arbitrary and they were often related directly to the crime, by analogy and by degree. If one was a thief, one could have his arm or hand severed, or he was hanged. Outlaws and criminals of various sorts were often hanged, or quartered. If one perpetrated sexual crime or performed some unnatural practice, he might be castrated or burned at the stake. If there was a murder, hanging was often the punishment, etc. Instead of hanging, nobles were usually beheaded. Sentences could be combined and gradated in various ways.71 According to Foucault, citing Jaucourt, torture was “Corporal punishment, painful to a more or less horrible degree.” Torture as punishment had to produce a certain degree of precisely measurable pain (hierarchy of pain), it should not just take the right to life, but take it gradually, maintaining life in pain. The quantity of pain was carefully legally regulated, depending on the gravity of the crime, quartering being the most excruciating punishment of all. Torture was part of the ritual that marked the victim, afflicting his body in a spectacle and purging the crime.72 In approaching Gubec’s case one should start with an event that allegedly took place during the rebellion, leaving a lasting imprint in its aftermath and subsequent (proto-) historical accounts. It was Gubec’s alleged crowning as a (peasant) king. Based on testimonies of rebels and contemporary sources, the crowning of Gubec as a peasant king probably took place in a half-serious mood 71 Foucault, “Discipline and Punish,” 7−23, 28−30, 32−57 et passim; Dülmen, “Theater des Schrekens,” 29−37 (torture), 102−44 et passim; Evans, ”Rituals of Retribution,” 27−108, on quartering 87−88; Martschukat, ”Inszeniertes Töten,” 12−53 et passim; and Jürgen Martschukat, “‘The Duty of Society’: Todesstrafe als Performance der Modernität in den USA um 1900,” in Geschichtswissenschaft und “performative turn”: Ritual, Inszenierung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit, ed. Jürgen Martschukat and Steffen Patzold (Cologne– Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 2003), 229−53, here 230−33. 72 For greater elaboration see Foucault, “Discipline and Punish,” 33−34 et passim.

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on an evening during Carnival. Historiography mostly agrees that there was no serious, let alone official, crowning. Hartinger explained how earlier writers accepted as a fact that Gubec was elected peasant king (Rattkay, Istvánffy, Valvasor, Thurn, Drasˇkovic´, Kukuljevic´), but that “the name ‘peasant king’ is a blasphemy, fairytale and fabrication of the noblemen” that was denounced even by Sˇisˇic´, Radics and Horvat. According to Hartinger, “We cannot and will not believe that Matija Gubec was proclaimed king of peasants because peasant leaders would know about this … It keeps us convinced that within the peasant movement there was no disloyal thought whatsoever … .” Nada Klaic´ questioned various information regarding Gubec’s election as king and concluded that it was plausible that “Ambroz Gubec … was actually elected king,” but probably “during some village feast, to the sound of tambura [a folk string instrument] music.” Steindorff also stated that Gubec had demonstrably been proclaimed king, half seriously, half facetiously, on Carnival Tuesday (February 3). The exception to the rule was Josip Adamcˇek, who maintained that ban and bishop Drasˇkovic´ did not have a motive to fabricate and that Gubec was elected and crowned king, most probably after the rebel armies had dispersed.73 Be that as it may, contemporary nobility, including the ban and bishop Juraj Drasˇkovic´, readily repeated the story of the peasant king. From their point of view, Gubec had blatantly and arrogantly transgressed and endangered the world order by leading the rebellion. He was a traitor and his case was irredeemable. Whether this was accurate or not, the notion of peasant king and the idea that Gubec agreed to be crowned was further cited by the nobility as a vivid illustration to contemporaries of what Gubec actually did in leading the rebellion. It received great attention at the time of rebellion as well as during inquiry and later on. Through this alleged act Gubec revealed himself to be not only a rebel, but also a traitor who attempted to elevate himself from his social standing in the realm of a ruling class. Gubec had thus defied not only a group of noblemen, but Christian values and divinely ordained society as well, thus evincing overt pride and arrogance not befitting his social standing. Lacey Baldwin Smith described the early modern concept of pride in this way: “The sin which burns most fiercely in the Christian hell is pride, and for the sixteenth century treason was pride 73 Hartinger, “Hrvatsko-slovenska,” 164; and Klaic´, “Drusˇtvena previranja,” 98−100; Ludwig Steindorff, Povijest Hrvatske: od srednjeg vijeka do danas (Zagreb: Jesenski i Turk, 2006), 81. For a critical review of historiography surrounding the crowning see Sˇidak, ”Kroz pet,” 23, 28, 33, 35, 45−46. For the opposite view see Josip Adamcˇek, “Uzroci i program seljacˇke bune 1573. godine,“ Radovi 5 (1973): 72−75; Adamcˇek, “Seljacˇka buna,” 1981, 58; and Adamcˇek, “Seljacˇki kralj,” 4. The possible election of Gubec as the peasant king was also important in the longlasting discussion on the program and goals of the rebels, (i. e., the fight for total annihilation of the feudal order vs. the fight for the improvement of conditions in the existing social order).

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incarnate. What could be more presumptuous than to defy God, crown and commonwealth? What could be more deadly to the soul than to die “puffed up with insatiable pride?”74 Along with Gubec’s leadership activities, similar to the case of Dózsa, this alleged act was interpreted as a monstrous crime by chroniclers and noble decision makers in general. It enabled authorities in the Croatian–Slavonian Kingdom to treat Gubec as the highest of traitors and an ultimate menace to the social order. Such implications surely provided the ban and bishop Drasˇkovic´ with the leeway to react more cruelly and unsympathetically, beyond ordinary or approved procedures. The worse imaginable penalty could therefore be inflicted and improvisation was in order. In medieval and early modern England those accused of high treason were, after a proper trial, usually hanged, drawn and quartered.75 It was a ritual public execution in which every element had its meaning, not only as part of a “‘state’sanctioned strategy,” but within a “wider socio-cultural framework in which concepts of honor and shame were commonly enacted upon the body”—as summed up by Danielle Westerhof.76 In short, the accused was first dragged through the crowd, disrobed (with coats of arms reversed) 77 and subjected to verbal and physical insult, without a horse, armor, weapons or any other noble insignia. It visibly stripped the accused of his noble rank as well as his power and human dignity. It was designed to be the ultimate public humiliation. After the accused was dragged half-naked though the dirt amid the jeering crowd he arrived at the place of the execution where, deprived of protection usually offered by his social status and physically embarrassed, he was first hanged (almost to the point of death, which resulted in further loss of control over the body). Stripped of his public identity and, in many cases, his masculinity, the accused was beheaded and quartered. Beheading and quartering were the usual sentences for treason. The display of body parts across the town or country served as a remainder of the victim’s deeds and, often, to prevent a burial and unification of the body and soul in the afterlife. Sometimes additional public destruction of the 74 Lacey Baldwin Smith, “English Treason Trials and Confessions in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 15, no. 4 (1954): 483, 492, 496 (citation) et passim. 75 Smith, “English Treason Trials,” 471−98, here 473, 484 et passim. If women committed high treason the punishment was burning at the stake or drowning. 76 Danielle Westerhof, “Deconstructing Identities on the Scaffold: the Execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, 1326,” Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007): 89−90 et passim. I consider some aspects of Westerhof ’s analysis of noble identity in the medieval period “lodged in and upon the body” of male aristocrats and public execution for treason as ways of dismantling that noble body to be highly relevant for the case of Gubec. 77 Westerhof ’s interpretation for the undressing of the accused noblemen could be relevant in Dózsa’s case as well and would resolve the dilemma put forward by Birnbaum, who presumed that Dózsa, as a lesser nobleman, would have deserved to be executed fully clothed. Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary,” 94.

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body followed through emasculation, evisceration and burning of internal organs, which was usually related to moral corruption and treachery. Some members of old, influential families could be pardoned from lengthy torture and simply beheaded.78 With such complete ritual eradication of person’s identity as well as physical and spiritual essence the ceremony of execution strived to rectify imbalance and restore harmony to the endangered order. In cases of treason, German practice also prescribed judicial torture and quartering by horses or by an executioner, even the punishment by the breaking wheel. It was the same in the Habsburg lands.79 In medieval and early modern Europe the crime of treason was worse than that of murder. High treason was the most horrible and dangerous crime an individual could commit. This concept was evidently developed and promoted by royal and church authorities beginning in the medieval period. High treason was considered an attack on the social order as the order of things envisaged by God. Finally, it attacked the state, the royal person, the personification of godly rule and order. As a rule, the ultimate, the worst-imaginable and bloodiest punishment was adjudicated. Although it could be implemented in somewhat various ways across Europe, it often united several physical punishments with complex social and penal purpose. Dózsa and Gubec died unique and similar deaths. Both had to witness the torture and killing of their colleagues, both were crowned with red-hot iron crowns and tortured in front of a crowd of spectators with red-hot iron pincers. Both were quartered, while Dózsa’s remains were put on display throughout the Kingdom of Hungary. Even in such improvised and unconventional executions one could discern three indicative symbolic phases: (1) degradation and loss of honor, power and pride; (2) severe and long corporal punishment; (3) quartering as denial of afterlife and warning to the community. By successfully leading thousands of people in rebellion Gubec acquired a significant amount of power and authority as a courageous and daring man. Alleged election as a peasant king probably gave him additional might and grandeur. His actions and his name resounded through peasant houses across the borders of kingdom. This power had to be publicly taken from him, which could be done only in a staged execution in a number of evocative steps. Gubec was not a nobleman and could not be stripped of his insignia, armor, special dress or emblems. Taking away his horse and arms, if he had them at all, did not carry 78 More in: Westerhof, “Deconstructing Identities,” 91−93, 103−106, 96, 101 et passim. 79 Evans, “Rituals of Retribution,” 27−64; Dülmen, “Theater des Schrekens,” 109, 127; Martschukat, “Inszeniertes Töten,” 16−17; Martschukat, “The Duty,” 230−33; Ernst C. Hellbling, Grundlegende Strafrechtsquellen der österreichischen Erbländer vom Beginn der Neuzeit bis zur Theresiana: Beitrag zur Geschichte des Strafrechts in Österreich (Vienna–Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 1996), 77−80; and Friedrich-Christian Schroeder, Die peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V. (Carolina) (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000).

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adequate symbolic meaning. Dragging him half-naked through dirty streets and an angry mob was not a grave enough humiliation for a peasant. He had to be degraded in another way. Gubec did not have powerful friends and relatives so at first he was simply denied trial, without legal consequences in the chaotic aftermath of the rebellion. Next, his brother in arms, Andrija Pasanec, was killed in front of him, thus sending a simple message to the spectators: Gubec is powerless and he cannot protect even his closest accomplice. Afterwards he was crowned. The crown was probably a hot cattle muzzle put on his head in front of assembled spectators, most likely with an explanation to the crowd that he himself desired to be crowned. The crown was such a universally illustrative symbol of power in medieval and early modern Europe that there were also other comparable cases in which it was efficiently used for mockery and humiliation. Besides the wellknown crown of thorns for Christ, Westerhof enumerates examples of crowns being put on the heads of accused traitors: a crown of nettles for Despenser; a crown of thorns for Baldock; and crown of periwinkle for Simon Fraser. Freedman also identifies some cases of crowning for the purpose of humiliation (of people from upper and lower strata) that were intended to mock claims to power.80 Moreover, there was the famous crown of laurel for William Wallace.81 In these cases the authorities mocked (often unsuccessfully) the attempts to (il) legitimately assume a ruling or superior position. The topos was therefore known in sixteenth-century Europe. Conveniently for the authorities February 1573 was the period of fasˇnik (Fastnacht), or Carnival, so it seemed appropriate to play with the reverse world order. This emphasized mockery to the extreme. It also reminded everybody of Dózsa’s defeat and grim end and took away one more fragment of Gubec’s pride and recently established public identity.82 In addition, the head was considered a seat of reason and wisdom. The head that did not understand the established order was corrupted and therefore had to be removed (cases of beheading) or punished. Finally, treason punishments also served to separate the traitor from his community by proclaiming that he transgressed the order of things as well as the code of honor and social behavior by which he was born and supposed to live.83 By aspiring to leadership, Gubec transgressed social 80 Westerhof, “Deconstructing Identities,” 91−92; Freedman, “Atrocities and Executions,” 75−77, 79−80; Same in Freedman, “Representations.” 81 G.W.S. Barow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 178. 82 Freedman also stresses the element of the Carnival in Dózsa’s execution (“the emphasis was on mock seriousness and grotesquely festive reversal“). Freedman. “Atrocities and Executions,” 75, 80−81; Same in Freedman, “Representations.” 83 The aristocratic traitor lost his rank, title and possessions as well as his honor and virtue, which made him and unworthy member of a privileged strata. Westerhof, “Deconstructing

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boundaries and stepped out of his social group. The excruciating mock coronation also exposed and punished his alleged transgressions, pride and arrogance. Now the torturers could turn to full corporal punishment. Gubec was pinched with red-hot iron pincers. Whether it was done at one place or whether he was dragged through the streets remains an open question. In Dózsa’s case his fellow rebels were even forced to eat his roasted flesh at the places where it was pinched. It was a punishment known in Europe for similar offences and it required great skill from the executioner, as became obvious from huge problems encountered in pinching the flesh and quartering the body in one case presented by Foucault. Foucault’s famous book actually starts with a grisly paragraph describing in great detail how “Damiens the regicide” was punished by tearing the flesh from his arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, burning the injuries with sulfur and further inflicting pain to open wounds with molten led, boiling oil and so on. Damiens was screaming before being quartered by horses in a long agony and eventually burned.84 Though we do not know anything about the skill or the knowledge of Gubec’s executioners, the punishment was surely known in the examined region.85 Punishment of the body was the basic punishment in the period considered and crimes defined as treason resulted in its most cruel variant. Corporal punishment in Gubec’s case also had a dual role. The infliction of horrible pain would result in the loss of control over the body. The act of punishment was made evident in the subject’s screams and agonized calls for help. This was designed to punish the body and to help purge the crime. It was also intended to communicate to as many people as possible that Gubec was no longer dangerous, that he had lost his masculine power and strength. After this part of the torture was performed in front of the audience, the huge physical and spiritual energy that Gubec (and Dózsa) accumulated by leading the rebellion was symbolically taken away from him. Finally, quartering was a customary and widespread punishment for traitors and outlaws, even in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Military Border included. It was practiced in Germany for the offense of treason, as was amply stated, for example, in the penal code of Bamberg.86 Quartering should serve, first, as a longIdentities,” 91. According to Tripartitum, in cases of treason the loss of rank and possession was prescribed in the Kingdom of Hungary as well. 84 Foucault, “Discipline and Punish,” 3−6. See German cases as well in Evans, “Rituals of Retribution,” 32, 43, 80. 85 A growing number of studies have appeared on the craft of execution. See, for example, Joel F. Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century (New York: Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). 86 The original text of the Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis is available in facsimile: “Straff der verretterey. Item welcher mit boßhafftiger verretterey mißhandelt / Sol der gewonheyt nach durch vierteyllung zum todt gestrafft werden…/ So solt die straff durch schlayffen oder zangen reyssen beschwert / vnd also zu todlicher straff gefürt werden.“ Johann von Schwarzenberg,

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lasting remainder and warning to the community and, second, as a measure serving to violate the integrity of the body. Scattered body parts and denied burial prevented the possibility of salvation. Istvánffy, and, subsequently, Sˇisˇic´ considered it a usual punishment for evildoers and rebels.87 Gubec’s quartering presumably sent the message that Gubec was not only a traitor, but a vile criminal and bandit. There was no mention of beheading with regard to Gubec or reference to the display of his body parts across the kingdom to serve as a deterrent, as in the case of Dózsa. However, such a display would not be difficult to imagine under circumstances in which numerous peasants were openly hanged after the rebellion. Gubec’s burial place was mentioned in neither historiography or in folk tales, which suggests that he was probably denied a proper burial as a means of denying him salvation and the possibility of an afterlife. There is a legend among the people of Zagorje that Gubec is not dead and will eventually return.88 In folklore and historiography, Gubec was not frequently perceived as a Christian martyr (as might be the case with Dózsa),89 but as a hero of simple working folk, whether it be peasants or, later on, industrial workers. Gubec’s punishment thus ended in his full corporal and spiritual punishment. In comparison to some European models, one remarks that some components are missing, such as a proper trial, the priest who escorts the accused to the execution site and prays with the victim (confirmed in the case of Dózsa90) or the (skilled) executioner. Whether these elements are missing as a result of the swift nature of Gubec’s execution and his low social standing, which entailed crude procedures, or can be attributed to a lack of sources remains to be investigated. Contemporary chroniclers and noblemen were content with Gubec’s deserved punishment. In their eyes higher objective justice was attained and the world order restored. But how did other social strata view the execution of the leader of the peasant rebellion at the time? Gubec’s crowning and execution eventually backfired into martyrdom and long-lasting public attention and compassion. Whether this was the case only at the beginning of the nineteenth century or pertains to an earlier period as well remains an issue to be investigated. This article is intended only to promote one more stream of research in a vast domain of literature regarding 1573.91

87 88 89 90 91

Bambergische Peinliche Halsgerichtsordnung (Bamberg: n.p., 1507), page 93, accessed April 11, 2015, http://www.unimannheim.de/mateo/desbillons/bambi/seite93.html. A rebel becomes a traitor only if the rebellion fails, otherwise he would be perceived as a virtuous person. See Smith, “English Treason Trials,” 495. See footnote 59. See Gabriella Erdélyi’s chapter in the present volume. Birnbaum, “A Mock Calvary,” 95−96. It would also be interesting to find out about the activities of ban and bishop Drasˇkovic´ during the execution and his more precise reasoning behind the suggested punishment and also more on his pleas for innocence and abolition of Mihajlo Gusˇetic´, Vinko Lepoic´ and

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Conclusion There exists a vast corpus of literature on the 1573 uprising, which was created with different ideological aims and purposes from the sixteenth century onwards. Although it offers a multitude of interpretations on the causes and course of the rebellion, Gubec’s torture and death were only sporadically researched and interpreted. They were mostly described as cruel, even by the contemporary accounts and the authorities. On the one hand, Gubec’s (and Dózsa’s) execution were the result of fear experienced by the endangered noblemen, who strove to exact revenge and to restore their authority and dominance. On the other hand, their deaths sent a more complex and captivating message, one written by the European language of execution. In the chaotic aftermath of the 1573 rebellion, the local authorities hastily constructed a spectacle of execution that differed from usual penal procedures and intentionally revived memories of the 1514 revolt. However improvised, unstructured and bizarre as the two executions might seem at the first sight, they could still uncover how pre-modern people approached the issue of crime and punishment. Hence, from a pre-modern perspective, the phases of Gubec’s torture and death were not just superficial sadism carried out in the interest of intimidation. They possessed ritual character and conveyed symbolism that could be comparatively evaluated as the result of a growing number of studies on social and cultural aspects of pre-modern European penal systems and punishments for treason.

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Racˇki, Franjo. “Gradja za poviest hrvatsko-slovenske seljacˇke bune god. 1573” [Sources for the History of Croatian-Slovenian Peasant Rebellion from 1573]. Starine JAZU VII (1875): 164–322. – “Dopunak gradje za poviest hrvatsko-slovenske seljacˇke bune god. 1573. I nekoliko izprava o hrv. poturici Franji Filipovic´u” [Appendix to the History of the CroatianSlovenian Peasant Rebellion from 1573 and Some Documents on Franjo Filipovic´]. Starine JAZU VIII (1876): 243–52. Rattkay, Juraj. Spomen na kraljeve i banove Kraljevstava Dalmacije, Hrvatske i Slavonije [Memory of Kings and Bans of the Kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia]. Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2001. Romsics, Ignác. ”Székely Dózsa György. Haramia és/vagy népvezér?” [György Székely Dózsa. Bandit and/or Popular Leader] Rubicon 24 (2014): 4–29. Schroeder, Friedrich-Christian. Die peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V. (Carolina). Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000. Schwarzenberg, Johann von. Constitutio Criminalis Bambergensis / Bambergische Peinliche Halsgerichtsordnung. Bamberg, 1507. Facsimile accessed April 11, 2015. http://www. uni-mannheim.de/mateo/desbillons/bambi/seite93.html. Sˇicel, Miroslav. “Tema seljacˇke bune u hrvatskoj knjizˇevnosti 19. stoljec´a” [The Theme of the Peasant Rebellion in Croatian Literature of the Nineteenth Century]. Radovi 5 (1973): 215–26. Sˇidak, Jaroslav. “Seljacˇka buna g. 1573. u historiografiji” [Peasant Rebellion of 1573 in Historiography]. Radovi 5 (1973): 7–30. – Historijska ˇcitanka za hrvatsku povijest [Historical Reader for Croatian History]. Zagreb: Sˇkolska knjiga, 1952. – Kroz pet stoljec´a hrvatske povijesti [Through Five Centuries of Croatian History]. Zagreb: Sˇkolska knjiga, 1981. Sˇisˇic´, Ferdo. “Seljacˇka buna od 1573” [Peasant Rebellion of 1573]. Jugoslavenska njiva 7 (1923): I-3/89–94, 4/170–73, 5/204–05, 6/235–41. – “Znacˇaj hrvatske seljacˇke bune 1573” [Importance of the Croatian Peasant Rebellion of 1573]. Novosti Easter issue (1936). Smicˇiklas, Tade. Poviest Hrvatska. Dio drugi od godine 1526–1848 [History of Croatia. Second Part from 1526 until 1848]. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1879. Smith, Lacey Baldwin. “English Treason Trials and Confessions in the Sixteenth Century.” Journal of the History of Ideas 15, no. 4 (1954): 471–98. Sˇtefanec, Natasˇa. “Soziale Unruhen im Königreich Dalmatien, Kroatien und Slawonien (16.–18. Jahrhundert).” In Die Stimme der ewigen Verlierer? Aufstände, Revolten und Revolutionen in den österreichischen Ländern (ca. 1450–1815), edited by Peter Rauscher and Martin Scheutz, 177–200. Vienna–Munich: Böhlau–Oldenbourg, 2013. Steindorff, Ludwig. Povijest Hrvatske: od srednjeg vijeka do danas [History of Croatia from the Middle Ages until Today]. Zagreb: Jesenski i Turk, 2006. Sugar, Peter F., Péter Hanák and Tibor Frank, eds. A History of Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Sˇvab, Mladen. “Ambroz Gubec.” In Hrvatski biografski leksikon [Croatian Bibliographical Lexicon]. Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod “Miroslav Krlezˇa,” 2002. Tkalcˇic´, Ivan Krstitelj. Hrvatska povjesnica [Croatian History]. Zagreb: Brzotisak Dragutina Albrechta, 1861.

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Trencsényi, Balázs, and Kopecˇek, Michal, eds. Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945. Vol. II. National Romanticism. The Formation of National Movements. Budapest: CEU Press, 2007. Valvasor, Johan Weikhard von. Die Ehre des Herzogthums Krain. Nürnberg: n.p., 1689. Vitezovic´, Pavao Ritter. Kronika aliti spomen vsega sveta vikov 1696 [Chronicle of the Memory of All Centuries of the World]. Zagreb: ArTresor naklada, 2015 (1696). Vukcevich, Ivo. Croatia 2: Ludwig von Gaj Opposes Croatia’s Hungarian Heritage. Xlibris Corporation: 2013. Werbo˝czy, Stephen. The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary in Three Parts (1517). Edited and translated by J.M. Bak, P. Banyó and M. Rady. Idyllwild– Budapest: Charles Schlacks–CEU, 2005. Westerhof, Danielle. “Deconstructing Identities on the Scaffold: the Execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, 1326.” Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007): 87–106.

Márton Szilágyi

Der Bauernkrieg von 1514 als Exemplum Die literarischen Dózsa-Interpretationen im 19. Jahrhundert

Der große Bauernkrieg von 1514 nimmt bis in die Gegenwart hinein im kollektiven Gedächtnis in Ungarn keinen besonderen und dauerhaften Platz ein. Nur manchmal fand er größere Beachtung, im Allgemeinen wurde aber gar nicht über ihn geredet. Als historisches Beispiel gelangte der Bauernkrieg immer wieder zu Aktualität, dieses Beispiel war allerdings immer eng mit der politischen Realität verbunden. Das 19. Jahrhundert kann sicherlich als Wendepunkt in diesem Prozess betrachtet werden. Die politisch-gesellschaftlichen Umstände verliehen dem einstigen Bauernkrieg jetzt eine bestimmte Wichtigkeit. In der ersten Hälfte des Jahrhunderts begann der Bauernkrieg infolge der Idee des Humanismus, auch in der ungarischen Literatur als mögliches Thema in Erscheinung zu treten, allerdings bildete er damals bei weitem noch kein populäres Thema. Es stehen uns allerdings in dieser Periode vereinzelte Hinweise in der Literatur und überdies zahlreiche publizierte historische Quellen zur Verfügung, und auch die Zusammenhänge weisen eindeutig auf ein bestimmtes Paradigma hin. Dieses Paradigma kann relativ einfach beschrieben werden und die Unterschiede und Variationen sind nicht sehr groß und bedeutend. Die ungarische Historiografie, vor allem die marxistischen Darstellungen im 20. Jahrhundert, forderten ein Modell, das in erster Linie eine „konservative adelige Anschauung“ postulierte. Darauf folgte dann langsam eine „radikale, revolutionäre“ Interpretation, wenigstens seitens der bedeutendsten „fortschrittlichen“ Protagonisten der Epoche.1 Diese Konstruktion scheint aber – meines Erachtens – falsch zu sein: In den 40er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts gab es nur einige Stimmen, die Sympathie für Dózsa äußerten. (Als Beispiel kann der große ungarische Dichter Sándor Peto˝fi angeführt werden). Diese Stimmen bezweckten aber ganz bewusst, die vorherrschende Einstellung zu provozieren. Wenn man die wichtigsten literarischen Beispiele in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts erneut betrachtet, dann stellt man eher eine homogene Beurteilung, die nicht einfach als „reaktionär“ beurteilt werden kann, fest.

1 Niveauvoll seitens der Literaturgeschichte siehe Kulin, Hódíthatatlan szellem.

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Der Bauernkrieg von 1514 trat nämlich in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts nur als „Parallele“ in Erscheinung, das heißt als ein früheres historisches Beispiel für ein zeitgenössisches Ereignis, nämlich den transsilvanischen Bauernkrieg von Horea und Closca im Jahre 1784.2 Dieser erneute Bauernaufstand verursachte nicht nur in Transsylvanien,3 sondern auch im Königreich Ungarn einen großen Schock. Seine Wirkung war besonders erschütternd, da er die allgemein verbreitete, zügellose gesellschaftliche Anarchie und keinen kontrollierten Gewaltausbruch vor Augen führte. Dieses Erlebnis konnte aber nur mittels eines historischen Vorbilds angemessen beschrieben werden und hierzu bot sich die Parallele zum Bauernkrieg von 1514 an. Ein philosophisches Gedicht eines bedeutenden ungarischen Dichters aus der Anfangszeit des 19. Jahrhunderts, Dániel Berzsenyi, legt den historischen Hintergrund anschaulich dar: Berzsenyi erwähnt die „mörderischen Horden“ von Dózsa und Horea nämlich nebeneinander.4 Berzsenyi war nicht allein mit dieser Meinung. Am Anfang des Jahrhunderts erschien ein ungarischsprachiges, dreibändiges Lexikon von Ferenc Budai, einem jung verstorbenen kalvinistischen Historiker. Dieses Werk wurde in Literatenkreisen in kurzer Zeit sehr beliebt. Das Lexikon enthält nämlich Artikel, die die Protagonisten der ungarischen Geschichte vorstellen. Man kann sagen, es ist ein populäres nationales Geschichtsbuch in alphabetischer Reihenfolge. Das BudaiLexikon, das oft als „Bürgerliches Lexikon“ bezeichnet wurde, bietet eine gute Möglichkeit, die allgemeine geschichtliche Auffassung des früheren 19. Jahrhunderts mit protestantischen (kalvinistischen) Akzenten darzustellen. In dem Lexikon befindet sich auch ein Artikel über Dózsa, der seinen Held als einen großzügigen Verbrecher, einen „Unmensch“ und einen Mörder, der die Ruhe eines ganzen Landes gefährdet, vorstellt.5 Diese eindeutige Interpretation wurde auch durch die ungarische SchillerRezeption bekräftigt. Zum Lebenswerk von Friedrich Schiller gehört auch eine editorische Arbeit: Es wurde eine mehrbändige Version der französischen Kriminalgeschichten von Francois Gayot de Pitaval herausgegeben und dazu wurde ein Vorwort von dem schon verstorbenen Schiller angeknüpft.6 Die Auswahl spiegelt ganz bestimmt den Geschmack von Schiller, der diese populäre Gattung 2 Siehe Köpeczi (Hg.), Kurze Geschichte. 3 Damit hängt zusammen, dass es am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts mehrere Versuche gab, diesen Bauernaufstand in literarischer Form, in einem Epos zu verarbeiten. Dazu siehe Keszeg, A Horea-féle parasztlázadás 217–226. 4 „A Dózsa, Hóra gyilkos pórhada“ Berzsenyi, Vandal bölcsesség [Vandalische Weisheit – Dieses Gedicht wurde nie ins Deutsche übersetzt]; über Berzsenyi siehe noch Heinz (Hg.), Kindlers, Bd. 1–18. Über seine literaturgeschichtliche Bedeutung: Kulcsár Szabó (Hg.), Geschichte der ungarischen Literatur, 125–129. 5 Budai, Magyar Ország polgári históriájára 289–294. 6 Schiller (Hg.), Merkwürdige Kriminalgeschichten.

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des 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts als interessant betrachtete, wider.7 Aus den kleineren Prosatexten erstellte ein wenig bekannter Übersetzer, nämlich István Czövek, im Jahre 1817 einen Band: Diese Arbeit bestand aus mehreren kleineren Biographien, die sich alle mit dem Weg zum Verbrechen und zur schrecklichen Schuld beschäftigen und schließlich mit einer verdienten Hinrichtung enden.8 Dieser ungarischsprachige Band wurde unter dem Namen von Schiller herausgegeben, deshalb gehört er auch zur ungarischen Schiller-Rezeption. In diesem Werk sprach man natürlich nicht von Dózsa, unter den Aufsätzen befindet sich aber eine Biographie von „Pugatschew“, dem Anführer des großen russischen Bauernkriegs von 1773 bis 1775, sowie eine andere von „Horjah“ und „Kloska“,9 den Protagonisten des schon erwähnten transsilvanischen Bauernkriegs von 1784. Diese drei Figuren gehören – entsprechend der Konzeption des Bandes – zu der gleichen Klasse von Verbrechern wie Dózsa und werden als Landesverräter und Mörder präsentiert. István Czöveks Werk vertiefte den Eindruck, dass ein Bauernkrieg gar nicht anders interpretiert werden kann als eine Epoche der Anarchie und des gewalttätigen Massentodes. Diesen Eindruck verstärkte in den 30er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts ein weiteres Element: Im Jahre 1831 brach in Nordungarn ein Revolte gegen die Cholerasperre aus und auch dort kam es zu gewalttätigen Ausschreitungen gegen Adelshäuser. Aus zeitgenössischem Blickwinkel erschienen diese Ereignissen wie ein neuer Bauernkrieg. Und diese Erfahrungen verstärkten die frühere Beurteilung des Bauernkriegs von Dózsa als Urbild und Ursprung des Chaos. Seit den 30er Jahren stand auch dieses Erlebnis im Hintergrund des Dózsa-Bildes. Dazu kam noch ein weiteres schockartiges Erlebnis in den 40er Jahren, nämlich der polnische Bauernaufstand in Galizien im Jahre 1846. Die Auswirkung dieser Ereignissen waren noch fürchterlicher, weil hier die Bauernmassen gegen den liberalen Adel, der die Lage der Leibeigenen verbessern wollte, kämpften. Kurz und gut: Die dominante Stellung des Bauernkrieges von 1514 kann mit Erscheinungen im ungarischen Vormärz, die keine heroische revolutionäre Nostalgie, sondern eher ein Furcht vor terroristischer Gewalt enthalten, erklärt werden. Lange Zeit entstanden kaum literarische Werke, die die Anführer des Bauernkriegs in den Vordergrund rückten, weil Dózsa einfach uninteressant war: Vor dieser Person konnte man nur Angst haben und es lohnte sich einfach nicht, sich mit seinen Emotionen und Wünschen zu beschäftigen. Der Name Dózsa blieb ein bloßes Schimpfwort, damit man die Zeit des Bauernkriegs immer wieder als eine ständige Gefahr hervorheben konnte.

7 Über die Kriminalgeschichten siehe Bauer, Zwischen Galgen und Moral, 381–398. 8 Czövek, Az Európai híres zsiványok I. Bd. 151–241. 9 Czövek, Az Európai híres zsiványok I. Bd., 241–262.

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Vor diesem Hintergrund scheint der Roman von József Eötvös wirklich innovativ zu sein. Eötvös schuf sein großes Werk 1847 und dieses wurde bereits 1850 in deutscher Übersetzung herausgegeben.10 Die erste Ausgabe des Romans erschien zu einem unglücklichen Zeitpunkt: Kurz nach seiner Publikation brach die Märzrevolution und der sogenannte Freiheitskampf in Ungarn aus. Diese Umstände förderten natürlich keine vielseitige und kritische Rezeption. Unmittelbar nach den Ereignissen des Jahres 1849 wurde die epische Darstellung des Romans überwiegend als eine Wahrsagung, als eine Vorahnung für den Niedergang einer Revolution in Form eines historischen Romans interpretiert. Und auch diese Annäherung war aufgrund der poetologischen Vielfalt des Werkes noch immer nicht einfühlsam und plausibel genug. An dieser Stelle würde eine gründliche Analyse des Romans zu weit führen,11 ich möchte daher nur einen Aspekt betonen und die Frage stellen: Wie steht dieses Werk zur Tradition des früheren DózsaBildes? Oder anders formulieren: Was für eine Bedeutung hat der Roman von Eötvös – der übrigens ein Klassiker der ungarischen Prosa im 19. Jahrhundert ist12 – in Zusammenhang mit dem Diskurs über den Bauernkrieg? Eötvös arbeitete sein historisches Thema sorgfältig und fachgemäß auf. Er studierte die bereits publizierten Quellen gründlich und fügte dem Text bedeutende Anmerkungen und Quellenzitate hinzu. Dieser Teil wurde übrigens – interessanterweise – in beiden deutschen Übersetzungen ausgelassen.13 Dieses Fehlen bedeutet für die deutschsprachigen Leser einen großen Verlust, weil man gerade anhand dieses Materials erkennen kann, dass Eötvös die wichtigsten narrativen Quellen über den Bauernkrieg gut kannte und auf dieser Basis seine Vision über die Ereignissen konstruierte. Der Roman entsprang also im Grunde nicht alleine seiner Einbildungskraft. Die zuvor skizzierte Einstellung ist auch für die Auffassung von Eötvös charakteristisch: Die Epoche des Bauernkriegs wird auch in seinem Roman als eine ziellose und von Gewalt beherrschte schreckliche Welt dargestellt. Eötvös knüpft auch insofern an die frühere Tradition an, als dass er die Person von Dózsa nicht als Zentralfigur behandelt. Dózsa scheint in der Struktur des Romans kein Held 10 Der Roman wurde sogar von zwei verschiedenen deutschen Übersetzern herausgegeben. Zur zeitgenössischen Edition siehe Eötvös, Der Bauernkrieg in Ungarn Die spätere Version: Eötvös, Aufstand der Kreuzfahrer. 11 Über den Roman siehe Szilágyi, Megváltás és katasztrófa, 211–230. 12 Über die literarische Bedeutung von Eötvös siehe Kulcsár Szabó (Hg.), Geschichte der ungarischen Literatur, 181–183. 13 Diese Lösung wurde in der ersten deutschsprachigen Edition am Anfang des Romans so begründet, beziehungsweise der Teil ersetzt: „Das Original erschien unter dem Titel Magyarország 1514ben. Regény irta B. Eötvös Jósef 3 kötet, Pest, 1847. Demselben sind viele Quellen und Belege beigedruckt, denen die historischen Angaben entnommen sind, und welche die geschichtliche Treue des Romanes bewähren.“ Eötvös 1850, ohne Zahl. Die moderne Übersetzung ließ diese wichtigen Teile ohne Anmerkung aus.

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zu sein, obwohl er natürlich als Anführer des „Kreuzfahrers“ vorgestellt wird. Aber er dominiert nicht und er kann auch die Ereignisse nicht wesentlich beeinflussen. Er hat keinen festen Plan, was er mit diesem Krieg erreichen möchte. Eötvös vollzog allerdings eine merkwürdige Wende in dieser Tradition: Er sah in Dózsa ein psychologisch zu erklärendes und zu verstehendes Objekt, das man nicht einfach als eine böse Figur beschreiben sollte. Eötvös machte aus Dózsa natürlich kein Ideal, aber auch kein Ungeheuer, er wollte vielmehr einen einfachen Mann mit vielseitigen Motiven vorstellen. Aus dieser Absicht entspringen natürlicherweise Lösungen, die sehr eng mit der christlichen Weltanschauung von Eötvös verbunden sind. Der Roman enthält so keine drastischen und ekelerregenden deskriptiven Elemente. Zum Beispiel werden keine Hinrichtungen, also weder die von Dózsa befohlenen Exekutionen, noch der qualvolle Tod von Dózsa selbst, dargestellt. Eötvös ließ die – ihm ganz bestimmt (direkt oder indirekt) wohlbekannte – Beschreibung von Taurinus aus.14 Die legendäre Variante des glühenden Throns wird nur so verwendet, dass der Kerkermeister einen Tag vor der Hinrichtung darüber als geplante Art und Weise der Hinrichtung Dózsas erzählt. Die letzte Szene, in der Dózsa im Roman vorkommt, bildet daher die Gefangenschaft im Kerker, die fürchterlichen Todesumstände werden hier nicht vor Augen geführt, sondern lediglich die christliche Vorbereitung auf den Tod. Dózsas Weg führt also zur Bekehrung. Er bekannt sich hier öffentlich und vor Gott zu seinen Sünden und akzeptierte den Tod ruhig. Dózsa gelangt vom Ehrgeiz und seiner früheren moralischen Schuld nun endlich zur Möglichkeit des Heils. Und dieser sakralisierte Weg deutet auch seinen Charakter neu.15 Der letzte große Monolog Dózsas fasst diese seelischen Wandlungen emblematisch zusammen: „Doch Zápolya [der Woiwode, der das Todesurteil aussprach – M. Sz.] kennt auch mich nicht. Er wird das Urteil vollstrecken; jedoch nicht Schimpf und Schande, die er von meiner Schwäche erwartet, werden die Folge sein, sondern ewiger Ruhm. Ich habe schwere Schuld auf mich geladen, denn ich habe Taten begangen, die ich in ruhigeren Stunden bereue, und für mich die Menschen vielleicht verfluchen, die aber durch meine Leiden und Qualen gesühnt sein werden. Vor dem Richterstuhl Gottes und der Nachwelt, vor dem auch der mächtige Woiwode erscheinen muss, werden meine letzten Augenblicke die Sünden meiner Vergangenheit auslöschen, und nicht vor dem Opfer, sondern von dem Henker wird man sich voller Abscheu abwenden. Sagt das Zápolya! Sagt ihm, dass ich seine Wut verachte. Für das Volk habe ich zu den Waffen gegriffen, und als unsterbliches Vorbild für das Volk werde ich auf meinem glühenden Thron sitzen, den er für mich hat anfertigen lassen; aber 14 Über Taurinus und seine literarische Leistung siehe noch die Abhandlung von Farkas Gábor Kiss in diesem Band. 15 Dózsa als christlicher Märtyr erschien auch in der damaligen bildenden Kunst in Ungarn; darüber siehe noch die Abhandlung von Marta Fata in diesem Band.

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seine schwächliche Hand wird nicht imstande sein, mir die leuchtende Krone wieder von der Stirn zu nehmen; die kommenden Geschlechter werden sie auf meinem Haupt finden und sich vor dem Manne neigen, der sie klaglos zu tragen vermochte.“16 Hier handelt es sich eher um die Glückseligkeit und um einen Märtyrertod, der wegen der anderen Mitmenschen erduldet werden muss. Dózsa kommt in diesem Monolog einer Darstellung als Held am Nächsten, aber dieses Heldentum geht nicht aus seinen Taten als Anführer des Bauernkriegs hervor, sondern aus seinem letztendlich entdeckten christlichen Glauben. Eötvös behandelt Dózsa nicht so, als ob er ein romantischer, asozialer, aber edler „Räuber“ sei (wie man es im gleichnamigen Drama von Schiller sieht):17 Er blickte nicht mit Bewunderung oder Hass auf ihn, sondern nur mit Mitleid. Dieser Begriff bildet übrigens auch den Schlüssel für das Verständnis des ganzen Romans: Das historische Panorama zeigt ein Land, das sich seinem endgültigen Niedergang nähert, aber diese Entwicklung bemerkt kaum jemand. Der Originaltitel des Romans (wörtlich: Ungarn 1514) scheint also viel treffender, als der Titel der beiden deutschen Übersetzungen: Das Werk handelt nämlich nicht vom Bauernkrieg, wie es die deutschen Titel suggerieren, sondern vom damaligen Zustand des Königreichs Ungarn. Und darin erscheint der Bauernkrieg als nur ein Faktor. Deshalb kann man sagen, dass Eötvös in seinem großen Roman keinen „revolutionären“ Dózsa18 schuf. Eine derartige Darstellung sollte erst später, in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und im 20. Jahrhundert, in einer ganz anderen politischen Situation zum Tragen kommen. Aber diese späteren Werke sind nicht so bedeutend wie Eötvös’ Roman aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, obwohl sie die Wirkung einer machtpolitischen Ideologie gut illustrieren können.

Literatur Bauer, Werner M., Zwischen Galgen und Moral – Kriminalgeschichte und Spätaufklärung im österreichischen Raum, in: Zeman, Herman (Hg.), Die österreichische Literatur, Ihr Profil im 19. Jahrhundert (1830–1880), Graz 1982, 381–398. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Anke/Guzzoni, Alfredo, Der „Asoziale“ in der Literatur um 1800. Königstein/Ts., 1979. Budai, Ferenc, Magyar Ország polgári históriájára való lexicon, a’ XVI. század végéig, hrsg. von Budai, É’saiás. I–III. Bd. Nagyvárad 1805, III.

16 Eötvös, Aufstand der Kreuzfahrer, 711. 17 Über diese Möglichkeit (nach dem Beispiel Schillers Drama) siehe Bennholdt-Thomsen/ Guzzoni, Der „Asoziale“, 110–121. 18 Ich bin mit dem Nachwort der letzten Eötvös-Ausgabe nicht einverstanden: Vogler, Nachwort, 719–748.

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Czövek, István, Az Európai híres zsiványok, útonálló tolvajok, gyilkosok, haramiák, lázzadók és pártüto˝k’ tu˝köre, mellyet Siller Fridrik írásiból fordított… I–II. Bd., Pest 1817. Eötvös József., Der Bauernkrieg in Ungarn, Historischer Roman. [Übersetzt] von Dux, Adolf, Pest, 1850. – Aufstand der Kreuzfahrer, Übersetzt von Szent-Iványi, Ita, Berlin–Budapest 1976. Keszeg, Anna, A Horea-féle parasztlázadás irodalomtörténetéhez, in: Devescovi, Balázs/ Szilágyi, Márton/Vaderna, Gábor (Hg.), Kolligátum. Tanulmányok a hetvenéves Bíró Ferenc tiszteletére, Budapest, 2007, 217–226. Heinz, Ludwig Arnold von (Hg.), Kindlers Literatur Lexikon, 3. völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, Bd. 1–18., Stuttgart – Weimar, 2009. Köpeczi, Béla (Hg.), Kurze Geschichte Siebenbürgens, Budapest 1990. Kulcsár Szabó, Erno˝ (Hg.), Geschichte der ungarischen Literatur, Eine historisch-poetologische Darstellung. Berlin – Boston, 2013. Kulin, Ferenc, Hódíthatatlan szellem, Dózsa György és a parasztháború reformkori megítéléséro˝l, Budapest 1982. Merkwürdige Kriminalgeschichten und Rechtsfälle, Ein Beytrag zur Geschichte der Menschheit. Nach Pitaval’s Französischen Werk durch mehrere Verfasser ausgearbeitet und mit einer Vorrede begleitet herausgegeben von Friedrich Schiller, Jena und Weimar 1811. Szilágyi, Márton, Megváltás és katasztrófa, Eötvös József: Magyarország 1514-ben, in: Ders., Határpontok, Budapest, 2007. 211–230. Vogler, Günter, Nachwort, in: Eötvös, József, Aufstand der Kreuzfahrer, Übersetzt von Szent-Iványi, Ita, Berlin – Budapest, 1976, 719–748.

Giorgio Politi

Spontane Generation einer Fälschung Michael Gaismair und „seine“ sogenannte Landesordnung

Meine Beschäftigung mit Gaismair und der sogenannte Landesordnung war Teil einer breiteren vergleichenden Untersuchung über den Ursprung und den Charakter der Territorialstaaten im ausgehenden Mittelalter unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Norditaliens, Spaniens und des Deutschen Reichs. Eine sorgfältige Analyse der großen Konflikte, die die Entstehung des Territorialstaates fast überall in Europa begleiteten, insbesondere aber die Betrachtung der beiden größten Revolutionen in Kastilien und in Deutschland der Jahre 1520/21 bzw. 1525/26, überzeugten mich, dass das Vorbild der Revolution des gemeinen Mannes und die davon abgeleitete These einer frühneuzeitlichen Auseinandersetzung zwischen proto-absolutistischen und korporativ-bündischen Staatsmodellen verallgemeinert werden sollte.1 Genau in dieser Hinsicht war für mich die sogenannte Landesordnung als mögliches Manifest eines solchen Staates von außergewöhnlichem Interesse. Einige Dinge waren aber nicht ganz klar. Vor allem ließ das Problem der Überlieferung des Textes viele Fragen offen. Es ist allgemein bekannt, dass die sogenannte Landesordnung in Form von drei handschriftlichen Abschriften, die im Haus-, Hofu. Staatsarchiv Wien, im Diözesanarchiv Brixen und im ehemaligen Königlichen, heute Staatlichen Archiv Bozen aufbewahrt wurden, zu uns gelangte.2 Einige Forscher wie z. B. Macek betrachteten diese Streuung sogar als Beweis für die Verbreitung der Landesordnung während des Tiroler Bauernkrieges.3 Die letzte dieser Abschriften, d. h. die Bozener, gilt seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg als verschollen. Niemand benutzte sie mehr, seitdem sie A. Hollaender, der sie als „die älteste, gleichzeitige Fassung“ der Urkunde betrachtete, seiner berühmten Ausgabe von Schlern aus dem Jahre 1932 „zugrunde gelegt“ hatte.4 Glücklicherweise sind die

1 2 3 4

Politi, Rivolte contadine, movimenti comunali, 159–191. Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 113ff. Macek, Der Tiroler Bauernkrieg, 95. Hollaender, Michel Gaismairs Landesordnung 1526; Hollaender, Michel Gaismairs Landesordnung 1526 (Schluss), 425–429.

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zwei anderen Abschriften noch vorhanden. Jede neue Erörterung des Überlieferungsproblems muss deshalb von diesen zwei Abschriften ausgehen.5 An dieser Stelle kam mir eine Idee, die meine Forschung in eine ganz neue Richtung lenken sollte. Ich nahm eine Prüfung der Wasserzeichen vor, die alle meine Vorgänger außer Acht gelassen hatten. Die erste Abbildung (vgl. Abb. 1) zeigt drei Wasserzeichen (Ochsenköpfe mit einer Schlange mit doppelter Kontur). Das erste Wasserzeichen ist in der Wiener Abschrift der Landesordnung zu finden, die anderen werden in der Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart aufbewahrt und sind mit „Löbau 1526“ und „Kassel 1528“ datiert. Dann folgt erstens ein Beispiel des Wasserzeichens der Brixner Abschrift, zweitens eine Tafel aus dem berühmten Werk von Briquet, datiert mit „Comorn im 1596“. Und schließlich gibt es ein weiteres Wasserzeichen aus der Kartei Piccard, datiert mit „Murrhardt 1594“ (vgl. Abb. 2).6 Das Ergebnis der Untersuchung war so scharfsinnig wie erstaunlich. Die Wiener Abschrift stammte aus den Jahren von 1525 bis 1529, also zeitgleich mit der Tiroler Revolution des gemeinen Mannes; die Brixner Abschrift erfolgte hingegen unzweifelhaft erst am Ende des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Diese Schlussfolgerung wurde auch von einer paläografischen Analyse bestätigt. Wir wissen nicht, ob der Wiener Text eine Urfassung darstellt. Die Brixner Urkunde hingegen kann – alleine schon aus zeitlichen Gründen – nichts anderes als eine Kopie sein. Doch lehrt uns die klassische Philologie genauso wie die moderne Psychologie, dass man keinen ziemlich langen Text fehlerlos abschreiben kann. So beweist eine genaue Untersuchung des Brixner Textes nicht nur, dass solche Fehler vorhanden sind, sondern auch, dass einige davon sozusagen zeitbedingt sind, d. h. sie sind konkret durch die zeitliche Entfernung des Kopisten zu den Ereignissen bzw. zur Lage Tirols zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts bedingt. Das klarste und offensichtlichste Beispiel dafür ist das völlige Unverständnis des Brixner Schreibers gegenüber der ganzen Welt der Bergwerke, ein wirtschaftlicher Zweig, der am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts schon längst von der Tiroler Bühne abgetreten war. Noch viele andere Stellen könnten zitiert werden. Beispielsweise durchschaut unser Kopist keineswegs, was sich an zwinglianischer Weltanschauung „von menschlicher und göttlicher Gerechtigkeit“ hinter dem Ausdruck „gesatz Gottes“ verbirgt, den er trivial als „gepot Gottes“ wiedergibt.7 Kommen wir nun auf die Bozener Fassung zu sprechen. Die landläufige, von mir kurz vorher angesprochene Meinung, wonach diese verloren gegangen sei, stimmt nicht ganz, denn exakter und im Sinne der Urkundenlehre gesprochen, 5 Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Österreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, 3a–6a; Archivio diocesano Bressanone/Brixen, Archivio aulico/Hofarchiv, N. 16575. 6 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 126–134. 7 Ebenda, 134–145.

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sind nur deren äußere Merkmale verloren gegangen, d. h. das Papier, die Tinte, die Schreibweise, keineswegs aber der Inhalt. Mehr als ein Jahrhundert vor Hollaenders Ausgabe wurde nämlich die Bozener Abschrift in einem handschriftlichen Sammelband, der heute in der Bibliotheca Dipauliana des Ferdinandeums aufbewahrt wird, niedergeschrieben. Diese Abschrift erschien dann im Urkunden-Band der Geschichte der Regierung Ferdinands I. von Franz Bernhard von Bucholtz, die 1838 in Wien publiziert wurde.8 Wenn uns also weder ein Wasserzeichen noch ein paläografischer Beleg im Bezug auf die Bozener Abschrift zur Verfügung steht, so kann zumindest die Philologie recht gut weiterhelfen. Der Bozener Kopist machte nämlich dieselbe Fehler wie der Brixner, also Fehler, die ebenfalls zeitbedingt waren. Er versteht z. B. nicht mehr die ideologische Prägnanz des Eigenschaftswortes „gemein“ und verwechselt überdies die „gemaines lands notturft“, d. h. die Bedürfnisse des neuen Landes, das letztlich die privilegierten Stände von Adel und Geistlichkeit vertrieben hat, mit der „gemainer landsnotturft“, d. h. mit den täglichen Nöten eines Landes.9 Es ist also ganz klar, dass auch die Bozener Abschrift eine Kopie ist, die derselben politischen und religiösen Atmosphäre wie die Brixner Abschrift entstammt, also etwa gegen Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts zu datieren ist. Damit ist aber noch nicht alles gesagt. Der Wiener Abschrift10 wurde eine sich noch heute darauf befindende eigenhändige, auf den 8. Oktober 1932 datierte Anmerkung von A. Hollaender, mit der er eine wichtige Auskunft erteilt, hinzugefügt. Diese kommt in seinem berühmten Schlern-Aufsatz nicht mehr vor. Die Anmerkung von A. Hollaender lautete folgendermaßen: Inliegendes Aktenstück ist die „Landesordnung“ Michel Gaismairs … [Sie] ist eine erweiterte Abschrift der heute im Königlichen Staatsarchiv in Bozen … lagernden Fassung. Präambel „Das ist die lannßordnung, so Michel Gaismair gmacht hat…“ und (verstümmelte) Schlusssatz „… wen er fürst wurd hinnderm ofen„ fehlen hier, dafür sind zwei in der Bozener Fassung nicht vorfindlichen neue Artikel interpoliert (fol. 5a): “Man soll ain wag, ain ellen und ainerlay satzung im ganzen lannd haben, – man soll die confinen und päß in gueter verwarung haben …“11

Warum ist diese Auskunft von entscheidender Bedeutung? Einer der häufigeren Fehler, die beim Abschreiben geschehen, ist zweifelsohne jener, den die Philologen als den „saut du même au même“ kennen. Es ist das unbewusste Verlangen des Abschreibers, seine Arbeit zu verkürzen. Der Abschreiber springt von einem

8 Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum Innsbruck, Bibliotheca Dipauliana, Sammelband Dip. 1082, 12r–18r; Bucholtz, Geschichte der Regierung, 651–655. 9 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 149f. 10 Vgl. Fußnote. 5. 11 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 150f.

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Wort bis zum nächsten, identischen Wort im Text weiter, die dazwischenliegenden Wörter werden ausgelassen.12 Das ist auch in unserem Fall geschehen. In diesem Teil des Textes besteht nämlich die sogenannte Landesordnung aus einer Reihe von kurzen Sätzen, die alle mit „Man soll“ beginnen. Es ist ganz klar, dass der Abschreiber die zwei Sätze zwischen „Man soll hinfuran nur ain markht“ und „Man soll ain taphere suma“ übersprungen hat.13 Das bedeutet aber auch, dass die Wiener Abschrift keine Kopie der Bozener ist, sondern genau das Gegenteil (vgl. Abb. 3). Ein anderer Fehler bestätigt dieses Ergebnis. Im Artikel der Landesordnung, der der Landwirtschaft gewidmet ist, und wo gesagt wird, dass „man möchte auch an vill orten ölpaumb setzen“, hat der Kopist den Buchstaben „u“ vergessen und nur das diakritische Zeichen angebracht. Das war in gotischer Schrift üblich, um es zu unterscheiden, sodass man dort tatsächlich „ölpamb“ liest (vgl. Abb. 4). Die Lesart der Bozener Fassung war genau „olpam“. Solche und viel andere Belege beweisen, dass auch die Bozener Fassung eine Kopie der Wiener ist, es ist sogar sehr wahrscheinlich, dass dieselbe Person beide Kopien angefertigte. Daraus kann man Folgendes schließen. Erstens hat die derzeitige Verteilung der Abschriften der sogenannten Landesordnung auf drei verschiedene Archive weder etwas mit ihrer Entstehung noch etwas mit einem vermutlichen Umlauf zu tun, sondern ist lediglich das Ergebnis der Aufteilung des fürstbischöflichen Archivs nach der Aufhebung des Hochstiftes Brixen im Jahre 1803.14 Zweitens gibt es keineswegs drei Fassungen der Landesordnung, sondern nur eine, nämlich eine, die während der Tiroler Revolution entstand (also die Wiener Abschrift) und zwei Kopien derselben, die fast siebzig Jahre später in der fürstbischöflichen Kanzlei angefertigt wurden. Warum man diese Kopien gerade dort anfertigte, ist nicht schwer zu erraten. Nachdem sich die Bauern das ganze Jahrhundert hindurch ruhig verhaltet hatten, brach in Oberösterreich zwischen 1594 und 1597 ein neuer Bauernkrieg aus. Andere Bauernunruhen begannen 1596 im Allgäu. 1605 fürchtete man sogar in Innsbruck, dass der sogenannte Rettenberger Aufruhr der bischöflich-augsburgischen Bauern vom benachbarten Allgäu auf Tirol übergreifen könnte.15 Diese Kette von Revolten musste zweifellos die alte Urkunde von 1525 wieder interessant werden lassen. Diese Urkunde ist aber anonym. Wir besitzen keinen Beleg aus jener Zeit, der beweist, dass sie mit Gaismair etwas zu tun hatte. Die Verknüpfung dieses Textes mit der Gestalt des berühmten Bauernführers kann also nur das Werk eines 12 13 14 15

Brambilla Ageno, L’edizione critica dei testi volgari, 67. Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 329ff. (vgl. Abb. 3). Ebenda, 113–122. Evans, Felix Austria, 135; Kamen, Il secolo di ferro, 432, 438, 440–444, 452; Palme, Reformation, 160.

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späteren Kopisten sein. Deshalb muss man sich fragen, ob die Präambeln und die Schlusssätze der Bozener und der Brixner Abschrift, in denen der Name Gaismair vorkommt, auf irgendeiner sachlichen Angabe beruhen oder ob diese Verknüpfung nur eine Gaismair-Sage reflektiert, die jede Störung der bestehenden Ordnung im nunmehr katholisch-habsburgisch geworden Tirol auf die Gestalt des großen Revolutionärs zurückführt, wie dies z. B. das Verhör von Balthasar Dosser im Januar 1562 zu belegen scheint? 16 Ich habe den dritten Teil meines Buchs einer analytischen Überprüfung aller biografischen Angaben über Gaismair – von seiner Flucht aus Innsbruck bis zu seinem Tode in Padua – gewidmet. Jede Angabe wurde immer auf der Grundlage der Originalquellen überprüft.17 Ich habe daraus den Schluss gezogen, dass die Zeitgenossen dem Brixner Sekretär keinen Text zuschrieben, der mit der sogenannten Landesordnung identifiziert werden kann. Die einzige Ausnahme ist eine Stelle der Annales Novacellenses, die lateinisch verfasste Chronik des Stiftes Neustift, die J. Bücking als Augenzeugenbericht betrachtet und zur Unterstützung seiner These über die Verfassung der ersten Landesordnung beifügt.18 Dieser Bericht über die Plünderung von Neustift während des Bauernkrieges enthält tatsächlich Zitate sowohl aus der sogenannten Landesordnung als auch aus der Urkunde, die Bücking für die erste Landesordnung hält. Aber es gibt keinen Anlass, sich darüber zu wundern, denn der Verfasser ist nämlich keineswegs der Neustifter Dekan Franz Premenstainer, gestorben am 13. Mai 1527, wie Bücking erstaunlicherweise behauptet, sondern der spätere Stiftsarchivar Caspar Remich. Letzterer wirkte in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts und verfügte sowohl über die „Ordnung, über alle beschwärungen“, die im Klosterarchiv Neustift aufbewahrt wurden, als auch über die Landesordnung, die er im fürstbischöflichen Archiv leicht einsehen könnte.19 Bis heute hat man die sogenannte Landesordnung immer mit der festen Überzeugung ausgelegt, Gaismair habe sie als Programm oder Manifest eines geplanten revolutionären Einfalls in die Grafschaft Tirol im Frühling 1526 verfasst. Alles, was nicht zu dieser Verknüpfung passte, wurde in den Hintergrund gerückt oder kaum beachtet. Jetzt aber, da alles bezweifelt werden muss, muss man jeden Widerspruch, jede Seltsamkeit und jede Spur im Text sorgfältig bewerten. Nachdem die Überlieferungsfrage positiv gelöst worden ist, besitzen wir zwar einen festen Text unserer

16 Delmonego, Entwicklung des Gerichtes, 102–106. 17 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 193–278. 18 Ebenda, 279–286; Stiftarchiv Neustift, Cod. 15, Annales | Collegii | Novacellensis … in quibus res gestæ ab ipso | fundationis exordio per quin | gentos triginta annos, usque | ad annum salutis nostræ | MDCLXXII | fideliter scriptæ continen | tur | studio et opera | eiusdem temporis et loci | multum venerabilis con | ventus, 723–725; Bücking, Michael Gaismair, 62ff. 19 Innerhofer, 850 anni Abbazia di Novacella, 252; Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 286.

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Urkunde, wir haben aber auch viel verloren. Wir wissen so weder wer diese Urkunde verfasste noch wo, wie und warum sie verfasst wurde. Wurde dieses Schriftstück wirklich als eine Art Landesordnung abgefasst? Daran kann man zweifeln. Die unbekannten Empfänger des Aufrufes hatten nämlich schwören müssen, dass sie „ain gantz christenliche satzung aufrichten wellet“. Ein wenig später sieht man andererseits vor, dass „ain wag, ain ellen und ainerlay satzung im gantzen Land“ eingerichtet werden soll. Warum aber verordnet ein Text, der selbst eine Landesordnung sein sollte, die Abfassung einer Landesordnung? 20 War dieses Schriftstück wirklich als Gesetzestext, vielleicht sogar als ein revolutionäres Dokument, abgefasst worden? Das ist fraglich. Dem Brixner Kopisten ist ein seltsamer, dafür bezeichnender Fehler unterlaufen. Die „viertlhaubtleut“, die laut Wiener Abschrift über das „gantz land“ verteilt wurden, werden ausgelassen: „so soll wier haubtleith uber das gantz land gesetzt werden“.21 Die Meinung des Kopisten ist ganz klar. Das Schriftstück beginnt mit einer Ansprache: „Anfangklich so werdt jr geloben und sweren“ – was so viel bedeutet, dass hier jemand spricht. Ein wenig später begegnet man einem anderen Artikel in ähnlicher Form: „der zöll halben säh mich“. So hegt unser Kopist, wenn er später den für ihn nunmehr ungewohnten „viertlhauptleute“ begegnet, keine Zweifel mehr. Hat er nicht den Text Michael Gaismair zugeschrieben? Und wer war Gaismair? „Der Michl Gaissmair was ein haubtman“.22 Das Schriftstück kann nichts anderes sein, als eine Rede, die der Hauptmann Gaismair an die anderen Hauptmänner richtet, die mit ihm in die Grafschaft Tirol eindringen wollten. So interpretierte der Brixner Kopist die ganze Urkunde als den Text einer Rede – oder vielleicht als eine oratio ficta. Man muss jedoch hervorheben, dass eine solche Perspektive trotz des Missverständnisses bezüglich der „viertelhauptleute“ durchaus möglich ist.23 So wird die sogenannte Landesordnung, losgelöst von jedem archivalischen Kontext und ohne jede feste Autorenschaft, ein wirkliches Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Bildet diese Urkunde einen einheitlich abgefassten Text oder ist sie bloß eine Liste von kaum übereinstimmenden Meldungen bzw. Anklagepunkten, die z. B. von einem Richter oder Kontroversisten zum eigenen Gebrauch verfasst wurde? Sicherlich ist dieses angebliche Manifest voll von Seltsamkeiten, Schwierigkeiten und Widersprüchen. Nur um einige davon in Erinnerung zu rufen. Die Sprache des Bergwerkartikels ist viel volkstümlicher und umgangssprachlicher als die des übrigen Textes; der Pfannhausartikel erscheint als 20 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 46; 325/I,16–19; 329/V, 29f. 21 Ebenda, 328/III, 39–41; 342/VII, 9–12. 22 „Ein new lied, wie es vor Rastat mit den pauren ergangen ist“, in Hollaender, Michel Gaismairs Landesordnung 1526, 375. 23 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 325/I–1; 327/III–1.

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Fremdkörper; einerseits bemüht man sich, eine sparsamere Verwaltung zu errichten, auf der anderen Seite zählt man nicht weniger als elf Ertragsquellen auf, was völlig absurd ist. Dem Zinsartikel gemäß, „ist es zubedenkhen, das gemeine landtschaft ain kriegs cossten ain zeitlang brauchen werde“. Wenige Seiten später scheint dagegen kein Krieg mehr bevorzustehen – „man soll ain taphere suma gellts zum vorrat machen, ob das Land ain unversehner krieg überfiel“.24 Dennoch können in einem derartigen Nebel einige Fixpunkte festgemacht werden. Es ist vor allem ganz klar, dass die Ursachen, die im vorigen Jahrhundert so heftige Debatten über diese Urkunde auslösten, völlig haltlos sind. Dieses Schriftstück enthält nämlich nichts, was an den modernen Kommunismus erinnern könnte. Der berühmte Bergwerksartikel ist nämlich keine Vorwegnahme des Kommunismus. Man sagte, dass Gaismair hierin die Tiroler Bergwerke verstaatlichen (Bücking, Blickle) oder sozialisieren wollte (Franz).25 Das war aber gar nicht nötig, weil sich die Bergwerke bekanntlich bereits in Staats- bzw. fürstlichem Besitz befanden. Wie im zeitgenössischen Spanien oder in der benachbarten Republik Venedig das Obereigentum der Bodenschätze eindeutig dem Herrscher zustand, der sie einem Privatmann bzw. einer Privatgesellschaft gewiss verpfänden, aber nicht verkaufen konnte.26 Daran erinnert uns der Wortlaut des Bergwerkartikels selbst, wo am Schluss des ersten Absatzes steht, dass sich der Adel und die verhassten Handelsgesellschaften in fürstliche „vermugen gereicht“ hätten.27 So bedeuten die hier vorgesehenen politischen Maßnahmen weder eine Sozialisierung noch eine Verstaatlichung im Sinne des heutigen Kommunismus, sondern – genauer gesagt – einen Loskauf von Regalien, unentgeltlich und gewaltsam durchgeführt, was sicherlich eine revolutionäre Maßnahme war, doch ganz im Sinne des 16. Jahrhunderts. E. P. Thompson schrieb, kein Sieg in der Geistesgeschichte sei so durchschlagend gewesen wie jener des Physiokratismus im 18. Jahrhundert, und zwar derart, dass selbst die Erinnerung an den Wirtschaftsdirigismus, der unsere europäische Gesellschaft das ganze Mittelalter und ancien régime hindurch charakterisiert habe, auch beim Fachmann fast verschwunden sei.28 Dessen müsste sich jeder Forscher bewusst sein, um krasse Anachronismen zu vermeiden. Der zweite Pfeiler der ur-sozialistichen Deutung der sogenannten Landesordnung war der Handelsartikel. Konkret sieht man darin drei Hauptmaßnahmen vor: die Zwangsverlegung aller handwerklichen bzw. textilen Be24 Ebenda, 327/II, 34–39; 329/V, 33f. 25 Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525, 225; Bücking, Michael Gaismair, 85–89; Franz, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 158–159 26 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 97–99. 27 Ebenda, 330/VI–24. 28 Thompson, Società patrizia, 70.

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triebe nach Trient, den Zwangsverkauf einiger Waren in einigen bestimmten Läden im Land sowie die Einsetzung eines öffentlichen Amtmanns, der die Durchführung dieser wirtschaftlichen Maßnahmen überwachen sollte.29 Die zeitgenössischen Schlüsselwörter dieses Artikels sind sehr einfach und lauten: mittelalterliches Stadtrecht – oder besser gesagt „städtisches Sonderrecht“ – und Höchstpreise – genauer gesagt „calmiere“ – wobei es vielleicht bezeichnend ist, dass uns keine exakte deutsche Übersetzung dieses Wortes zur Verfügung steht. Erstaunlicherweise haben die Forscher bisher geglaubt, dass dieser Artikel jeden Privathandel bzw. jedes private Handwerk verbiete; im Text aber findet man keine Spur davon, ganz im Gegenteil. Wenn dies nämlich der Fall gewesen wäre, über wen hätte der vorgesehene Amtmann dann wachen sollen? Es ist doch klar, dass dieser Amtmann darauf achten musste, dass der Konsument von Kaufmännern und Handwerkern nicht betrogen wurde. Die Forscher glaubten somit, dass dieser Artikel einen Verkauf zu reinen Schleuderpreisen verordnet habe; im ganzen ancien régime aber wurde der rechte Gewinn des Kaufmanns bzw. des Handwerkers unter den Kosten subsumiert und keineswegs als Profit angesehen. Wenn die adeligen Gemeindeausschüsse der norditalienischen Städte einen Fleisch- oder „Brotcalmiere“ erstellen sollten, mussten sie sogenannte „esperienze“ (Prüfungen) durchführen. Sie gingen z. B. aufs Land, kauften eine Kuh und führten sie in die Stadt. Dort zahlten sie alle Unkosten, um sie dann zu schlachten und zu verkaufen. So konnten sie endlich den Ladenpreis aller Fleischteile fixieren und vor allem den rechten Gewinn der Metzger ausmachen, was das eigentliche Ziel der ganzen Handlungskette darstellte. In der zweite Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts errichteten alle Stadträte des Herzogtums Mailands sogenannte „macelli pubblici“ (öffentliche Schlachthöfe) und zwangen alle Metzger, weil sie nicht gewillt waren, das „calmiere“ zu beachten, ihr Fleisch nur dort zu schlachten und zu verkaufen. Auf diese Weise konnte der „officiale delle vettovaglie“, der städtische Lebensmittelamtmann, Preise und Güte der Ware überwachen.30 Die Zusammenziehung aller Vertreter eines handwerklichen bzw. kommerziellen Zweigs auf einen einzigen, überschaubaren Platz, um sie besser kontrollieren zu können, war in den mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Städten keine seltene Maßnahme. Noch heute heißen einige Straße im Zentrum meiner Geburtsstadt Mailand „via Orefici“ (Goldschmiedstraße), „via Armorari“ (Waffenschmiedstraße), „via Speronari“ (Spornschmiedstraße). Oft bestand – wie oben gesagt – ein enger Zusammenhang zwischen der Konzentrierung der Gewerbe und der Höchstpreise. Oft stellte die amtliche Fixierung der Höchstpreise 29 Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 328/IV 30–329/V 12. 30 Politi, La società cremonese, XXIII–XXXVI.

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keine Wahl, sondern eine echte Not dar. Der Konsument hatte nämlich nicht mit einzelnen, gegenseitig konkurrierenden Kaufleuten, sondern mit zunftorganisierten Gegenparteien zu tun, die monopolistisch wirkten und deshalb gegebenenfalls auch Monopolpreise erzwingen konnten. So stellen „läden“ im Land und „ambtman über den handel“ durchaus geläufige Erscheinungen dar. Auch die Verbote, im Land weder Handwerk noch Zwischenhandel mit Textilien zu betreiben, kommen gewöhnlich in den städtischen Statuten vor. Solche Maßnahmen waren aber zu schwerwiegend und zu bauernfeindlich, um diese konkret anzuwenden. Ihre Durchführung hätte nämlich die völlige Vernichtung der bäuerlichen Wirtschaft bedeutet. Als der Zürcher Bürgermeister Hans Waldmann 1489 solche Gesetzte vom Kleinen Rat einführen ließ, löste dieser unglückliche Entschluss die größte Bauernempörung in der ganzen Geschichte des Kantons aus.31 So schließt sich der Kreis meiner Forschung. Die sogenannte Landesordnung erweist sich bei genauerer Betrachtung als kein bäuerliches Manifest. Ganz im Gegenteil. Sie weist starke stadtzentrische Züge auf, sodass sie kein vernünftiger Mensch eingesetzt hätte, um damit unter den Bauern für sich zu werben. Gaismair aber, der seine fünf Sinne bestens beisammen hatte, verfügte immer über ein rein bäuerliches Gefolge. Die inhaltliche Analyse scheint also die Ergebnisse der formellen Durchforschung zu bestätigten, die die Trennung zwischen dem berühmten Bauernführer und dem Text, der ihm lange Zeit – keineswegs immer einstimmig – zugeschrieben wurde, immer offensichtlicher werden lassen.

Literatur Azzara Claudio-Ermanno Orlando/Marco Pozza-Alessandra Rizzi (Hg.), Historiæ. Scritti per Gherardo Ortalli, Venezia 2013. Brambilla Ageno Franca, L’edizione critica dei testi volgari, Padova 21984. Bucholtz, F. B. von, Geschichte der Regierung Ferdinand des Ersten. Urkunden-Band, Wien 1838. Blickle, Peter, Die Revolution von 1525, München–Wien 1981. Bücking, Jürgen, Michael Gaismair, Reformer – Sozialrebell – Revolutionär. Seine Rolle im Tiroler Bauernkrieg (1525–32), Stuttgart 1978. Delmonego, Ernst, Entwicklung des Gerichtes und der Gemeinde Lüsen von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, in E. Delmonego (Hg.), Lüsen. Natur, Kultur, Leben, Lüsen 1988, 102–106, 61–176. Dietrich, Christian, Die Stadt Zürich und ihre Landgemeinden während der Bauernunruhen von 1489 bis 1525, Frankfurt a.M.–Bern–New York 1985. Evans, R.J., Felix Austria. L’ascesa della monarchia asburgica: 1550–1700, Bologna 1981. 31 Dietrich, Die Stadt Zürich; Politi, Gli statuti impossibili, 294–295.

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Franz, Günther, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, Darmstadt, 111977. Hollaender, Albert, Michael Gaismairs Landesordnung 1526, Entstehung-Bedeutung-Text, Der Schlern 13, 1932, 375–383. – Michel Gaismairs Landesordnung 1526 (Schluss), Der Schlern 13, 1932, 425–429. Innerhofer, Theodor (Hg.), 850 anni Abbazia di Novacella, Catalogo della 1a mostra provinciale, Bressanone 1992. Kamen, Henry, Il secolo di ferro 1550–1660, Bari 1975. Macek Josef, Der Tiroler Bauernkrieg und Michael Gaismair, Berlin (Ost) 1965. Palme, Rudolf, Reformation, Bauernempörung und Täufertum in Tirol (1519–1564), in J. Fontana. et al, Geschichte des Landes Tirol, II, Bozen–Innsbruck–Wien, 1986. Politi, Giorgio, Gli statuti impossibili. La rivoluzione tirolese del 1525 e il „programma“ di Michael Gaismair, Torino 1995. – La società cremonese nella prima età spagnola, Milano 2002. – Michael Gaismair. Tutti gli scritti autografi, Geschichte und Region/Storia e regione III, Bozen/Wien 1994, 161–187. – Rivolte contadine e movimenti comunali. Una tesi, in: S. Gasparri/G. Levi/P. Moro (Hg.), Venezia. Itinerari per la storia della città, Bologna 1997, 159–191. Thompson, E. P., Società patrizia, cultura plebea. Otto saggi di antropologia storica sull’Inghilterra del Settecento a cura di E. Grendi, Torino, 21981.

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Fig. 1. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung: Wasserzeichen aus der Wiener Abschrift (Ochsenköpfe mit einer Schlange mit doppelter Kontur). Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Oesterreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, Fol. 3; G. Piccard, Die Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Findbuch II/I, Abteilung XVI, Typ 331, Stuttgart 1966.

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Fig. 2. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung: Wasserzeichen aus der Brixner Abschrift (Doppeladler) Archivio diocesano Bressanone/Brixen, Archivio aulico/Hofarchiv, N. 16575; C. M. Briquet, Les filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600, Généve 1907, Aigle, Aigle à deux têtes, Tafel Nr. 285; Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Die Wasserzeichensammlung Piccard ( J 340), s. www.piccard-online.de.

Fig. 3. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung, Wiener Abschrift (Detail): Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Oesterreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, 5a.

Fig. 4. „Gaismairs“ sogenannte Landesordnung, Wiener Abschrift (Detail): Haus-, Hof- u. Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichskanzlei, Oesterreichischen Akten, Abteilung Tirol, Generalia Faszikel 2, 4b.

Erzsébet Tatai

Dózsa ’72 The Visual Representation of György Dózsa in the Middle of the Kádár Era

In 1972 the Hungarian National Gallery organized an exhibition of graphic works and statuettes with the support of the Ministry of Education, while the Studio of Young Artists, a subsidiary of the Art Foundation of the Hungarian People’s Republic, organized an art competition. Both of these events were held on the occasion of the alleged 500th anniversary of the birth of György Dózsa, the leader of the 1514 peasant revolt in the Kingdom of Hungary. Relatively speaking, a great deal of information is available about the Gallery’s exhibition: a proper catalogue was published, which elicited numerous critiques, and the Arts and Crafts Advisory Council (as well as its successors) preserved the jury’s records. However, we know almost nothing about the Studio of Young Artists competition. The pictorial sources are far from complete; aside from this, we have to rely on the artists’ memories for the most part. Records for the July 1972 general assembly located at the archives of the Studio of Young Artists’ Association1 merely mention in passing that the competition was successful. Aside from shedding light on the slim chances “young” artists had against their well-established colleagues, this lack of documentation also demonstrates the frightening speed with which art history becomes impossible to reconstruct, even in a period unravaged by revolutions or war. Focusing on these two art events/exhibitions elucidates how political propaganda undermined artistic motivation and invention in the era of “refrigerator socialism” in Hungary. Shortly after World War II, Dózsa became an emblematic figure in Hungary. As early as May 13, 1945, the National Peasant’s Party organized a Dózsa memorial celebration in Cegléd.2 “Dózsa’s character shines more and more brightly through the ages in spite of periods of oppression and devastation. The leader of peasants sitting on the smoldering iron throne became an eternal symbol of the struggles of Hungarian peasants. All subsequent peasant uprisings followed his 1 Legal successor of the Studio of Young Artists. 2 MAFIRT krónika, June 1945. http://filmhiradokonline.hu/watch.php?id=5959, accessed October 19, 2014.

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spirit, even if they did not directly refer to him.”3 The Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government presented Dózsa not merely as the leader of a peasant revolt, but as a forerunner of the proletarian revolution and the labor movement – as a symbolic figure of class struggle. When the official rhetoric mentioned revolution and failed revolution, most people thought of an uprising other than the one intended by the government. While the explicit aim of official text was to emphasize the revolutionary state of society as part of a brainwashing mechanism in a party dictatorship that was, in fact, in no way revolutionary, its readers were more likely thinking either of the failed revolution of 1956 or of a much-desired revolution yet to come. But the revolutionary mantra quashes political desires, motivation and thoughts—as is exemplified by a quotation from Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party General Secretary János Kádár: “The best of our people, the true representatives of people, like György Dózsa, Horea and Clos¸ca, Cris¸an, Lajos Kossuth and Nicolea Ba˘lcescu had struggled for the union of our peoples in ancient times as well […] We, Hungarian communists, proudly and patriotically remember not only György Dózsa and the fighters of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but also the struggles of Rákóczi and Kossuth.”4 The idea of an abstract permanent revolution (and counterrevolution) generated during the Kádár era that has nothing to do with the history served to veil the 1956 uprising. “Four hundred years ago György Dózsa was burnt on a smoldering iron throne and his confederates impaled. Later on ruling classes avenged all peasant movements with similar brutality. In 1919, after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, capitalists and landowners paid for their loss of power – which lasted only a few months – with unprecedented cruelty. The same ruling-class fury raged in October 1956.”5 At the time, artists were forced to participate in thematic exhibitions, as there were few other opportunities to make themselves known. Those who produced work for an official Dózsa exhibition had to deal with something practically impossible: they had to talk about Dózsa and his uprising without saying anything, or at least anything potentially interesting. The combination of revolutionary demagogy, the suppressed desire for revolution, lies and a peculiar knowledge of history could only result in a highly blurred image of history and Dózsa—an image based upon which it was quite difficult to create a work of art. Yet they still tried to come up with 3 Dózsa György útján, publication of the National Peasants’ Party 1945. Quoted by Ferenc Kulin, ed., “Ötszáz éve született Dózsa György,” Kritika 5 (1972): 16–17. 4 Speech to Bucharest General Assembly, February 27, 1958, ibid. 5 Magyar Nemzet, October 30, 1957, 3. Quoted by Péter Apor, Az elképzelt köztársaság. A Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaság utóélete 1945–1989 (Budapest: MTA BTK Történettudományi Intézet, 2014), 85. “[Council of Ministers Chairman] Münnich explained his dogmata about permanent popular revolution in his interview,” Apor noted about the interview made with Hungary’s head of government in 1958. Ibid., 91.

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something. “Artists’ approach to the subject matter of Dózsa has always been inspired by the most acute issues of their own time. In Madarász6 it was in defense of the spirit of 1848; [Gyula] Derkovits used it as a propaganda device of the labor movement, paying tribute from the position of the worker’s power to the throne of Dózsa, symbolizing the reign of the people, like in 1919 and nowadays,” wrote Nóra Aradi, the doyenne of socialist art historiography.7 It is noteworthy that the Hungarian National Gallery hosted an exhibition of graphic works, statuettes and medals only. Surprisingly, one of the country’s largest and most significant art institutions organized an exhibition dedicated to lesser genres on a much-celebrated anniversary. In the given context, these genres are restrictive and somewhat provincial, even if at the time graphic art in Hungary was considered to be very significant. The reason for the insistence on these minor genres could be explained by a wish for variety, since many works had been created by 1972,8 including several large spectacular monuments in public spaces. So perhaps it was thought that there was no need for more of these works of art, but something else was required instead.9 However, the National Gallery was also wary of showy, grand, more interesting genres, since it needed to steer revolutionary discourse in a direction that would not lead to an actual revolution, but would glorify the Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government. The Kádár regime had inherited the Dózsa theme from the Rákosi regime, which had appropriated left-wing traditions from the interwar period. However, at that time there were art works that represented modern and powerful, visual traditions regarding Dózsa like the series of woodcuts by Derkovits, and Béla Kondor’s diploma work from just before the revolution of 1956.10 These may have served as an “archetype”11 for artists and could have guided curators as well. But 6 Hungarian painter Viktor Madarász (1830–1917), who produced a famous painting depicting Dózsa and his followers in 1868. 7 Nóra Aradi, “A Dózsa-téma,” Mu˝vészet (1972): 8–12. 11. 8 Mrs. Gizella Wilhelmb Cenner, “XVI–XVIII. századi parasztmozgalmak grafikus ábrázolásai,” Folia Archaeologia 12 (1960): 259–71; Pál Boros, ed., Dózsa bibliográfia. A Dózsa Györgyro˝l és az 1514-es parasztháborúról szóló irodalom és képzo˝mu˝vészeti alkotások jegyzéke (Budapest: Ceglédi Városi Tanács-Pest Megyei Tanács V. B. Megyei Könyvtára, 1972); Dózsa was portrayed on one of the new banknotes issued in Hungary in 1947; György Szücs, “‘Keressük Dózsát!’ Dózsa György alakja a magyar képzo˝mu˝vészetben,” conference paper, June 5, 2014, Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc). 9 Half a dozen monuments were unveiled in that year alone. 10 Sándor Hornyik, Forradalmár, próféta, melós: Kondor Béla mu˝vészete (exhibition catalogue, Center for Modern and Contemporary Art) (Debrecen: MODEM, 2012); On Dózsa-series 5–9; Kálmán Bolgár and Katalin T. Nagy, eds., Kondor Béla: 1931–1972 (Oeuvre-catalogue, Hungarian National Gallery) (Budapest: MNG, 1984); Lajos Németh (foreword), Béla Kondor (graphic works) (Budapest: Corvina, 1969). 11 Only András Váci reflected on the woodcut series (1929) of Gyula Derkovits (1894–1934). In the background of his etching In Memory of Dózsa I, Váci qouted one detail from Derkovits’s woodcut (Fig. 1).

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by this time, Derkovits’s series had been neutralized through absorption; specifically it had become commonplace through over-repetition, which instilled in artists the fear of being accused of epigonism as a result of turning to such a popular example. And what is more, Derkovits’s series of prints raised the bar very high: to surpass it in quality would require inspiration similar to that of the artist himself. However, most artists had by this time developed a skeptical, apolitical attitude. Apart from works for competitions or commissioned art works they did not paint political pictures. The main reason for which Derkovits did not become an archetype was that he—as an artist—had taken a very different position, a critical attitude toward society, unlike most artists had by around 1970.12 While the exhibition catalogue13 mentions Derkovits, it says nothing about Béla Kondor. This exhibition added little to contemporary visual culture, as—beyond these “genre limitations”—it lacked topicality.14 Contemporary artists made conceptual art works at the time, as well as installations and land art in great numbers and on a grand scale in the free world; and in secret, in small numbers and on a smaller scale, in dictatorships. Opinions about the exhibition in the National Gallery at the time were not very enthusiastic. The jury15 that selected art works and authorized them made just one comment on the statuettes, saying they were “extremely low quality,”16 mentioning only a few exceptions. Critiques emphasized the importance of the theme while blurring their real opinion with circumscriptions. They call several works “excellent,” but only vaguely refer to how dull the exhibition was as a whole. “In one way or another, most artists went around answering the question of what György Dózsa 12 After 1945 Derkovits lived a uniquely successful life as “proletarian painter.” Exhibitions composed of his works: 1948: Fo˝városi Képtár, Budapest; 1954: Új Magyar Képtár, Budapest; 1961: Teachers Training High School, Szombathely; 1964: Savaria Múzeum, Szombathely; 1965: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest. His wife’s memoir: Mrs. Gyula Derkovits, Mi ketten (Budapest: Képzo˝mu˝vészeti Alap Kiadóvállalata, 1954). The following studies and books were published on Derkovits’s work: Anna Oelmacher, Derkovits Gyula (Budapest: Társadalom- és Természettudományi Ismeretterjeszto˝ Társulat, 1954); Gábor Ö. Pogány, Derkovits Gyula (Budapest: Corvina, 1961); Éva Körner, Derkovits Gyula (Budapest: Corvina, 1968). His woodcuts were published in 1945 and 1972. The State Fund for young artists established in 1955 was named after Derkovits. On the reception of Derkovits most recently: Katalin Bakos and András Zwickl, eds., Derkovits. A mu˝vész és kora (catalogue, Hungarian National Gallery) (Budapest: MNG, 2014). ‘On Dózsa series’ 190–97. 13 Gábor Ö. Pogány, “Mu˝vészeink Dózsáról,” in Dózsa György emlékezetére: mai magyar grafika és kisplasztika (catalogue, Hungarian National Gallery), (Budapest: MNG, 1972). 14 After Modernism new works of art “must” always contain something contemporary. Hal Foster, ed., “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary,’” October 130, no. 4 (2009): 3–124. 15 Three of the four members of the graphics jury who were artists actually participated in the exhibition as well as all three members of the sculpture jury who were artists. Képzo˝- és Iparmu˝vészeti Lektorátus (art coordinating bureau = KIL): K-419/1972, 1, 11.; KIL: K-420/ 1972, 1, 6. 16 Record for the Jury. KIL: K-420/1972, unpaged.

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meant to them and what message his revolution had for this day and age. […] they chose the easier way, the resignedly representative, professionally high-quality, yet reserved salute tribute, the illustrative presentation.”17 In the visitor’s book, most of the one-sentence reviews (penned by socialist brigades and high-school students) praised the exhibition: “astonishing,” “thought-provoking,” although some claimed it “shames the memory of Dózsa.” The longer entries are generally more nuanced and express ambivalent opinions. According to the most common critiques, the exhibition was “thoughtless” and “if Dózsa saw this exhibition, he’d be horrified too,” as one visitor noted. Three of them believed that “less would have been better” and one that “Derkovits is better.” Several people complained that some works did not belong to this exhibition at all (e. g. the drawings of Jeno˝ Barcsay). One comment praises Dózsa, but another finds the exhibition lacking in the representation of Dózsa’s historical context: “…a landlord’s portrait, a picture of a saint from a temple or a work of folk art.” Finally, an American commenter encouraged all Hungarians to revolt: “you, being the people of the Majarorsag [sic], must decide to shake off the ugly chains of communism and not in anguish turn to capitalism …”18 More than half of the titles are stereotypes. Of the 304 works of 96 artists, 119 (39 percent) were entitled Dózsa, Dózsa Medal, In Memory of Dózsa, Dózsa Series. Another 48 (16 percent) were called Variation on Dózsa’s Head, A Study on Dózsa, The People of Dózsa, The Crusaders of Dózsa or Peasants’ war, 1514. And at least another 13 (4 percent) of works had nothing to do with the Dózsa theme (Man and Drapery). Accordingly, less than a quarter of the titles (24.4 percent) are promising in that that they refer either to the topic or the attitude of the work. The fact that most of the artists did not waste time articulating their ideas about the role, character and myth of György Dózsa is noteworthy, even if pictures (and their creators) are expected to convey visual, not verbal, information and innovation. The elaboration of themes in most compositions reflects the same consideration. However, differences in styles can be observed—though in this case it is hardly relevant. It is still telling that even in cases of thematic works the artists were more involved in elaborating individual styles rather than concentrating on the theme itself, because they—at least those who wished to be considered modern artists—considered the actual theme to be a constraint.19 17 Gábor Rideg, “Dózsa György emlékezetére,” Mu˝vészet, no. 10–11 (1972): 55. “Professionally high-quality,” meaning that they had mastered academic drawing and the graphical technique they were using well enough to be able to distort, re-write, stylize, etc. 18 Archive of the Hungarian National Gallery, 20606/1980. 19 “If (…) it is natural that the Central Committee of KISZ [Hungarian Young Communist League] announces generally thematic and political competitions, then in my opinion we should insist on the opposing solution in the case of a Studio competition. I do not agree to work on exclusively thematic competitions (…) I do not think it a priori a proper idea.”

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The most common topics are: Dózsa’s execution (Imre Kovács: In Memory of Peasants’ Revolts I. Execution of György Dózsa – Fig. 2);20 making him sit on a “fiery” throne and placing a crown of red-hot iron on his head;21 revenge (Mihály Gácsi: Lords’ Revenge– Fig. 3);22 Dózsa’s figure;23 the people of Dózsa (Vladimir Szabó: In Memory of Dózsa – Fig. 4);24 and Dózsa’s head.25 The representation of heads sheds light on applying visual topoi. The tortured heads, with the red-hot iron crown which harks back to medieval Christian iconographical traditions, to a type of Vir Dolorum—both in regard to the head’s motion and the facial expression, except that the crown of thorns is replaced by one of iron. The heroic,26 the peasant-like27 and the fierce faces28 recall the types elaborated in early modern times. As Charles Le Brun set forth in his 1668 lecture titled “Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière des passions” (1668) at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, “When anger takes hold of a person’s soul, he who is wracked by this passion has red, fiery eyes, sparkling pupils gazing into the distance. The eyebrows are sometimes lowered, sometimes raised, the two brows coming closely together. The forehead is creased, and there are wrinkles between the eyes. The nostrils open and flare.”29 The lecture was later compiled into a manual that held useful instructions for painters. It is unlikely that the Hungarian participants in the Dózsa exhibition were familiar with this text, but it had been used by artists throughout Europe and consequently its teachings had been incorporated into the common visual language. Besides many battle scenes (Árpád Bognár: Dózsa III – Fig. 5) 30 and tortured figures,31 one may find depictions of

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

“Record on the General assembly of the Studio of Young Artists,” June 26, 1972, 19. Archive of the Studio of Young Artists’ Association. In addition, e. g., Gabriella Molnár: Crucified, etching. I write the date merely only if the work of art was produced earlier than 1972. The catalogue of the exhibition is unpaginated (see note 13). E. g. Líviusz Gyulai: Dózsa’s Crown, linocut; Vladimir Szabó: Dózsa, pencil; József Szentgyörgyi: Dózsa in Captivity II, ink; Tibor Borbás: György Dózsa, terracotta, wood; István Lisztes: For the Dózsa Anniversary III, bronze, ibid. In addition, e. g., Zoltán Bognár: Hells’ Beast, mixed technics; Imre Kéri: Peasant Fastened 1514, iron engraving; Béla Kucs: People of Dózsa, terracotta, ibid. E. g. László Marosán: Dózsa, lead, ibid. In addition, e. g., Nándor Lajos Varga: Dózsa with Prepared Army, woodcut, ibid. E. g. Ferenc Czinke: Variations for Dózsa-Head I, linocut, color serigraphy; Gábor Gacs: Dózsa on Fire I, color lithography; Róbert Csíkszentmihályi: Thoughts on Dózsa I, bronze, ibid. E. g. István Kiss: Dózsa’s Head, patinated plaster, ibid. E. g. Róza Pató: Dózsa, red marble, Lajos Kondor: Dózsa, Indian ink and wash, ibid. E. g. Gábor Boda: Dózsa relief, patinated plaster, ibid. Quoted by Éva Vígh, ed., “Természeted az arcodon.” A fiziognómia története az ókortól a XVII. századig, Ikonológia és Mu˝értelmezés 11, vol. 2 (Szeged: JATEPress, 2006), 272. In addition, e. g., István Engel Tevan: Peasant Uprisings II, etching; János Józsa: Battle, woodcut; László Tulipán: Dózsa Memorial Card I, walnut dye; Miklós Turcsán: Dózsa’s Fight, Indian ink. (See note 13).

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people being forced to barbarically feast on Dózsa’s body32—a topic that goes back to archaic myths of strengthening the bonds of filial communion in the collective unconscious.33 The few heraldic depictions34 are as enigmatic as the emblematic (Gábor Pásztor: 1514 – Fig. 6)35 or as the typically allegoric36 and symbolic (Tibor Zala: His Spirit Fire Could Not Burn (Dózsa) – Fig. 7) and metaphoric (Endre Sziráki: Humans, Wolves IV – Fig. 8) representations. Erika Ligeti’s bronze medal (In Memory of György Dózsa) is exceptionally clear with its minimalist, almost abstract, composition of straightened scythes. The iconographical elements and motifs are sometimes obvious and sometimes completely unrecognizable;37 most often the motif associations do not allow for conventional iconographical analyses. The compositions consisting of surrealistic concentrations of motifs (for example the metonymic color etching by Gábor Rádóczy Gyarmathy entitled Hunger – Fig. 9) 38 offer only vague associations. Finally the illustrations of well-known (or thought to be well-known) historical events39 or representations of persons40 served as counterpoints to the evasive scenes (Ferenc Banga: Suspense 1514, 1971, – fig 10).41 In many cases the title and the composition suggests a narrative picture, yet they “do not tell a story,” but remain enigmatic. We can see, for example, human figures in a forest landscape—could they be Dózsa’s troops gathering? 42 The Studio of Young Artists organized a competition entitled Dózsa 1514 in the spring of the same year43 which was presented in an exhibition at the University of

31 E. g. János Miklós Kádár: Half a Millennium. 1971, fiber pen; Péter Kovács: Studies for the “Dózsa 1514” Topic, Indian ink, ibid. 32 Lajos Szalay, Dózsa I, Indian ink, ibid. 33 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (1913), Moses and Monotheism (1939); Géza Róheim, “A kazár nagyfejedelem és a turul monad,” in Bu˝vös tükör. Válogatás Róheim Géza mu˝veibo˝l, ed. Kincso˝ Verebélyi (Budapest: Magveto˝, 1984), 127–252; Griselda Pollock, “Introduction: Trauma and Artworking” in After-Affects/After-Images. Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum (Manchester–New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), 8–9. 34 E. g. Rafael Ábrahám: Dózsa-Series I, lithograph. (See note 13). 35 In addition, e. g., Imre Kocsis: Dózsa’s Crusaders, linocut, ibid. 36 E. g. András Baranyay, Detail of a 1514 Statute Book, lithograph; Béla Kondor: Disintegration, monotype; Béla Kondor: Confusion/Disorder, monotype, ibid. 37 E. g. Gyula Feledy: Homage to György Dózsa III, mixed technics ; Béla Tassy: Dózsa 1514 II, mixed t., ibid. 38 In addition, e. g., Nándor Záhorzik: 1514, wood, lead; Kálmán Csohány: The Castle, etching, ibid. 39 E. g. Mihály Gácsi: Marching Towards Temesvár, linocut, ibid. 40 E. g. Pál Bárczi: Priest Lo˝rincz, ink, ibid. 41 In addition, e. g., Imre Kovács: In Remembrance of Peasants’ Revolts I. Execution of György Dózsa, Zincography; Csaba Rékassy: The Blacksmiths, etching, ibid. 42 Lenke Diskay: Dózsa népe I, woodcut, ibid. 43 The Agit-Prop Committee of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party decided on July 20, 1971 to hold a competition for young artists to create a “depiction of

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Technology.44 The two exhibitions show considerable similarities on account of the fact that several Studio artists were also present at the Hungarian National Gallery exhibition. While the Young Artists’ exhibition received little publicity, it included 21 paintings as well, which lent it a stronger, livelier visual effect. However, the most important difference was that the locations of the two exhibitions were of differing prestige and the actual selection juries accordingly had different approaches. We learn about the young artists’ image of Dózsa from the answers eight artists45 gave to editorial questions46 in the periodical Mozgó Világ. These answers—though different in content and character—repeat the well-known, commonplace Dózsa image. We learn from the answers that these artists were inspired by works of poets and writers like Endre Ady, Sándor Peto˝fi, Pál Szabó, Gyula Illyés, Ferenc Kósa, Ferenc Juhász, József Eötvös and the painter Derkovits. “Dózsa represents the crude power of the masses, simplicity, naturalness”47 and the “revolution with a tragic end.”48 György Dózsa is important for them as a result of his human attitude.49 He represents the desire for freedom, the will of the people.50 Dózsa “became a symbol, the culture of the suppressed classes kept his memory alive”51 and he is “the man who became a martyr rising above aggression, destruction.” Consistent with their sweeping statements, these young artists had ambitious aims: “With my statue I wish to create a memorial to suppressed consciousness that from time to time bursts out in revolts.”52 Naturally, István Bodóczky’s prize-winning painting (Dózsa53 – Fig. 11) could not be part of an exhibition of graphic works and statuettes. Although there was more to it in that different canons emerged from the subtle differences of the two

44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Dózsa’s figure.” Hungarian National Archives, accessed October 19, 2014, http://archivportal. arcanum.hu/mszmp/opt/a130523.htm?v=pdf&a=start. “List of Artwork Authorized by Jury: Hungarian National Archives, XIX-J-4-m case 95. (K234. April 11, 1972). Ferenc Banga, Gábor Rádóczy Gyarmathy and József Szentgyörgyi exhibited both at the Hungarian National Gallery and at the exhibition of the Studio of Young Artists, while Tibor Bráda, Ferenc Gyurcsek, Ádám Kéri and Iván Szkok participated only the Studio’s exhibition and Ildikó Várnagy did not take part in either show. “1.What does the word “Dózsa” invoke in you? 2. How did your Dózsa image take shape? 3. Has this image changed or varied in the course of preparing for the competition or during work? 4. What part of Dózsa issues are still valid today? 5. Did you imagine Dózsa’s personality and temper? 6. What is the main point of your work?” “Dózsa 1514-pályázat a Fiatal Képzo˝mu˝vészek Stúdiójában. Kérdések a pályázatra készülés állapotában,” Mozgó Világ 4 (1972). Supplement (four pages). Banga, ibid. Bráda, ibid. Szentgyörgyi, ibid. Kéri, ibid. Gyurcsek, ibid. Gyurcsek, ibid. Oil, canvas, 150x110 cm, private property.

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exhibitions. Bodóczky uses clear, contrasting colors, dynamic brushstrokes and rough, passionate shapes to depict the feast on Dózsa’s flesh, thus making an already brutal event even more horrific: two of his own soldiers sink their teeth into the flesh and tear it from the living, pain-racked body. Bodóczky’s Expressionist painting is a kind of “diverted Realism” that completely ignores the politically encouraged type of Realism (whose “socialist content” was quite vague by that time anyway). The Expressionism of his Dózsa painting, adequate to convey physical pain and suffering, is a forerunner of the Neo-expressionism of the 1980s and has its own antecedents in the 1920s. Its Pathosformel for conveying suffering, however, are reshaped versions of centuries-old motifs (descent from the cross; a rarer type of Pietà, with the head hanging back; Vir Dolorum, bloodied by many wounds). Although the art works at the National Gallery exhibition represented various individual styles from pseudo naive to detailed, from expressive to naturalistic or the almost abstract, they added up to a subdued monochrome monotony. For these works had something in common: a “smeared realism,” which was a consequence of the fact that Socialist Realism had by then lost its validity (although it still existed until the end of the seventies in rhetoric). It no longer meant a style, only “socialist” subject matter.54 As the dictatorship became softer, so did realism in art. Paintings in the Studio exhibition indicate a shift of emphasis (though the young artists also “fulfilled an obligatory task”), their colorful, expressive, loosely figurative paintings began to corrode boring, weakened realism.55 The two exhibitions are a case in point regarding the impact of dictatorship on the arts. The political system that strongly bars the free flow of culture and restricts artists obviously leads to the regression of culture, which became embarrassing to politics only when it became clear that artists are unable to produce enough good-quality artworks to support its ideology. Political ideals that have lost their credibility no longer serve as motivating forces. However, in certain cases—such as the Dózsa memorial celebrations—it came in handy to the political leadership anxious to maintain its power, because while their rhetoric was about preserving a “revolutionary spirit,” it was actually afraid that if this preservation were to become too successful the revolutionary spirit might turn people against political leadership. 54 Endre Prakfalvi and György Szücs, A szocreál Magyarországon (Budapest: Corvina, 2010); Nóra Aradi, A szocialista képzo˝mu˝vészet története. Magyarország és Európa (Budapest: Corvina, 1970). 55 In order not to depart from the point, here I use the term Realism (and Realist) in the most conventional meaning even though their application is controversial and entails theoretically sophisticated problems. The question of several realisms was a permanent issue during Kádár era. E. g. Béla Köpeczi (ed.), A szocialista realizmus, 2 vols (Budapest: Gondolat, 1970); Iván Vitányi, “A realizmus értelmezéséro˝l,” Társadalmi Szemle 34, no. 5 (1965): 65–71; and János Maróthy, “A realizmus általában és konkrétan,” Társadalmi Szemle 33, no.12 (1964): 54–69.

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Therefore it would have been quite convenient for the political leadership if a representative memorial exhibition of this kind were filled with meaningless works by apolitical artists who merely wanted to survive, degrading themselves from artists to artisans. The reason for including graphic works of higher quality, though they had nothing to do with the theme of the exhibition, was obviously that the jury could not collect enough material worthy of the occasion. While they avoided scandal, they exposed the situation by showing inappropriate pictures and treating the exhibition of young artists as almost unimportant. The official exhibitions were undoubtedly more or less dismal (the one in the National Gallery to a greater degree, that of the Young Artists Studio to a lesser degree). Apart from the general state of the arts in Hungary, the incompetence and authoritarianism of the jury was also responsible for this. This is also well illustrated by the case of Dóra Maurer, who created a witty graphic work, commissioned by the Hungarian National Gallery,56 which was not, however, exhibited. In the first half of the 1970s, Maurer produced systematic conceptual works, composing her logical sequences (usually from geometrical elements) according to simple mathematical algorithms. Looking for Dózsa57 (Fig. 12) fits into this series. Its description and the instructions for using it are given at the top: “Ask yourselves what Dózsa would have looked like? Based on the photos of Székely men, I drew eight portraits, each with a different facial expression; then I cut them into strips and mixed them together. You can create new faces by rearranging the strips.” The combinations of ten strips make for millions of different portraits of Dózsa. In preparation for this work, Maurer studied anthropology, history and the history of iconography. Her initial thought—that there are no known historically accurate portraits about Dózsa—is the essence of this witty work. While we play this game, combining strips, making one new face after another and generally having fun, we generate its meaning: that we all must construct our own image of Dózsa, because it is impossible to create one true image of him.

Bibliography Apor, Péter. Az elképzelt köztársaság. A Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaság utóélete 1945– 1989 [The Imagined Republic. The Afterlife of the Hungarian Soviet Republic]. Budapest: MTA BTK Történettudományi Intézet, 2014. Aradi, Nóra. “A Dózsa-téma” [The Dózsa Topic]. Mu˝vészet 8 (1972): 8–12. Bakos, Katalin and András Zwickl, eds. Derkovits. A mu˝vész és kora [Derkovits. The Artist and His Age] (catalogue, Hungarian National Gallery). Budapest: MNG, 2014. 56 E-mail by Dóra Maurer, June 24, 2014. 57 Fiberboard, paper, collage, pencil, 62x100 cm. Pécs, Janus Pannonius Múzeum, Inv. 74.71. Éva Hárs and Ferenc Romváry, Modern Magyar Képtár Pécs (Budapest: m.p. 1981), 308–09.

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Bolgár, Kálmán and Katalin T. Nagy, eds. Kondor Béla: 1931–1972 [Béla Kondor, 1931– 1972] (Oeuvre-catalogue, Hungarian National Gallery). Budapest: MNG, 1984. Boros, Pál, ed. Dózsa bibliográfia. A Dózsa Györgyro˝l és az 1514-es parasztháborúról szóló irodalom és képzo˝mu˝vészeti alkotások jegyzéke [Dózsa Bibliography. List of Literary and Artworks on György Dózsa and the Peasant Revolt of 1514]. (Budapest: Ceglédi Városi Tanács-Pest Megyei Tanács V. B. Megyei Könyvtára, 1972). Derkovits, Mrs. Gyula. Mi ketten [The Two of Us]. Budapest: Képzo˝mu˝vészeti Alap Kiadóvállalata, 1954. Foster, Hal, ed. “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary.’” October 130, no. 4 ( 2009): 3–124. Hornyik, Sándor. Forradalmár, próféta, melós: Kondor Béla mu˝vészete [Revolutionary, Prophet, Toiler. The Art of Béla Kondor] (Exhibition catalogue, Center for Modern and Contemporary Art). Debrecen: MODEM, 2012. Körner, Éva. Derkovits Gyula. Budapest: Corvina, 1968, 1971. Kulin, Ferenc, ed. “Ötszáz éve született Dózsa György” [György Dózsa Was Born Five Hundred Years Ago]. Kritika 5 (1972): 16–17. Németh, Lajos. Kondor Béla sokszorosított grafikái [The Reproduced Graphic Works of Béla Kondor]. Budapest: Corvina, 1969. Oelmacher, Anna. Derkovits Gyula. Budapest: Társadalom- és Természettudományi Ismeretterjeszto˝ Társulat, 1954. Pogány, Gábor Ö. Derkovits Gyula. Budapest: Corvina, 1961. – “Mu˝vészeink Dózsáról” [Our Artists About Dózsa]. In Dózsa György emlékezetére: mai magyar grafika és kisplasztika [In Memory of György Dózsa, Contemporary Hungarian Graphics and Statuette] (catalogue, continuously Hungarian National Gallery). Budapest: MNG, 1972. Pollock, Griselda. “Introduction: Trauma and Artworking.” In After-affects / After-images. Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum. Manchester– New York: Manchester University Press, 2013, 1–33. Prakfalvi, Endre and György Szücs. A szocreál Magyarországon [Soc(ialist) Real(ism) in Hungary]. Budapest: Corvina, 2010. Rideg, Gábor. “Dózsa György emlékezetére” [In Memory of György Dózsa]. Mu˝vészet 10– 11 (1972): 54–58. Róheim, Géza. “A kazár nagyfejedelem és a turul monda” [The Khazar Prince and the Turul Myth]. In Bu˝vös tükör. Válogatás Róheim Géza mu˝veibo˝l [Magic Mirror. Selection from the Works of Géza Róheim], edited by Kincso˝ Verebélyi, 127–252. Budapest: Magveto˝, 1984. Szücs, György. “‘Keressük Dózsát!’ Dózsa György alakja a magyar képzo˝mu˝vészetben” [“Looking for Dózsa!” Dózsa’s Figure in Hungarian Art], conference paper, June 5, 2014, Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc). Vígh, Éva, ed. “Természeted az arcodon.” A fiziognómia története az ókortól a XVII. századig [“Your Nature on Your Face.” The History of Physiognomy from the Ancient Times to the Eighteenth century]. Ikonológia és mu˝értelmezés 11, vol. 2. Szeged: JATEPress, 2006. Wilhelmb Cenner, Mrs. Gizella. “XVI–XVIII. századi parasztmozgalmak grafikus ábrázolásai” [Illustrations of Sixteenth–Seventeenth-Century Peasant Revolts]. Folia Archaeologia 12 (1960): 259–71.

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Fig. 1. András Váci: In Memory of Dózsa I. 1972, etching, 489x296 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.237. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 2. Imre Kovács: In Remembrance of Peasants Revolts I. Execution of György Dózsa, Zincography, 140x196 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.232. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 3. Mihály Gácsi: Lords’ Vengeance, linocut, 331x505 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.230. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

Fig. 4. Vladimir Szabó: In Memory of Dózsa, pencil, 600x750 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. F. 73.157. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 5. Árpád Bognár: Dózsa III. 1972, etching, 297x396 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.236. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 6. Gábor Pásztor: 1514. 1972, fiber pen, 430x307 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. F 73.149. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 7.Tibor Zala: His Spirit Fire Could not Burn (Dózsa). 1972, colored lithograph, 610x430 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.249. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 8. Endre Sziráki: Humans, Wolves IV. 1972, lithograph, 316x430 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G.73.234. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 9. Gábor Rádóczy Gyarmathy: Hunger. 1970, color etching, 591x480 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. G. 73.250. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 10. Ferenc Banga: Suspense 1514. 1971, Indian ink, 420x600 mm. Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery Inv. F 73.153. Photo: Zsuzsa Berényi.

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Fig. 11. István Bodóczky: Dózsa. 1972, oil, canvas, 150x110 cm. Private property. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

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Fig. 12. Dóra Maurer: Looking for Dózsa! 1972, fiberboard, paper, collage, pencil, 62x100 cm. Pécs, Janus Pannonius Múzeum Inv. 74.71. Photo: István Füzi.

Márta Fata

War György Dózsa der ungarische Thomas Müntzer? Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in der Volksrepublik Ungarn und in der DDR im Vergleich1

1.

Zwei sozialistische Leitfiguren

György Dózsa und Thomas Müntzer, Leitfiguren des ungarischen Bauernaufstandes von 1514 beziehungsweise des deutschen Bauernkrieges von 1524/25, sind heute in der historischen Erinnerung fest verankert. Das ist nicht zuletzt ein Ergebnis der marxistischen Geschichtspolitik, der nach der alleinigen Machtübernahme der Kommunisten 1949 sowohl in Ungarn als auch in der DDR die Aufgabe zugewiesen wurde, eine von der Bevölkerungsmehrheit nicht gewünschte Sowjetisierung der Gesellschaft zu legitimieren und für eine Identifizierung der Gesellschaft mit dem neuen System zu sorgen.2 In beiden Ländern sollte aus diesem Grund an eine revolutionäre Traditionslinie in der jeweiligen Nationalgeschichte angeknüpft werden, die sich nach marxistischem Verständnis aus sogenannten humanistischen und progressiven historischen Ereignissen zusammensetzte, wozu man auch die großen Bauernrevolten im 16. Jahrhundert zählte. Betrachtet man die Formen der Präsentation und die Instrumentalisierung der beiden Bauernführer, fallen zahlreiche Gemeinsamkeiten auf: So wurden zur Erinnerung an Dózsa und Müntzer Denkmäler errichtet, LPGs, Arbeiterbrigaden, Pioniergruppen, Schulen, Kulturhäuser, Sportvereine oder Straßen nach ihnen benannt. Die Konterfeis der beiden, obwohl zeitgenössische Bildnisse weder von Dózsa noch von Müntzer überliefert sind, schmückten häufig verwendete Banknoten: ab 1947 die Zwanzig-Forint-Scheine und ab 1971 die FünfDDR-Mark-Scheine. War also György Dózsa der ungarische Thomas Müntzer? 1 Dieser Beitrag ist eine erweiterte Fassung des Aufsatzes Fata, Erinnerungsort, 101–114. 2 Zum Konstruieren historischer Erinnerung vgl. stellvertretend für die Vielzahl der Fachliteratur: Assmann, Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik; Wolfrum, Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik, 13–47; zur Bedeutung von Geschichtspolitik in der Identitätsbildung von Großgruppen vgl. u. a. Schmid, Kampfbegriff, 53–75; Gyáni, Relatív történelem, bes. 87–184.

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Ein Vergleich lässt sowohl die länderspezifischen als auch die generellen Entwicklungen besser hervortreten. Die Ausgangspositionen für einen Vergleich sind allerdings denkbar schlecht. Denn während in Deutschland bereits zahlreiche Abhandlungen über die Instrumentalisierung Müntzers und des deutschen Bauernkrieges in der DDR entstanden sind3 – und seit 2010 mit dem populärwissenschaftlichen Film des ZDF „Thomas Müntzer und der Krieg der Bauern“ in der Reihe „Die Deutschen“ auch eine Neubestimmung Müntzers in der diesmal vereinten deutschen Erinnerungskultur vorliegt4 –, gibt es in Ungarn weder zum sozialistischen Geschichtsbild Dózsas eine tiefgehende Untersuchung noch eine Neubestimmung seiner Person in der jüngsten historischen Erinnerungskultur, die nach dem gesellschaftlichen Systemwechsel von den politischen Zwängen immer mehr befreit werden konnte.5 Das fordert dazu heraus, den Stellenwert der historischen Figur des ungarischen Bauernführers in der Geschichtspolitik zur Zeit des Sozialismus zu ermitteln und dabei den Müntzer-Kult als Folie zu nutzen. Die Objekte des Vergleichs sind zwei Persönlichkeiten an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, deren Namen bei der Nachwelt paradigmatisch für die Bauernerhebung stehen, obwohl Dózsa im Königreich Ungarn und Müntzer im Heiligen Römischen Reich deutscher Nation nicht die einzigen Bauernführer waren.6 Dózsa und Müntzer, die sich gegen die bestehende Ordnung auflehnten, hatten nicht nur das gleiche persönliche Schicksal der Hinrichtung geteilt, sondern wurden durch die Nachwelt lange Zeit gleichermaßen negativ bewertet. In Ungarn war Dózsa in der bis ins 19. Jahrhundert dominanten Geschichtsbetrachtung des Adels der Aufrührer, der bäuerliche Kreuzfahrer nicht gegen die Osmanen, sondern den Adel führte, so die Wehrkraft des Landes beeinträchtigte und mithin die nationale Katastrophe von Mohács im Jahre 1526 vorbereitete.7 In Deutschland bauten auf die Verteufelung des radikalen Theologen Müntzer durch den Reformator Martin Luther gleich zwei historische Traditionen auf: „eine protestantische, die dem Verdikt Luthers über den Schwarmgeist Müntzer folgte, und eine katholische, der zufolge Müntzer eine Ausgeburt des lutherischen Geistes war“.8 Eine Gegen-Erinnerung an die beiden Bauernführer wurde 3 Vgl. Berbig, Müntzer, Bd. 2, 235–264; Heise/Stache, Dialog; Junghans, Der Wandel, 55–89; Goertz, Müntzerforschung, 972–987; Müller, Thomas T., Doppelte Vergangenheit, 13–28, sowie die Beiträge in Scheunemann (Hg.), Reformation und Bauernkrieg. 4 Vgl. dazu Grisko, Film und Fernsehen, 70–76. 5 Ein erster Versuch bei Romsics, Haramia és/vagy népvezér, 22–29. 6 Zu Personen von Bauernunruhen im Königreich Ungarn vgl. zusammenfassend Pálffy, Ewige Verlierer, 152–154; zum deutschen Bauernkrieg vgl. stellvertretend die Monografie von Blickle, Die Revolution. 7 Zu den älteren historiographischen Arbeiten vgl. zusammenfassend Bellér, Dózsa-parasztháború, 289–296. 8 Zit. nach Vogler, Müntzerbilder, 3.

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weder in der ungarischen noch in der deutschen Volksüberlieferung bewahrt,9 dennoch hat die kontinuierliche negative Beschäftigung mit Dózsa und Müntzer in der Geschichtsschreibung dazu beigetragen, die Erinnerung an sie wach zu halten. Warum aber konnten die Bauernführer einen so prominenten Platz in der historischen Erinnerung der beiden kommunistisch-totalitären Staaten einnehmen? Dazu benötigt es historischer Argumente.

2.

Dózsa- und Müntzerbilder in Ungarn und in Deutschland bis 1918 im Widerstreit

Das negative Bild der beiden Bauernführer änderte sich im Vormärz allmählich, als sowohl im Deutschen Bund wie auch im Königreich Ungarn der Abbau des Feudalsystems in den Blickpunkt der politischen und gesellschaftlichen Reformen rückte. Im Königreich Württemberg erschien 1841–1843 die zweiteilige Monografie „Allgemeine Geschichte des großen Bauernkrieges nach handschriftlichen und gedruckten Quellen“ des evangelischen Pfarrers und späteren radikalen linken Paulskirchenabgeordneten Wilhelm Zimmermann – bis heute die ausführlichste Darstellung der Ereignisse.10 Stark beeinflusst von den Freiheitsdiskussionen seiner Zeit sprach Zimmermann der Erhebung der Bauern 1524/25 erstmals in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung Legitimität zu und stellte den Bauernkrieg als ein positiv zu bewertendes Ereignis der deutschen Geschichte dar. Dass Zimmermanns Werk vor allem im Kreis der Sozialisten auch noch im 20. Jahrhundert zu den meistgelesenen und meistverkauften Bauernkriegsdarstellungen gehörte,11 war der Würdigung der Monografie durch Friedrich Engels zu verdanken. Engels, 9 Die Frage, warum sich die Dózsa- und die Müntzer-Tradition in der Volksüberlieferung nicht halten konnte, wurde von der Forschung bisher nicht ausreichend beantwortet. In der ungarischen Volksüberlieferung gab es zwar nachweislich eine Dózsa-Tradition – darauf verweisen Spuren von Volksliedern oder Erzählungen –, die bis ins 19. Jahrhundert noch bekannt waren. Doch Dózsas Gestalt wurde in diesen allmählich durch andere historische Persönlichkeiten wie König Mathias Corvinus oder Ferenc II. Rákóczi ersetzt. Auch bis heute verwendete Ausdrücke in der ungarischen Sprache wie „gebratener Bauer“ [sült paraszt] oder wie „ich sage dies mit Eid auf Dózsa“ [Dózsa-hitre mondom] bei Bekräftigung einer Aussage bei den Szeklern in Siebenbürgen erinnern an den Bauernaufstand von 1514. Vgl. dazu Katona, Dózsa alakja, 99–110; Sándor, Dózsa György, 442–456. Die Dózsa-Erinnerung spiegelte sich auch in den Volkserzählungen über Dózsas Kontrahenten, János Szapolyai, wider. Erzählt wurde etwa, dass Szapolyai die Krone bei seiner Krönung im Jahre 1526 nicht auf dem Haupt sitzen bleiben wollte oder dass ihn Dózsas grausame Hinrichtung noch lange Zeit quälte, indem er beim Besuch der heiligen Messe während des Hochgebets jedes Mal sein Augenlicht verlor. Vgl. dazu Horváth, Pórlázadás, 63. 10 Zur Bedeutung des Werkes vgl. Blickle, „Freiheitsbegeisterung“, 37–56; Vogler, Geist, 83–132; Müller, Laurenz, Diktatur und Revolution, 31f. 11 Blickle, „Freiheitsbegeisterung“, 37–56.

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einer der Begründer der marxistischen Gesellschaftstheorie, wandte sich nach der gescheiterten bürgerlichen Revolution in Europa in seinem Werk „Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg“ von 1850 dem thüringischen Bauernführer Thomas Müntzer zu. Ausgehend von Zimmermanns Arbeit, welche die Verteufelung Müntzers entschieden ablehnte, hielt auch Engels gegenüber dem „bürgerlichen Reformator“ Luther Thomas Müntzer für einen „plebejischen Revolutionär“.12 Müntzers besondere Bedeutung sah er darin, dass er sich mit seiner Forderung nach Allgemeinbesitz und einem Reich der Freiheit und Brüderlichkeit von der bürgerlichen Oppositionsbewegung Luthers abhob und sein Wort für „die Plebejer […], die einzige Klasse, die ganz außerhalb der offiziell bestehenden Gesellschaft stand“, erhob.13 Da jedoch sein Programm der Zeit weit voraus war, musste er vorgeblich unvermeidlich scheitern.14 Durch seine säkularisierte Bewertung Müntzers machte Engels den Bauernführer zum Vorläufer des Kommunismus und den Bauernkrieg zum ersten deutschen Revolutionsversuch – eine Ansicht, die von der sozialistischen Bewegung nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern auch in Ungarn rezipiert wurde, umso mehr, weil Engels die Erhebung der ungarischen Bauern als Teil der europäischen Bauernaufstände und einer der Vorläufer des deutschen Bauernkrieges thematisiert hatte.15 Zeitgleich mit Zimmermanns Monografie erschien im vormärzlichen Ungarn eine den Dózsa-Bauernaufstand neu bewertende Schrift, „Az 1514-diki pórlázadás, annak okai s következményei“ [Der Bauernaufruhr von 1514, dessen Ursachen und Folgen],16 aus der Feder des katholischen Pfarrers und späteren Kultusministers der revolutionären ungarischen Regierung von 1849, Mihály Horváth. In seiner Analyse brach Horváth mit der bis dahin vorherrschenden Sicht, indem er den Aufstand der Bauern, die sich in seiner Lesart gegen die Unterdrückung des natürlichen Rechts durch den Adel auflehnten, für legitim erklärte. Die nach der Niederwerfung der Revolte erfolgte kollektive Entrechtung der Bauern durch die Gesetzesartikel über die Schollengebundenheit und das Verbot des Waffentragens wertete er wiederum aus Sicht der weiteren Entwicklung des Landes als besonders verhängnisvoll, weil dadurch die Bauern für Jahrhunderte aus der Nation ausgeschlossen wurden, was schließlich die Gesellschaft dauerhaft schwächte.17 12 13 14 15

Engels, Bauernkrieg, 59. Ebd., 51f. Ebd., 69. Ebd., 84–87. Engels Werk erschien nachweislich erst 1909 in ungarischer Sprache, übersetzt von Ervin Szabó, allerdings war ein Großteil der Sozialdemokraten in Ungarn zweisprachig, wodurch für sie das Werk auch schon davor zugänglich war. Vgl. zu den Hintergründen der Übersetzung die Korrespondenz Szabós mit Karl Kautsky bei Soós, Szabó Ervin, 831–842. 16 Zuerst erschien Horváths Werk in der Zeitschrift der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Tudománytár 9 (1841), 211–237. 17 Horváth, Pórlázadás, 60f.

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Ähnlich wie Zimmermanns Werk wurde auch Horváths bürgerlich-liberale Bewertung der Bauernrevolte vorwiegend außerhalb der akademischen Forschung rezipiert, obwohl – anders als Müntzer bei Zimmermann – die Person Dózsa bei Horváth nicht besonders gewürdigt wurde; lediglich sein grausamer Tod erhielt Aufmerksamkeit, um so den Adel an den Pranger stellen zu können. Vertreter der ungarischen Reformzeit und der 1848er-Revolution verteidigten zwar Dózsas Verhalten an der Spitze der aufständischen Bauern, doch sie nahmen ihn nicht bedingungslos an.18 Die Ausnahme stellte die radikal revolutionäre Richtung der Vormärzjugend mit dem Dichter Sándor Peto˝fi an der Spitze dar, für die Dózsa den unangefochtenen Anführer des unterdrückten Volkes verkörperte.19 Einem der ehemaligen Vertreter den Märzjugend, Mór Jókai, war es auch zu verdanken, dass Dózsa nach der gescheiterten nationalen Unabhängigkeit von 1849 in die ungarische Elitenkultur aufgenommen wurde. Jókais romantisches Freiheitsdrama „Dózsa György“ wurde 1856 im Nationaltheater aufgeführt. Jókai arbeitete auch am Libretto der gleichnamigen Oper des Komponisten Ferenc Erkel mit, die 1867 in der Nationaloper uraufgeführt wurde. Zur Zeit des passiven Widerstandes der Ungarn gegenüber der absolutistischen Politik der Habsburger zwischen 1850 und 1867 konnten Helden der Aufstände den unterdrückten Freiheitsdrang der Nation zum Ausdruck bringen – allerdings gingen die Meinungen bei Dózsas Bewertung als Nationalheld auseinander und anhand Jókais Dózsa entfaltete sich die erste Dózsa-Debatte in der ungarischen Literatur.20 Denn während liberale Autoren den Bauernführer für ein würdiges Thema der Nationalliteratur hielten, fühlten sich konservative Autoren durch 18 Bezeichnend dafür ist die ablehnende Haltung des selbst aus einer Bauernfamilie stammenden Publizisten und Politikers Mihály Táncsics, der für die Bauernbefreiung kämpfte und in Ungarn als einer der Ersten die Ideen des utopistischen Sozialismus vertrat. Vgl. dazu Kulin, Táncsics, 151–164. Auch die liberalen Reformer, meist adeliger Abstammung, wie etwa József Eötvös, sahen in Dózsa den zum Aufstand gezwungenen Anführer, aber nicht den Volksheld. Vgl. dazu Kulin, Hódítatlan szellem, 101–125. 19 Peto˝fi verfasste am Vorabend der Revolution das Gedicht „A nép nevében“ [Im Namen des Volkes], in dem er die Herrschenden an die notwendige Beteiligung des Volkes an der Staatsmacht und am Staatswohl mit dem historischen Beispiel des mit eruptiver Kraft ausgebrochenen Bauernaufstandes von 1514 mahnte. Zur Gestalt Dózsas in der ungarischen Literatur vgl. zuletzt den Überblick bei Pomogáts, Dózsa, 89–105. – Im Vormärzdeutschland wandte sich der Dichter Heinrich Heine Müntzer zu. In seinen publizistischen Beiträgen über „Französische Zustände“ von 1831/32 zitierte er aus Müntzers „Hochverursachter Schutzrede“ von 1524, in der Müntzer die Fürsten, die alles im Land zu ihrem Eigentum erklärten, anklagte. Vgl. dazu Vogler, Müntzerbilder, 5. 20 Während der Premiere blieben die vornehmen Logen des Nationaltheaters leer, dagegen feierte das Publikum auf der Galerie den Autor. Jókai merkte in seinen Lebenserinnerungen dazu an: „Die vom Nimbus der Dichtung umhüllte Vaterlandsliebe und Ideen der Freiheit erreichten die empfindlichen Brüste. Die Theaterbühne war der Ersatz für das fehlende Parlament.“ Zit. nach Jókai, Önéletírásom, http://bfl.archivportal.hu/id-1269-jokai_mor_ neletirasom.html, letzter Zugriff am 12. 10. 2014.

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Dózsas Heroisierung in ihren nationalen Gefühlen verletzt.21 Das Dózsa-Thema hatte schließlich nach dem ungarisch-österreichischen Ausgleich von 1867 an Aktualität verloren, wie das Gemälde von Viktor Madarász aus dem Jahre 1868 zeigt. Der wegen seiner die tragischen Ereignisse in der ungarischen Geschichte darstellenden Arbeiten in den 1850er-Jahren besonders populäre Historienmaler brachte auf seinem Gemälde „Dózsa népe“ [Dózsas Volk] den gekreuzigten und von seinem Volk verehrten Bauernführer zur Darbietung,22 doch beim Publikum erzielte er mit dem Martyriumsthema keinen Erfolg mehr.23 Die sich in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts als wissenschaftliche Disziplin etablierende Geschichtsschreibung wandte sich verstärkt der Quellenforschung zu. Auch zum Dózsa-Bauernaufstand wurden Quellen ediert, die von Sándor Márki in seiner 1883 erschienenen Monografie „Dósa György és forradalma“ [György Dósa und seine Revolution] bearbeitet wurden. Der Autor, ab 1892 Professor an der Universität Klausenburg und Begründer der Geschichtsdidaktik in Ungarn, holte Dózsa in die akademische Forschung und in die historische Erinnerung zurück. In den folgenden Jahren setzte Márki seine Arbeiten am Thema fort und meldete sich 1913 mit der ergänzten und überarbeiteten Monografie „Dósa György 1470–1514“ erneut zu Wort. In seiner Synthese versuchte er den Bauernführer in der Ahnengalerie der Vertreter jener adelig-liberalen Traditionen zu platzieren, die 1848 mit der Bauernbefreiung ihren Höhepunkt erreichten. Entstanden war eine liberal-romantische Darstellung der Ereignisse, die einem neuen, idealisierten Bild über Dózsa als ein diese Rolle bewusst verkörpernder Bauernführer Pate stand. Zum Schluss seiner Monografie summierte Márki: „Wenn wir seine [Dózsas] Beurteilung nicht mit der allgemein verbreiteten falschen Annahme beginnen, dass wir es hier mit einem Biest zu tun haben, dann werden wir in ihm einen charakterstarken, klugen, heldenhaften und das Wohl des Volkes suchenden Patrioten kennenlernen können. Einen, der die Ausbesserung der Fehler beabsichtigte, aber in seinen Mitteln nicht wählte und von den stärkeren ökonomischen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Interessen weggefegt und zusammen mit der für Jahrhunderte versagten Sache an den Pranger gestellt wurde.“24 Márkis Ansichten stießen bei den Sozialdemokraten, Bürgerlich-Radikalen und vor allem Agrarsozialisten auf nachhaltigen Widerhall. Wie die Dokumente zur 21 Vgl. dazu Pamlényi, Der Bauernkrieg, 438. 22 Das Christus-Motiv erscheint nach 1848 auch bei Müntzers Darstellung. Der deutsche Historienmaler Friedrich Wilhelm Martersteig malte 1856 „Münzers Gang zur Richtstätte“. Martersteigs Müntzer gleicht dem von Judas verratenen und von den römischen Soldaten gefangen genommenen Christus. Vgl. das Gemälde im Rathaus von Naumburg, das von der Stadt noch 1856 angekauft wurde und seitdem dort hängt. 23 Vgl. dazu Fülep, Mu˝vészet, Bd. 2, 177. 24 Zit. nach Márki, Dósa, 522.

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Entfaltung der agrarsozialistischen Bewegung in der Großen Ungarischen Tiefebene in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts belegen, wählten bevorzugt Landarbeiter in den Komitaten Békés, Csongrád und Szolnok – 1514 Schauplatz der bewaffneten Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Dózsas Heer und den Adelstruppen – den Bauernführer und die aufständischen Bauern zu ihren Identifikationsfiguren. So feierten 1893 Feldarbeiter und Armbauern in Hódmezo˝vásárhely den Ersten Mai unter den nachgenähten Fahnen der Kreuzfahrer von 1514, auf weißem Grund mit rotem Kreuz.25 Ob bei diesem bewusst gewählten Symbol eine lokale Erinnerung bei den Bauern in der Tiefebene oder aber Lektüren über den Bauernaufstand für die Teilnehmer eine Rolle spielten, ist heute nicht mehr zu ergründen. Fest steht jedoch, dass die agrarsozialistischen Bewegungen ihren Dózsa-Kult auf der Suche nach eigenen historischen Vorbildern gegenüber dem bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts vom Staat etablierten Kult der revolutionären Persönlichkeiten der ungarischen Geschichte wie Ferenc Rákóczi, Sándor Peto˝fi oder Lajos Kossuth formiert und verfestigt haben. Eine nicht wegzudenkende Rolle spielten dabei die Gründer der ersten Bauernparteien, István Várkonyi und András L. Áchim, mit ihren Presseorganen, die im Namen von ‚Dózsas Volk‘ Recht und Brot für die Landarbeiter und armen Bauern forderten. Dózsa wurde zum Kampfprogramm erhoben, das beispielsweise in der am 23. Januar 1910 erschienenen Nummer der Zeitung „Szabad Föld“ folgendermaßen formuliert wurde: „Für die schönere und bessere Zukunft zieht das Heereslager in den Kampf, Dózsas Soldaten bewaffnen sich, ihre Seelen sind vom Geist des Bauernführers erfüllt.“26 Die Sozialdemokratische Partei, die der Arbeiterbildung große Aufmerksamkeit widmete, war besonders bestrebt, ihre Mitglieder auch in der Bewertung von historischen Fragen zu schulen. Der bedeutendste Theoretiker der ungarischen Arbeiterbewegung an der Jahrhundertwende, Ervin Szabó, nahm den Bauernaufstand von 1514 zum Anlass, sich mit der „parteiischen Geschichtsschreibung der herrschenden Klasse“ auseinanderzusetzen, weil, wie er in seinem für den Kalender der Sozialdemokraten 1903 verfassten Artikel ausführte, die offizielle Geschichtsschreibung die Rolle der Unterdrückten in der Geschichte stets verschwieg oder verfälschte.27 1914 anlässlich des 400. Jubiläums des Bauernaufstandes wurden die Ereignisse und Personen von 1514 von den Sozialdemokraten vielfach gewürdigt. Zum Jahrestag erschien auch die erste sozialistische Interpretation der Bauernrevolte unter dem Titel „A nagy magyar parasztforradalom. Dósa György“ [Die große ungarische Bauernrevolution. György Dózsa] aus der Feder des Journalisten und Dichters Sándor Csizmadia, in dessen

25 Vgl. dazu Pölöskei/Szakács (Hg.), Földmunkás, Bd. 1, 203. 26 Zit. nach Fodor, Földmívelo˝ Párt, 56. 27 Szabó, Az 1514-i forradalom, 92–102.

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Schrift neben Engels’ Wertung der europäischen Bauernkriege auch Márkis Forschungsergebnisse eingeflossen sind.28 Vertreter der bürgerlich-radikalen politischen Richtung plädierten für die Etablierung einer neuen Dózsa-Erinnerungskultur. So forderte 1906 der Dichter Endre Ady, nach der Familientradition ein späterer Nachfahre Dózsas: „Wir sollten uns jemanden aus der Geschichte als Symbol für unsere endlosen Leiden, unsere abscheulichen Tragödien wählen. Der anstelle von uns in die Welt schreit, dass Ungarn von einigen tausend Privilegierten beherrscht wird und dass es hier für jeden Arbeiter qualvoll ist, zu leben. Sie haben uns […] aus der Vergangenheit schon alles geraubt und sie haben alles verfälscht. […] Sie wählen willkürlich die Großen der Vergangenheit aus und lassen diese gegen uns auftreten. […] Könnten auch wir nicht György Dózsa gegen sie auftreten lassen? […] Ungarns Volk, das gegen den Feudalismus kämpft, soll ein Denkmal für Dózsa errichten, damit auch wir nicht vergessen, dass unser Kampf sehr ernst ist.“29 Ganz in Adys Sinne ließ 1908 die Ungarländische Bauernpartei anlässlich ihres Kongresses in Békéscsaba die erste Dózsa-Statue errichten und rief Bauern und Landarme mit der Losung zur Teilnahme auf: „Es soll jeder kommen, in dessen Adern ein Tropfen von György Dózsas Blut fließt.“30 Symbolisch vor der DózsaStatue verkündete Áchim das Parteiprogramm.31 Die Statue von Géza Rubletzky32 blieb nicht erhalten, dagegen schuf Ady mit seinen mehr als ein Dutzend DózsaGedichten ein Bild des bewusst handelnden Bauernführers und holte als anerkannter Vertreter der modernen ungarischen Lyrik das Dózsa-Thema in die Elitenkultur zurück.33 So wurde Dózsa bis Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts zum Symbol der gegenüber der alten, feudalen Ordnung stehenden neuen, progressiven Kräfte der Gesellschaft. Ein ähnlicher Aufstieg gelang Müntzer in Deutschland zunächst nicht. Zimmermanns Darstellung wurde von der akademischen Geschichtsschreibung abgelehnt, was nicht zuletzt Leopold von Ranke zu verdanken war. Mit seiner 28 Csizmadia betonte: „Die Bauernrevolution von 1514 mit György Dósa an der Spitze war in Ungarns Geschichte mit Sicherheit das größte revolutionäre Ereignis. Damals lehnte sich der am meisten unterdrückte Volksteil des Landes ganz selbstständig, an die eigene Kraft glaubend, zum ersten Mal auf und griff zu Waffen gegen seine Unterdrücker.“ Zit. nach Czine, Századelo˝, 817. 29 Ady, La Barre, http://mek.oszk.hu/00500/00583/html/ady65.htm, letzter Zugriff am 12. 10.2014. 30 Zit. nach Klimó, Geschichtskultur, 182. 31 Czine, Századelo˝, 822. 32 Die Dózsa-Statue wird im Rubletzkys Œuvre als vernichtet angegeben, aber wahrscheinlich war die 1908 erwähnte Statue nur eine Studie, denn in der Zeitung der Sozialdemokraten „Népszava“ wurde schon 1910 die Aufstellung einer Dózsa-Statue gefordert. Vgl. dazu Vörös, Történelmi személyiségek, 60. 33 Király, Ady, Bd. 2, 601–608. Ady, der eine Zeit lang in Temeswar, Dózsas Hinrichtungsort, lebte, wurde wahrscheinlich von jener Marienstatue an die Ereignisse von 1514 erinnert, die dort zum Memento an den Bauernführer stand. Vgl. dazu Franyó, Ady, 199–204.

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zwischen 1839 und 1847 erschienenen Monografie „Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation“ lag eine national-konservative Interpretation des Bauernkrieges vor, die für lange Zeit, insbesondere nach der Reichsgründung von 1871, die Sicht auf Müntzer und den Bauernkrieg verklärte. Denn Ranke bewertete den Bauernkrieg als „das größte Naturereignis des deutschen Staates“34 negativ und seine ablehnende Haltung gegenüber den aufständischen Bauern begründete er vor allem mit den Thüringer Ereignissen sowie dem radikalen religiösen und sozialen Programm Müntzers. Im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich geriet Müntzer zwar nicht ganz in Vergessenheit, denn es gab auch ein bescheidenes Bemühen, sein Leben und Werk besser aus den Quellen zu erschließen, aber er wurde nur in den Schriften der Sozialisten als „Vorläufer des modernen Sozialismus“35 bedingungslos gewürdigt.36

3.

Dózsa und Müntzer als eponyme Heroen der Bauern in der Zeit von 1919 bis 1945

Die ungarische Räterepublik rückte in der kurzen Zeit ihres Bestehens vom 20. März bis zum 1. August 1919 die international geehrten Vordenker des Sozialismus in den Vordergrund. Aus der eigenen Nationalgeschichte war es nur einigen wenigen vergönnt, in das Pantheon der Helden aufgenommen zu werden.37 „Der den Märtyrertod erlitten habende György Dózsa, der Anführer der ersten Revolution der ungarischen armen Landarbeiter“ – wie der Szegeder Dichter Gyula Juhász in seinem „Revolutionären Kleinen Katechismus“ in jenen Tagen schrieb – gehörte dazu.38 Dem Bauernführer wurde von der Räterepublik in vielfältiger Weise ein Denkmal gesetzt, so mit einer Statue am Eingang des Budapester Parlaments oder mit einer Briefmarke. Auch nach 1919 war Dózsa die leitende Symbolfigur der Kommunisten geblieben, mit der sie den Landbesitzern den Kampf um die Bodenverteilung unter den Landarmen ansagten. 1926 wurde dies von dem angeklagten Kommunisten Mátyás Rákosi in seinem Gerichtsprozess folgendermaßen formuliert: „Der erste Prozeß [des Volkes] ist seit György Dózsa im Gange. Dieser Prozeß ist der Prozeß der arbeitenden, verkümmernden, für das Ungartum tausend- und aber tausendmal verblutenden Kleinbauernschaft gegen die untätigen, sich von jeder Last drückenden, seit einem halben Jahrtausend mit den Habsburgern paktierenden und unter einer 34 35 36 37 38

Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte, 317. Luxemburg, Briefe, Bd. 3, 95. Vgl. dazu Hohberg/Remer, Das Müntzerbild, 587–602; Vogler, Müntzerbilder, 6. Vörös, Történelmi személyiségek, 85–96. Gedruckt in Péter, Délmagyarország, 3.

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Decke steckenden Großgrundbesitzer.“39 Zugleich war Dózsa dazu berufen, das Bündnis der Landarbeiter mit dem Industrieproletariat zum Ausdruck zu bringen. In der Literatur und bildenden Kunst wurden deshalb der Bauernaufstand und Dózsa kontinuierlich und herausgehoben thematisiert. Eine der eindrucksvollsten Darstellungen der Ereignisse und Personen von 1514 wurde im Auftrag der Kommunistischen Partei 1928 vom Maler Gyula Derkovits angefertigt.40 Die Kommunisten mussten allerdings ihren Dózsa-Kult von den 1930erJahren bis in die zweite Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts mit den sogenannten Volksschriftstellern teilen, die sich mit den brennenden Problemen in den Dörfern, die sich aus der Gesellschaftsstruktur Ungarns als Land der großen Latifundien und der Abertausenden von besitzlosen Landarbeitern ergaben, auseinandersetzten.41 Die Volksschriftsteller, zum Großteil selbst Bauernsöhne, die ihre schriftstellerische Tätigkeit als Dienst an der Nation definierten, gründeten 1939 die Nationale Bauernpartei und schrieben nationale Verantwortung und Einheit auf ihre Fahne. Geleitet wurden sie dabei von der Überzeugung, dass die Zukunft der Nation vom Schicksal der Unterdrückten nicht zu trennen sei. Tonangebend bei der Ausformulierung des Konzeptes war Gyula Illyés, der Linke mit Nation gleichsetzte und Nation durch Volk ersetzte.42 Illyés setzte sich schon in seinem 1931 in der Zeitschrift „Nyugat“ erschienenen Gedicht „Dózsa beszéde a ceglédi piacon“ [Dózsas Rede auf dem Marktplatz von Cegléd] mit der Gestalt des Bauernführers auseinander. In ihren belletristischen und soziografischen Schriften griffen die Volksschriftsteller auf den Bauernaufstand unter Dózsa als eine der revolutionären und freiheitlichen Traditionen des Landes gerne zurück.43 Einen ersten Höhepunkt erreichte ihre Dózsa-Interpretation in dem 1939 erschienenen historischen Essay von Géza Féja, der darum bemüht war, Dózsa als historischen Ahnherrn der Bauern und zugleich als Vorbild der nationalen Einheit zu etablieren.44 In seiner Schrift stellte er deshalb Dózsa zwar als Helden, doch nicht als Anführer einer Bauernrevolution dar, der sich zum Ziel gesetzt hatte, die feudale Ordnung zu stürzen. Vielmehr präsentierte er ihn als einen bäuerlichen Condottiere, der die bestehende Ordnung reformieren und zusammen mit dem Adel 39 Zit. nach Der Rákosi-Prozeß, 77. 40 Körner, Derkovits, 176–181. 41 Politisch waren die meisten Schriftsteller in der 1920 neu gegründeten Kleinlandwirte-Partei oder in der 1939 gegründeten Nationalen Bauernpartei engagiert, manche auch in der kommunistischen oder aber in der rechtsextremen Pfeilkreuzlerpartei. Vgl. dazu Borbándi, Populismus, 88–138, 200–237. 42 Vgl. dazu u. a. Lackó, Illyés, 79–98. 43 Borbándi, Populismus, 93. 44 Féja, Dózsa, 9–12.

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das Vaterland vor den Osmanen verteidigen wollte. Doch der Adel unter Szapolyai und die Bauern unter Dózsa konnten nicht aufeinander zugehen, was unausweichlich zur Niederlage des mittelalterlichen Ungarn bei Mohács und zur anschließenden inneren und äußeren Teilung des Landes führte.45 Féjas gewissermaßen zwischen den beiden Fronten vermittelnde Interpretation der Bauernrevolte wurde weder auf der linken noch auf der rechten politischen Flanke geteilt und führte zur zweiten Dózsa-Debatte, an der sich sowohl Vertreter der Literatur und Publizistik als auch der Geschichtswissenschaft beteiligten.46 Sándor Gergely, der in Moskauer Emigration lebende Kommunist und Redakteur der dortigen ungarischsprachigen Zeitschrift „Új Hang“, welcher zwischen 1936 und 1945 selbst eine Dózsa-Trilogie verfasste,47 bemängelte Dózsas Darstellung durch Féja als einen den nationalen Kompromiss suchenden Reformer,48 während Jeno˝ Katona, Publizist der bürgerlich-rechten „Magyar Nemzet“, bezweifelte, ob Dózsa gleichberechtigt mit den Freiheitskämpfern Zrínyi, Rákóczi und Kossuth als heros eponymos anzuerkennen sei, zumal Féja selbst nicht den klassenkämpferischen Bauernführer darstellte.49 Auch die historische Zunft ging an Féjas Dózsa-Bild nicht wortlos vorüber. Gyula Szekfu˝, der führende konservative Historiker der Zeit, dem Féja sein Buch zuschickte, mahnte in einem Privatbrief an Féja, dass die Geschichte und Traditionen unter keinem politischen Ziel verfälscht werden dürften.50 Der sich im Namen der jungen neopositivistischen Generation zu Wort meldende Géza Istványi bezeichnete Féjas Darstellung des Bauerntums um 1514 als eine einheitlich organisierte und bewusste Kraft regelrecht als ahistorisch.51 Die Kritik war nicht zuletzt schon deshalb berechtigt, weil die Geschichtsschreibung gerade in der Zwischenkriegszeit neue Ergebnisse über den Bauernaufstand zutage förderte: So wies beispielsweise der Kirchenhistoriker Ödön Bölcskey auf die Bedeutung der Franziskaner im Bauernaufstand hin52 und der Mediävist Elemér Mályusz modifizierte die Ursachen der Bauernerhebung, indem er die führende Kraft im Aufstand den privilegierten Bewohnern der Marktflecken zuwies.53 Doch diese Ergebnisse blieben zunächst ohne Widerhall.

Zur Interpretation vgl. u. a. Gombköto˝, Féja, 36–39; Bellér, Dózsa-parasztháború, 323. Vgl. dazu Illés, Új Hang, 165. Die Trilogie bestand aus „Úriszék“ (1936), „A nagy tábor“ (1939) und „Tüzes trónus“ (1945). Gergely, Dózsa-portré, 384–389; vgl. dazu auch Illés, Új Hang, 165. Illés, Új Hang, 165. Féja, Dózsa, 254. Istványi, Népies történelem, 66f. Bölcskey, Capistranói, Bd. 2, 302–344. Die Thesen über die Zusammenhänge zwischen den Franziskaner-Observanten und dem Bauernaufstand von 1514 arbeitete am Anfang der 1970er-Jahre Jeno˝ Szu˝cs aus. Vgl. dazu den Beitrag von Pál Ács in diesem Band. 53 Mályusz, Jobbágyháború, 373–380. 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

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In der Weimarer Republik verhalf Müntzer den Kommunisten mit dem Aufruf „Das Gesicht dem Dorfe zu!“ zur besseren Profilierung. Um eine eigene revolutionäre Tradition zu etablieren und das Arbeiter- und Bauernbündnis zu stärken, wurden die Müntzer-Tage im Jahre 1925 anlässlich des 400. Jahrestages des Bauernkrieges und der Hinrichtung von Thomas Müntzer genutzt.54 In Anbetracht der Folgen der Wirtschaftskrise ab 1928/29, wie der zunehmenden Hofzwangsversteigerungen, hatten die KPD-Kundgebungen in Thüringen, wo der Schwerpunkt der Feierlichkeiten lag, einen stellenweise großen Zulauf. In der Stadt Mühlhausen, im Hinrichtungsort des Bauernführers, versammelten sich zu den Kundgebungen mehrere Tausende.55 Auch lokale Traditionen lebten fort,56 so wurde schon 1901 ein Gedenkstein zur Erinnerung an Müntzer in einem Stadtpark aufgestellt und 1923 nachweislich zum ersten Mal eine Straße nach ihm benannt.57 Seit den 1920er-Jahren war auch eine eigenständige Bauernkriegsforschung im Entstehen –etwa durch die Arbeiten von Günther Franz58 –, doch Müntzer erfuhr nach wie vor eine negative Bewertung. So wurde er von Franz, ab 1933 Mitglied der NSDAP, als ein pseudo-politischer Revolutionär charakterisiert, der die Volksmassen für seine eigenen Ziele missbrauchte.59 Obwohl der Nationalsozialismus sich als eine Revolution des deutschen Volkes verstand und gewissermaßen in der Tradition der aufständischen Bauern sah,60 befasste sich die nationalsozialistische Geschichtsschreibung nur am Rande mit Müntzer – eine Tatsache, die Müntzers Aufstieg als Ahnherr der DDR zugutekam.

4.

Die ‚Verstaatlichung‘ der Dózsa- und der Müntzer-Erinnerung zur Zeit des Sozialismus

4.1

Mit Dózsa für und gegen nationale Mythen in Ungarn

Wenige Wochen nach Beendigung des Zweiten Weltkrieges organisierte die Nationale Bauernpartei Ungarns am 13. Mai 1945 die erste Dózsa-Kundgebung in Cegléd, wo Dózsa der Überlieferung zufolge die Bauern zum Aufbegehren gegen 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Profeld, Müntzer-Tradition, 627–641. Luhn, Müntzer- und Bauernkriegstradition, 622. Vgl. dazu ausführlich Müller, Thomas T., Reformator, 115–140. Vogler, Darstellung, 7. Franz, Bauernkrieg. Müller, Laurenz, Diktatur und Revolution, 84. So bezeichnete der NSDAP-Propagandist Johann von Leers die „Kämpfer der Bauernkriege“ als „berechtigte erste Vorfahren des Nationalsozialismus“ und ihre Niederlage deutete er als „Tragödie führerloser Massen“. Zit. nach Leers, Bauernkrieg, 169f.

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den Adel aufgerufen hatte, sodass der Kreuzzug gegen die Osmanen in einen antifeudalen Aufstand umschlug. Damit setzte sich die Nationale Bauernpartei als „Dózsas Volk“ und späte Vollstreckerin der Ziele des Bauernaufstandes in Szene und instrumentalisierte den Bauernführer als Kronzeugen für die begonnene Bodenreform.61 In ähnlich propagandistischem Rahmen verlief die Bodenreform in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands. Im Oktober 1945 fanden beispielsweise in Stolberg am Harz, dem Geburtsort Müntzers, die Thomas-Müntzer-Tage statt, bei denen einem Bauern von einem Vertreter der KPD „das den Vorfahren geraubte Land“ symbolisch zurückgegeben wurde.62 Die ab 1949 in Ungarn allein regierende kommunistische Partei erhob den Anspruch auf die Deutungshoheit über die gesamte Nationalgeschichte und wies der Geschichtsschreibung die Aufgabe zu, einen neuen Kanon der Erinnerungskultur aus dem Reservoir historischer Traditionen des Landes zu schaffen. Das erklärte Ziel war die Etablierung eines auf der positiven revolutionären Tradition basierenden volksdemokratischen Nationalbewusstseins.63 Damit begann der Kampf um das kulturelle Gedächtnis der Nation, was 1954 in einer Sitzung des Budapester Ausschusses der Ungarischen Arbeiterpartei wie folgt formuliert wurde: „Auf ideologischem Gebiet führen wir Krieg gegen jene historischen Ideen, die nur das Schlechte sehen und den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Dózsa-Bauernkrieg, Rákóczi-Freiheitskrieg, der Räterepublik und unserer Befreiung [durch die Sowjetunion, Anm. d. Verf.] nicht erkennen.“64 Anders als in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone griffen die ungarischen Kommunisten schon ab 1945 gezielt auf die im Gesamtnationalbewusstsein seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts verankerten Vertreter der Freiheitstradition wie Zrínyi, Rákóczi, Peto˝fi oder Kossuth zurück. Die Gründe dafür waren in der Lehre aus der Räterepublik zu suchen, als die Kommunisten nicht zuletzt aufgrund ihres internationalistischen Denkens und Handelns vom Großteil der Gesellschaft abgelehnt wurden. Hinzu kam, dass die freien Wahlen im November 1945 zwar die Kleinlandwirte-Partei gewonnen hatte, sie auf Druck des sowjetischen Kontrollausschusses die Regierung jedoch unter anderem mit der Kommunistischen Partei unter der Führung von Mátyás Rákosi teilen musste. In dieser politisch heiklen 61 Vgl. Dózsa-Feierlichkeiten. Siehe dazu auch die Rede von Imre Kovács, gedruckt in der Broschüre Fel hát, 8–13. Das Heft des Ungarischen Demokratischen Jugendverbandes diente als Hilfsmittel bei der Organisation von „Kulturnachmittagen“ zur ideologischen Erziehung der Jugend. Im Heft wurden Werke von Endre Ady, Gyula Illyés und György Sárközi über Dózsa zitiert. 62 Wille, Bodenreform, 102. 63 Standeisky, Kommunista Párt, 31–34. 64 Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, Magyar Országos Levéltár [Ungarisches Nationalarchiv, Landesarchiv=MOL – Budapest], MDP Budapesti Pártbizottság ülései, 17. 12. 1954, 6.

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Situation wies die sowjetische Führung die ungarischen Kommunisten an, zunächst keine offene Sowjetisierung der Gesellschaft vorzunehmen. Die Herrschaft der Kommunisten musste auch nach den nächsten Wahlen im Jahre 1947 als eine fortschrittliche Stufe nationaler Entwicklung, sprich Befreiung vom halbfeudalen System des alten Ungarn, präsentiert werden, umso mehr, weil das neue Regime wegen des allgemein bekannten Wahlbetrugs der Kommunisten keine rechtliche Legitimation besaß und zunächst auch nicht das versprochene bessere Lebensniveau bieten konnte.65 Es wurde deshalb an die in der gesamtnationalen Erinnerung seit dem 19. Jahrhundert fest etablierten Nationalhelden angeknüpft und mit neuen Elementen aus der kommunistischen Erinnerungskultur ergänzt.66 Dózsa und der Bauernaufstand erhielten dabei eine hervorgehobene Aufmerksamkeit einerseits, weil man auf eine in der ungarischen Gesellschaft vorhandene DózsaTradition zurückgreifen konnte. Andererseits aber erschien der Dózsa-Stoff für die Partei zur Legitimation und Festigung ihrer Herrschaft besonders geeignet, vermochte sie doch nicht nur den revolutionären Freiheitsgedanken in Ungarns nationales Selbstbewusstsein als Agrarland einzubetten, sondern zugleich auch die jeweiligen Ziele der Kommunisten im Agrarsektor – zunächst die Bodenreform, dann die Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft nach sowjetischem Muster – zu untermauern.67 Nach József Révai, zwischen 1948 und 1953 Chefideologe der Partei, hatte Dózsas Programm nicht nur einen antifeudalen, sondern zugleich auch einen nationalen Charakter aufgewiesen, denn, wie er schrieb: „[…] auch die Klassenkämpfe werden für allgemeine, große nationale Ziele mit dem Programm zum Aufbau des Landes geführt.“68 Die Dózsa-Tradition der Partei sollte schließlich auch die Volksverbundenheit der Partei stärken, denn, wie Révai weiter argumentierte: „Rákóczi und Kossuth werden vom ungarischen Volk geehrt, doch Dózsa ist sein eigenes Blut.“69 Dózsa stammte zwar aus einer freien Szekler-Familie in Siebenbürgen und wirkte als Grenzsoldat, doch im Rahmen der politischen Weiterbildungskurse in den Betrieben und den LPGs oder bei Schulungen der Jugend- und Erwachsenenorganisationen der Partei wurde ein plebejisches DózsaBild propagiert.70 Ihren künstlerischen Niederschlag fand diese Interpretation in dem 1961 an einem architektonisch herausragenden Platz von Budapest unterhalb der Burg aufgestellten Dózsa-Denkmal.71 Die vom jungen Bildhauer István Kiss bereits 65 Vgl. dazu u. a. Rainer, Fordulatok, 17–39. Zur Rolle der nationalen Frage bei den Kommunisten vgl. Gyurgyák, Nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus, 501–526. 66 Rényi, Festészet, 35f. 67 Szabó, Politikai kultúra, 230–233. 68 Révai, Nagyatádi, 143–149. 69 Ebd. 70 Vgl. etwa Vezérfonal. 71 Tasnádi, Kiss István, 12–18; Pótó, Emlékmu˝vek, 237. – Die Statuengruppe wurde anstelle des

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1954 angefertigte dreiteilige Gruppenkomposition verweist zugleich auf eine Besonderheit des ungarischen Bauernaufstandes. Seine Teilnehmer stammten nicht nur aus den Reihen der ungarischen Bauern, sondern auch der Serben im Süden des Landes, was der Künstler in zwei Nebenfiguren zum Ausdruck brachte. Allerdings erschienen bei Kiss nicht die serbischen Aufständischen, denn 1961 zählte Jugoslawien nicht mehr zum sozialistischen Brudervolk. Ihre Stellen nahmen slowakische und rumänische Bauern ein, mit deren Darstellung nicht nur eine Brücke zu den sozialistischen Nachbarländern geschlagen, sondern auch ein nach 1945 noch immer ungelöstes nationales Problem Ungarns, die Lage der ungarischen Minderheit in den Nachfolgestaaten, im Sinne des sozialistischen Internationalismus thematisiert werden konnte. Der aus Siebenbürgen stammende Dózsa – wenn auch als Rumäne unter dem Namen Gheorghe Doja verklärt – konnte nach 1945 auch in der rumänischen Geschichtsschreibung in die Reihe der Volkshelden aufgenommen werden72 und zugleich als Namenspatron von drei Ortschaften fungieren. Neben dem Szeklerland entstand auch im Banat mit dem multiethnischen Zentrum Temeswar/ Temesvár/Timis¸oara, wo Dózsa 1514 hingerichtet wurde, schon seit dem 19. Jahrhundert eine dreisprachige, ungarisch–rumänisch–deutsche Erinnerung an den Bauernführer.73 Für die Kontinuität dieser lokalen Dózsa-Erinnerung steht die 1906 neu errichtete Maria-Statue.74 Im geteilten Deutschland dagegen wurde die unterschiedliche Erinnerung an Müntzer zunächst zum Symbol der unüberbrückbar erscheinenden Einbindung der beiden deutschen Staaten in zwei sich feindlich gegenüberstehende Systeme. Die von den ungarischen Kommunisten bevorzugte Tradition der Revolution und Unabhängigkeitsbestrebungen in der ungarischen Geschichte wurde in der stalinistischen Ära immer mehr auf eine teleologische Deutung reduziert, deren vernichteten Denkmals der im Ersten Weltkrieg gefallenen ungarischen Artilleristen aufgestellt. 72 Ghermani, Historiker, 248. In Laurent¸iu Fulgas Drama „Ion Voda˘ cel Cumplit“ [Fürst Ion der Schreckliche] von 1952 kämpft Dózsa sogar gegen die walachischen Bojaren, vgl. dazu Stanomir, Dramatik, 54. 73 Balogh, Dózsa, 422–424. 74 Nach der Legende konnte das Feuer bei Dózsas Hinrichtung nur mit großer Mühe gelegt werden, weil das nasse Holz nicht entflammen wollte. Es entstand zunächst ein großer Rauchnebel, in dem plötzlich die Gottesmutter erschienen war. Daraufhin brachten die Franziskaner nach den tragischen Ereignissen am Ort an einem Baumstamm ein Marienbild an, das bald zum Pilgerort wurde. Auch während der osmanischen Besatzung des Marktfleckens brach die Tradition nicht ab. 1865 wurde anstelle des Marienbildes schließlich eine aus Stein gemeißelte Marienstatue aufgestellt. In Temeswar pflegte man die Erinnerung weiter: 1906 ließ die Stadt auf Initiative der Südungarischen Historischen und Archäologischen Gesellschaft eine kleine Kapelle und eine neue Marienstatue durch László Székely errichten. Vgl. zur Legende und zum Erinnerungsort Szekernyés, A magyarság emlékhelyei, 591f.

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Ausgangspunkt Dózsa war und die über Rákóczi und Kossuth bis zu Rákosi führen sollte. Wie leicht sich eine solche forcierte Freiheitstradition in einer Diktatur gegen das System selbst wenden konnte, zeigten die Ereignisse von 1956. Die 1956 als Peto˝fi-Partei neugegründete Nationale Bauernpartei wandte sich mit dem Aufruf „Auf, Dózsas Volk!“ an die Bauern, sich gegen die stalinistische Willkür, die Zwangskollektivierung und Lebensmittelrequirierungen aufzulehnen.75 Gyula Illyés hatte sich schon 1954 mit einem gegen die Tyrannei gerichteten Dózsa-Drama zu Wort gemeldet. Das von Illyés überarbeitete und vom Nationaltheater im Januar 1956 aufgeführte Stück stellte den Bauernaufstand als ein bestimmendes Ereignis in der Reihe der ungarischen nationalen Bewegung dar. Dózsa war nicht nur der Bauernführer, der mit dem Adel in Konflikt geraten war, sondern der Nationalheld, der gegen die Verräter der Nation, den Adel, kämpfte, der mit der Einstellung des Kreuzzuges die bäuerlichen Kreuzfahrer daran hinderte, die osmanische Gefahr abzuwenden.76 Nach dem Volksaufstand verkündete die von János Kádár angeführte Ungarische Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei (USAP) einen Zweifrontenkrieg. Dieser richtete sich einerseits gegen den die nationale Freiheitstradition hervorkehrenden RákosiDogmatismus, andererseits gegen die Reformkommunisten um Imre Nagy, darunter auch die Volksschriftsteller, die für die nationale Unabhängigkeit ihr Wort erhoben.77 Die neue Parteiführung diskutierte über die Ursachen des Volksaufstandes und kam zu der Stellungnahme, dass die nationalen Freiheitstraditionen die ideelle Grundlage für den Aufstand lieferten. Gegenüber der Geschichtsdeutung aus nationaler Sicht sollte deshalb in der Zukunft die Auslegung der historischen Ereignisse und Prozesse im Sinne des Proletar-Internationalismus erfolgen.78 In die Parteidiskussion platzte 1960 die vom Direktor des Historischen Instituts der Ungarischen Akademie, Erik Molnár, eingeleitete Historikerdebatte über Nation und Nationalismus, die zwei Jahrzehnte lang geführt wurde und über die Geschichtswissenschaft hinausging.79 Molnár, ganz im Sinne der Partei, bezeichnete die Aufgabe der Geschichtswissenschaft darin, mit den nationalen Mythen und Illusionen in der ungarischen Geschichte zu brechen. In seinen Artikeln wie auch in den Schriften der Mitarbeiter des Historischen Instituts behielten die Bauernaufstände eine zentrale Bedeutung.80 Molnár wies in seinem Auftaktartikel 75 Plakat der Nationalen Bauernpartei „Fel Dózsa népe!“, http://www.mek.oszk.hu/04000/ 04056/html/roplap/pdf/roplap1956_0720.pdf, letzter Zugriff am 12. 10. 2014. 76 Illyés, Dózsa. 77 Borbándi, Populismus, 279–304. 78 Lackó, Molnár Erik, 1504f. 79 Zur Erik-Molnár-Debatte vgl. u. a. Gyurgyák, Nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus, 526–534. 80 1962 wurde im Historischen Institut eine wissenschaftliche Tagung zum Thema „Nation, Vaterland, Landesverteidigung im Denken des Bauerntums und der nichtadeligen Soldatenschicht im 15.–18. Jahrhundert“ organisiert, deren Beiträge in der institutseigenen Zeitschrift „Történelmi Szemle“ 1963 erschienen sind.

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am Beispiel des Bauernaufstandes von 1514 darauf hin, dass die Bauern aus dem mittelalterlichen regnum ausgeschlossen waren und dass es ausschließlich den Adel umfasste; so war es nur folgerichtig, dass die Bauern dieses adelige regnum nicht verteidigen wollten, sondern ihre Waffen gegen den Adel richteten.81 Molnár, der die Zurückprojizierung moderner Begriffe wie Nation und Vaterland in die mittelalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Geschichte ablehnte, erklärte jedoch zugleich, dass der Bauer keine „religiöse oder patriotische Ideologie“ benötigte, um zu den Waffen zu greifen, weil die eigentlichen Beweggründe der Geschichte nicht in Ideologien, sondern ausschließlich in den Klassengegensätzen zu suchen seien.82 Weniger Molnárs tendenziöse Feststellungen als vielmehr seine Fragestellung nach Ursprung und Wesen der Nation initiierten eine rege Diskussion und Publikationsflut über natio, patria, gens und populus, die eine vertiefte Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Nationalidee und -identität und schließlich das Überdenken beider Kategorien in der historischen Entwicklung bewirkten.83 Die vielleicht bedeutendsten Ergebnisse legte der Mediävist Jeno˝ Szu˝cs vor, der seine Thesen über Wurzeln und Entwicklung des ungarischen Nationalbewusstseins und Nationalismus am Beispiel der Akteure des Bauernaufstandes von 1514 in mehreren Aufsätzen minutiös ausarbeitete.84 Er ging davon aus, dass, wenn es 1514 ein die ständischen Grenzen übergreifendes, alle Gesellschaftsschichten integrierendes Bewusstsein und eine emotionale Bindungskraft gab – wie das bis dahin in der historischen Forschung behauptet wurde –, diese Merkmale nicht auf zeitlos existierende Kategorien von ‚Nation‘ und ‚Vaterlandsliebe‘, sondern vielmehr auf die Mobilisierungskraft des Christentums zurückzuführen waren. Szu˝cs griff auch Ergebnisse des Kirchenhistorikers Bölcskey auf, als er festhielt, dass für die Formulierung der sozialen Ziele der Aufständischen die christliche Kreuzzugsidee Pate stand, die mithilfe der Franziskaner-Observanten verbreitet wurde, denen die Werbung für den Kreuzzug übertragen worden war.85 Szu˝cs unterschied klar den mittelalterlichen ‚Patriotismus‘ vom modernen Nationalbewusstsein und arbeitete auch den Unterschied zwischen der modernen Nationalidee und einer vormodernen ethnischen Idee heraus. Dabei wies er nicht nur auf die Gefahren falscher Historisierung des Nationalen hin, sondern verneinte auch die Bewertung der Klassenkämpfe als ab ovo progressiv. So bestritt er auch den fortschrittlichen Charakter des Bauernaufstandes und vertrat die Ansicht, dass der Bauernaufstand weder die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte und der Produktionsmethoden förderte, noch in 81 Molnár, Nemzeti kérdés, 19. 82 Molnár, Bevezeto˝, 1. 83 Neben den Beiträgen in der Zeitschrift „Történelmi Szemle“ im Jahre 1963 vgl. vor allem die Schriften im Studienband von Szu˝cs, Nemzet és történelem. 84 Szu˝cs, Dózsa, 12–39; deutsche Zusammenfassung ders., Die Ideologie, 157–187. 85 Ders., Obszervancia, 213–263.

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seiner Zielsetzung und Ideologie revolutionäre Elemente beinhaltete. Damit wurde der Dózsa-Bauernaufstand, der bis dahin als revolutionärer Ausgangspunkt der progressiven Geschichtslinie interpretiert worden war, demontiert.86 Die Demontage erreichte schon bis zum Dózsa-Jubiläumsjahr 1972 einen ersten Höhepunkt, sodass der Altkommunist Aladár Mód die Frage stellen musste, warum man den Bauernaufstand überhaupt feiere.87 Die vielleicht wichtigsten Ergebnisse der bis in die 1980er-Jahre geführten Debatten waren, dass die Parteiführung in der Zukunft auf konkrete Stellungnahmen in wissenschaftlichen Fragen verzichtete und dass sich die ungarische Geschichtswissenschaft gegenüber neuen Forschungsrichtungen und Methoden aus dem Westen allmählich öffnete und pluralistischer wurde.88 So wurden die Richtlinien der Dózsa-Feierlichkeiten anlässlich des 500. Geburtstages Dózsas nicht von der Partei vorgegeben, sondern von einem aus Historikern bestehenden Kollektiv ausgearbeitet, die von dem Dózsa-Erinnerungskomitee, bestehend aus Vertretern von Politik und Kultur, angenommen wurden.89 Der Verzicht der Partei auf wissenschaftliche Vorgaben bedeutete aber keine Absage an eine gelenkte Kulturpolitik und historische Erinnerung. Der Bauernaufstand gehörte nach wie vor zu den progressiven, das heißt ideologisch förderungswürdigen Traditionen, deshalb hieß es in einem Rundschreiben der Kultur- und Propagandaabteilung der Partei an ihre Komitats- und Kreisorgane, das Jubiläumsjahr mit allen Mitteln zu unterstützten, damit die Erinnerung an den Dózsa-Bauernaufstand einen Massencharakter erhalte.90 Ungarn feierte Dózsa 1972 in künstlerischen Darstellungen, deren Zahl allein im Jubiläumsjahr mehrere Hunderte erreichte.91 Bezeichnend für die Darstellungen war allerdings die Suche der Künstler nach einem persönlichen DózsaBild. Anschaulich brachte die Grafikerin Dóra Maurer in ihrem Werk „Keressük 86 Ders., Nemzet, 108. 87 Mód, Patriotizmus, 45. – Mód verfasste bereits 1943 eine Darstellung der ungarischen Geschichte unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Kampfes um die Selbstständigkeit des Landes und wählte den Dózsa-Bauernaufstand als Ausgangspunkt auf dem Weg „zur Geburt der modernen bürgerlichen Gesellschaft“. Der Vulgärmarxist Mód erklärte den Ausbruch des Aufstandes mit der Einführung der Schollengebundenheit der Bauern und machte somit die Folge des Aufstandes zur Ursache. Vgl. dazu Mód, 400 év, 19–24. Das Buch erreichte bis 1951 bereits sechs Auflagen und seine zentrale Fragestellung nach der nationalen Unabhängigkeit wurde u. a. mit dem Ziel der Etablierung eines „neuen Patriotismus“ erklärt. Ebd., 5. 88 Laczkó, Molnár, 1483–1536; Szu˝cs, Tudat, 345–354. 89 Vgl. dazu etwa die Richtlinien des Jubiläumskomitees Dózsa György születésének évfordulójára, 531–535. 90 MOL, MSZP Budapesti Bizottság, Tájékoztató az 1972. elso˝ félévi politikai évfordulók ünnepségeiro˝l, 14. 01. 1972, 72. 91 Vgl. die zum Dózsa-Jubiläum im Jahre 1972 erschienenen grafischen Werke im Katalog Mai magyar grafika. Zu den Dózsa-Erinnerungen in der Kunst vgl. ausführlich den Beitrag von Erzsébet Tatai in diesem Band.

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Dózsát“ [Wir suchen Dózsa] das demontierte Heldenbild zum Ausdruck, indem der Bildbetrachter aus den von Maurer gezeichneten zehn Varianten an Gesichtsteilen sein Dózsa-Bild selbst erstellen musste.92 Zur gleichen Zeit war die Geschichtswissenschaft bemüht, das historisch verklärte Bild über den Bauernaufstand und Dózsa zu revidieren. Die vom Archivar Antal Fekete Nagy ein Jahrzehnt lang betriebene Forschung wurde nach dessen Tod von Gábor Barta zu Ende geführt. Die auf neuen Quellen und auf einer strengen Quellenkritik beruhende Arbeit93 konnte das von Márki geprägte Bild korrigieren und zahlreiche bis dahin ungelöste Widersprüche und Ungereimtheiten im Ablauf der Ereignisse klären und neue Zusammenhänge beleuchten. So konnten die Historiker unter anderem Dózsas Rede in Cegléd oder die Person Lo˝rinc Mészáros, Dózsas Mitgefährten, in den Bereich der Mythen verbannen. Ebenso wurde die seit Horváth allgemein verbreitete Ansicht, wonach die Bauernrevolte ein Armutsaufstand war, verabschiedet und der Aufstand als eine Protestbewegung der sich rasch entwickelnden viehzüchtenden Marktflecken in der Großen Ungarischen Tiefebene und der sich daran im Norden und im Süden anschließenden weinproduzierenden Marktflecken definiert.94 Bartas Buch ist aber erst ein Jahr nach dem Jubiläum erschienen95 und konnte trotz seines an eine breite Leserschaft gewandten verständlichen Stils nicht jene Breitenwirkung erreichen wie etwa die Arbeit des Literaturwissenschaftlers István Nemeskürty „Krónika Dózsa György tetteiro˝l“ [Chronik über die Taten des György Dózsa]. Nemeskürty tradierte in seinem flüssig geschriebenen Buch falsche Ansichten, so die Meinung, wonach für die Katastrophe von Mohács die herrschende Klasse Verantwortung trug, denn sie habe mit ihrer Rachsucht nach der Niederwerfung des Bauernaufstandes verhindert, dass die Bauern an der Landesverteidigung gegen die Osmanen teilnahmen. So ist es nicht weiter verwunderlich, dass die von Barta widerlegten Mythen teilweise bis heute weiterleben, wenn etwa die militärische Niederlage des ungarischen Heeres gegenüber den Osmanen in der Schlacht bei Mohács 1526 mit dem Fernbleiben der an die Scholle gebundenen Bauern erklärt wird.96 Allerdings haben die mit Nemeskürty geführten Kontroversen auf eine weitere wichtige Frage die Aufmerksamkeit von Politik und Wissenschaft gelenkt, dass nämlich das historische Bewusstsein nicht

92 Király, Maurer, http://members.iif.hu/visontay/ponticulus/rovatok/hidverok/kiraly_maurer. html, letzter Zugriff am 12. 10. 2014. 93 Barta/Fekete Nagy, Parasztháború. 94 Barta/Szakály, Dózsa népe, 73–85; vgl. dazu auch die Rezension von Bácskai, Parasztháború, 219–223, und von Heckenast, Dózsa-parasztháború, 13f. 95 Der Quellenband – Monumenta rusticorum in Hungaria rebellium anno MDXIV, hg. von Antonius Fekete Nagy u. a. – erschien noch später, im Jahre 1979. 96 B. Szabó, Mohács-„legendáink“, 102f.; Ero˝s, Mohács-vita, 55–76.

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von der Politik diktiert werden kann und dass es neben Fachhistorikern auch von „Laien“ mitgeformt wird. Mit den Feierlichkeiten 1972 erreichte der sozialistische Dózsa-Kult seinen Zenit und bald auch sein Ende. Der Grund dafür war nicht nur im Abbau des heroischen Dózsa-Bildes und der idealisierten Darstellung des Bauernaufstandes zu suchen, sondern vor allem in der Tatsache, dass sich die Menschen in Ungarn nach 1956 den legitimatorischen Ritualen des Staates mehr entziehen konnten als in der DDR, weil auch das Kádár-Regime pragmatischer agierte als das von Honecker.97

4.2

Mit Müntzer für und gegen den Gründungsmythos der DDR

In der DDR stellte sich, anders als in Ungarn, nicht nur das Problem der Herrschaftslegitimität der Kommunisten, sondern zugleich auch die grundlegende Frage nach der Staatlichkeit. Diese war in erster Linie von der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung abhängig, denn die DDR war nur als sozialistische Alternative zur Bundesrepublik denkbar. Der neue Staat bedurfte eines eigenen Gründungsmythos, welcher in der Bevölkerung sein integratives Potential entfalten konnte. Neben dem antifaschistischen Widerstand als Abgrenzung von der Bundesrepublik wurde der Bauernkrieg zum zweiten politischen, sozialistischen Mythos kreiert, was in Europa als Phänomen beispiellos ist.98 Als Gründungsmythos musste die Erzählung über den Bauernkrieg nicht zwingend das von der Geschichtswissenschaft verfügbar gemachte Wissen beinhalten. Es wurde auch maßgeblich auf die Engels’sche Interpretation des Bauernkrieges als erste deutsche Revolution zurückgegriffen. Die historischen Ereignisse von 1524 bis 1526 wurden dem Zweck entsprechend überzeichnet und in der Gestalt Thomas Müntzers als ein „politischer Führer mit plebejischem Instinkt“ personalisiert. So konnte nicht nur eine revolutionäre Traditionslinie konstruiert, sondern zugleich die Notwendigkeit der Gründung der DDR und die Legitimität der Kommunisten erklärt werden. Denn wie der SED-Autor Alexander Abusch betonte, wurde das von Müntzer formulierte Ziel des Bauernkrieges, „irdische Gerechtigkeit“ für den gemeinen Mann zu erkämpfen, erst im Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat DDR erreicht.99 Bis zum Mauerbau 1961 konnte der Volksrevolutionär Müntzer auch zum Vorkämpfer der deutschen Einheit „von unten“ stilisiert und dem als „Fürstenknecht“ diffamierten Martin Luther gegenübergestellt werden.100 Nach dem kommunisti97 98 99 100

Vgl. dazu u. a. Konrád, Der ungarische Weg, 9–32. Münkler, Gedächtnis, 458–468; Zimmering, Mythen, 173–300. Abusch, Vorwort, 17f. Vgl. u. a. Haun, Diskussion, 5–22; Goertz, Bild; Lehmann, Lutherbild, 500–514.

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schen Geschichtsbild hätte Luthers Verrat an den aufständischen Bauern die Niederlage des Bauernkrieges und somit der nationalen Einheit mit verursacht. Doch Müntzer als Ahnherr der DDR erwies sich besonders nach 1961 als kulturpolitische Stolperfalle,101 denn Bauernkrieg und Reformation wurden als eine Narrationseinheit102 aufgefasst, ganz im Sinne des sowjetischen Historikers Moisei Mendeljewitsch Smirin, der 1947 in seinem Buch „Die Volksreformation des Thomas Müntzer und der große Bauernkrieg“ zwischen einer reaktionären bürgerlich-lutherischen Reformation und einer revolutionären Volksreformation unterschied.103 Mit der analytischen Zusammenschau von Bauernkrieg und Reformation, die in der Formel der Frühbürgerlichen Revolution erfasst wurde,104 etablierte die DDR-Geschichtswissenschaft in den 1960er-Jahren unter der Führung des Historikers Max Steinmetz ein prägnantes Gegenkonzept zur westlichen Geschichtsschreibung.105 Die Reformation wurde „nicht mehr länger als ein primär theologisch-kirchengeschichtliches Ereignis, sondern als die theoretische Phase einer Revolution zur Überwindung des Feudalismus“106 verstanden. Damit konnte das Konzept der Frühbürgerlichen Revolution die Existenz der DDR legitimieren und der von der SED nach 1961 gewünschten Abgrenzung von der Bundesrepublik gerecht werden. Die marxistische Interpretation, die weiterhin an der negativen Rolle des Reformators Luther festhielt, geriet jedoch unter den Druck der bundesdeutschen und internationalen Bauernkriegsforschung.107 Nicht zuletzt aus Rücksichtnahme auf die öffentliche Meinung im Westen änderte die SED ihr negatives Luther-Bild. Die Aufwertung des Reformators sollte außenpolitisch zur ersehnten internationalen Anerkennung der DDR beitragen, innenpolitisch ein spezifisches DDR-Nationalbewusstsein fördern, indem den evangelischen Kirchen entgegengekommen wurde. Schon der 450. Jahrestag der Reformation im Jahre 1967, vor allem aber die Proklamierung einer DDR-eigenen Nation durch Erich Honecker 1971 leiteten einen grundlegenden Wandel ein. Die von der SED maßgeblich gesteuerte und kontrollierte Geschichtsschreibung gab in den 1970er-Jahren das extrem selektive Geschichtsbild auf und entwickelte ein Konzept für „Erbe und Tradition“.108 Besondere Aufmerksamkeit wurde weiterhin dem Bauernkrieg und der Reformation gewidmet, denn das Territorium der DDR war kulturell stark durch die Erinnerung an die 101 102 103 104 105

Fleischauer, Enkel, 325–370. Nipperdey, Reformation, 158. Smrin, Volksreformation, 659–662. Vogler, Konzept, 87–117. Steinmetz, Reformation und Bauernkrieg, 9–31; zur Einordnung des Konzepts vgl. Müller, Laurenz, Diktatur und Revolution, 167–320. 106 Müller, Laurenz, Diktatur und Revolution, 327. 107 Ebd., 276–282; Wohlfeil, Entfremdung, 331–350. 108 Fleischauer, Enkel, 217–274.

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Wirkungsstätte sowohl Müntzers als auch Luthers geprägt. Das neue kulturpolitische Konzept bewirkte in der Geschichtswissenschaft eine verstärkte Hinwendung zur Quellenforschung und führte in den 1980er-Jahren dazu, dass einerseits Müntzer auch als Theologe wahrgenommen und andererseits Luther eine eigenständige historische Wirkung zugestanden wurde.109 Das Konzept der Frühbürgerlichen Revolution wurde ebenfalls modifiziert: Die Ursachen des Bauernaufstandes fand man nicht mehr in den Entwicklungsproblemen des frühneuzeitlichen Staates, sondern im Antagonismus frühkapitalistischer Produktionsweisen und der spätfeudalen Gesellschaftsordnung. Historiker wie Günter Vogler verringerten die Differenzen und den Abstand zur Geschichtsforschung in der Bundesrepublik. Auch dort begann man sich an Universitäten oder im Verein für Reformationsgeschichte mit Themen und Thesen der DDRFrühneuzeitforschung auseinander zu setzen, was die sozialhistorische Annäherung an die Reformation und die Relativierung der Fixierung auf Luther förderte,110 denkt man etwa an die Arbeiten von Peter Blickle, Hans-Jürgen Goertz, Bernd Moeller oder Gottfried Seebaß. Nicht nur Historiker entdeckten verbindende Elemente. Auch in der Erinnerungskultur fanden die beiden deutschen Gesellschaften seit Anfang der 1980er-Jahre zusammen.111 Zahlreiche Gedenkanlässe wie die unter der Federführung der SED veranstalteten Jubiläen zur Reformationsgeschichte 1967, 1975 und 1983 oder die nationalgeschichtlich inszenierten Gedenkstätten öffneten Schleusen der Erinnerung. Das „Erbe und Tradition“-Programm der SED, das eine gefühlsmäßige Bindung an die DDR bewirken sollte, hatte eine gegenteilige Wirkung und führte Menschen dazu, gesamtdeutsche Gefühle zu aktivieren.112 Symbolisch brachte dies das zwischen 1977 und 1989 erstellte Panorama-Bild des international anerkannten DDR-Künstlers Werner Tübke in Bad Frankenhausen zum Ausdruck. Das Bild entwarf anstelle eines prestigeträchtigen Fanals der DDR-Überlegenheit ein zeitloses Panorama der conditio humana.113

109 Leppin, Reformationsgeschichtsschreibung, 33–47. 110 Stellvertretend für die Kontaktaufnahmen zwischen Historikern aus West und Ost vgl. den Sammelband Wohlfeil (Hg.), Bauernkrieg; zur Geschichte der Kontakte und wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzungen vgl. ders., Entfremdung, 331–350. 111 In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland erhielt der Bauernkrieg als „Aufstand des gemeinen Mannes“ u. a. in den Protesten der 68er-Bewegung oder aber den Anti-Atomkraft-Demonstrationen und anderen Widerstandsaktionen der Bürger eine symbolische Bedeutung. Vgl. dazu Müller, Thomas T., Doppelte Vergangenheit, 13, 27. 112 Fleischauer, Enkel, 320–323. 113 Behrendt, Panoramabild, 121.

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Die Frage ist mit einem klaren Nein zu beantworten. Denn in der Volksrepublik Ungarn war dem Dózsa-Kult nicht die Rolle zugedacht, eine Nationalidentität, sondern vielmehr eine Identifikation der Landarmen und Bauern mit dem neuen System zu stiften. Dabei konnte die kommunistische Partei auf ein vor allem in der agrarsozialistischen und sozialdemokratischen Erinnerungskultur etabliertes Bild über Dózsa als Ahnherr der Bauern zurückgreifen. Doch Dózsa hatte in der Kádár-Ära, in der das Arbeiter- und Bauernbündnis vorgeblich vorbildlich besiegelt war, die Funktion einer politischen Leitfigur immer mehr eingebüßt. Eingeleitet wurde diese Entheroisierung durch die Geschichtswissenschaft, die nach 1956 begann, sich mit überkommenen Interpretationen der ungarischen Geschichte auseinanderzusetzen. Politischer Leitstern blieb der auf gesamtnationalem Konsens beruhende 1848er-Nationaldichter Sándor Peto˝fi, während als nationale Integrationsfigur der Staatsgründer Stephan der Heilige seine nach 1947 eingebüßte Rolle allmählich wieder einnehmen konnte. Zu diesem hatte die USAP zwar ein ebenso ambivalentes Verhältnis wie die SED zu Luther, musste ihn aber unter Druck der kollektiven Erinnerung der Mehrheit der Ungarn ebenso akzeptieren wie die SED den Wittenberger Reformator. In der DDR wurde die Reformationstradition der sozialistischen Geschichtsschreibung des wilhelminischen Deutschland nahtlos übernommen und mit ihr trat an die Stelle des säkularisierten Luther-Kultes des Kaiserreichs der Müntzer-Mythos. Müntzer konnte zwar zum Nationalhelden der DDR aufsteigen und sich als solcher bis zum Untergang des SED-Staates behaupten, doch seine sinnstiftende Funktion als Ahnherr der DDR wurde infolge der notgedrungenen Bestrebung der SED, Luther für die Traditionspflege zu vereinnahmen, konterkariert. Müntzer und Luther waren im Bauernkrieg Antipoden. Dieses Problem ließ sich von der SED, die von Anfang an auf die Omnipotenz der Reformationsgeschichte als Legitimations- und Identitätsfaktor, wenn auch als eine sozialistische Gegenerzählung, baute, nicht lösen. Und eine nachhaltige Hilfestellung dazu konnte das von der Geschichtswissenschaft entwickelte Konzept der Frühbürgerlichen Revolution nicht liefern. Das Beispiel der Bauernerhebung in der ungarischen und der DDR-Geschichtspolitik weist darauf hin, dass das Konstruieren der historischen Erinnerung und die Formierung einer Erinnerungskultur einer gesellschaftlichen Großgruppe nach Maßgabe der Politik auf Dauer nicht einmal mithilfe der Geschichtswissenschaft funktionsfähig sind.114 Dies ist nur deshalb der Fall, weil die Geschichtswissenschaft selbst aus oft miteinander konkurrierenden Deutungsgemeinschaften besteht und sich der Politik entziehen kann, sondern auch, weil 114 Jarausch, Krise, 140–162; Kovács/Seewann, Ungarn, 817–845.

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normativ-verbindliche Erinnerungen nur unter bestimmten Bedingungen zur gleichsam akzeptierten kollektiven Erinnerung werden können. Ohne einen Konsens der Mehrheit ist keine Erinnerungsgemeinschaft zu bilden. Eine spannende und nach wie vor offene Frage der Forschung ist allerdings, wie ein Konsens der Erinnerung(en) tatsächlich ausgehandelt wird. Denn Diskurse über die Vergangenheit sind immer partikular, sie entsprechen den Interessen und Ansichten von gesellschaftlichen Gruppen, die ihre Sichtweisen nur in Konkurrenz miteinander durchsetzen können.115

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Horváth, Mihály, Az 1514-diki pórlázadás, annak okai s következményei, in: Ders., Polgárosodás, liberalizmus, függetlenségi harc. Válogatott írások, hg. v. Lajos Pál, Budapest 1986, 41–63. Illés, László, Az Új Hang kritikai munkássága. (Második közlemény), in: Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 64 (1960), H. 2, 160–173. Illyés, Gyula, Dózsa György. Dráma három felvonásban, Budapest 1956. Istványi, Géza, Népies történelem, in: Magyar Szemle 37 (1939), 63–67. Jarausch, Konrad H., Die Krise der nationalen Meistererzählungen. Ein Plädoyer für plurale, interdependente Narrative, in: Ders./Sabrow, Martin (Hg.), Die historische Meistererzählung. Deutungslinien der deutschen Nationalgeschichte nach 1945, Göttingen 2002, 140–162. Jókai, Mór, Önéletírásom, http://bfl.archivportal.hu/id-1269-jokai_mor_neletirasom.htlm, letzter Zugriff am 12. 10. 2014. Junghans, Helmar, Der Wandel des Müntzerbildes in der DDR von 1951/52 bis 1989, in: Deppermann, Klaus (Hg.), Thomas Müntzer. Ein streitbarer Theologe zwischen Mystik und Revolution, Karlsruhe 1990, 55–89. Kaschuba, Wolfgang, Gedächtnislandschaften und Generationen, in: Frank, Petra/Hördler, Stefan (Hg.), Der Nationalsozialismus im Spiegel des öffentlichen Gedächtnisses, Berlin 2005, 183–186. Katona, Imre, Dózsa alakja és a parasztmozgalmak emléke a magyar néphagyományban, in: Létünk 3 (1973), H. 4, 99–110. Király, István, Ady Endre, 2 Bde., Budapest 1972. Király, Judit, Maurer Dóra munkásságának matematikai vonatkozásai, in: Ponticulus Hungaricus 12 (2008), Nr. 12, http://members.iif.hu/visontay/ponticulus/rovatok/hidverok/kiraly_maurer.html, letzter Zugriff am 12. 10. 2014. Klimó, Árpád von, Nation, Konfession, Geschichte. Zur nationalen Geschichtskultur Ungarns im europäischen Kontext (1860–1948), München 2003. Konrád, György, Wir schauspielern alle in ein und demselben Stück. Der ungarische Weg, in: Futaky, István (Hg.), Ungarn – ein kommunistisches Wunderland? Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, 9–32. Körner, Éva, Gyula Derkovits. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der ungarischen Kunst in der Zeit zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen, Budapest 1974. Kovács, Éva/Seewann, Gerhard, Ungarn. Der Kampf um das Gedächtnis, in: Flacke, Monika (Hg.), Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen, 2 Bde., Mainz 2004, hier Bd. 1, 816–845. Kulin, Ferenc, Hódítatlan szellem. Dózsa György és a parasztháború reformkori értékeléséro˝l, Budapest 1982. – Táncsics Mihály Dózsa-képe, in: Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 80 (1976), H. 2, 151– 164. Lackó, Miklós, A megrendíto˝ rögeszme. Illyés Gyula két háború közötti tanulmányai, in: Ders., Sziget és külvilág, Budapest 1996, 79–98. – Molnár Erik és a 60-as évek történész-vitája, in: Századok 142 (2008), 1483–1536. Leers, Johann von, Der große deutsche Bauernkrieg – Wer hatte recht? in: Odal. Monatsschrift für Blut und Boden 3 (1934), H. 3, 162–171. Lehmann, Hartmut, Das marxistische Lutherbild von Engels bis Honecker, in: Medick, Hans/Schmidt, Peer (Hg.), Luther zwischen den Kulturen, Göttingen 2004, 500–514.

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Index

absolution 59, 202, 234 f, 237 f Adamcˇek, Josip 258, 261, 265, 268 Agazzano 94 f, 97, 99, 102 f, 108 Anabaptism 122–124 Ancona 173 Anguissola, Bernardo 100 Anguissola, family 90–92, 104, 107, 112 Anguiossola, Antonio, 93 Anguiossola, Gian Galeazzo 94 f, 97, 99, 107 Anguissola, Giuliano 100 Anguissola, Martino 88, 93–97, 99–101, 104, 109 f Anguissola, Onofrio, Count 83, 92–94, 97, 99, 103, 104, 108 Annales 92, 94–97, 127, 143, 241 f, 293 annual fair 68 Antoljak, Stjepan 254 f, 258 Antonio da Ripalta 92, 95–97 Apologia regis Wladislai 184 apostate 25, 139 f, 143 Apostolic Penitentiary 202 f Arad 212, 214 Arcelli, Zanotto 97, 100, 108 archilutteranus 158 aristocracy 139–141, 175, 181, 215 armalis 74 Artikel der Wiedertäufer 122 Aufstand der Nu-pieds 50 Augsburg 15, 122 f, 222 Augustinus 177 f, 184 Auspitz (Hustopecˇe) 125, 127, 130 f Austerlitzer Brüder 124 f, 131 Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna) 124 f, 130 f Austria 20, 178, 213, 236, 241, 292

autokephaly 53 autonomy 111 Bakócz, Tamás, Cardinal 138, 172–175, 177, 207, 232–241 Bán, Imre 142 ban of Slavonia 213 Barátmajor 71 Barbel, János 195 Barta, Gábor 59, 137–139, 141, 175, 201 f, 212, 224 f, 230, 235, 243, 341 Bartfeld (Bardejov, Bártfa) 153 f, 191 Basel 31, 51, 266 Báthory, Gábor (Prince of Transylvania) 197 Báthory, István (Prince of Transylvania, King of Poland) 230 f, 237, 245 Báthory, Zsigmond 192 Batthyány, Ferenc, Hungarian magnate 70 f Battle of Frogs and Mice/ Batrachomyomachia 171, 177 f Battle of Gubacs 225 Battle of Mohács 33, 145, 163, 216, 255, 324, 333, 341 Battle of White Mountain 124 Bauernkrieg von 1514 see Dózsa Revolt Bauernkrieg von 1525 see German Peasants’ War Bayerischer Bauernkrieg von 1705 42, 50, 52 Bazin (Bösing; Pesinok, in Slovakia) 66 f, 75 Beatrix of Aragon, Queen of Hungary 184

354 Bebek, Franz 156 Bellér, Béla 224, 241, 324, 333 Bél, Mátyás 14, 240 f Benedek of Nagyhatvan, (priest) 206 Benedek of Pellérd, (priest) 212 f Berger, Illés /Berger, Elias 193, 198 Beriszló, Péter (bishop) 213, 236 Beroaldo, Filippo Sr. 185 Bethlen, Gábor, Prince of Transylvania 192, 198 Bic´anic´, Rudolf 258 Bihar (Biharia) 75, 206–208, 213 f Black Death 84 Bobbio 91, 104 Bocatius, Ioannes/Johannes 191–193, 195–199 Bocskai, István 33, 78, 191, 197, 199 f Bocskai uprising 66 f Bogovic´, Mirko 255 Bonfini, Antonio 236 f Bornemisza, János 173, 175 Bornemisza, Miklós 159 Bracciolini, Poggio 226 Brandenburg 51 Brandenburg, Albrecht von 150 Brandenburg, Georg von 172 Brandolini, Tiberto 102 f Brod (Uherský Brod) 192 Brüdergeld 152 Bruderschaft Corpus Christi 151 Brügge 44 Bruni, Leonardo 226 Bruto, Giovanni Michele 230 Brutus, Johannes Michael 223–225, 230– 232, 234 f, 237 f, 241 Buda (Ofen) 60, 65, 148, 174, 176, 184, 241 f Bundschuh 28, 147, 149–151, 156, 161, 164 Burda von Schweinitz, David 130 burgher 72, 77, 109 Cagnola, Giovan Pietro 98–100, 106 cahiers de doléances 46 Calabria 87, 141, 178 Calvinist 68, 238 Calvin, Jean 47, 126

Index

Canimich, Kelemen (priest) 201, 205, 213 capitano del divieto 92 f, 95, 101 Carnival of Udine 85 Carteggio sforzesco 88 Castile 47 Catholic 29, 31, 70, 78, 203 f, 215, 235, 237, 239 f, 243 Cegléd 176, 242, 301, 332, 334, 341 Cegléd speech 138, 224 f, 243 Celtis, Conrad 177 f Cesarini, Giuliano 236 Champagne 44 Charles V / Kaiser Karl V, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor, Karl I in Spanien, 47 f, 130 f, 199 Chomedey, Jérôme 227 Christianity / Christentum 43, 47, 339 Christi-Leib-Bruderschaft 151 churbayerische Libertät 42 clientele 88 f Codro, Antonio Urceo 185 Cohn, Norman 21, 23, 41, 84, 86 f, 142 collective violence 29, 201, 203, 210, 213 Colleoni, Bartolomeo 104 common law 46 common man, see also Gemeiner Mann 26 f, 83 commune 45, 95 communitas 44 condominium 63 condottiere 102, 332 Coniuratio Catilinae 183, 226, 229–234 conspiratio 46, 176, 183 contado 84, 88, 90, 98, 109 cortes 47 Cortesi, Alessandro / Cortesius, Alexander 192, 195, 199 Count Salm 66 Cremona 90 f crimen laesae maiestatis 46 Croatian Party of Rights 256 Croatian Peasant Party 256, 258 Croatian–Slavonian Kingdom 269 crusade 21, 25, 27, 139–142, 173, 202, 205– 209, 211 f, 224 f, 234 f, 237–240, 243

Index

Csanád (Cenad, Romania) 139, 207, 211 f, 214, 225 Császár, Péter 176, 216, 227 ˇ ulinovic´, Ferdo 257 C Cureus, Joachim 127 Cybeleius, Valentinus 185 Czechoslovakia 137 da Capestrano, Giovanni 143 da Compiano, Giovanni Albertuzzi 101 Dal Verme, Pietro 90 f, 104, 108 Dänemark/Denmark 52 Deák, István 206 Debrecen (Debreczin) 13, 67–69, 74, 142, 162, 239, 303 della Marca, Giacomo 143 Deutschendorf (Poprad) 157 di Belgioioso, Barbiano 191 Diet of Worms 179 Dobrafalva 70 domination 27, 63, 65, 67, 76 f, 172, 231, 233, 254 Dominicans 213 Donnersmarkt (Szepescsütörtökhely, Spisˇský Sˇtvrtok) 196 Dózsa, György 15–17, 25 f, 29, 31–34, 41, 49, 59, 78, 137–144, 172–177, 179–182, 195, 199 f, 202, 206, 208 f, 211 f, 214–217, 223–234, 237, 241–243, 251 f, 255, 261– 263, 265, 269–274, 281–286, 301–310, 323–342, 345 Dózsa revolt/Dózsa uprising/Dózsa-Aufstand/Bauernkrig von 1514 26–28, 30, 47, 59, 140, 143, 171, 201, 223, 226–228, 234 f, 239 f, 243, 251, 281–286, 326–240 Duchy of Milan 83 f, 87–89, 92, 101, 111 ecclesia militans 143 Eger, Chapter of 74 Eger (Erlau), town 161, 164, 213, 215 enclosures 51 English peasant uprising of 1381/der englische Bauernkrieg von 1381 44 Ennius 193 ennoblement 73 f Eperies (Eperjes, Presˇov) 191

355 Erasmus, Desiderius 181–184, 186, 199 Erzstift Mainz 48 Esterházy, Miklós, Count, Hungarian aristocrat, Palatine 66, 215 f états généraux 46 Etienne, Marcel 44 Evangelic/ Reformation Lutherscher Observanz/secte lutherienne 47 f Fekete Nagy, Antal 31, 59 f, 138 f, 201, 206, 212, 224 f, 230, 235, 243, 341 Ferdinand I, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary 66, 73, 130 f, 157, 161, 291 Festkultur 204 Fischer, Andreas 155 f, 164 Florence 84–87, 89 f, 102, 226 f Fogliani, Corrado, Governor 92, 94–100, 102 f, 106, 108–111 Fölk (Velˇká) 157, 159 food riot 51 Forgách, Zsigmond 192, 197 f Franciscan observance 139, 143 Franciscan Reformation 140, 142 Franconia/Franken 48, 123 Frankfordensis, Bartholomeaus 184 Frederick III, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor 89 Friuli 85 gabelle, see also salt tax 50, 105 Gaismair, Michael 13, 15 f, 32, 124, 289, 291–295, 297 Gaj, Ljudevit 252, 256 Gemeinde Gottes in Mähren 124–126, 131 Gemeiner Mann see also common man 21, 111, 258 Gemeinschaft der Hutterischen Brüder 125 General Court 54 Gent 44, 108 gentiluomini 84, 86, 88 f, 96, 101 f, 106–108 Georgenberg (Spisˇská Sobota) 157 Georg von Brandenburg 172 Geréb, László 176, 207, 223 Gerendi Miklós, royal secretary 73

356 German Peasants’ War/ Bauernkrieg von 1525 25, 27, 29, 47 f, 53, 121–123, 128, 195, 323–326, 331, 334, 342–345 Ghibelline 90, 94 Gömör County 74 Gönc 71 Gonzaga, Ludovico II, Marquis of Mantua 88, 93–97, 99–101, 104, 109 f, 112 Gornja Stubica 259 Gragnano 100, 108 Gregoric´, Ilija 261, 266, 274 Grgec, Petar 256 group memories 255 Grundherrshaft 19, 24, 124, 127, 129 Gubec, Ambroz 216, 251–263, 265–274 Gubec, Matija 29, 216, 251–263, 265–274 Guelf 90, 94 Gutsherrschaft system 59, 61 Gyo˝r 212 György of Bodony (friar) 211 f Gyula 137, 139, 235, 303 f, 307 f, 331–333, 335, 338 Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia, Romania) 213 Habdelic´, Juraj 253 f Habsburg dynasty 78 Hain, Caspar 155–157, 159 hajdú 78, 211 Halas 211 f Haushaben/Bruderhöfen 125 Hausnotdurft 43, 109 Heltai, Gáspár 237 Henckel von Donnersmarck, Lazarus 196 Herceg, Rudolf 256 Hergot, Hans 128 heroism 73, 256 Herrenhof 45 Herrschaft 19, 23 f, 34, 43, 51, 61–63, 66, 86, 107, 122 f, 126, 129, 157, 160, 335 f historiography 14, 19, 30, 84 f, 223–226, 237, 239, 243, 251 f, 254 f, 257, 259–262, 268, 273, 303 history of the body 252 Hofverband 45 Holy Roman Empire/Heilisches Römisches Reich 20, 42

Index

Homer 171, 177 f, 184, 194, 199 Horváth von Lomnitz, Johannes 157 Hradschin, Prager 192 Hubmaier, Balthasar 122 f Humanism 12–14, 236 Hungarian Crown 74 Hungarian Royal Chancery 240 Hus, John 41 Hut, Hans 123 f, 128, 130 Hutterer 125–131 Hutterite 28, 124 f, 128 Hutter, Jakob 125, 127, 131 Iglau ( Jihlava, Tschechien) 147–151, 155, 191 Île-de-France 44 Illésházy, István 66 f Illyrian Party 255 Ilosvai Selymes, Péter 68 Independent State of Croatia 257 infidelis 206 f inheritance 64, 92, 263 Iovius, Paulus 224 f, 228–231, 234 f Istvánffy, Miklós 215 f, 224 f, 232–235, 237, 239–242, 252 f, 259–262, 268, 273 Italic League 86 Italy 13, 20 f, 23, 84–87, 227 f, 236, 239 ius statuendi 54 Jacquerie 44 f Jankovits, László 171, 228 Jesuit 143, 239–241, 243, 253 f Jirousˇek, Antun 256 Joachim of Fiore 141 John of Anjou 102, 104 Judge 62, 65, 67 f, 182, 204 Julius II, Pope 173 Junta General/ Santa Communidad in Kastilien 47 juridification 86 just war 205, 209 Kardos, Tibor 140 Karlstadt-Bodenstein, Andreas 161 Karpfen (Korpona, Krupina) 191 Kascach, Dénes 207

Index

Katona, István 242 f, 325, 333 Kendi, István 197 Kétsoprony 212 Kett, Robert 51, 292, 304 Kett’s Rebellion 51 Keulenkrieg 50 Khlesl, Melchior, Cardinal 198 Kingdom of Naples 85, 87 King’s Personal Presence Court 66 Klaic´, Nada 255, 259, 261–263, 268, 274 Klaic´, Vjekoslav 254 f, 261–263, 268, 274 Klaniczay, Tibor 26, 59, 142 f, 175 f, 207 Knin 241 Kommunalismus/communalism 11, 42, 45, 258 Koppándi, Gergely 208 f, 213 f Koren, Snjezˇana 257–259 Krakow/Krakau 154, 156, 161 Krásna Hôrka 156 Krcˇelic´, Baltazar Adam 253, 265 Kremnitz (Kremnica, Körmöcbánya) 151, 191 Krusith, János 66 Kukuljevic´ Sakcinski, Ivan 254, 256, 263 laboratores 45 Ladislaus V Postumus, of Hungary 184 Landi, Manfredo 88, 90, 94, 97, 100, 103, 107 f land protest 51 Landtag 48, 127, 130, 150, 191, 197 f Laskai, Osvát 140 Lausitz 191 Laws, 1514 46, 54, 60 f, 63 f, 66, 75, 238, 254 Lay of Winchester 1285 46 Leibeigenschaft 23, 46, 48 f, 53, 121 Leopold I, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor 68, 74 Leo X, Pope 49, 60, 173, 201, 206, 234–237, 241 Leudischit, Georg 156–164 Leutschau (Levocˇa) 155–157, 159 f libertas 46, 63 libertas Siciliae 42 Liebfrauenbruderschaft 151 Lippa 138

357 Lipsius, Justus 227 Ljubic´, Sˇime 254 Lombardy 26, 86 f, 107 London 27, 44, 77, 85, 142, 201, 209, 254, 260 Lórántffy, Zsuzsanna 79 Loretto 173 Lo˝rinc, priest 70, 139, 225, 232, 242, 341 Louis II of Hungary/Ludwig II, Jagiellon 148 f, 172 Lower House, of the National Diet, Hungary 75 Lubló (Lˇubovniansky hrad, Slovakia) 65 Lucan 171, 178 f, 181 Luther, Martin 11, 41, 47 f, 52, 126, 147 f, 150, 179 f, 215, 324, 326, 342–345 Macˇek, Vladko 256 Macerato 92, 104 Machiavelli, Niccolò 227 Magister Andreas, chaplain of Ferdinand I 73 Mähren 121, 123–125, 127, 129, 148–150, 156 Makkai, László 76 f, 141, 216 Maletta, Francesco 92–94, 97–104, 106– 108 manorial court 72, 75 manorial survey 62 f, 66, 69–71, 75 manorial tax 67 Manutius, Aldus 185 Marchese da Varese 98, 106 Maria, Filippo 84, 86, 89–93, 95 f, 99, 103– 106, 108, 110, 195, 229, 337 market privileges 68 Márki, Sándor 59, 137, 206, 224, 243, 328, 330, 341 Marquis of Mantua 88, 98, 100 Márton, member of the magistrate of Szenc 13, 32 f, 65, 160, 199, 255, 281 martyrdom 179, 203, 216, 252, 256, 273 Massaniello Uprising/Massinello Aufstand 50 Matthias II, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor, König von Ungarn 193, 195, 198 Matthias I of Hungary, Hunyadi 195

358 Matthiaskult 192 Maximilian I, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor 46, 89, 178 Mazˇuranic´, Ivan 256, 264 Mecklenburg 51 Melius Juhász, Péter 68 Memminger Bundesordnung 48 memory war 30, 201, 204 f, 208, 210, 212– 214 Mesic´, Matija 254 mezzadria 85 Miklós of Bihar 206 f, 213 Milan 83 f, 86–89, 91 f, 94, 97–102, 104 f, 107, 109, 111, 257 ministerium ecclesiasticum 151 Moller, Georg 156–161 Montechiaro 92, 94 f, 97, 99 Morroni, Tommaso 92–94, 97 f, 100–103, 106 f Mühlenbacher Pakt 161 Mühlenbach (Mlynica) 156–161 Mühlhausen 123, 147, 334 Müntzer, Thomas 13, 29, 32 f, 41, 122 f, 128, 323–328, 330 f, 333–335, 337, 342– 345 Museum of Peasant Revolts 259 Mussato, Albertino 226 mythmaking 210 Nadányi, János 238 f Nagylak 138, 212 Narni 173 National Diet, in Hungary 205, 211 Neisse 186 Németújvár (Güssing) 70, 213 Neusohl (Banská Bystrica) 151 Nicelli 91, 108 Nikolsburg 129, 148, 155 Norfolk 51 Northern Italy 20, 83, 87 f Norwich 51 Nürnberg 122, 128, 130, 253 oath of fidelity 54 Olmütz 129, 148 f, 155, 186 Oroz, Tomislav 259 f

Index

Ottoman Empire 78 Ottomans 25, 69, 78, 202, 205 f, 234, 236, 241 f, 255 Padua 184, 226, 293 Pálffy, Katalin 66 f, 324 Pallavicini 88, 91 Paris 20, 28, 44, 92, 105, 143, 185, 203, 306 Parma 12, 84, 88–91, 93, 98, 108 f patria 87, 108, 208, 229, 232 f, 339 Pauschner, Georg 157 Pavia 91, 98 Pázmány, Péter, Cardinal 238 Pazzi conspiracy 226 Peace of Westphalia 225 peasant uprising 9, 21, 32, 59, 83, 87, 172, 251, 261, 301, 306 Pécs 17, 69, 185, 212, 232, 310 Pellizzari, Giacomino / Peloia 83 Perner, Christoph 156 perpetual serfdom 59, 61 Personenverbandsstaat 89 Petho˝, Gergely de Gerse 239 f Petrovics, Péter 230 Pfeiffer, Heinrich 123 Pharsalia 171, 178 f, 181 Philipp, Melanchthon 92, 143, 260 Piacentino 84, 87, 91, 98, 103, 108 f, 111 Piacenza, peasant uprising (1462) 21, 23, 26, 83 f, 87 f, 90–95, 97–104, 106–108, 110–112 Piccinino, Giacomo 102, 104 Piedmont 85, 87 Pio, Giovanni Battista 185 Piso, Jacobus, humanist 69 Plautus 193 f podestà 91, 95, 97, 101 f, 109 pogrom 180 Poland 230, 235 Pommern 51 Ponte dell’Olio 98 popolo minuto 99, 109 Pöstyéni, Gergely 206 Prague/Prag 65, 144, 148, 150, 180, 191– 194 Pray, György 172, 241–243, 273

Index

Predavec, Josip 256 Preßburg (Pozsony, Bratislava) 193 Preußen 24, 150 f Prima communitas Hierosolymitana/Jerusalemer Urgemeinde 129 Principality of Transylvania 78 Prinzip der Gütergemeinschaft 128 Privileg der Normandie von 1315 51 Protestantism 26, 141 f Protokollbuch der Zipser Fraternität/Matricula Molleriana 156–161, 164 public execution 27, 29, 31, 209, 215–217, 251, 269 public history 214 Puritanism 141 Radic´, Stjepan 251, 256 Rákóczi family 78 Rákóczi, György I, Prince of Transylvania 79, 302, 325, 329, 333, 335–337 Rákosi regime 223, 303 Rákosmezo˝ 191 Ransanus, Petrus 236 f Rattkay, Juraj 253, 268 Rechtsgewohnheit 50 Reeves, Marjorie 141 Reformation 9, 11–13, 26 f, 29, 47, 49, 68, 70, 141 f, 147, 149, 153, 156 f, 159, 162 f, 238, 292, 324, 331, 343 f Reichstag 49, 52 Renaissance 12, 30, 85 f, 89–91, 141 f, 185, 202, 226 f Révay, Péter 237 f revolt 9, 13, 16, 20 f, 23–34, 39, 41–46, 49– 54, 59 f, 78, 83–88, 91, 95, 103, 105, 107, 110, 137, 139–141, 143 f, 169, 172 f, 183, 201 f, 204–208, 210–217, 223–226, 228, 232, 234 f, 237–239, 241, 249, 251, 257, 264 f, 274, 283, 292, 301 f, 305–308, 326 revolution 11, 21, 31, 33, 41 f, 46–48, 59, 85, 121, 140 f, 143, 203, 256–259, 264, 284, 289 f, 292, 295, 301–303, 305, 308, 324– 328, 331, 334, 337, 342–345 Ritter Vitezovic´, Pavao 253 River Po 90 f Roberti, Luchino, Captain 101

359 robot 22, 63, 65, 70, 77 Rome 12, 84 f, 87–89, 91, 100, 102 f, 106, 139, 172 f, 178, 184, 202 f, 209, 213, 225, 227, 234, 238, 241 Romsics, Ignác 225, 262, 324 Rossi 88, 107 Royal Chamber 66 f Royal Chancellery 72, 74 royal free city 66, 69 Rudolph II, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary 66 rumore 93, 106 rusticana plebs 60 Sallustius, Crispus Gaius 176, 183, 227– 229, 231, 233 salt tax 96 f, 100–103, 108 Sárospatak 71, 139 Savoy 54, 85 Schemnitz (Banská Sˇtiavnica, Selmecbánya) 151, 191 Schleitheimer Artikel 124 Schmalkaldischer Bund 131 Schneeweiß, Simon 150 Schustel, Wolfgang 153 f, 163 Schwedler (Sˇvedlár) 155 f Schweinitz (Trhové Sviny in Südböhmen) 130 Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft 44 Scotti, Alberto 84, 90, 94, 97, 100 f, 103, 107 f second serfdom 19, 22, 61 seigneurial land 73 seigniorial domination 60, 64 Senj 173 Sˇenoa, August 251, 255 Serédy, Gáspár 66 servitus 46 Sforza, Francesco 84, 87–89, 92–95, 97– 104, 106–110 Sicily 42 Sigismund of Luxemburg, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary 65, 68 Sˇisˇic´, Ferdo 253 f, 262 f, 268, 273 Sizilianische Vesper/Sicilian vesper 42, 44 Slavonia 211 f, 239, 252, 254, 256, 264 f, 269

360 Smicˇiklas, Tadija 254 f, 263 Sokovich, András, of Obedszentkereszt (Krizˇ) 211 f Somorja 69 f Spanien/Spain 20, 41, 52, 289, 295 Speratus, Paulus 147–151, 162–164 Spervogel, Conrad 155 f spiritualism 28, 122 Starcˇevic´, Ante 256 stare pravice 256 Stauromachia 15, 32, 171–179, 181–184, 207 f, 227, 230, 241, 263 Steuerverweigerung 126, 130 f steward 77, 206 Stibor of Stiboricz, Voivode 64, 66 Straßburg 131 Stubica 253 Sturla, Valle 103 Südschwarzwald 123 Sultan 78, 130, 194, 236 Sweden 42 Szapolyai, János 173, 206, 215, 225, 230, 234, 237, 239, 241, 325, 333 Szatmári, György (bishop) 174, 185 Székely, György 140, 195, 199, 202, 207, 212, 216, 223–225, 235, 262, 310, 337 Szenc (Senec, in Slovakia) 64–66, 69 Szentgyörgy (Sankt Georgen; Svätý Jur, in Slovakia) 66 f, 75 Szentiványi, Márton 240 Szentmárton 73 Szerémi, György 206, 216, 230, 235 Szikszó 139 Szörényi, László 14, 33, 171, 177, 191, 193, 199, 228 Szu˝cs, Jeno˝ 25–27, 32, 59, 137–144, 202, 206, 211, 214, 224, 228, 237, 333, 339 f Tamás, the judge of Szenc 65, 74, 138, 172 f, 199, 202, 207, 232, 234, 236, 238 f, 242 Täufertum 121–124, 131 Taurinus, Stephanus (Stieröxel) 15, 30, 32, 171–179, 181–184, 186, 207–209, 213, 223 f, 227 f, 230, 232, 241, 285 tax collector 27, 101

Index

Telegdi, János 225 Temesvári, Pelbárt 140 Temesvár (Timis¸oara, Romania) 225, 229 f, 233, 240 f, 243, 307, 337 tenant peasant 68, 72, 74 f Teszelszky, Kees 193, 199 the Netherlands 238 The Praise of Folly 182, 184 Thirty Years’ War 79, 142, 204 three-field farming 70 Thurzó, Elek 73, 158, 186, 197 Thurzó, György Palatine, 73, 158, 186, 193, 197 Thurzó, Johannes 73, 158, 174, 186, 197 Timon, Sámuel 240 Tiroler Bauernkrieg 124, 289–290, 292 Tito, Josip Broz 257 Tomori, Pál 208, 213 Toppertz (Toporec) 157, 159 Torda 213 Torda von Gyalu, Zsigmond 195 Tóth, Gergely 14, 30–32, 137, 199, 209 f, 216, 223, 225, 237 f, 240 f, 255 trained memory 260 Transdanubia 70 Transylvania 78 f, 172 f, 177, 179, 206–209, 213, 225, 230, 237 Tubero, Ludovicus 223 f, 228, 230–232, 235 f, 238, 242 Tumulto dei Ciompi 85 Túrkevei, Ambrus 139 Tuscany 85 f tyranny 42, 212 Újlaky, Lo˝rinc, Prince 70 universitates 44, 46, 90 Upper House, of the National Diet, Hungary 75 Upper Hungary 29 Vadianus, Joachim 178 Várad (Oradea, Romania) 139, 206, 212 Várdai, Ferenc (bishop) 172 f, 207, 213 Várna 236 Vasvár 213 Veano 94 f, 97

Index

Veggiola 94 Verantius, Antonius, bishop 161 f Verrechtlichung 86 Vetzschau 191 Villikation 45 Vincenzo Della Scalona 88 Visconti 84, 88 f, 92 f, 95 f, 99, 103–105, 108, 110 Vladislaus I of Hungary, Jagiellon 236 Vladislaus II of Hungary, Jagiellon 60, 184, 241–243 volonté générale 54 von Dietrichstein, Franz 129, 131 Vrancˇic´, Anton / Verancsics, Antal 161, 231, 254 Wagner, Carolus 242 Waldshut 123 Weikhard, Johan von Valvasor 253 Werbo˝czy, István, Palatine 152, 263–265

361 Wien 15 f, 148, 150, 155, 178, 193, 196–199, 289–292, 294 Wolconz, Imre 210, 212 Württemberg 48, 325 Würzburg 148, 214 Zagorje region 257 Zagreb 13, 210, 251–259, 261–265, 268 Zambarlani 95 Zeben (Sabinov) 155 f Zemplén County 72 Zimmermann, Wilhelm 20, 121, 228, 234, 325–327, 330 Zips 155–157, 159–161, 196 Zsámboky (Sambucus) János 236–238 Zürcher proto-täuferischer Kreis 123 Zwingli, Huldrich 42, 47, 123, 147 Zwölf Artikel der oberschwäbischen Bauern 48