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Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Humanities Doctoral Dissertation Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Humanities Doctoral Dissertation Nándor Virovecz The Life of Menyhárt Balassa and Early Modern Hungarian Political Culture Doctoral School of History Professor Dr. Gábor Erdődy Cultural History Doctoral Programme Professor emeritus Dr. László Kósa, MHAS Members of the Committee: Professor emeritus Dr. László Kósa, MHAS Dr. István Fazekas, PhD, Habil. associate professor Dr. Pál Ács, DSc, Honorary professor Dr. Eleonóra Géra, PhD, Habil. associate professor Dr. Judit Balogh, PhD, Habil. associate professor Dr. Ildikó Horn, DSc, professor Dr. Nóra Etényi, CSc, Habil. associate professor Supervisor Dr. Gábor Várkonyi, PhD, Habil. associate professor Budapest 2017 Preconceptions – questions – problems The political culture of the period from the battle of Mohács to the Convention of Speyer was famous for the phenomenon of individuals easily switching allegiance between the Habsburg and Szapolyai parties. The rivalry between the two powers was in fact generated and deepened by the Ottoman aggression. The reactions of the Hungarian political elite resulted in Hungary’s territorial division. The public of the mid-sixteenth century blamed the Hungarian elite’s political practices as a cause of the country’s disintegration, arguing against it with ethical and moral reasons. The related Hungarian historical tradition of ‘being disunited’ and the discourse of the aristocracy of Hungary were also condemned. This opinion was enhanced by the popular and awareness-raising publications written during the socialist era to satisfy the demands of contemporary ideological expectations. Menyhárt Balassa (Melchior Balassa de Gyarmat) was a famous (or infamous) politician and war-lord during the period explained above, who became the emblematic character of this epoch due to the comedy written about him (Comedy about Melchior Balassi’s Betrayal...). There were two basic problems concerning the work: first, its unauthenticated nature and in addition to this, the unknown time of it being written and finished by the author. However, there were other contemporary sources about Balassi’s valour and heroic courage, shown by his brave struggles against the ottomans. That is why there are two contradictory opinions about his personality – and consequently, of him. This defined the point of view of historians and literary historians of the early modern Hungarian political culture after the battle of Mohács. There is no relevant published literature about this problem that would use proper source criticism. The first editors of the encyclopaedias in the 18th and 19th centuries published many data and well-known facts about his life, but they used the works of the historians from the 16th and 17th centuries and adopted their approaches. A multi-layered research about his character helps us to get closer to the problems of this period and give answers to the questions posed by secrets of the Comedy, which have been unanswered for two hundred years since its „discovery”. During my dissertation, I studied the mentality, the attitude, the strategy of success of the elite and the political culture through these factors. The sources Unfortunately, there is no memoir, diary or „ego-document” written by Menyhárt Balassa that could be a primary source to reconstruct the basic features of his character. That is why I published his six letters – which were previously unknown – as an appendix to my 1 dissertation so that we could learn about his mentality or way of thinking. Even like this, it is not easy to get trustworthy information about him, since as one of the contemporary historians stated: he was ‘the master of pretension’. Firstly, I had to ignore all the negative terms coming from the Comedy, but also all the heroic songs about his victories containing his positive image. Only after that I could view his deeds rather critically. My primary sources were the historioans of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Ferenc Forgách, Miklós Istvánffy and Farkas Bethlen. As I have already mentioned, the editors of later encyclopaedias often made use of these works. There were many other publications used, the bulk of which were the archival sources of the Történelmi Tár (Historical Repository and Hungarian Historical Repository). This series contained documents from family archives and the National Museum, but also recent and already published researches from the Secret State Archive in Vienna. It was especially Eudoxiu Hurmuzaki who revealed a lot of letters in his monumental edition which were relevant for Transylvanian state affairs. Historical researches on the common events of the mid-16th century (Imre Lukinich, Endre Veress) and the search for the Comedy’s author by Jenő Házi, Ágnes Szalay, Antal Pirnát and Mihály Balázs resulted in the appearance of works that applied a broader perspective on these issues, gathering a wide range of historical sources and giving some new information about the political role of Balassa. Recent publications must also be mentioned in the form of Ildikó Horn’s doctoral dissertation about the Transylvanian elite by Ildikó Horn and the papers of Teréz Oborni who dealt with the relationship of Balassa and Transylvania. Unfortunately, the 16th-century documents in the Balassa family archive were always not relevant as most of them focused only on the issue of protecting of land rights. Also, there is no collection in relation to him among the others about the family members. The Royal Books in the Archive of the Chancellery kept his appointments, oath of allegiance and the diplomas issued by the king. There are several documents and scattered sources about tithe rent charge, salary and the administration of the Balassa domains in the Archive of the Royal Chamber. Many letters written by the Balassa brothers to each other in the 16th and 17th centuries are also stored there and in Section E 200 of the National Archives of Hungary. There are also valuable and unavoidable data in the collection of Nádasdy family’s correspondence in their own archive, since letters by the four Balassa brothers (Imre, Zsigmond, Menyhárt, János) to Tamás Nádasdy could be found there. In my work, special attention is paid to the Perényi family archive and the Zichy family archive (especially the one named „Zsélyi”), the last one also containing the Várday and Melith family archive. Limited information originated from Batthyány family archive and from the copies of the Pray Collection in the University Library 2 of the Eötvös Loránd University. There are several reports to the town senate and judges of Selmecbánya in the collection created after the battle of Mohács in the NAH. These were excellent sources through which I could deal with the memoires of the contemporary historians who mentioned the events taking their course near to the Balassa estates in the 1530s and 1540s. With these letters at hand, it was relatively easy to reconstruct the role of the Nyáry, Kosztka, Podmaniczky and Balassa families during the times of the „civil war” in Hungary. Significant sources were discovered in the Esztergom Primate Archives in relation to the relationship between the lords. There are two letters by Balassa in the Department of Manuscripts of the National Széchényi Library which are the integral parts of the Hungarian Monuments. More related letters could be found in the Illésházy collection. The Department of Manuscripts in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences stores not only the unique Comedy but also the copy of the Rerum Carponensium Codex, a relevant source of the history of the 1530s and 1540s. Authentic documents from the Benedictine monastery of Garamszentbenedek were especially relevant sources which helped me to discover the policy of the Balassa brothers about enlarging their estates and the inner relations in the counties where they were possessors. Similarly to the already mentioned archive of the monastery, the Révay family archive and the Pálffy family archive are also situated in Bratislava (Slovakia), which include some importans datas to Balassa Menyhárt’s life. As a matter of fact, the documents from the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv’s Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, especially the collection named Hungarica, and from the Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv Hoffinanz Ungarn were the starting points when it came to discovering the life of Balassa. I should also mention at this point that the two letters wrote by him in Hungarian are also in Vienna in the Kriegsarchiv, but they are available on microfilm in the Archives of War History. That is why I published them next to the others in the appendix. The research process and the results In view of the fact that Balassa’s contemporaries in the 16th century had a bilateral opinion about him, first I tried to research and discover the sources of these opinions, meanwhile I collected relevant sources with critical analysis. Through this method I had to breakdown the elements of this image. First of all, the systematisation of the documents and new datas came from the archival research referred to above were the basis and the background to write the biography devide it into five parts. Menyhárt Balassa was an active participant in all important events from the battle of Mohács to the convention of Speyer, therefore his 3 activities, statement, and fights help us to get closer and understand the questions of this period. Each stages of his career give an answer to the questions of the „dual-kingdom’s” internal fights, and touch on the central problems about how king Ferdinand I. take charge in the areas in Hungary, which he controlled it before namely. After that I managed to compile a kind of biography, in which hitherto unknown and unexpected sources and datas were used to make statements, a new fund was born, which enabled an examine with critical analysis. This was the most helpful way in the research to the author and the origin of the Comedy. By way of introduction I tried to demonstrate the evolution of Balassa’s image, the origin of the opinions, and his the position in the Hungarian histrocial tradition.
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