An ‘Old Empire’ on the Periphery of the Old Empire: The and the in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries1

Géza Pálffy

While there have been many treatments to date of the special connection between the Holy Roman Empire and the lands of the Bohemian crown,2 researchers of the early modern age have so far scarcely addressed its relationship with the kingdom of Hungary.3 This is all the more surpris- ing since the ruler of the Old Empire (Altes ) and the ruler of the kingdom of Hungary was often one and the same individual. Thus it was with Sigismund of Luxemburg ( of Hungary from 1387; king of the Romans 1410–33; Holy Roman 1433–7), Albert II of Habsburg (king of Hungary from 1437; king of the Romans 1438–9) and almost all rulers of the Old Empire from 1558 right up until the dissolution of that structure in 1806. The study below seeks to fill the above-mentioned gap with reference to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It surveys the links between the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of Hungary in this period, examining systems of connections in five areas: 1. State orga- nization; 2. Defence; 3. Economy; 4. Culture, law, the nobility, and titles; and 5. Ceremonial.

1 This study was financed by Hungary’s National Foundation for Scientific Research as Project No. 60,618. 2 For summaries of the earlier literature in Czech and German, see Jaroslav Pánek, ‘Der böhmische Staat und das Reich in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in Volker Press (ed.), Alternativen zur Reichsverfassung in der Frühen Neuzeit? (Munich, 1995), 169–78; cf. the studies by Jaro- slav Pánek and Petr Matˇa in the present volume. 3 The findings so far are given in Moritz Csáky, ‘Karl V., Ungarn, die Türkenfrage und das Reich. Zu Beginn der Regierung Ferdinands als König von Ungarn’, in Heinrich Lutz and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner, (ed.), Das römisch-deutsche Reich im politischen System Karls V. (Munich/Vienna, 1982), 223–37; Franz Brendle, ‘Habsburg, Ungarn und das Reich im 16. Jahrhundert’, in: Wilhelm Kühlmann et al. (ed.), Deutschland und Ungarn in ihren Bildungs- und Wissenschaftsbeziehungen während der Renaissance (, 2004), 1–25. 260 géza pálffy

1. An ‘Old Empire’ Outside the Old Empire but Inside the

From the second half of the 1550s, the title conferred on Ferdinand of Habsburg and his successors as of Hungary was the following: ‘Dei gratia Romanorum imperator semper ac Germaniae, Hun- gariae, Bohemiae, Dalmatiae, Croatiae, Sclavoniae, Ramae, Serviae, Gali- tiae, Lodomeriae, Cumaniae, Bulgariaeque rex etc.’, i.e. ‘By the Grace of God Roman Emperor, always August, and King of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Rama [i.e. Bosnia], Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, , Bulgaria, etc.’.4 The title well indicates that from the mid-sixteenth century onwards the destinies of the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of Hungary were closely bound together, as indeed they had been during the reigns of Sigismund of Luxemburg and Albert II of Habsburg.5 In spite of this though, Hungary was never a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Similarly to the lands of the Bohemian crown or the Habs­ burg Netherlands, it lay on the periphery of this Empire, not as a forma- tion within the Empire’s frontiers, as they were, but as one outside them, similarly to the kingdom of Denmark. Nor was it one of the hereditary provinces (Erblande), although even today some German, British and American works list it among them. In the early modern age, then, the kingdom of Hungary operated as a completely independent kingdom outside the borders and organiza- tional framework of the Holy Roman Empire. This the Hungarian politi- cal elite always emphasized with pride, as for instance in a memorandum drawn up in the summer of 1652 in connection with the appointment of György Lippay, archbishop of Esztergom (in office 1642–66), to the rank of cardinal: ‘l’Ongheria essendo provincia separata, non ha che far con l’imperi’.6 Only on the level of political propaganda was Hungary annexed to the Empire. However, generally used this interpretation only to extract financial and military support from the estates of the Empire. One such instance occurred in July 1505, when, in a proposition submitted

4 Magyar Országos Levéltár, Budapest [hereinafter MOL], E 148, Neo-regestrata acta, Fasc. 1664, No. 59 (1.12.1563); ibid., A 57, Libri regii Vol. 4, p. 74 (28.8.1588). 5 Elemér Mályusz, Sigismund in Ungarn, 1387–1437 (Budapest, 1990); Imre Takács et al. (ed.), Sigismundus rex et imperator. Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismunds von Luxem- burg, 1387–1437. Ausstellungskatalog (Budapest/Luxemburg, 2006). 6 Péter Tusor, Purpura Pannonica. esztergomi ‘bíborosi szék’ kialakulásának előzményei a 17. században. (Budapest/Rome, 2005), 231, no. 17.