Rebels and Turcophiles? The Hungarian Protestant Clergy's Resistance against the Habsburg Counter Reformation

Abstract

In March 1674, Hungary's Lutheran and Calvinist clergy stood collectively accused of fomenting rebellion against the Habsburgs and seeking protection from the Ottomans. A widely publicized tribunal in Pozsony (Bratislava, Pressburg) resulted in systematic expulsions, incarcerations, and the sale of forty-two pastors as galley slaves. A voluminous body of historiography has been dedicated to the victims of the tribunal and their tribulations. It is commonly assumed that the accusations against the Protestant clergy were fabricated. This article shifts the focus from martyrologies, sermons, and narratives written after the year 1674 to eyewitness accounts in inquisitorial records, letters, petitions, official reports, and military dispatches from the years leading up to the Pozsony Tribunal. These unstudied testimonies in the Hungarian and Austrian archives reveal that a significant number of pastors participated in popular resistance and revolt against a brutal Habsburg Counter Reformation. Many put their hopes in the Ottomans whom they considered protectors against the destruction of their religion. These little-known developments shed light on important larger historical realities that have been eclipsed by Habsburg and Central European historians, namely, Hungarian popular hopes for liberation from the Habsburgs by the Ottomans which culminated in two major revolts in 1670 and 1672.

This article revisits a topic that has been given significant attention by Hungarian, Slovak, Austrian, and other scholars for more than 200 years: the mass expulsion of the Protestant clergy from Habsburg Hungary after the infamous Pozsony (Bratislava, Pressburg)¹ Tribunal in March 1674. Previously, the focus has been almost completely on the tragic stories of the expelled pastors, particularly those who were sold as galley slaves in the Mediterranean.² Departing from this voluminous body of work I examine the veracity of the Tribunal's two key accusations that the pastors “were the primary authors and mobilizers of rebellion, . . . [and] happier to subjugate themselves to Turkish authority than to remain under the authority of His Majesty.”³ Were these accusations indeed entirely fabricated as traditional studies have uniformly insisted? Or were they based on pastors' actual behavior? To explore these questions, I reconstruct the pastors' roles in popular resistance against the violent Habsburg Counter Reformation during the years preceding the 1674 trial. This resistance culminated in major revolts that took place against the backdrop of growing Habsburg fears that an Ottoman invasion was imminent. The combination of Habsburg Turcophobia and Hungarian revolt gave rise to the Vienna court's conviction that Protestant preachers were advocating the secession of Habsburg Hungary to the Ottoman Empire. Was this actually true or was it the figment of a paranoic Habsburg imagination?

The 1674 Pozsony Tribunal represented the high point of the violent Counter Reformation in Hungary. Since the early 1600s Hungarian Catholic bishops and magnates had attempted to restore the Catholic faith. They faced a realm in which the Protestant Reformation had been overwhelmingly successful; most German and Slovak speakers had embraced the Lutheran faith while a large majority of ethnic Hungarians⁴ had become Calvinists. Violence was a distinctive feature of recatholicization from the very beginning. Powerful lords such as the Erdődys, Batthyánys, Esterházys, and Nádasdys expelled pastors from their estates and forced peasants to convert. Successes were largely limited to the western parts of the Hungarian kingdom but even here popular resistance was seething. Priests were beaten, processions attacked, holy images defaced, and Catholic holidays ignored. Peasants went to confession only when threatened with brute force.⁵ The pressure on local Protestant communities intensified in the 1660s when the Habsburg court got involved and ordered troops to assist the Catholic clergy in the confiscation of churches and the expulsion of Protestant clergy. During the week of Pentecost 1669, for example, 300 Habsburg soldiers occupied the main Lutheran church of the important mining town of Selmecbánya (Schemnitz, Banská Štiavnica). More than 2,000 miners and artisans armed themselves to defend their church, but they could achieve very little against the Habsburg army.⁶

The Habsburg court's readiness to provide military support to the Hungarian Counter Reformation was largely inspired by the unprecedented expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Hungary. The conquest of Várad (Varat, Wardein, Oradea) (1660) and Újvár (Uyvar, Neuhäusel, Nové Zámky) (1663), two linchpins of Hungarian border defense, allowed Ottoman pashas to impose their authority on countless villages and towns in what until then had been the heartlands of Habsburg Hungary. By the early 1670s the pasha of Uyvar collected tribute from villages near the Moravian and Austrian borders.⁷ Emperor Leopold I and top Viennese courtiers began to echo the fears of Hungarian bishops that Hungary's still largely Protestant population could not be trusted. In 1671, for example, the Secret Council (Geheimer Rat), the Habsburg emperor's exclusive advisory body, discussed a memorandum that collectively denounced Hungarian Protestants as dangerous fifth columnists: “Hungary will never be quiet, as long as the heresy will be tolerated . . . . If the Turk invades and overtakes (irruat et superveniat) [Hungary] it is likely that all the heretics will join him.” According to the Swedish Ambassador Esaias Pufendorf the Vienna court became convinced that “the emperor would never be the real master of the Kingdom [of Hungary]” unless Protestantism was suppressed.⁸ Clearly, fears of the Ottoman Turks and Hungarian Protestants were running high in the minds of the Hungarian and Viennese powerbrokers who endorsed and organized the Pozsony Tribunal. It is against this backdrop that the unprecedented attempt to expel the entire Protestant clergy from Hungary must be seen.

The historiography on the Protestant clergy's tragic fate is voluminous. Lutheran and Calvinist historians have presented the expulsion as an arbitrary act of violence by the Habsburg authorities. The charges raised at the trials are seen without exception as fabrications and political devices to eliminate Protestantism from Hungary. The martyrdom of the galley slaves has assumed outsized proportions in this confessional scholarship.⁹ In addition to this dominant approach scholars have focused on the expelled Hungarian clergy's lives in the European diaspora: Eva Kowalská, for example, has reconstructed the fate of the exiled pastors in the Lutheran territories of Germany. Similarly, László Bujtás has focused on Dutch sources to reconstruct the liberation of the galley slaves and their subsequent lives in the Netherlands.¹⁰ These studies continue a long-standing tradition of scholarship that focused on the writings of the exiles (Exulantenliteratur).¹¹ These writings created a powerful narrative about the hardships the clergy faced during trial, incarceration, galley slavery, and foreign exile. The plight of the Hungarian pastors also attracted much attention in the international Protestant community and left substantial traces in pamphlets and booklets that echoed the sentiments of the trials' principal victims.¹² It is important to note that these literary canons originated during the years following the 1674 trial. They were typically polemical manifestoes against the Habsburg court and the Catholic Church lamenting the catastrophe of Hungarian Protestantism.

A few historians have looked at the trial itself. László Benczédi and Joseph Maurer, for example, explored the political decisions that led to the summons, arrest, and incarceration of the Protestant clergy. In particular, they explored the agendas of the Vienna court and the Hungarian Catholic hierarchy, concluding that the eradication of Protestantism was their top priority. What happened in Bohemia after White Mountain (1620) was to be repeated in Hungary.¹³ In a similar vein, Katalin Péter elucidated the manipulative and propagandistic aspects of the trial. Following in Péter's footsteps Katalin S. Varga established that the text of the proceedings was permeated by anti-Protestant literary cliches and stereotypes. Varga's analysis is pioneering in the sense that it forces us to look very carefully at the evidence presented at the trial.¹⁴ But was this evidence in fact entirely fabricated, as she suggests, or did it relate to actual incidents that can be verified with reliable historical evidence?

Unfortunately, writings by Protestant clergy from the pivotal years before the 1674 trial are extremely scarce. I have found only two autobiographical accounts by Lutheran pastors who lived through the popular revolts of the early 1670s. While the authors hide their own participation in the revolts, they reveal a lot about the traumatization of their communities by the violent Counter Reformation.¹⁵ But sermons, letters, pamphlets, and diaries by pastors who participated in the revolts have apparently not survived. That such texts were written can be inferred from the proceedings of the Pozsony Tribunal.¹⁶ For example, the prosecutors emphasized the importance of a miscellany entitled Triumphant Weapon (Győzedelmeskedő fegyver) which survived in one single manuscript copy until 1906 but has since disappeared. Tibor Fabiny, who searched Hungarian manuscript collections, assumed that it was destroyed. Triumphant Weapon contained a collection of prayers and sermons by pastors who joined a rebel army that fought and defeated Habsburg troops during the 1672 revolt. These prayers and sermons praised the armed fight against the Habsburgs and likely endorsed rebel efforts to enlist Ottoman assistance. No historian has ever studied it.¹⁷

To gain first-hand insights into the actions of the Protestant clergy one must turn to the Hungarian and Austrian archives. Particularly valuable are the in-depth investigations conducted by the Habsburg authorities during the years preceding the 1674 trial. These investigations, which have been ignored by scholarship, commenced after a first major anti-Habsburg revolt in April 1670. They reached a culmination point after a second even larger revolt that began in September 1672 and led to the temporary collapse of Habsburg power in the eastern parts of Royal Hungary. Only the dispatch of fresh troops from Bohemia, Silesia, and the German principalities allowed the Habsburg court to restore order in January 1673.¹⁸ During the next two years Habsburg investigators interrogated thousands of witnesses. Their testimonies reveal that popular outrage about the persecution of the Protestant clergy was the principal trigger of revolt. There is also substantial evidence that Lutheran and Calvinist pastors participated.¹⁹

The veracity of these inquisitorial records is corroborated by local reports, petitions, and letters in the archives of the Zipser Kammer and the Aulic War Council.²⁰ It is further suggested by the ways in which testimonies were gathered. Most importantly, the investigators made no efforts to coerce witnesses or use torture, and selected witnesses randomly. Witnesses included participants, bystanders, as well as victims of the revolt. It is interesting that participants typically spoke their minds openly without any apparent fear. The investigators' letters to the Zipser Kammer provide an explanation: they worked under difficult circumstances as they faced popular animosity and even violence. In Bártfa (Bartfeld, Bardejov), for example, Lutheran students attacked the investigators' coachman with stones and broke his skull. Even though the officials were under the protection of the occupying Habsburg army, they did not feel safe and were eager to leave the inhospitable places they visited as soon as possible. This means that testimonies were gathered quickly under the immediate impression of events; there was no time for significant editing.²¹

Prehistory: Growing Fears About the Loyalty of the Protestant Clergy

Official fears of Protestant pastors as potential rabble rousers preceded the Pozsony trials by several decades. During the 1630s Jesuits, who had ventured into entirely Protestant regions beyond the Tisza River and along the border with the Ottoman Empire, reported that they were in constant battle with Calvinist village ministers.²² Concern was also raised by the emigration of Bohemian refugees that started after the Battle of White Mountain (1620) and turned into a steady stream during the late 1640s. These fugitives were suspected of having ties with Bohemian rebels and some had probably participated in Czech peasant uprisings against the Counter Reformation. Most settled in villages and towns that had long been centers of resistance against Habsburg power. Among these was the wealthy town of Eperjes (Eperies, Prešov), a hotbed of opposition, whose Lutheran pastors attracted the anger of Catholic Church leaders for having ordered the arrest of a man who had converted to the Catholic faith and joined the Franciscans.²³

As the Hungarian Counter Reformation intensified, Catholic clergy, Catholic magnates, and the Habsburg court increasingly resorted to denouncing the Protestant clergy as dangerous subversives. In the early 1660s, the Lutheran clergy of Rozsnyó (Rosenau, Rožňava) came under suspicion of having supported—if not encouraged—the Lutheran magistrate's call for Ottoman protection against the Jesuits who had begun to make inroads into the town's almost completely Lutheran population. And in 1667 when two Lutheran pastors assumed positions in the already heavily Catholicized town of Nyitra (Neutra, Nitra) in the western parts of Royal Hungary Emperor Leopold I “gave strictest orders” that the matter should be resolved by means of violence. The preachers should either be expelled or, if necessary, put to death (li faccia morire) because their presence was undermining the Catholic Church's success. The emperor's decision was reported to Rome with enthusiasm by the papal representative in Vienna.²⁴ In analogous fashion, Zsófia Báthori, a powerful magnate who converted to the Catholic faith in 1661, targeted Calvinist ministers after unsuccessfully ordering her serfs to adopt her new faith. Convinced that the Calvinist clergy was responsible for her serfs' resistance she unleashed a military campaign to dislodge them. This brutal campaign affected all Calvinist counties of Upper Hungary (Hungaria Superior)—Vienna's easternmost Hungarian military province²⁵—but it seems to have backfired and driven the Calvinist clergy into the arms of the Hungarian estates who prepared an uprising against the Habsburg Empire.²⁶

A new tone of genuine alarm about the Protestant clergy emerged when Vienna began to uncover the so-called Ferenc Wesselényi Conspiracy, a yet poorly understood attempt by Hungarian magnates and nobles to secede from the Habsburg Empire and turn Hungary into an Ottoman vassal kingdom.²⁷ The conspiracy culminated in revolt in April 1670. In a letter to Emperor Leopold, Bishop György Bársony, the most powerful churchman of Upper Hungary, conjured up the imminent danger of an Ottoman invasion that would result in catastrophic consequences for both the Habsburg Empire and the Catholic Church. After seizing Upper Hungary, the Ottomans would “expand their power” into the empire's hereditary provinces and “penetrate into the entrails (viscera) of the Holy Roman Empire within a very short time.” The letter painted a nightmarish scenario: Hungarian rebels accompanied by Ottoman troops would slaughter (extirpare) the Catholic clergy, seize “as booty” (in praedam) all Catholic lands, and occupy missionary residences. The destruction of Catholicism would be accompanied by the installation of Protestant pastors in abandoned Catholic parishes. In Bársony's horror vision, the threat of an Ottoman invasion with its “imminent danger to all of Christianity” merged with the extermination of Catholicism and the triumphant takeover of Catholic institutions by the Protestant clergy.²⁸

There is good evidence that Emperor Leopold shared Bársony's opinion. In fact, the Aulic War Council and the Hungarian Chancellery began to issue orders to Habsburg military commanders in Upper Hungary to investigate Protestant pastors who came under suspicion of being secret supporters of the presumed Ottoman invasion plan. The first such investigation began in January 1670, coinciding with an earlier—unfortunately lost—letter by Bársony to Leopold and a decree issued directly by the emperor.²⁹ The target was none less than István Czeglédi, the prominent leader of the Calvinist community of Kassa (Kaschau, Košice), the citadel of Habsburg power in Upper Hungary. Habsburg military commanders accused Czeglédi of having given a public sermon celebrating a major Ottoman victory over the Venetians in Candia (Crete). He supposedly had thanked God for granting the Ottomans this glorious conquest. The Venetian ambassador in Vienna, who commanded an elaborate spy network in Hungary, provided more detail.³⁰ Czeglédi allegedly had prophesied that “the happy hour of liberation has come for . . . [our] miserable country.” In the spring, the Ottoman army would come “to break the chains of [our] servitude and restore [us] to freedom.” A large crowd of listeners had enthusiastically welcomed the news of the Ottoman victory with “singular [rounds] of applause and infinite blessings.” According to the ambassador Czeglédi's well-known rhetorical skills had left the crowd spellbound as if they were listening to “celestial inspirations and an angelic oracle (angelico orracolo).”³¹

It is hard to establish what exactly Czeglédi said without access to the actual sermon which has not survived. Suffice it to say that the case attracted considerable attention at the imperial court and was closely followed by Emperor Leopold himself who issued repeated instructions to interrogate and arrest the pastor.³² Czeglédi continued his preaching campaign in prison where he was viciously beaten by guards and thrown into solitary confinement to “separate him from the other rebels.” His subsequent release, which was authorized by an official concerned that Czeglédi might die, immediately attracted the wrath of Emperor Leopold who expressed his disbelief that “the author and fomenter of rebellion and sedition” had been set free.³³ In May 1671, Czeglédi was summoned to appear in front of an extraordinary commission in Pozsony to give testimony about his alleged involvement in the April 1670 revolt. Czeglédi died on his way, yet even this did not diminish the fear he generated at the Viennese court.³⁴

The Czeglédi case set a precedent which soon led to the indictment of other Protestant ministers for supporting Ottoman authority. Calvinist preachers in villages and small towns along the Tisza River were denounced for having placed their hopes in Ottoman arms as Habsburg troops advanced into Upper Hungary in the aftermath of the April 1670 revolt. One of them was Sándor Bagossy, the minister of Mándok in Szabolcs County and a close associate of Czeglédi. According to several witnesses Bagossy had told his flock that “the Turk had sworn on his beard, the sun, the moon, and the stars that he would take the Reformed under his protection.” And when the Ottomans would finally come to their rescue it would be a day of reckoning for the papists and “all those who held with the Germans.”³⁵ Another Calvinist pastor, István Szőlősy of Nagymihály in Zemplén County, prophesied that the Ottomans' capture of Candia had prepared “the way to the ruin of the German Empire and the extermination of idolatry, that is, the Catholic faith.”³⁶ Similar observations can be made about Calvinist pastors in the western parts of Hungary. One of them was Péter Kajáry who “terribly blasphemed against God, the Virgin Mary, and Catholic religion.” According to several witnesses he voiced the hope that “the Upper Hungarians come down with the Turks and Tatars to slaughter the Catholics.”³⁷

The Turcophile Bagossy's statement was not based on a utopian dream but rather on actual experience: Habsburg officials and military officers in Szabolcs County and other Hungarian counties adjacent to the Ottoman border had no power to prevent Ottoman intervention in local affairs. For example, the proximity of Szatmár Fortress—the most significant Habsburg garrison in eastern Hungary—could not prevent a cross-border raid by Ottoman troops that targeted estates and villages belonging to the Habsburg emperor in July 1672. The administrator of these fiscal properties could do nothing but flee to the fortress and pen a letter to Kassa complaining about the abduction and killing of royal peasants.³⁸ While depopulating fiscal villages under the nose of a major Habsburg garrison, Ottoman troops left alone close-by Protestant communities. Letters by other frustrated officials show that these communities continued to thrive and that it was simply impossible to dislodge their ministers (“not one of them wants to move out”).³⁹ In fact, local Ottoman commanders had apparently promised these communities protection: when Habsburg emissaries came to the town of Jolsva (Jelschau, Jelšava) (Gömör County) to expel the Lutheran ministers and confiscate the parish church they learned that the Pasha of Eger had ordered the town's magistrate not to cooperate. When the emissaries nevertheless proceeded to confiscate the church a general uprising ensued that forced Habsburg troops to barricade themselves in the town's castle.⁴⁰

The Habsburg court's fear of an Ottoman invasion became almost an obsession in August 1672. Rumors were spreading that an army of 5,000 Ottoman soldiers would join Hungarian rebels who stood poised to invade from Ottoman territory. And a report from the Ottoman controlled town of Rimaszombat (Gross-Steffelsdorf, Rimavská Sobota) (Gömör County) indicated that the entire nobility of Heves County was about to secede to the Ottoman Empire.⁴¹ In Zemplén County, Habsburg tax collectors were threatened with death; nobles refused to pay the dézsma tax stating “they would rather give it to the pagan Turk.” In Upper Hungary, garrisons no longer dared to leave their fortresses and Hungarian soldiers openly declared that they would not fight the Ottomans. The top Hungarian military commander in Upper Hungary, Vice General Zsigmond Pethő, resigned his position in despair. He claimed to be a broken man who neither had the strength nor the nerves to carry on.⁴² Even the sober assessment of a well-informed undercover agent—who had won the trust of Hungarian rebel leaders—that an Ottoman invasion was not likely did not dispel the climate of fear that engulfed the imperial court.⁴³

Efforts to Contain Protestant Clergy in Border Fortresses, Towns, and Villages

The fear that Protestant clerics, both Lutheran and Calvinist, were placing their hopes in an Ottoman invasion was closely associated with a related anxiety: that ministers were responsible for undermining Habsburg military strength. For example, in February 1670 Habsburg soldiers of the Tokaj garrison (Zemplén County) refused to help Zsófia Báthori evict Calvinist ministers from villages and market towns on her estates. Stating that they did not want “to fight against their faith comrades (wider Ihre Glaubensgenossen nit fechten)” they stubbornly resisted explicit orders by Emperor Leopold I and no threats by their commanders could move them. None of the targeted Calvinist ministers appears to have been held responsible for this mutiny.⁴⁴ However, the episode—and an almost identical incident involving Calvinist soldiers from Kálló Fortress (Szabolcs County)—caused considerable shock in Vienna and soon generated an almost paranoic obsession with the loyalty of Protestant soldiers.⁴⁵

Protestant preachers in Hungary's border fortresses confronting the Ottoman Empire came under close scrutiny. The Calvinist preacher of Ecsed Fortress, for example, stood accused of having encouraged desertion: he supposedly had convinced (überreden) a soldier from Baden in Upper Germany—apparently a fellow Calvinist—to run away but the soldier had been captured during his escape attempt and told the story. General Paris von Spankau, commander-in-chief in Upper Hungary, reported the incident to the Aulic War Council in Vienna which promptly issued strict orders to prevent “persuasions of this kind” in the future. The Hungarian Chancellery also got involved in this matter, which clearly was of great interest to the highest authorities. It is interesting to note, however, that while the deserter was severely punished the unnamed minister was not touched.⁴⁶

There were growing demands for the removal of Protestant clergy from border fortresses, but they were not easily implemented. For example, the Catholic parish priest of Korpona (Karpfen, Krupina) wrote to Vienna that all Protestant clergy should be removed from the border and their offices (Ambter) should be given to loyal Catholic clergy. No response to this request has been recorded.⁴⁷ However, a similar proposition by Baron Zeiss, commander of Légrád Fortress, left a significant paper trail. In August 1670, Zeiss asked whether he “should get rid of (wegschaffen solle)” the garrison's Lutheran pastor, János Rakicsányi, who had been involved in a “troubling undertaking (besorgende Impresa)” in a nearby town.⁴⁸ Vienna gave permission for the preacher's arrest but immediately Lutheran soldiers—who together with Calvinist soldiers made up the entire garrison—sent a series of protests to the Aulic War Council. When Vienna failed to respond they issued an ultimatum demanding “not to molest them any further and leave things in status quo.”⁴⁹ The approximately 1,000 Lutheran and Calvinist soldiers in Légrád and smaller nearby fortresses were ready to mutiny. In the end, the soldiers won, at least temporarily. Their pastor was released from prison and reinstalled in office. Baron Zeiss received instructions from both the Aulic War Council and Hungarian Chancellery “not to interfere [anymore] in religious matters and thereby bring significant harm to the royal fiscus.”⁵⁰

Efforts to discipline and expel the Protestant clergy in border fortresses appear to have been called off after this incident.⁵¹ Instead attention shifted to towns and villages. The first attacks occurred in the vicinity of Kassa, the citadel of Habsburg power in Upper Hungary. In March 1671, for example, German troops led by Ferenc Szegedi, the Archbishop of Eger,⁵² invaded the market town of Mecenzéf (Metzenseifen, Medzev) fifteen miles west of Kassa. The archbishop accused Pastor Martin Novack, a Lutheran, of having made derogatory remarks about His Majesty and expelled him from his church. Novak soon returned to his community but was eventually forced to escape to Ottoman territory and then to Silesia.⁵³ At about the same time the Franciscan Ferenc Hamar led an armed detachment into the nearby town of Torna (Tornau, Turňa) and surrounded the home of Calvinist minister István Szőnyi Nagy. When Szőnyi Nagy stepped out of the door to reason with Hamar the latter threatened him with an axe and forced him to hand over the keys to the church. Despite a heroic speech in which Szőnyi Nagy invoked God, the Habsburg emperor, and the law of the Hungarian Kingdom, there was little he and his faithful supporters could do in the face of naked violence. After the pillaging and destruction of his residence, Szőnyi Nagy and his family fled across the Ottoman border to Debrecen (Varat vilayet).⁵⁴

In April 1671, the Aulic War Council, after consulting with Emperor Leopold, got directly involved in the persecution of the Protestant clergy and issued an arrest warrant for the 83-year-old pastor of Lednic (Lednice, Lednica) (Trencsén County), Mikuláš (Miklós) Drábik, a Czech exile who had fled the Habsburg occupation of Bohemia in the late 1620s.⁵⁵ Drábik, who in the past had belonged to the Bohemian Brethren, attracted considerable attention for his apocalyptic sermons about the imminent collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the destruction of the Catholic Church. In a widely disseminated treatise which circulated in Hungarian Protestant communities—and was read by Lutheran and Calvinist clergy alike⁵⁶—he praised the Ottomans as the instruments of divine punishment. An Ottoman invasion would annihilate the Austrian Beast, end the reign of the Roman Antichrist, and give Hungarian nobles the opportunity to exterminate all Catholics on their estates. After this cathartic event, he prophesied, a Divine Light (Lux) would enter the darkness of the world and the Ottoman would convert to Christianity and become Protestants.⁵⁷ In fact, it appeared that Vienna was more afraid of his writings than the man himself. Nevertheless, Drábik was arrested, put on trial, and executed—a brutal episode that shocked Hungarian and European Protestant communities.⁵⁸

While Vienna resorted to trials to eliminate or intimidate its opponents, the Hungarian Catholic clergy relied increasingly on military force. The outspoken Turcophobe György Bársony was at the forefront of this little-studied development.⁵⁹ In Szepes County alone, he personally participated in the confiscation of at least thirty churches. For example, in April 1671 he intruded into the territory of the Protestant lord János Görgei, who was absent at that time, and chased away the Lutheran pastor Vencel Ritzman from the market town of Toporc. In the village of Illésfalva, not far from Bársony's residence, Habsburg soldiers under the bishop's command cruelly abused the pastor and dragged him by his hair from the parish.⁶⁰ Such brutal attacks could easily backfire. In July 1672, the pistol-wielding Bársony and Croat mercenaries tried to break through a large crowd of Lutheran peasants in Nyitra County to confiscate their church; they were viciously attacked with clubs, pitchforks, and axes. Bársony was severely injured; his brother, an imperial judge, was butchered; and several Croat soldiers were beaten to death. Interestingly, Bársony only survived because the Lutheran pastor, Štefan Pilárik, saved his life.⁶¹

Again and again, we see Catholic clergy as initiators and perpetrators of violence against the Protestant clergy, and not vice versa as suggested by the proceedings of the 1674 trial. Bishop György Széchényi of Győr (Raab, Ráb), for example, called repeatedly for military assistance to expel Lutheran pastors from his diocese.⁶² The primate of the Hungarian Church, György Szelepcsényi, appealed to the War Council to evict the Calvinist pastors of Komárom (Komorn, Komárno) and Pápa.⁶³ The archabbot of the ancient Benedictine Monastery of Pannonhalma, a former soldier himself, rode over his estates with an armed militia to chase away all Calvinist ministers. And the Jesuits in Szatmár relied on the Habsburg fortress commander to expel the Calvinist pastor and occupy their new residence.⁶⁴ Similarly, Canon Imre Kolozsváry and Provost (prépost) István Szegedi rode with troops through the villages and towns of Sáros County in May 1672 and mercilessly expelled all Lutheran and Calvinist clergy. They also threatened the clergy's local supporters with pillage and extracted bribes or valuable merchandise—such as clothing and furniture—in exchange for leaving people alone.⁶⁵ The violence employed by the Hungarian Catholic Church and its agents was so excessive that General Spankau appealed to the Aulic War Council to stop such abuses.⁶⁶ He feared the outbreak of a major popular revolt and his superiors in Vienna appear to have been receptive. In February 1672, the Aulic War Council instructed a military convoy accompanying Bishop György Széchényi of Győr to use utter restraint. They were “to watch out diligently (fleissig invigilieren) that no revolt would happen.”⁶⁷

Popular Resistance and the Protestant Clergy

The armed intrusions spearheaded by the Catholic clergy did not remain unopposed and it is in this context that Protestant preachers got involved in violent altercations with their Catholic counterparts and the military detachments they commanded. In most cases it is impossible to say to what extent Protestant clergy participated in these attacks or if they instigated them. All we know is that a significant number of communities—both rural and urban—rose up in revolt to prevent the expulsion of their pastors.⁶⁸ For example, in September 1671 the women of Káposztafalva rang the church bells when Bishop Bársony arrived in their village and welcomed him with a hail of mud and stones. Only when Bársony returned with a larger military detachment a month later did resistance subside. In January 1672, the women of the village of Hunfalva (Szepes County) bombarded Bársony with stones, garbage, and rotten eggs when he arrived to drag away their pastor. In both cases, the Lutheran pastors could only be blamed for encouraging the populace to protect their churches: Pastor Simon Bielek of Hunfalva, for example, had not objected when the village women started camping out in his church day and night for weeks on end. He also had not protested when on an earlier occasion the same women had prevented an attempt by Pauline monks to seize their church.⁶⁹ The Lutheran pastors of Körmöcbánya (Kremnitz, Kremnica), however, went much further. Daniel Neckel, the German pastor, gave rousing sermons “against His Majesty . . . maliciously accus[ing] him in the most impudent way.” And his Slovak colleague, L'udovít Lucius, apparently did the same as suggested by a now lost apocalyptical treatise denouncing the “furious persecution by the Antichrist of the Occident (Antichristi Occidentalis).” Lucius stood accused of breaking into Catholic homes and throwing crucifixes into the fire. Other similar cases could be cited.⁷⁰

Did the pastors condone popular riots? Did they participate in them? The evidence is inconclusive. In late January 1672, Bishop György Széchényi occupied the town of Komárom with Croat troops and expelled the town's two popular Calvinist ministers—a brutal action to which no immediate popular response has been recorded.⁷¹ Several months later, in June 1672, arson destroyed the confiscated Calvinist church; the fire spread and incinerated parts of the town. The bishop immediately launched an investigation and identified János Száki, the minister of a nearby village, as the main culprit: he had supposedly hired a young man and an old woman to place combustible materials against the church walls. A soldier from the local garrison had provided tinder and gunpowder. Was Száki really involved? It is impossible to say because he claimed innocence and only one witness, the young man, directly indicted him. But we know that the new Catholic leaders of Komárom had become apprehensive, if not panicky, about secret visits by Calvinist ministers from nearby towns and villages under Ottoman protection. A minister named Pál Ónodi had been present when a Calvinist mob rioted against the confiscation of their church. And two more ministers from nearby villages had been tracked down shortly afterward. And General Karl Ludwig von Hofkirchen, the local military commander, certainly did not reassure Bishop Széchényi when he reported that ministers continued to go in and out of Komárom secretly. In any case, when the fire broke out in June 1672 during the height of this panic, Széchényi quickly pinpointed one of these secret visitors, János Száki, as being responsible.⁷²

Száki's brutal execution resulted from Széchényi's conviction—which was shared by Hofkirchen—that Calvinist pastors were dangerous rabble rousers. The fact that they had infiltrated from Ottoman territory surely contributed to Széchényi's strong reaction: he was an outspoken Turcophobe whose father, a Habsburg officer, had been killed in battle with Ottoman troops.⁷³ It is noteworthy that Száki was executed together with the widow of a former minister, a woman who enjoyed much local prestige. By killing Száki and the widow, Széchényi believed that he had stopped a secret conspiracy of the Calvinist clergy. Yet, the executions did not solve the general apprehension of the authorities. Shortly afterward, Hofkirchen confiscated correspondence between local residents and the Calvinist preacher of Ottoman Buda. An investigation revealed other contacts with Calvinists in Buda and the Aulic War Council gave strict orders to “search for suspicious persons and seize their letters.” The information cited here helps to explain why the Calvinist clergy of Komárom was singled out by the Pozsony Tribunal, but it does not provide much proof of their responsibility for the town's resistance.⁷⁴

It is much more likely that the Komárom ministers—including the executed Száki—fell victim to episcopal wrath because they were closely associated with resisting secular elites. Calvinist nobles and townsmen had long resisted Catholic intrusions into their town. They were in close contact with the Calvinist soldiers of the local garrison and sent joint protests to the War Council. And they were largely responsible for the miserable living conditions of the Catholic clergy who had replaced their ministers.⁷⁵ Did Bishop Széchényi believe that he could punish these powerful opponents by singling out the Calvinist clergymen who visited them in secret? In any case, a similar process of scapegoating—that is, holding the clergy responsible for the resistance of local Protestant elites—seems to have played out in several other cases.⁷⁶

Yet, there is good evidence that some Protestant pastors resorted to violence or participated openly in armed uprisings. One of the most spectacular episodes was a popular uprising in Árva County that began after the county's Lutheran majority population lost their protector, the magnate István Thököly, who had died in December 1670 when his castle came under siege by Habsburg troops.⁷⁷ In May 1671, news reached Vienna that István Bocskó, the son of a prominent Árva pastor, had assembled Lutheran parish clergy, peasants, and demobilized soldiers to launch an uprising. Everywhere he went he administered an oath of allegiance to Imre Thököly, the deceased magnate's 14-year-old son who had escaped to Transylvania. Bocskó told his audiences that it was time to start “killing all the Germans (Germanos omnes interimendos esse)”; Imre Thököly would soon come to help them with Ottoman and Transylvanian troops. Bocskó was admired by the local Lutheran clergy; they hosted him at their homes and had drinks with him. Things became very ugly very quickly for Catholic clergy and Habsburg officials alike. The panicked Bishop György Bársony claimed that Bocskó and his supporters were leading a religious war against both the Catholic Church and Habsburg Empire. He conjured up images of the Hussite wars and a 1631–32 peasant revolt which had left the Catholic Church of Upper Hungary in shambles.⁷⁸

The Lutheran serfs of István Thököly were the driving force behind the uprising. They were seething with rage about the unbearable costs of billeting, the occupying soldiers' random violence—particularly the rape of their women—and the drastic imposition of new taxes.⁷⁹ The spark that likely set off the volatile powder keg was the murder of a popular Lutheran school master by a band of Catholic thugs. In late May 1671, armed peasant detachments led by Lutheran clergy and their sons invaded Árva County's mountainous north with its largely Catholic population. A vicious civil war, which unfortunately has left few traces in the archives, led to atrocities on both sides. Catholic missionaries, mostly Paulines and Piarists from neighboring Poland, were the principal targets of the Lutheran rebels and the Polish authorities called for the immediate deployment of the Habsburg army. This military intervention came in June and July 1671, but it was a miserable failure: none of the revolt's leaders were captured and many battle-hardened Lutheran clerics and their sons remained at large and prepared for the next uprising, which was only a matter of time.⁸⁰

The frustrated War Council and the furious Bishop György Bársony, who prodded Vienna to take drastic action, had to be content with the arrest of Pastor János Andreas who had been István Thököly's court preacher and confessor. Andreas stood accused of having conspired with a Habsburg officer in Árva Castle, the headquarters of Habsburg military power, in an apparent attempt to allow rebel detachments secret entry into the castle. However, no proof was found against Andreas and the War Council finally—in January 1672—gave instructions to release him with full restoration of his confiscated properties. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the War Council's fear of losing Árva Castle came true only a few months later: rebels bribed a high-ranking Habsburg officer (possibly the same man with whom Andreas had allegedly been in touch) and seized the castle only to establish a vicious regime of persecution against Árva's Catholics.⁸¹

A similar drama unfolded in Zemplén County, where Calvinist pastors operated in a social environment that was fervently hostile to Habsburg power and the Catholic Church. The Calvinist nobles of Zemplén County routinely used brute force to keep Catholic priests from their villages and had the reputation of “hanging bailiffs.”⁸² During the April 1670 revolt these nobles had appealed to the Ottomans for military support and, unlike the magnate Ferenc I. Rákóczi and other Catholic supporters, did not surrender to Vienna when the Ottomans failed to intervene. At a turbulent meeting of the rebellious nobility in Tállya on 1 May 1670 Rákóczi was angrily denounced as “a son-of-a-bitch with a lawyer's soul (procator lelkű kurvafia)”; he and other Catholic nobles were threatened with murder. Using guerilla-style tactics against advancing Habsburg troops, Calvinist nobles of Zemplén County continued their resistance for two more months; they had significant support among the peasantry. In fact, these peasants never capitulated even after the nobles finally fled to Ottoman territory or Transylvania.⁸³ Violent clashes between armed peasants and German garrison soldiers continued and—as billeting and foraging grew harsher—Zemplén peasants began to express pro-Ottoman sentiments quite openly. Many of them voted with their feet for the Ottoman Empire in order to escape Habsburg repression.⁸⁴

The military occupation of Zemplén County led to a systematic attack on the Calvinist clergy. But it backfired. In December 1671, for example, the townsmen of Tállya, an epicentre of the April 1670 revolt, fought to the death against a military detachment that attempted to expel their pastor. They were assisted by armed students who had been expelled from a nearby Calvinist academy. The Habsburg field commander attributed the rebels' stubborn resistance to the active participation and leadership of the town's popular pastor, István Budai.⁸⁵ The townsmen of Gálszécs, who had a reputation for rebelliousness since they had enthusiastically embraced the István Bocskai Uprising (1604–06), listened to the apocalyptic sermons of Pastor János Técsy, who compared the Catholic Church to the Whore of Babylon and made jokes about the Virgin Mary. In July 1672, the town was occupied by a military detachment and Técsy fled across the Ottoman border to make contact with fugitive nobles from Zemplén County; he returned with the rebel army that invaded from Ottoman territory in September 1672.⁸⁶ And the residents of the market town of Nagymihály closed ranks around their pastor Mihály Zadany, who attributed Catholic cult worship to the Devil. A priest who tried in vain to take Zadany's place wrote that all his efforts and those of other priests in the region were in vain (in vanum laboraverunt). Nagymihály exploded in anti-Catholic violence a few weeks later.⁸⁷

In Sárospatak, not far from Tállya, Calvinist pastors found themselves at the center of a brewing conflict with the Habsburg military. Anti-Habsburg sentiments had been running high ever since Jesuits sponsored by the magnate Zsófia Báthori had launched an aggressive conversion campaign in the mid-1660s. In fact, the Jesuits feared for their lives “because school masters and judges had sworn to kill every [Jesuit] who would fall into their hands.”⁸⁸ Only the presence of a strong Habsburg garrison guaranteed their safety. After the April 1670 revolt the destruction of local Calvinism was immediately put on the agenda: all churches were to be confiscated and the Sárospatak Academy, the principal seminary of Calvinist ministers in Royal Hungary, was to be closed.⁸⁹ The town's Calvinist ministers, among them most vocally Mihály Szántay and András Szepsi, refused to cooperate. They enjoyed significant support from the town magistrate, local nobles, and the students of the Sárospatak Academy who armed themselves to the teeth to resist the seizure of their school.⁹⁰ The town's stubborn resistance probably explains the vicious retaliation that followed: Habsburg troops systematically plundered and demolished (demolierten) the town's Calvinist churches. The town's pastors, several professors, and many students of the Sárospatak Academy fled onto Ottoman territory where they joined a rebel army that invaded Upper Hungary in September 1672.⁹¹

In other Calvinist counties one also finds pastors who openly encouraged or participated in popular resistance against Habsburg authority.⁹² A good example is András Porcsalmi, a prominent Calvinist minister who was a protégé of István Bocskai, the high sheriff (főispán) of Zemplén County. In the aftermath of the April 1670 revolt, Porcsalmi sought refuge in his native hamlet of Porcsalma in Szatmár Country. Here he enjoyed the protection of Calvinist peasants and nobles who had been fervent supporters of the revolt.⁹³ When some nobles considered capitulating to the Habsburg army, Porcsalmi loudly protested. He mobilized his supporters with a rousing speech in which he called for the continuation of the armed struggle: “Don't trust the emperor. The dog has no faith (nincs hite az ebnek)! Just lay down your arms and you will see what will happen.”⁹⁴ When the Habsburg authorities heard about this speech, they issued an arrest warrant and finally threw Porcsalmi in jail. However, a curious story followed: leading nobles of Szatmár County claimed that the authorities had captured the wrong man. The prisoner, they contested, was in reality a harmless vagabond who had had the misfortune of sharing the same first and last name with Porcsalmi. Yes, the vagabond was also a Calvinist minister, but the real Porcsalmi had long absconded with Bocskai to Transylvania. Thrown into confusion, the War Council gave orders to establish the identity of the arrested man. Unable to come to a resolution and under increasing pressure from Porcsalmi's outraged Calvinist patrons, Vienna finally gave orders to release the man. It appears that the authorities feared the outbreak of another uprising; there can be little doubt that they had captured the right person.⁹⁵ The released Porcsalmi immediately joined Bocskai who was busy assembling an army of escaped Hungarian rebels on Ottoman lands.

Lutheran and Calvinist Pastors During the 1672 Revolt

On 10 August 1672 a well-informed Habsburg agent reported from Upper Hungary that Protestant pastors were calling out (kihiviak) the population to get ready for a major revolt. The signal to rise would be the imminent invasion of Hungarian exiles from Ottoman territory. And this is, in fact, what happened.⁹⁶ In the last days of August 1672, a rebel army composed of survivors of the 1670 revolt and other Hungarian refugees marched into Habsburg Hungary. The rebels were accompanied by several hundred Ottoman troops under the leadership of Hussein Aga, the commander-in-chief of the Varat vilayet. A massive popular revolt exploded into the open; within less than two weeks the Habsburgs lost control over the thirteen Calvinist and Lutheran counties of Upper Hungary. Every town and village the armed rebels entered gave them a rousing welcome; the regime's supporters fled to a handful of large fortresses. On 14 September the rebel army defeated General Spankau near Kassa, the Habsburg capital of Upper Hungary. For the next six weeks all hell broke loose. An orgy of popular violence spread like wildfire. The targets included Catholic clergy, Catholic laymen, Habsburg officials, and Habsburg soldiers. The Catholic infrastructure that had been put into place only recently collapsed like a house of cards.⁹⁷

The 1674 Tribunal accused the Protestant clergy of being responsible for the rebels' violence against Catholic clergy and laymen. Yet, the archival record tells a more complicated story. The beatings, torture, and murders of monks and priests were carried out by lynch mobs composed of impoverished peasants, artisans, and soldiers. These furious crowds, which included women and children, were supported by Protestant nobles and town magistrates. The horrors that descended upon the largely Lutheran town of Kisszeben (Zeben, Sabinov) (Sáros County) are a good example. Catholic houses were marked and plundered; Catholics were beaten and deprived of their livelihoods. Popular wrath focused on the town's Catholic priest, the Franciscan monk Ciprianus (Saladinus) from Italy. After ransacking the Catholic church, angry townsmen stripped Ciprianus naked, sheared off his hair, fed him horse manure, and dragged him through the streets for public pillorying. The intention was to decapitate him, but a prominent Catholic noblewoman successfully appealed to her Lutheran brothers to spare the priest's life.⁹⁸ The trigger that unleashed this mob violence was not provided by sermons of the Protestant clergy but by the news that a Hungarian rebel army supported by Ottoman troops had invaded. Even in faraway places such as the foothills of the High Tatras (which were not reached by the rebel army before October) Catholic priests fled for their lives to escape the pent-up popular wrath against them.⁹⁹

What then was the role of the Protestant clergy in anti-Catholic excesses? It is clear that some used their authority to save the lives of Catholic clergy and laity.¹⁰⁰ But other pastors actively participated in the violence. The three Lutheran pastors of Kisszeben, for example, are repeatedly mentioned as perpetrators by eyewitnesses. The German Pastor Peter Regius “grabbed the monstrance, took out the hosts, dispersed them all over the pavement of the church, and then stamped on them with his feet.” And the Slavic Pastor Andreas Galli, a refugee from Bohemia, prepared the friar for execution; he “heard his confession and gave him communion according to [the Lutheran] rite.” He also performed church services and public prayers celebrating the successes of the rebel army.¹⁰¹ One of the more shocking episodes was reported by Franciscans who lived in the entirely Calvinist town of Nagyszőlős (Ugocsa County). A crowd made up of armed peasants, townsmen, and Hungarian soldiers had invaded their monastery. Among them was the Calvinist pastor of nearby Feketeardó who actively participated in an orgy of destruction that left the monastery and “all objects pertaining to the Divine Cult” in shambles. Anything of value such as chalices, silver vases, liturgical vestments, and procession banners was plundered. The friars themselves were mocked, humiliated, and told that “the dogs would soon lick their blood.” They escaped death but at least two of them were castrated. Neither the Feketeardó nor Kisszeben pastors initiated the crowds' excesses, but they certainly participated.¹⁰²

There were pastors, most of them Calvinist, who instigated violent attacks on Catholics and the symbols of Catholic religion. In Varannó (Vranov) (Zemplén County), the unnamed Calvinist minister mobilized the population to go on a rampage against a Franciscan monastery that had long been a thorn in his eyes. The crowds went wild and called for the killing and skinning alive of all missionaries and priests.¹⁰³ In Torna County, the site of a major peasant revolt only a year earlier, pastors seem to have stirred people into a frenzy. For example, István Telkibányai of Almás returned from his refuge on Ottoman territory and led a peasant mob to seize his confiscated church. The Catholic priest was badly beaten and chased away; his home and possessions were pillaged. Telkibányai then “entered the church with the peasants . . . and saw to it that the altar was completely smashed to pieces.”¹⁰⁴ Elsewhere in Torna County altars were demolished, saint statues decapitated, and images of the Virgin Mary used for target practice. The atmosphere was carnivalesque. In the village of Zsarnó, for example, people danced around fires with crucifixes and Marian images, laughing, singing, and drinking. Led by their pastor they then threw these symbols of the Catholic faith into the flames. In Torna and other Calvinist counties, unknown numbers of Catholic priests were killed or dragged away to an unknown fate; their parish houses were torched.¹⁰⁵

There can be little doubt that the persecuted Calvinist and Lutheran clergy welcomed the rebel army's arrival. Many celebrated this army's stunning victories in sermons, public prayers, and church services.¹⁰⁶ And all of them used the opportunity to take back their churches and, if necessary, reverse any inroads that the Counter Reformation had made among their flock. General Spankau reported to Vienna that Calvinist ministers in Szatmár, Szabolcs, and Zemplén counties armed themselves with sabres to take back their churches. They were supported by rebel leaders who claimed that they were “promoting God's glory.”¹⁰⁷ In Sáros County, Pastor Samuel Stephanovich of Raszlavica was returned to his church by his patrons János and Péter Raszlavice. When he discovered that a number of peasants had converted to the Catholic faith Stephanovich resorted to coercion to “force them to revert back to the Lutheran faith.” The brothers Raszlavice assisted him.¹⁰⁸ The unnamed pastors of six villages belonging to the Lutheran merchant town of Bártfa resorted to similar measures. They acted under orders of town notary Elias Splenius to “lead those who had already converted . . . back to the Lutheran faith and threaten those ready to convert.” Splenius helped the pastors by personally beating up and chasing away Catholic priests. The same happened in Bártfa itself: Splenius brutally reestablished Lutheran church services; the principal beneficiary was his son-in-law, Pastor Jakob Zabler. Similar developments can be documented for many other locations.¹⁰⁹

Quite a number of pastors participated in military confrontations with the Habsburg army. For example, the mentioned Pastors Paul Regius and Andreas Galli played vital roles in the defense of Kisszeben when the town came under siege by the Habsburg army in October 1672. Regius led a large crowd (multitudo) of armed townsmen to the town walls. And Galli gave sermons that “inspired the entire town community to fight bravely (se fortiter gererent) against the German army.” Among those who followed him into battle were expelled pastors from nearby villages as well as unarmed men and women “who were carrying stones to hurl on the Germans.”¹¹⁰ Similarly, György Petenada, the Lutheran pastor of Eperjes, led artisans and students in guerrilla-style attacks on Habsburg troops. His militant sermons and prayer services for victory help to explain why the town continued a hopeless battle for months after being surrounded by the Habsburg army in late October 1672.¹¹¹ Mihály Rudini, another Lutheran pastor, joined nobles and soldiers who incinerated crown and magnate estates in Szepes County. In Szatmár County, Calvinist pastors died in combat with Habsburg troops in an attempt to seize Szatmár Fortress.¹¹² In Ung, Bereg, and Ugocsa counties, at least thirty Calvinist pastors joined peasants, townsmen, and nobles devastating the estates of the Catholic magnate Zsófia Báthori. The most prominent among them were Alexander Barkoczky of Ungvár (Ungwar, Uzhhorod) and Pál Görgei of Nagykapos. In November 1672, Görgei and his supporters fought to the death against superior armed forces; hundreds died on the barricades of Nagykapos or were summarily executed after the town's fall. Görgei miraculously escaped but later died of his wounds in Transylvania.¹¹³

General Spankau, Hungarian Catholic bishops, and the Aulic War Council in Vienna repeatedly accused militant pastors of stirring up the population with pro-Ottoman sermons. Several pastors in Upper Hungary were indicted for “arranging public prayers for the Turks (für die Türckhen öffentliche Gebete anstelten),” presumably for a quick victory of the Ottoman army in Poland.¹¹⁴ Unfortunately, the names of the indicted pastors have not been preserved in the archival record. The evidence I have found strongly suggests that Calvinist and Lutheran nobles, not pastors, mobilized popular audiences with promises that tens of thousands of Ottoman troops would soon invade to destroy Habsburg power once and for all. This would happen after the sultan's victory over Poland.¹¹⁵ It is true that the pro-Ottoman sermons of the mentioned Pastor Mikuláš Drábik circulated among the Hungarian soldiers who made up the core of the rebel army. They almost certainly were known to the armed students expelled from Protestant colleges. But Drábik had already been executed more than a year earlier. Echoes of his teachings can be found in sermons of Drábik's fellow Bohemian Andreas Galli who preached that a Divine Light had arisen to illuminate “[our] truth and suppress the falsity of [our] enemies.” But Galli did not make any references to the Ottomans. The archives yield only a few specific examples of pro-Ottoman sermons. In Zemplén County, the Calvinist preacher Péter Azari, predicted that “the Turk [was] ready, and must only start moving.” It was only a matter of days. His assertion that “the Turk or Tatar is better than the idol-worshiping Papist” resonated with peasants, townsmen, and nobles. In Veszprém County, Mihály Sályi, a rural Calvinist minister, prayed publicly that “God should bring the Turk together with the Tatar.” Neither Azari nor Sályi were ever arrested and we know nothing else about them. Other pastors were investigated inconclusively.¹¹⁶

Hopes that the victorious Ottoman army stood poised to help the Hungarian rebels may explain why several Calvinist ministers and a small number of Lutheran pastors went into battle dressed “in Turkish fashion” (more Turcico), that is, wearing turbans and dressing up like Janissaries.¹¹⁷ Such militant pastors were among the rebels who attacked the strategic Habsburg border fortress of Ónod “with Turkish invocations of Allah” (Turcice Allam clamantes) before massacring the entire garrison and local Catholics.¹¹⁸ Most of these “Turkish” pastors had previously sought refuge from the Counter Reformation on Ottoman territory and almost certainly mingled with Ottoman soldiers. Such mingling is well-documented for officers and rank-and-file soldiers of the rebel army. Some Hungarian nobles, peasants, and students (companones) from closed Protestant colleges also dressed up as Janissaries. The pasha of Varat later claimed that “dressing like a Turk” was a widespread phenomenon in the 1672 revolt. Since many pastors joined the ranks of the rebel army their donning of Ottoman garb was not out of the question.¹¹⁹

Most of the pastors who “dressed up as Turks” apparently came from Calvinist communities in Zemplén County, the epicentre of the April 1670 pro-Ottoman revolt. They included Mihály Szántay (Monok), and István Budai (Tállya) who—as mentioned—had been expelled by Habsburg troops for resisting the Counter Reformation. The other known “Turkish” pastors were István Tasnády (Tarcal), István Miskolczy (Bodrogkeresztúr), András Gyöngyösi (Tarcal), and István Somogyi (Szerencs). They all participated in some of the revolt's most vicious fighting together with thousands of peasants, students, and an unknown number of Janissaries. We know that these pastors gave inspired sermons denouncing Habsburg tyranny and the Antichrist-Emperor in Vienna.¹²⁰ They were influenced by István Czeglédi who had launched his career in Zemplén County; Czeglédi's pro-Ottoman sermons and efforts to enlist the Ottomans must have been known to these pastors. They had read his tract Sion vára (“Zion Fortress”) which called for militant resistance against the evil forces threatening “the True Reformed Church.” Representing “Christ who was [manifest] in the Hungarian nation” the church under siege had to “defend itself . . . with all kinds of ammunition” until the expulsion of the enemy.¹²¹ The Ottoman Turks provided such ammunition—both literally and metaphorically.

Conclusion

It is noteworthy that none of the thirty-eight pastors mentioned by name in this article ever appeared at the Pozsony Tribunal. Only the names of eight are found on the lists of the approximately 730 pastors summoned, but officials failed to track them down.¹²² None of the other thirty pastors even made it onto the Tribunal's long proscription lists. Why? One explanation is certainly that quite a number of pastors had died during battles with the Habsburg army. But I think the more relevant answer is that the majority of the roughly 4,000 Lutheran and Calvinist pastors then in Hungary remained beyond the reach of Habsburg power.¹²³ Some pastors were protected by their communities; others moved temporarily into the manor houses of noble patrons.¹²⁴ Some fled into neighboring Transylvania or Silesia. Yet the most effective way to elude detection was to flee to neighboring Ottoman territory or settlements paying tribute to the sultan. We know that the Ottomans actively offered pastors protection. Vizier Ibrahim Pasha of Buda (1671–75) and Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü (1661–76) strongly opposed any attempt to expel pastors under the sultan's protection.¹²⁵ The most astute observer of this reality was Hamel Bruyninx, the Dutch Calvinist resident in Vienna, who corresponded with Hungarian Protestant communities. He informed The Hague that “the Turks are extending their hands to [the persecuted Protestants] . . . and letting them know that their ‘men of God’ (Godtsmannen)—this is how [the Turks] call their pastors—should come over to them. They will host, supply, and shield them.” According to Bruyninx “[the Hungarians] are hanging their heads towards the Turk. This is where most of the expelled pastors . . . are directing their paths. They cannot do anything else and are well received.”¹²⁶

The Tribunal's key accusation that Protestant pastors preferred Ottoman to Habsburg authority is therefore entirely plausible. We know that pastors visited the court of the vizier of Buda and the courts of Hungarian pashas to beg for protection. And such protection was actually granted; for example, villages paying tribute to the sultan received guarantees of “security and happiness” against any violent intruders.¹²⁷ Less archival evidence survives about pro-Ottoman sermons. Decrees by the Habsburg commander-in-chief and orders issued by the Aulic War Council strongly suggest that such sermons were quite frequent. Given the regular promises of Ottoman help made by noble leaders of the 1670 and 1672 revolts it is likely that these were echoed in sermons. Undoubtedly, there were more than a few pastors who prophesied that Sultan Mehmed IV “will protect us and God should arrange it that he comes himself together with the Tatars.”¹²⁸

It is impossible to say how many pastors expressed pro-Ottoman sentiments or sought out Ottoman protection. And it is possible that very few, if any, of those actually arrested and tried by the Pozsony Tribunal had anything to do with the Ottomans. Almost all of them came from western counties where Habsburg authority was still halfway intact. By contrast, very few pastors came from eastern counties where many villages and towns had participated in the 1670 and 1672 revolts; some pastors lived in “patrimonies of the sultan” which provided safe areas for persecuted pastors.¹²⁹ For example, not a single pastor appeared from Bereg, Borsod, Torna, Szabolcs, Szatmár, Ung, and Ugocsa counties despite threatening summons. And only two pastors appeared from Abaúj and Zemplén counties respectively. In all of these Calvinist counties pro-Ottoman sentiments were widespread; it was here that the pro-Ottoman sermons mentioned above were recorded.¹³⁰

The basic failure of the Pozsony Tribunal was its insistence on generalizing: the judges collectively accused the entire Lutheran and Calvinist clergy of Habsburg Hungary of being both pro-Ottoman traitors and rebels against the Habsburg Empire. Evidence for pastors' resistance and revolt against the Counter Reformation is easy to come by but this does not mean that all pastors, or even a majority of them, resisted or rebelled. We only know that a sizeable number of pastors supported and actively encouraged the armed struggle against the Habsburg military during the 1670 revolt and its aftermath. Two years later an unknown number of pastors actually armed themselves and joined combat operations. But other pastors just used the opportunity of the 1672 revolt to return to their communities; some employed violence against Catholic priests and others engaged in iconoclasm. Yet, the horrific anti-Catholic violence that engulfed large parts of eastern Hungary in 1672 was not due to the pastors’ leadership or their sermons. It resulted from a powerful upsurge of popular revenge after years of brutal Counter Reformation and military occupation. Yes, unknown numbers of pastors willingly or unwillingly participated, but there are also examples of pastors using their authority to save the lives of Catholic clergy and laity.

Protestant pastors’ participation in popular resistance and revolt against the Habsburg Counter Reformation deserves more attention not only in the case of Hungary. In Bohemia, for example, the 1618–20 revolt and its brutal suppression generated significant popular resistance against the Catholic Church. However, the revolt and its aftermath continue to be studied with focus on the nobility, Catholic Church hierarchy, political institutions, and Vienna's administrative strategies.¹³¹ Marxist historians emphasised the role of the peasant masses without any attention to religion and the Protestant clergy. And confessional historians a priori rejected the blanket accusation of Habsburg propaganda (“all clerics were rebels”); they focused on the suffering of the clerics whom the Habsburg authorities expelled in droves starting in 1621.¹³² Official Habsburg sources, however, claimed that pastors “mobilized both the common folk and the elite against the emperor with their quarrelsome and unjust speeches and writings.” They suggest a vigorous subculture of religious resistance that was not easily eradicated. Expelled pastors remained in touch with their communities, gave sermons, and participated in secret ceremonies of “baptism and marriage in private homes.”¹³³

The evidence produced in this article suggests that the Hungarian lands of the Habsburg monarchy were no exception to a pan-European model of clerical resistance against the violent Counter Reformation and other forms of official church brutality. We know, for example, that Huguenot pastors fought in the frontlines of the French religious wars; the same holds true for Puritan ministers in the English Civil War. In the Dutch Revolt, Calvinist pastors led troops into battle against the forces of Antichrist, that is, the invading Spanish troops and the tyrannical regime established by the Spanish Habsburgs.¹³⁴ Similar developments can be observed in the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe: in Ukraine, for example, there existed a close alliance of priests, monks, Cossacks, and peasants during the Bohdan Khmel'nyckyi revolt (1648–49) against Catholic Poland. A leading scholar on the subject concluded that “we can give credence to the Polish charges that the clergy incited and led the masses.”¹³⁵ The same holds true for the priests and monks who declared war against the Russian Orthodox Church during the late seventeenth century and thereby caused a schism that continues to this day.¹³⁶

Hungarian Protestantism's dramatic struggle for survival has been largely eclipsed by historians’ traditional focus on the Pozsony Tribunal victims’ martyrologies, memoirs, and polemics. The gripping stories of incarceration, torture, and galley slavery by the Tribunal's survivors tell only one side of the story. The archival data I have pieced together shed light on the Hungarian clergy's astounding endurance and resilience. Despite the brutal persecutions of the early 1670s and the horrors inflicted by the Tribunal, this clergy did not succumb to Habsburg oppression. The resistance of this clergy continued well into the eighteenth century; without it we cannot understand the long-term survival of Hungarian Protestantism despite the persistent attempts of the Habsburg court to turn Hungary into a Catholic Kingdom.