Polish Immigrant Community Building in Brussels: The Role of the Polish Catholic Mission

This paper provides the first outline of the history of the Polish Catholic Mission (PCM) in Belgium, focusing on its role in the Polish immigrant community from 1926 to 2023. It examines the transformation of the PCM and its impact on the Polish diaspora, considering the broader context of secularization and social changes. The study utilizes primary sources, interviews, and participant observations to explore the PCM’s influence on community building, cultural preservation, and social capital formation within the Polish immigrant population in Belgium.

Keywords: Polish diaspora, immigration, Catholic Mission, pastoral care, catholic community, history.

The text offers a sketch of the Polish Catholic Mission (hereinafter PCM) in Belgium and its transformation over the course of a century (more precisely, between 1926 and 2023).1 Although a great deal of research has been done on the Polish diaspora in Belgium,2 no systematic history has been written about this institution, which became a center of leadership for both the Polish-speaking pastoral ministry and the Polish immigrant community in Belgium.3 We show that, while it was a conservative institution, the Polish Catholic Mission maintained its role as one of the key places of Polish activity in Belgium, despite an ongoing process of secularization.   

The study is based on a critical analysis of the literature, including primary sources (newsletters, memoirs, immigrant press, webpages), and participant observation and interviews. The primary sources which were examined are stored at the KADOC center at the Catholic University in Leuven and at the archive of the Polish Catholic Mission. The interviews were conducted in a recent study with Polish immigrants and Polish priests, but citations from interviews conducted in previous studies are also used here.4

The process of organizing and changing the Mission is shown in the context of the local Polish immigrant community and in the broader context of the receiving society. Launched in Brussels in 1926, the Polish Catholic Mission initially addressed the needs of Polish Catholics in Belgium, and in 1927, it extended its activities to the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Denmark.5 The text focuses on the Belgian part of the story. It provides a brief information of the Polish group in Belgium (part one), a basic chronology and data on the Polish Catholic Mission (part two), and an analysis of the changing functions of the PCM within the context of the Polish group in Belgium (part three).

Due to limited space, the text is devoted to the history of ethnic Poles, but it is worth keeping in mind that the influx from Polish lands also brought Polish Jews in the early twentieth century and the interwar period, as well as members of the Belarusian minority from the region of Podlasie since the late 1980s. 

Polish immigrants in Belgium managed to build their own world in the new milieu. In migration studies, this process is theorized as immigrant community building.6 In the case of this community, this process began in the nineteenth century, with each stream of Polish immigrants both contributing to and benefiting from the community. A network of institutions and relationships that comprised an immigrant community/immigrant communities embraced many newcomers.7 An ethnic institutional completeness8 has never been achieved, but the communities made it possible for newcomers to find their anchor in a new surroundings.9 In general, Poles oriented themselves towards their home country, their host society, and their immigrant community, which bridged the two. Today, researchers refer to this ability to create a new space in which migrants function on a daily basis across ethnic and state borders as transnationalism.10 Another concept that is useful in interpreting the findings of our study is social capital,11 which is produced in immigrant communities in a dense net of daily interactions. Bonding social capital is inward-oriented and contributes to internal social cohesion, while bridging social capital is produced in interactions with the new environment and with other immigrant groups.12

The Polish community in Belgium was made and remade, invented and reinvented by the successive streams of immigrants.13 The process of immigrants’ integration and their participation in cultural life of the host society was eased by the fact that the ethnic community helped them overcome the cultural shock that they experienced upon arrival.14 The community structures initiated by the first generation of each wave of immigrants often served the immigrants who arrived later.

The study challenges the traditional paradigms of the ethnic studies developed in the 1960s and 1970s, which portrayed ethnicity as “an insider identity generated in largely closed minority communities whose members struggle in the interaction with society at large.”15 The case of Poles in Belgium makes such an understanding of ethnicity inadequate, which is why one of the concepts underlying the study presented here is the New Architecture of Ethnic Studies (NAES). This new approach shows that ethnicity, as practiced or experienced by recent immigrants, allows and even facilitates the crossing of ethnic boundaries.16

There are many studies on the role of religion in the lives of immigrants.17 As Yang and Ebaugh observe, “Historically, religious institutions were among the most important resources that immigrant groups used to reproduce their ethno-religious identity in a new surrounding and to help them adjust to the challenges of surviving in a demanding and often threating environment.”18 This is certainly the case with the Polish Catholic Mission, which underwent significant evolution, changing its name to the Polish Catholic Community in 2018 and retaining its role as one of the key places of Polish activity in Belgium.

Polish Immigration to Belgium

Poland, a country with a population of about thirty-eight million (2022), has been left by at least seven million inhabitants over the course of the last two centuries.19 Massive outflow began in the mid-nineteenth century, reached its peak in the early twentieth century, and continues to this day with a few interruptions. Emigration produced several centers of Polish diaspora, the largest in the United States but also in Germany, France, and Great Britain. Other popular destinations include Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and Sweden.20 Belgium and the Netherlands received only a small portion of the Polish outflow, yet Poles built visible immigrant communities there.21 In the 1830s these communities, began to be formed by successive streams of newcomers from the Polish lands. The influx included both political refugees and migrants who came in search of work. 

The Polish diaspora communities in Belgium consisted of various groups of immigrants and their descendants: political refugees of the failed uprisings (who arrived in the 1830s and 1860s), Polish students at the postsecondary schools (Antwerpen, Liege, Glon near Liege, Leuven), migrants who came in search of work in the early twentieth century and the interwar period, World War II refugees, political and economic immigrants from communist Poland, including Solidarity refugees, migrants in search of work in the period of political transition (since 1989), and migrants who were and are taking advantage of greater mobility following Poland’s accession to the EU. Each wave of immigration stream had its particular social profile and contributed to the internal diversity of the immigrant group. While discussing its past and present, historians often tend to oversimplify the situation, usually focusing on working class communities because immigrants who come in search of work were and are the most numerous. As migration research shows, economic migration prevails in international flows, and this has been true in the case of waves of Polish migration. However, political motivations to migrate were usually intertwined with economic considerations. As Norman Davies has noted, in the nineteenth century, when Poland was partitioned, “The émigrés who stayed abroad because their lands and property had been sequestrated, or because they lost their source of livelihood in a home district annexed by a foreign power, were reacting as much to economic as to political factors.”22 The same interplay between political and economic factors in the decision to migrate can be found in the case of the outflow from communist Poland as well.23

It should be noted that this outflow did not stop with the fall of communism (1989), when Poland embarked down the path towards political transition and the free market. In fact, economic reforms of the 1990s (which initially resulted in high unemployment rates) and Polish accession to the EU in 2004 brought new streams of migration to the West, and Belgium became a popular destination for Poles. In 1991, Polish citizens were given an exemption from visa requirements in Belgium, and in 2009, Belgium opened its labor market to Poles. The influx that started in 1990s initially resulted in the undocumented employment of many Poles. At the time, circular migration became common, especially with Polish women working in Belgium for a few months, returning to Poland for a few months, and then coming to Belgium again.24 After 2009, most immigrants were able to legalize their status.

It is very difficult to determine precisely the actual size of migration flows, so we quote various estimates here. Currently, the estimated size of the Polish group in Belgium fluctuates around 60,000, including more than 43,000 Polish citizens.25 This number includes not only members of the first generation of Polish immigrants, but also members of the second and third generations. According to the population census conducted in Belgium in 1930, 48,840 Polish citizens resided in the country, including around 23,000 Polish Jews.26 In 1935, PCM rector Fr. Ryszard Moskwa estimated the group of Polish Catholics in Belgium at 24,000.27 In 1939, it was estimated that there were around 60,000 immigrants from Poland in Belgium, half of whom were Polish Catholics and half of whom were Polish Jews.28

The main Polish communities were found in the industrial regions of Liege, Limburg, and Hainaut (Charleroi, Mons, and the central area between them).29 During World War II, many Polish men who fought alongside the Western Allies ended up in the Benelux countries and took part in the fighting against the Nazi forces.30 After the war, there was a chaotic migration reshuffle. Poles who did not want to return to the communist country stayed in Belgium. This group included earlier immigrants and Polish Displaced Persons, many Polish soldiers among them.31 On the other hand, several thousand Poles left, deciding simply to return home.32

In the Polish collective memory,33 it is believed that the outflow of people from the country was the result of political oppression. In other words, the political dimension of the outflow is overestimated and the economic dimension is underestimated. In a sense, the heroic narrative of Polish émigré streams dominates Polish historiography.34 As nineteenth-century Polish publicist and independence agitator Maurycy Mochnacki famously contended, Polish emigration “has its own separate, historical character, not similar to the emigration of any other contemporary people […]. We are soldiers of the independence of our country, citizens of the future Poland.”35

This perception was shaped by the nineteenth-century Polish refugees who became diaspora leaders and understood their situation in exile as a continuation of the fight for the Polish cause. According to their speeches, memoirs, personal letters, and publications, the refugees believed that, while living abroad, they had a national mission to fulfill, i.e., they felt responsible for Polish cultural continuity, including Polish Catholicism. Indeed, many exiles in the nineteenth century were well-known figures who became symbols of Polish patriotism. Among the refugees from the uprisings there were several dozen officers and representatives of culture and science, among them Joachim Lelewel, an outstanding Polish historian and spiritual guide in a diaspora democratic camp who spent almost three decades in Belgium (1833–1861), and Stanisław Worcell, thinker and social activist of the Great Emigration.36 Another important element of the heroic history is related to Polish involvement in the Allied Forces and the anti-Nazi underground movement during World War II.37 The focus on heroism and martyrdom in Polish history, both on Polish soil and in the diaspora, is evident in the profile of patriotic activities organized by the Polish Catholic Mission in Belgium. Examples are given later in this discussion.

The Polish group in Belgium was often compared to the Polish diaspora center in France.38 This comparison is important because in the nineteenth century, Paris became the main center of Polish (unsuccessful) patriotic mobilization for the reestablishment of an independent Polish state. However, life in the diaspora could not focus solely on the old country. Everyday challenges prompted and compelled members of the émigré community to orient themselves towards the host society. Therefore, on the one hand side, there was a narrative about Polish refugees and their patriotic mission, while on the other, there was a more complex reality. The reality of the diaspora included both the integration process and ethnic community building. Subsequent generations of Polish immigrants integrated and dispersed in the host society, especially in the case of those born into binational families.39 Moreover, hope for social advancement was usually an incentive for immigrants to go beyond the (symbolic) boundaries of their ethnic group.40 

The migration path that led Poles to Belgium in the twentieth century is an interesting and little researched topic. Many Polish migrants who traveled to Belgium in search of work came directly from Polish lands before and after World War I, but a significant group came from Germany and France during this period. A priest who ministered to Poles in the interwar period estimated that only one third of the Poles in Belgium came from Poland, while one third came from Germany and another third from France.41 We are dealing here with multiple migrations that involved living and working in the diaspora prior to arrival in Belgium. These migrants moved to Belgium in search of better opportunities from industrial regions in Germany (Westphalia) and France (Pas de Calais and Nord), where Polish men were employed in coal mines. In the case of Westphalian Poles, another major push factor was the requirement to take the German citizenship if the migrant wanted to remain in the country after World War I.42 This push factor, rooted in the migrants’ attachment to their identity as Poles (the decision not to accept German citizenship), can be seen as cultural and political rather than economic. However, the labor market in Belgium (coal mines and work that Polish men were used to) proved a strong pulling force. This shows the interplay of various incentives in the decision to migrate.

Polish families brought with them from Germany and France a tradition of establishing ethnic institutions and associations, which during their stay in Belgium proved helpful in the process of building new immigrant communities.43 The experiences of working-class immigrant communities were thus added to the nineteenth-century traditions of refugee activities. The spiritual connection between waves of immigration, old and new, working-class and intellectual, is exemplified in the name of the (Polish student) Lelewel Society in Brussels.44   

From the perspective of gender, in the refugee streams in the nineteenth century, men predominated. In turn, the Polish economic migrations involved primarily single men and families.45 World War II brought soldiers to Belgium, meaning men, but the group of people referred to as Displaced Persons consisted of both men and women. Emigration from communist Poland involved both sexes, including the Solidarity refugees: families, single men, and single women. Polish immigration to Belgium in recent decades, however, has been dominated by women.46 Many of these Polish women have decided to stay, however, and they brought their nuclear families to Belgium, while earlier they had perceived migration as a short term solution or circular move.47

Today, the migration process has slowed or halted shifts in gender roles on the labor market. Most men are employed in traditionally male occupations, for instance the construction and renovation of buildings and as truck drivers, and most women are employed in typically female jobs, for instance as caretakers, nannies and babysitters, and cleaning staff.48 However, “in a recent study on female migration in Belgium […] it was found that women often perceived migration as an empowering experience: it not only strengthened their economic situations but also changed their intra-familial and gender positions for the better.”49 The most recent study which analyzes changes in the PCM focuses entirely on gender roles within this group.50 Its authors closely examine the intersection of class, gender, and ethnicity (minority status), and they demonstrate that Polish women must fight if they want to exercise agency. In this context, it should be noted that Polish migrants often have been working below their skill level. This situation is gradually changing, with more and more Polish men and women finding jobs in Belgium that are compatible with their education and/or getting education in Belgium to improve their position on the labor market.51

Polish Catholic Mission – Basic Information

In the case of waves of Polish migration, the religious dimension of the diaspora experience is clear. In most diaspora centers, Poles established their churches and developed an immigrant community around them.52 The initiative usually came from the bottom up, with immigrants raising funds to start their own churches and cover maintenance costs. They sent petitions to the Church hierarchy to get Polish clergy. It was a grass-roots activity, but a Polish priest often became the leader of a local group. However, the Polish group in Belgium differed significantly from that in countries with the largest Polish diasporas. Unlike in the religiously pluralistic United States, where Catholics were in minority, or France, where the process of secularization was already well underway, in Belgium, Polish immigrants joined the religious majority. Nevertheless, their religiosity, strongly associated with Polish national and folk culture, differed from the religious patterns they encountered in Belgium. They tried to exert some control over the situation by setting up their own structures. In Belgium, the initiative came from above.

Another important aspect was the existence of several pillars on which the social engagement of the Catholic Church in Belgium rested. From its foundation in 1830 in the wake of the Belgian Revolution, Belgium was a Catholic state, and the Catholic Church controlled education, culture, and charity. Thus, the endeavors of immigrants in these fields necessarily took place within the existing Church structures. Cooperatives, sick funds, trade unions, volunteer associations, the school system, and a Catholic party (from 1921) were the pillars of the institutionalized Catholic system.53 Ironically, however, it was more difficult for Poles in Belgium to become part of this established system than it was for Poles in the religiously diverse but nonetheless predominantly Protestant United States to establish ethnic parishes and schools.

On January 1, 1926, through the efforts of August Hlond, primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, and with the approval of Cardinal Désiré Joseph Mercier, the Polish Catholic Mission in Belgium was established.54 Its purpose was to provide pastoral care for Polish immigrants. A year later, the scope of activity was expanded to the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Denmark. The Mission, which is a church organizational unit, was responsible for the organization and development of the religious life of the Polish immigrants. The pastoral activities of the Mission were the same as those of any parish in Poland and included celebrating services, administering the sacraments, receiving confessions, granting absolution, and providing religious instruction. The main task of the PCM rector was to organize pastoral care so that every Polish local community would have access to a Polish priest. This was difficult since the communities were numerous and dispersed. Another crucial challenge was to organize religious instruction in Polish. Due to the lack of priests, the first PCM rector, Fr. Kotowski, trained a group of parishioners representing scattered communities and supplied them with catechisms and songbooks.55

Pastoral care by Polish clergy was and still is essential, as many Polish workers in Belgium either spoke neither French nor Flemish or had difficulty with the languages. Until the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Catholic masses were celebrated in Latin, to which Poles were accustomed, but listening to sermons, singing hymns, and giving confession in French or Flemish seemed alien to immigrants. As diaspora studies indicate, it was often difficult for immigrants to give confession in a foreign language, so they avoided doing do, even though the Roman Catholic Church requires one to give confession at least once a year.56 The Polish Episcopate was aware of this, and in 1921, it issued a decree recognizing pastoral care for Poles living abroad as necessary. In 1969, the legal situation of churches in the diaspora was regulated by the papal decree Pastorialis Migratorum Cura.57

The first PCM rector Fr. Tadeusz Kotowski (1926–28) established eight places of Polish pastoral care in Belgium and one in the Netherlands.58 Before coming to Belgium, he studied in France (Lyon, Nancy) and worked in Polish communities in the industrial regions of France, so he was accustomed to ministering among working-class immigrants.59 The second rector, Fr. Ludwik Kudłacik (1928–1935), also spent several years in France before being assigned to the PCM in Belgium. Both had official contacts with the Belgian Church hierarchy, as well as with the Polish bishops of their home dioceses, where they had worked before their departure. Both left rich correspondence with their Polish bishops, through which we gain some insight into the challenges they faced in their daily activities.60 Their actions were financially supported by Polish Roman Catholic Church and by the Polish Consulates (Brussels, Antwerpen). Thus, in addition to being subjects of the Belgian and Polish bishops, PCM rectors had to know how to navigate the world of diplomats and politicians. There was one more influential actor in the puzzle: the workplace. The owners of the coal mines where the immigrants were employed supported the Polish pastoral ministry. They offered places of worship and education and funded libraries, and in return, they expected the Mission to provide priests.61 This, however, was extremely difficult and caused frustration, and the PCM rectors expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation. In addition, the material support from all sides proved insufficient. The Mission rectors struggled financially, especially during the Great Depression.

In 1939, the Polish Catholic Mission was entrusted to the (Polish) Society of Christ Fathers, a community established in 1932 that has directed its service to Poles in the diaspora. In 1948, the Christ Fathers were succeeded by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a community originally established in 1816 in Aix en Provence. This French community decided in 1921 to establish a Polish Province, which consisted of Polish priests dedicated to caring for Polish immigrants. Both Polish communities had been trained to serve migrants and help them keep their faith. The first Oblate in Brussels was Fr. Karol Kubsz, who, like the first rectors, had experience ministering in Polish communities in France (during WWII).62 He became the PCM rector in 1948 and remained in that position until 1961. The Oblates continue to look after the Mission today.

In 2018 the Mission changed its name to the Polish Catholic Community, and its leader, Fr. Damian Kopytto OMI, became (instead of rector) a coordinator of Polish Pastoral Care in Belgium.63

Until 1925, there was no Polish Catholic parish, mission, or any other type of religious center in Belgium. Several Polish communities were served occasionally by Polish priests who studied in Leuven. In the 1930s, the situation improved a little. There were four Polish priests and two Belgian Capuchin Fathers who had learned Polish, and Polish priests who studied in Leuven still helped on occasion. In 1974, there were 14 priests taking full care of the Poles and three more assisting them. There were also roughly 15 students from the Catholic University of Leuven available.64 In 2023, two Polish priests (Oblates) resided in the Mission house at the Rue Jourdan, one at the St. Elisabeth in Schaerbeek and four Missionary Sisters of Christ the King for Polish Emigrants who helped them.

In Belgian society, where overall religiosity was and is diminishing65 and the Roman Catholic Church has been struggling with declining membership,66 the Polish Catholic Mission appears to have been a unique case of success. It has played and plays a crucial role in the local Polish group. There are currently four places in Brussels metropolis where services are held in Polish: Chapel of the Polish Catholic Community, St. Gilles; Sainte-Elisabeth, Schaerbeek; Notre Dame de la Chapelle, downtown; Saint-Joseph, Anderlecht. To this day, there is no Polish parish in Belgium, though Belgian parishes with large or significant numbers of Polish members try to provide Polish language services. The Polish Catholic Mission coordinates the pastoral care and orchestrates activities that are going on around churches. As already mentioned, Polish churches have always been centers of immigrant community life in the diaspora. Ethnic parishes were entwined with a network of associations. In Belgium, the institutionalization of the pillar system of Church life has made it more than natural for the local Catholic Church to go far beyond pastoral care. In these two contexts, the PCM developed its agenda. From the very beginning in the 1920s, the role of Polish priests was never limited to pastoral ministry. Fr. Kotowski, the first PCM rector, initiated social meetings at the Mission which took place once a month.67 He initiated the establishment of Polish Academic Youth Circles (Koła Polskiej Młodzieży Akademickiej) in localities where Polish students lived. In 1927, he opened at the PCM a kind of tourist branch to facilitate Polish student travel and enable Polish students to visit neighboring countries.68

While many decades have passed in the meantime, the situation has remained very similar. In the 1970s, the Rector of the Polish Catholic Mission stated that Polish priests devoted only 25 percent of their time to religious services, while 75 percent was devoted to counseling, teaching, and organizing social life.69 The same was said by a Polish priest in an interview that he gave in 1990s,70 and a similar claim was made in the recent study conducted in 2021–23.

Polish priests became not only spiritual guides for their compatriots but also teachers, translators, and social workers. Indeed, the religious life of immigrants was woven into a network of ethnic associations and institutions: schools, choirs, societies, clubs, and media organs. Catholic societies included women’s, men’s, and youth units, and many of them published newsletters, calendars, and/or regular magazines.71 Together with the PMC, the role of coordinating Polish activities was initially played by the Committee of Cultural and Social Welfare for Polish Emigration in Belgium (Komitet Opieki Kulturalno-Społecznej dla Wychodźstwa Polskiego w Belgii). The Committee published a bulletin, which is now a valuable source of detailed information on activities held in local communities. It should be noted that the editor of the Bulletin was the rector of the PCM.72

In 1923, the Catholic Men’s Association was established (Stowarzyszenie Mężów Katolickich).73 Another example of men’s societies was the (Polish) Association of St. Barbara, launched in coalmining towns. In several places, the local units gathered all Polish coalminers. They worked with mutual aid funds to help families cover the costs of accidents, health crises, and funerals.74 Polish women’s societies had a different range of interests. The Community of Living Rosary (Bractwo Żywego Różańca 1933), which brought together Polish women, was a prayer association, but its purpose was also to remind women of their patriotic mission in raising children. It emphasized the traditional role of the “Mother-Pole” and reinforced the gendered patterns of the family, in which men were breadwinners and women were bread-bakers. Baking bread is used here in its metaphoric sense, including the tasks of managing the daily life of a family, but also caring for the spiritual needs of the young generation.

In 1948, the Oblates founded a (Polish) Catholic Action in Belgium, a religious association modeled on the Catholic Action operating in Poland in the interwar period and banned during the communist period. At the same time, the (aforementioned) Catholic Men’s Association was active, and the local units of the Living Rosary of Ladies fell under the control of an umbrella organization, the Association of Confraternities of the Living Rosary of Ladies. This consolidation was necessary because the number of local Rosary groups had gradually increased.75 In addition, there was a Polish Catholic youth organization that dated back to 1947 (Workers Catholic Youth, Robotnicza Młodzież Katolicka) and later operated under the name Polish Catholic Youth Association (Katolickie Stowarzyszenie Młodzieży Polskiej). Polish (Girls’ and Boys’) Scout Teams, another type of immigrant youth association, were not directly affiliated with the Catholic Church, but scouts in their uniforms participated in Polish religious ceremonies.76  

Educational activities focused on religious instruction and Polish courses, language, history, geography, and literature. In 1952, the Polish Educational Society (Macierz Szkolna Wolnych Polaków) was established. This Society worked closely with the Polish Catholic Mission.77 Currently, Polish language, history and geography lessons are held on Saturdays in buildings owned by the Polish Catholic Community. An important part of the program is the teaching of Catholic religion, now conducted by Polish nuns. After the political changes in 1989, Polish classes are supported by the Polish state. In a 2012–13 survey of Polish women in Antwerp, half of the respondents reported that their children attended both Belgian schools and Polish supplementary schools.78

In the 1980s, the PCM actively supported Solidarity, a trade union in Poland, independent of the communist state. In December 1981, when martial law was declared in Poland, Solidarity was suspended and later outlawed. At the time, Fr. Bolesław Kurzawa, rector of the PCM (1981–1984), collected funds for the families of imprisoned (in Poland) Solidarity activists, and he cooperated with the head of the Solidarity office in Brussels, Jan Kułakowski, and sent secret literature to Poland and provided care for Solidarity refugees who had managed to leave Poland. Thanks to this initiative, a few days after Martial Law was declared, Cardinal Goodfried Danneels celebrated a solemn mass for Poland in the Brussels Cathedral.79 This part of the PCM’s achievements has contributed to the emergence, in Poland and in the diaspora, of a legend of heroic national history and has become an important part of the collective memory of the Belgian Polish community.

Before and after the Solidarity period, the PCM organized Polish cultural events that focused on Polish heroic history. These events aimed to reinforce Polish national feelings by commemorating the Polish uprisings (1794, 1830–31, 1863–64, and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944) and the legacy of Solidarity (1980–81). Another reason for celebration was the anniversary of the May 3 Constitution of 1791, a failed attempt to reform the Polish monarchy. Polish priests were also involved in the ceremonies that were held annually at the Polish war cemetery in Lommel. An interesting detail relates to Fr. Bolesław Kurzawa, who studied philosophy in Leuven between 1951 and 1954 and served during this time as chaplain to Polish war veterans in Ghent. Fr. Kurzawa purchased a plot in Ressaix and initiated the establishment of the St. Maximilian Kolbe Church, named to commemorate a Polish priest who had saved the life of his fellow Auschwitz prisoner by offering himself for execution.80 According to the records, Fr. Kurzawa managed to build a rectory, but there is no trace of the church today.

Polish pilgrimages to the Banneux shrine in Belgium and the shrine of Lourdes in France are an important element of Polish religious life which helps increase bonding social capital in the immigrant group. These events bring together Poles representing various local groups. Moreover, Poles meet occasionally in the Millennium Center opened in 1961 in Comblain-la-Tour in Ardennes, a province of Liege, Wallonia. This holiday center for Polish youth still operates today, and it hosts summer camps for Polish youths from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The Millennium Center thus has served as a bridge among Polish Catholic communities scattered around these countries. In the 1970s, some 400 Polish children spent part of their holidays there every year.81 Another place for trips and youth camps was Stella Maris, located in Pas de Calais, France, on the coast. Like the Millennium Center, Stella Maris brought together Polish migrants from several countries and served as a bridge among members of the Polish diaspora from France, Britain, and Benelux. In both cases, the centers were launched by the Polish Catholic Mission (in the case of Stella Maris, it was the Polish Catholic Mission in France), and over time, they opened to serve a wider range of guests. The Millennium Center is now managed by the Polish Educational Society, and it cooperates with the PCM.

 Most records indicate that Polish migrants gathered around the church. In fact, the Polish Catholic Mission became a “miniature Poland” and a kind of “small homeland” where people sought assistance and guidance in difficult moments of life. As the sources suggest, a parallel was even drawn between the experiences of the Polish refugees and the plight of Christ: “it is not unusual for migrants to hear during Mass that they are the same refugees that Christ once was, that they are refugees from communism, the consequences of which they still have to deal with”.82 This message reinforces the narrative of the heroism, although the sermon was mainly aimed at labor immigrants. To those who felt humiliated or exploited, however, it may well have given some consolation.

At the moment, Poles in Brussels celebrate anniversaries of the reestablishment of the Polish state (November 11, 1918), with the central ceremony being a holy mass in Notre Damme de La Chappelle. During the Mass in 2019, the dedication of the banner of the 24th regiment of lancers of the Reconstruction Group of the First Armored Division “Antwerp” was held.83 The event proves that reconstructions of heroic events have become an important part of Polish patriotic celebrations, and the PCM plays an important role in this.

The Polish Catholic Mission continues to serve as something of a substitute for the homeland for Polish emigrants, despite their integration into the host society. In addition, thanks to the size of the Polish émigré community and their attachment to religion and the significant participation in Sunday and holiday services, which is incomparably greater than that of the local community, arguably, the PCM activities have revitalized Brussels’ deserted churches. With more and more services in Polish attended by hundreds of worshippers, the church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in the center of Brussels, the church of Sainte-Elisabeth in the Schaerbeek district, and, more recently, the church of Saint-Joseph in Anderlecht have regained their former character, are more readily visited, and parishioners help cover the costs of utilities and building maintenance through contributions and donations. Thanks to the Polish émigré community, some churches in Brussels have been saved from total neglect or even closure. 

 Polish migrants involved in religious activities confirm that the Polish Catholic Mission is important to them:84 “The Mission is our home” (“Misja to nasz dom”); “I feel at home in the Mission” (“Na Misji czuję się jak w domu”); “The church is a substitute for the motherland (“Kościół to namiastka Ojczyzny”); “The church is Poland in miniature” (“Kościół to Polska w miniaturze”); “The Polish church is important to me for religious reasons; without it, life would be more difficult. Besides, it has a tradition here. It is a place to meet other Poles, although sometimes it turns into a big gossip forum.” (“Polski kościół jest dla mnie ważny ze względów religijnych, bez niego byłoby trudniej. Poza tym ma tu swoją tradycję. Jest miejscem do spotkania z innymi Polakami, chociaż czasami zamienia się w wielkie obgadywanie, jeden drugiego.”)85 

The Polish Catholic Mission did not shield immigrants from the host society, however. On the contrary, it helped create bridging social capital between them and the local population. It was anchored in the Belgian structures of the Roman Catholic Church, and despite some tensions in the first decades, it was fully endorsed by the local Church hierarchy.86 Polish priests have cooperated with Belgian clergy in the local parishes, and Polish societies and choirs functioned alongside the parochial Belgian societies. Polish cultural events are attended, moreover, by members of the non-Polish community. Belgian bishops celebrated masses on Polish holidays, especially on the occasions of visits by Polish bishops. As mentioned earlier, they also celebrate Polish patriotic masses in cooperation with the PCM. Polish students at the Catholic University in Leuven have belonged to the Belgian academic world and have been ready to help in the Polish Catholic Mission. Moreover, the Mission supported the (Polish) Workers Catholic Youth (1947), which was born out of inspiration coming from two sides: the French movement (Économie et Humanisme) and the Belgian JOC, or Jeunesse Ouvriere Catholique. This is another example of the creation of bridging social capital, in this case in the transnational Catholic space.

Polish involvement in the Polish Catholic Mission has not diminished, despite the ongoing process of secularization, with Poland following trends initiated in the West. Today, the PCM is present in eleven places: Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Genk, Leopoldsburg, Liege, Maasmechelen, Mons (Tetre), Namur, and Ressaix.87 Many migrants declare that they did not go to church in Poland, but as members of the diaspora, they remain in regular contact with the PCM. The community gives them a sense of belonging and security. This is especially the case of Polish Catholic women from Podlasie, who appreciate the social ties that function within the immigrant community. They do not question gender roles in the immigrant church, where women are denied both leadership positions and the right to assist in services. The relatively new rule allowing women in the Catholic Church to give Holy Communion and serve at the altar (“altar servers”) is not recognized in Poland, so Polish immigrants are not pursuing it.88 It seems that labor migrants are more involved in the PCM than Poles who managed to integrate into the Belgian social structure and who found jobs appropriate to their skills. Indeed, many educated and accomplished women declare that they do not participate in the PCM activities.89 On the other hand, church involvement depends on the migrants’ stage of life. Young couples want to have church weddings, baptize their children, and send them to Polish schools, at least until their first Holy Communion.90 Most of them hold their weddings in their hometowns in Poland, but pre-marriage courses are organized by the PCM.

The religious life of Polish immigrants is becoming diverse, however. In 2000, the Polish Section of the European Catholic Center in Brussels was established, offering services at the Dominican Church (Avenue de la Renaissance). The Polish Catholic Community Coordinator admits that the Section has little in common with the PCM/PCC (2023). As the group of Poles involved in EU structures increases (members of the European Parliament, employees in EU offices and their families), it seems that its role will grow. In addition, a Polish Orthodox Parish has been operating in Brussels since 2015. It was founded by immigrants from Podlasie who belonged to the Belarusian minority. Previously, all immigrants from Podlasie were seen as ethnic Poles, which is a typically ethnocentric/polonocentric approach. Research on the Belarusian minority in Belgium, its relations with other immigrants from Podlasie, and with immigrants/refugees from Belarus would be welcome.

The activities of the Polish Section of the European Catholic Center and the Polish Orthodox Parish contribute to the internal diversification of the Polish community in Belgium and may one day challenge the dominance of the PCM/PCC. On the other hand, their emergence demonstrates the importance of church attendance for many migrants: Catholic and Orthodox, PCM/PCC participants, and outsiders.

The PCM is conservative in every possible way. It preserves a heroic version of Polish history and conducts patriotic missions. It reinforces traditional Catholicism with its folk culture (for example the Corpus Christi processions). It provides religious instruction (led by Polish nuns) which is based on the teachings of Pope John Paul II. It reinforces traditional gender roles, with Polish women seen primarily as mothers. However, to this day, the PCM/PCC is an extremely thriving center of religious, cultural, educational, and social life which unites Poles living in the Kingdom of Belgium.  

To sum up this brief overview of the Polish Catholic Mission/Community in Belgium, the initiative to establish the Polish Catholic Mission sprang from the conviction that faith and national identity are strongly connected. At the time, the Polish diaspora leaders tried to prevent the dispersal of immigrants in the host societies, and their countermeasure was to promote Polish cultural continuity and preserve their understanding of “Polishness.” In this case, cultural continuity meant preserving the Catholic tradition and the heroic narrative of the Polish past and present. The Church hierarchy, in turn, feared losing members or loosening ties with the Catholic Church.91 Both sides wanted the immigrants to stay within the immigrant community, which was to be organized around the religious institution.  The migrant communities have proven an enduring entity and continue to function today.

To put the achievements of the PCMs in a broader perspective, it is worth returning to research on religion in the lives of immigrants. Most of this research has been conducted in the United States, and it has tended to highlight the positive role of religion in easing and facilitating the adaptation process. As Nancy Foner and Richard Alba have suggested, however, this is an oversimplification at best. In some instances, “[i]n contrast (…), religion is seen in Europe as the marker of a fundamental social divide. (…) The focus of scholarly commentaries on immigrant religion [in Europe] is almost exclusively on Islam.” Muslims in Europe, it has been noted, struggle to practice their religion and build up their institutions, and this has triggered conflicts (or been used as a pretext for conflicts) with long-established residents and institutions. Moreover, the incorporation of Muslims into European societies is viewed by some as very problematic.92 Looking from this perspective, the welcome enjoyed by Poles (who are EU citizens) in Belgium should be understood as something of a privilege in comparison with the response shown to Muslim immigrants. In other words, racism and Islamophobia create additional fault lines, alongside the fault lines of class, gender, and ethnicity. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, Poles were seen as mere a labor force and were not expected to integrate. Their Catholicism was perceived as an element that helped the host community exert a degree of control over them but did not bring them closer to the mainstream.

The Polish Catholic Mission at the Center of a Network of Migrant Associations and Institutions

Within the process of immigrant community building, Poles in Belgium supported Polish language ministry, raised funds to secure some form of Polish education, established and maintained publishing houses and libraries, published press materials, newsletters, and books, founded several societies,93 and in the course of time managed to have their own ethnic services: shops, workshops, counseling, medical services, gastronomy, etc.94 The list that gives names and data of many Polish immigrant institutions and societies in Belgium was compiled two decades ago and needs to be updated.95 Here, we provide the most illustrious examples of Polish structures in Belgium. The process of their establishment can be conceptualized as an attempt to achieve ethnic institutional completeness.96 However, nowhere was full “completeness” ever reached. In Belgium, there were no Polish parishes, and at the beginning, church services in Polish were irregular.

Still, in the network of Polish societies on a local level, the Church was very visible. According to detailed data provided by the rector of the PCM in 1936, after the rector’s visitation to the Polish community in Winterslag in Limburg, most of the local societies were connected to the church or directly supported by it (see the table below).97 Among the network of societies were men’s, women’s, and youth organizations, a cultural unit (church choir), and a parents’ association. All were directly controlled by the PCM. The sport units (the Falcons, the Riffle Association, the scouts) and the women’s association seemed to be independent. But the scout teams, established by Polish consulates and formally not under the control of the PCM, were actively involved in Polish church celebrations animated by the PCM.98 And the veteran society had a chaplain who cooperated with the PCM on a daily basis. In the case of the Eucharistic Crusade, it was initiated in the Polish local community by the Belgian Catholic Church and operated outside the influence of the PCM. However, it belonged to the network of Polish immigrant structures and contributed to its dynamic. Moreover, this case shows that the process of immigrant integration was advanced, and bridging social capital between the immigrant and the Belgian Church was generated.99

Table 1. Polish associations in Winterslag, (Belgian) Limburg, 1936.

Organization	Polish name	Supported by	Number of participants
Committee of Local Societies	Komitet Miejscowych Towarzystw
St. Adalbert Mining Society	Towarzystwo Górnicze Św. Wojciecha	Church*	50
Polish Union	Związek Polaków	Neutral (no church affiliation)	70
Sport Society FALCONS	Towarzystwo Gimnastyczne “Sokół”	Indirect Westphalen pattern	40
Rifle Association	Związek Strzelecki	the Polish government	20–30
Church choir	Chór kościelny	Church	30
Confraternity of the Living Rosary (women’s organization)	Bractwo Żywego Różańca	Church	115
Polish Women’s Society	Towarzystwo Polek	Independent	120
Polish Parental Care	Polska Opieka Rodzicielska	Church	30
Union of Former Military	Związek Byłych Wojskowych		25
Scouting	Harcerstwo	the Polish government	50 + 50**
Eucharistic Crusade	Krucjata Eucharystyczna	Belgian Church organization***	20 + 20**

* Polish Catholic Mission, Roman Catholic Church

**Boys and girls

***La Croisade Eucharistique: https://fsspx.org/en/the-eucharistic-crusade

Source: Szymański, “Życie organizacyjne wychodźstwa polskiego,” 64.

Data similar to that for Winterslag was provided following visits by the PCM rector to Polish communities in Limburg’s industrial cities: Waterschei, Zwartberg, Eysden, and Hensen.100 Moreover, Polish newspapers were received regularly from France, and one should note the impressive Polish editorial and publishing achievements in Belgium.101

Another factor particular to the Polish diaspora in Belgium relates to the working-class movement, which (both Christian oriented and secular/anticlerical) proved to be quite strong among Polish immigrants and led them to cross the ethnic boundary in their activity.102 On the other hand, it must be noted that there were Polish sections of the local trade unions, and the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna – PPS) was quite visible both before and after World War II.103 This means that the Poles’ participation in working-class activity was accepted in Belgium. Immigrants were welcome to launch their ethnic organizations within the broader structures, and they knew how to take advantage of these opportunities. Being active, whether in the structures of the Catholic Church or in the labor movement, Poles gradually integrated into the host society. Immigrants who joined the Belgian labor movement were simple workers, but there were some well-known figures among them. Edward Gierek worked as a teenager in the Arenberg coal mine in France, and around 1930, he joined the Polish Section of the French Communist Party, which caused him to be deported to Poland. In 1936, he arrived in Belgium, where he was employed as a coal miner in Limburg. He joined the local (Belgian) and Polish units of the labor movement. In this case, we again see a direct link between the Polish immigrant experience in France and Belgium and the advantages that knowledge of the language provided in the French-speaking regions of Belgium. After World War II, Gierek returned to Poland, and he eventually became a leading figure in the Polish United Workers Party, which gave him the highest position in the communist state (1970–1980).104 His participation in the left-wing parts of the anti-Nazi movement during World War II was probably exaggerated, since the research was done under the communist regime.105 Another key figure was Jan Kułakowski (1930–2011), a World War II refugee and graduate of the Catholic University of Leuven, who became a high-ranking official in international Christian trade unions and the International Labor Organization. Kułakowski is also an example of return migration. He settled in Poland after the fall of communism, reclaimed Polish citizenship, successfully led the process of Poland’s accession to the EU, and was elected to serve as a member of the European Parliament in 2005.106 As already noted, alongside these well-known figures were hundreds of anonymous Polish members of the labor movement who contributed significantly to the dynamics of the host society.

As shown above, Poles established a wide variety of associations and institutions in Belgium. In the late 1920s the leaders of the Polish group presented a typology of these structures: church societies, educational societies, mutual aid societies, and sports societies. At the same time, Polish consuls distinguished three types of associations: social, cultural, and sport.107 As for the labor movement, Polish leaders distinguished three branches: communist groups that were hostile to the Polish state at the time (Seraing near Liege); a radical group which questioned the role of the Church; and a Christian group which included Polish immigrants from Westphalia and the province of Poznan/Poznan. All typologies show that ethnic associations and institutions formed a very dense fabric within the immigrant communities.

After eight decades, a 2001 research report revealed information about Little Poland in Brussels. The list of the entities and activities in this community included Polish-language church services at two locations in the city, several associations, Polish language schools, choirs, small business (hairdressing, car repair shops, medical and legal services) and markets (South Market, Butchers’ Market), discos, and gastronomy.108 The religious activities (in Polish) were listed first in the report, which indicated the key role played by the Polish Catholic Mission.  

However, it should be noted that formal membership in Polish societies in Belgium is rather low. This situation is similar to the situations in other centers of the Polish diaspora, and generally it indicates a decreasing level of social capital in the modern/postmodern world.109 It is estimated that about 20 percent of immigrants are somehow involved in community life. This is probably an overestimate, since the typical level of Polish immigrants’ involvement does not exceed 10 percent.110 It is estimated that in Antwerp 14 percent of Poles belong to an immigrant organization.111 Still, migrants feel that they belong to an ethnic community. Many young Polish couples send their children to Polish schools, and they attend the events organized by the school communities. Many Polish children in Belgium attend Polish religious instruction, at least until the First Holy Communion. Whole families are eager to participate in the most important Polish holidays, such as Christmas Service and Easter ceremonies (blessing food on Good Saturday), but they avoid involvement in other activities. Moreover, ethnicity that is practiced or felt by the recent immigrants is often observed among those who do not engage much in ethnic institutions.112 Indeed, while Poles in Belgium have managed to produce high levels of bonding social capital,113 many still construct their identities outside the traditional structures of the diaspora.

Despite a certain level of social anomie, subsequent streams of Polish immigrants and geographical dispersion produced not just one but many local communities.114 These communities are comprised in part of people who belonged to various immigration streams, and they are diverse in terms of class and region of origin. Because the Polish Catholic Community operates in very traditional ways, which include reinforcing conservative gender roles,115 competing forces are gaining members, such as the Polish Section at the European Catholic Center and the Polish Orthodox Parish. However, these are religious institutions, and there is no secular body strong enough to take over the leadership of the Polish Catholic Community.

Living together and apart, over the course of the last half century, Poles in Belgium met for patriotic holidays and /or in the Millenium Center, and quite often they competed with one another. The main dividing line both before and after World War II was politics. Before the War, there was a division between groups that identified with the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand and groups that were involved in the working-class movement on the other. However, the strong position of Christian trade unions in Belgium has kept many labor activists in the Catholic Church. There was also a division between the groups that supported the Polish government after 1926 and groups that decided to remain neutral. After World War II, the division between pro-communist and anti-communist Poles was the most visible and rigid fault line. This division led to two separate celebrations in Lommel at the cemetery where Polish soldiers who died in World War II are buried.116 Admittedly, conflicts always attract attention and make headlines in the media. In other words, conflicts produce many records, which is why many researchers who examine organs of the Polish media emphasize disagreements within the Polish diaspora, both in Belgium and elsewhere.117 Daily cooperation and harmony are undervalued because they take place quietly and leave little trace.  

There is another interesting and disturbing aspect of diaspora studies. In traditional Polish historiography, the diaspora is characterized as a group that is an immanent part of the nation.118 From this perspective, researchers have focused on documenting the process of immigrant community building, highlighting the community’s successes in promoting Polish culture, and they have paid a lot of attention to outstanding individuals (Polish immigrants) with whom average immigrants wanted to identify. This is true in part simply because these outstanding individuals produced a lot of records, such as memoirs, letters, interviews, and other publications. The main sources for Polish studies on the diaspora were the files of Polish institutions and associations abroad and personal records. These files highlighted all Polish patriotic efforts in Belgium and usually contained little or no information about how Poles had integrated into the host society and culture. Therefore, the researchers’ perception of the diaspora reality was biased. Subtle indications of the integration process are often implicit, except for lamentations about members of the younger generation, which (according to these lamentations) preferred not to speak their native language (especially in public, but also with their siblings) and tried to avoid ethnic events.

The other side of the coin (the integration process) is usually overlooked by Polish researchers. However, studies on the integration of immigrants are being conducted by Belgian scholars and have yielded interesting findings. A new perspective was introduced by Idesbald Goddeeris, who noticed the interconnectedness of the political and economic causes of migration and has pushed for the de-heroization of the Polish experience in Belgium. Goddeeris later joined a group of researchers from Antwerp, and the whole group skillfully showed that Poles gradually integrated into their host society.119 Immigrants’ integration was a slow and quiet process that has been going on in daily life, e.g. children at school, adults at work, and in regular contacts with neighbors representing the host society. Such a process is usually not documented, except on rare occasions, for example celebrations of Polish religious holidays in Belgian churches (as reported sometimes by local media). However, one can examine the process by taking into consideration several key indicators of integration. These key indicators are markers and means (employment, housing, education), social connections (within an immigrant group, with the host society), factors that facilitate integration (language and cultural knowledge, safety and stability), and rights and citizenship.120

On the Polish side, we have studies on immigrant integration by Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska and Kamil Bałuk. Their works are unique in the sense that both authors understand the significance of the integration process and use some indicators of integration. Grzymała-Kazłowska has analyzed Polish women’s migration experiences in liminal time of their lives, and she has found connections between “doing family” and the integration process.121 Bałuk also noted a connection between migrant family life and the integration process, and he demonstrated that members of the second generation of recent immigrants feel at home in Antwerp (where the study was conducted) and motivate their parents to stay in Belgium. The decision to stay (instead of to live as circular or short-term migrants), in turn, results in participation in language and vocational courses in Belgium, which leads immigrants to integrate into the host society.122

Conclusion 

The history of the Polish diaspora in Belgium began in the 1830s and continues to the present day. It included various migration streams and counter-streams: emigration from Poland to Belgium; return migrations from Belgium to Poland (especially after World War I and World War II); multiple migrations, such as the arrival of Poles from Germany and France to Belgium, and the emigration of Poles (mostly DPs) from Belgium to the USA, Canada, and Australia (1950–55);123 and circular migrations in recent decades. At the moment, we witness each of these phenomena at the same time. Many Poles arrive in Belgium and settle there, while others move between Poland and Belgium on a regular basis. Migrants who seemed to be well established in Belgium decide to return to Poland, while seasonal migrants prolong their stay and change their status (in documented or undocumented ways) from temporary to permanent residents. After having spent several years in Belgium, many Poles decide to move on and they go to France or Quebec. Moreover, young people born in Polish families (or mixed families) in Belgium often decide to spend a longer time in Poland, and sometimes, they stay. At the same time, Polish students at the Belgian universities often marry Belgian classmates, and the couples move between Belgium and Poland. On the top of that, the number of Poles employed in EU institutions is increasing, and many of them live their everyday lives in Brussels. Almost all Poles representing these groups are or have been in touch with the Polish Catholic Mission/Community. There is a group of people who are connected with the PCM on a regular basis, but they are a minority among the local Polish diaspora. A larger group appears typically on Polish holidays and celebrates Polish traditions of Christmas carols and Christmas meetings (sharing wafers or opłatek), Easter traditions (pisanki), Corpus Christi processions, etc.  Many Poles show up in the community when they engage in ceremonies involving rites de passage, which they want to celebrate in accordance with Polish traditions. These rites of passage include First Holy Communion, confirmation, weddings, and sometimes funerals. An even larger group has contacts with the PCM that have little to do with religious life but are related, rather, to teaching children the language or getting a job.   

Nevertheless, studying the evolution of the PCM/PCC over the century, we found evidence that this institution, which had to struggle since its early years, managed to overcome the various difficulties it encountered. It has played a leadership role in the Polish community in Belgium and has contributed to the survival of this community to the present day.

In the age of online communication, it seemed that the traditional community was obsolete and would be replaced by online groups. The experience of the Polish immigrant group in Belgium shows that these expectations were premature. The diversity of Polish groups and the central role played by the Polish Catholic Community are indisputable. The immigrant church and school in their traditional form, with buildings, meetings, and celebrations in person, are still central in the lives of many immigrants. 

The question that researchers have not asked so far is whether Poles moved within Belgium and/or the Benelux countries. It would be important to know whether Poles, if they changed their region of residence, moved between Polish communities or (what seems much more likely) whether they left their communities and settled in places where there was no ethnic infrastructure. One must consider that today it is possible to participate in many forms of ethnic activity without residing in an ethnic neighborhood. However, as shown above, traditional forms of immigrant activity, with in-person meetings and a degree of religious decorum, have proven attractive.

The history of Poles in Belgium resembles the history of Poles in other destination countries and generally resembles the history of any diaspora center. In examining this history, we have focused on general trends that are common to all large diaspora centers (founded by immigrants from different countries), as well as on the characteristics of Polish immigration to Belgium. Each migration stream and each local immigrant community has its own unique set of experiences, but common patterns can always be identified.  

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“Pro arduis negociis destinandum” – Papal Delegates and the Neapolitan Succession (1328–1352)

A Professor as Diplomat: Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld and the Foreign Policy of the Principality of Transylvania, 1638–1643

Gábor Kármán
Research Centre for the Humanities
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.248

The paper addresses a unique phenomenon, the prominent role played by Johann Heinrich Bistefeld, a German professor at the academy of Gyulafehérvár Alba Iulia/Weissenburg in the foreign policy of György Rákóczi I, prince of Transylvania during the 1630s and 1640s. Having accepted a mission to Western European courts in 1638–1639, where Bisterfeld’s academic activities served as an excellent camouflage for the professor’s secret diplomatic negotiations, the professor maintained a leading role in keeping contact with the representatives of the Swedish and French Crowns also in the period after his return to the principality. As an “alternative correspondent” to the prince, he proved very useful in creating the treaties of Gyulafehérvár (1643) and Munkács (1645), and he played an outstanding role also in keeping the spirits of the prince high not to give up his plans to join the anti-Habsburg side of the Thirty Years’ War. Building upon the ideas Bisterfeld inherited from his tutor and father-in-law, Johann Heinrich Alsted, the German professor treated his pansophistic ideas and faith in the continuing Reformation as well as his political activities as different parts of the same endeavor as long as Calvinist believers were facing political repression in the Holy Roman Empire.

Keywords: diplomacy, Transylvania, international Calvinism, Gyulafehérvár academy, pansophia

“Mister Bisterfeld showed such benevolence towards the allied lords and specifically towards Your Excellency in promoting the negotiations and assisted us to such a degree that I cannot give ample praise for his good will towards the common cause and his loyal services.”1 With these words, Colonel Lieutenant Jacob Rebenstock, the representative of the Swedish Crown at the Transylvanian court, summarized his impressions to his superior, Lennart Torstensson, the chief commander of the Swedish armies in the Holy Roman Empire. Rebenstock was writing about the services provided by Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld, a professor at the Gyulafehérvár academy, in the creation of the freshly concluded treaty of alliance. The surviving documentation indeed shows that Bisterfeld not only helped Prince György Rákóczi I from the background with good advice but also had been in fervent correspondence with prominent personalities of the anti-Habsburg side of the Thirty Years’ War for years, thus apparently masterminding a much wider network in the principality’s western sphere of contacts than the prince himself. As has been noted in several recent monographs, in the seventeenth century, a network of pastors and scholars, often labelled “international Calvinism,” attempted to influence high politics between courts.2 Nevertheless, in the early modern period, it was still rare at best for diplomats, who officially represented various rulers, to have regarded a theologian as a negotiating partner for a longer period. Suffice it to quote the reaction of a clergyman, István Tolnai, the parson of Sárospatak in Hungary, to the news that, in the summer of 1637, Heinrich Meerbott, a churchman from Hanau, was heading for the court of György Rákóczi I allegedly as a representative of various German princes. “I am surprised,” Tolnai wrote, “that those princes (if this is indeed the case) trusted the embassy to a preacher.”3

Although Bisterfeld kept his role as a political advisor at the side of György Rákóczi I and, later, his son, György Rákóczi II, for a long time, he held such a key position in Transylvanian diplomacy only between 1638 (his mission to Western Europe) and 1643 (the conclusion of the Gyulafehérvár [Alba Iulia/ Weissenburg] agreement). In a recent study, I examined the negotiations leading to Transylvania’s reentry into the Thirty Years’ War in the 1640s, but I had occasion to make only cursory remarks on the special position Bisterfeld enjoyed in covering the thousands of kilometers between the principality and its potential allies. In this paper, I focus my attention on why the Gyulafehérvár professor seemed to offer a solution to the practical problems of Transylvanian diplomacy in the first half of the seventeenth century and how his political role interfered with his other ambitions as a scholar. The analysis I offer of the overlaps between the two sides in Bisterfeld’s biography furthers a more nuanced understanding of the workings of “international Calvinism,” and in particular of the group from Johann Heinrich Alsted to Jan Amos Comenius which aimed at continuing Reformation, uniting the knowledge on the universe and making the world a better place through learning – but repeatedly had to face serious political repressions.4

Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld’s Mission in Western Europe, 1638–1639

Bisterfeld became a professor at the Academy of Gyulafehérvár at the end of 1629.5 He came to Transylvania with two elder colleagues, Johann Heinrich Alsted and Philipp Ludwig Piscator, at the invitation of Gábor Bethlen, but he arrived only after the death of this prince, who had set up an ambitious plan to provide the Reformed college in his capital with the higher classes of philosophy and theology. By this time, Alsted had already become a renowned scholar whose name was widely known due to his program, which relied on faith in pansophia and a commitment to continuing the Reformation, as well as his encyclopedia, which was built on the same principles.6 He probably would not have left his cathedra at the University of Herborn in Nassau had the Restitutionsedikt, issued by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1629, not made the position of the Calvinist confession extremely vulnerable in the Holy Roman Empire. The imperial edict, however, seemed to have finally brought to an end the debate whether the stipulations of the Peace of Augsburg related to the rights for religious practices concerned only the Lutheran confession (which was explicitly mentioned by the document) or also the Reformed one (with the argument that their faith was based on a modified version of the same creed). This loophole had been maintained with the active support of prominent political actors in the Empire, and by closing it, the edict forced many important personalities in Calvinist higher education in Germany to leave the empire. Alsted received an invitation from Deventer, but he chose Gábor Bethlen’s offer instead. In this, he was certainly motivated – apart from the salary he was offered, which was decent even by Western European standards – by a certain sense of mission and the opportunity to bring his knowledge to faraway lands.7

There is virtually no secondary literature on the role of Johann Heinrich Alsted as Prince György Rákóczi’s political advisor. Limited but relevant evidence shows that Alsted was not only active as a scholar in Gyulafehérvár but also interfered in questions of the prince’s foreign policy. A statement made by an unknown correspondent from Rákóczi’s court, according to which the prince discussed each issue of importance with Alsted, finds confirmation in other sources. It was not just that the prince seems to have turned to Alsted for help with newsletters in German in order to receive clarification and guidance on news from the Western part of Europe, but the professor himself also maintained some channels of communication with political relevance.8 In 1637, when trying to convince Wilhelm V, landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, of the potential of cooperation with Transylvania, Heinrich Meerbott referred to his correspondence with Alsted, and we also know that in 1638 the Gyulafehérvár professor contacted Cornelis Haga, the ambassador of the United Provinces in Constantinople, to whom he sent letters with the princely couriers, presumably to mediate in the conflict between the two political actors.9 Since such activities are not known from Alsted’s earlier career, he must have been motivated to accept the role of a political advisor by Rákóczi’s openness to counsel offered by his well-versed guests as well as the radical changes in his living conditions due to political repression. His experience of being exiled from his earlier home was made more severe by the fact that a significant share of the three theologians’ belongings, which had been deposited in Regensburg during their journey, was confiscated by the emperor’s administration. In 1635, György Rákóczi I tried to recover these belongings, but even he labored in vain.10

In the early 1630s Bisterfeld’s career was closely connected to Alsted’s: he was the professor’s faithful disciple and also his son-in-law. When Gábor Bethlen’s invitation reached Alsted, Bisterfeld was working as a tutor in Grave (Brabant). It must have been at the invitation of his father-in-law that he came to Herborn, where he taught a course in the spring of 1629 and left with the two others late that summer. Bisterfeld, who was only twenty-four years old at the time, had to refuse an invitation from Groningen (which admittedly seemed somewhat uncertain). Some sources suggest that in 1631 he was not planning to remain in Transylvania for long.11 It is hardly surprising that the young theologian, who at the time had nothing resembling the reputation or network that Alsted had managed to gain, was not terribly motivated to spend his most active years in a land far away from the center of European scholarly life in an environment which must have been quite foreign to him. Also, the year following their arrival proved extremely chaotic in Transylvanian politics. Catherine of Brandenburg, Bethlen’s widow and successor, secretly converted to Catholicism and then resigned. She was replaced first by her brother-in-law, István Bethlen, and then by Rákóczi, one of the mightiest landowners in eastern Hungary and someone who had been a staunch follower of Gábor Bethlen’s policies in the previous decade. These troubles must have added to the fact that Gyulafehérvár hardly offered a comparably lively intellectual life or the proximity of fellow-minded scholars that a Dutch university could have provided for Bisterfeld.12 He clearly had good reasons to agree to a visit to Western Europe, where he was entrusted with the task of using his scholarly activities as a disguise for political negotiations in the service of his prince.

Since the early years of the Thirty Years’ War, the Principality of Transylvania recurrently participated in the endeavors of the party opposing the Habsburgs. Gábor Bethlen was allied to Friedrich of the Palatinate, and he was later accepted as a member of the League of The Hague between the United Provinces, as well as the kings of Denmark and England. He led three campaigns to Hungary (in 1619–1621, 1623–1624, and 1626), and in the consecutive peace treaties he secured substantial gains with respect to territory and prestige.13 Shortly after having secured his throne, György Rákóczi I continued Bethlen’s policies and sought contact with Gustav II Adolph, who had just accomplished the first successes of his German campaign. The Swedish king, however, found the costs of Transylvanian intervention too high, and communication problems made it difficult for the two parties to reach any sort of compromise. Although in 1632–1633 there was even a Swedish resident by the name of Paul Strassburg at the Transylvanian court, for over a year he received no instructions from his king, and thus his presence did little more than create more tension for the Transylvanian prince.14

When György Rákóczi I signed the Peace of Eperjes/Prešov/Eperies on September 28, 1633 with Emperor Ferdinand II, many observers concluded that, by doing so, he had abandoned any plan for cooperation with Sweden. This was not the case, however. Transylvanian envoys traveled to meet Axel Oxenstierna on various occasions over the course of the next two years, but they failed to attract the attention of the head of the Swedish Regency Government. In 1637, then, the aforementioned Heinrich Meerbott took the initiative to motivate the Transylvanian prince to take action again. He was sent to Stockholm in secret, but this insistence on the secrecy of the mission backfired. It was very important to Rákóczi that the plans for an anti-Habsburg alliance not be revealed too early. This, however, meant that he had to come up with creative ways to ensure that his envoy would secure accreditation, and the methods that were devised proved so unusual that they ultimately hindered the creation of any political alliance. The members of the Swedish State Council were presented with a letter in which Rákóczi entrusted Meerbott with the task of recruiting artisans (“artifices mechanici”), as well as a ciphered note which presented the prince’s proposal and reached Danzig/Gdańsk hidden in a pistol barrel, on a route separate from the pastor’s. Meerbott explained that the “artifices” the prince was looking for were actually parties in the intrigue (“artificium”), i.e. the kings of France and Sweden, as well as the landgrave of Hessen. However, after giving the proposal short consideration, the Swedish government decided not to sign anything at the exhortation of someone who lacked clear proof of having been granted plenipotentiary powers.15

Meerbott’s account of the developments did not survive, but it must have reached Transylvania, because the next envoy, Bisterfeld, received credentials which seem to have followed the Swedish State Council’s suggestion to speak in general terms but be addressed to a specific person in the court. The addressees were not the royal persons but the leading policymakers of the Swedish and French court, Cardinal Richelieu and Axel Oxenstierna, and the credentials did not include Bisterfeld’s name.16 It seems that they must have been penned only after Bisterfeld’s departure from Transylvania in mid-April 1638, and they were surely given to him at a later point of time, thus ensuring that the true nature of the professor’s journey could not be revealed as long as he was passing through the Habsburg-friendly territories of Hungary and Poland.17

Although the credentials only revealed that the envoy was supposed to discuss “certain issues” with the addressees, this proved enough for Richelieu and his administration to enter into a serious conversation with Bisterfeld. After having met Karl Ludwig, the heir of Friedrich of the Palatinate, in The Hague, Bisterfeld reached Paris on July 10, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm according to the account of Hugo Grotius, who was serving there as a Swedish resident envoy.18 The administration of Louis XIII almost immediately sent forth the king’s own envoy to Transylvania (using the sea route through the Mediterranean), and in November, Charles du Bois, Baron of Avaugour, agreed with Rákóczi that he would soon return with full credentials to conclude their alliance (though this never actually happened).19

While d’Avauguor traveled across half of Europe (eventually arriving in Danzig, where he remained as one of the most important points of contact for Transylvanian foreign policy over the course of the next few years), Bisterfeld also reached his new station, Hamburg. The central location of this harbor city and its professed neutrality had made it an important diplomatic hub as early as the first half of the 1630s, but from 1638 on, it is legitimate to speak of a diplomatic congress of the powers interested in the developments in Germany there. Negotiations concerning the possibilities for peacemaking between the Swedish and imperial envoys were running parallel to parleys among the ambassadors of the Danish, English, and French kings, as well as the United Provinces about creating an anti-Habsburg alliance. The representatives of Swedish and French foreign policy were the same persons who would later act as head commissioners at the Westphalian peace congress: Johan Salvius and Claude de Mesmes, Count of Avaux.20 It seemed obvious that Bisterfeld would join this “congress,” even if he arrived somewhat late, because by this time the high spirits caused by the Anglo–French and Swedish–French treaties of February 1637 and February 1638 as potential foundations for an anti-Habsburg alliance had already dissipated.

In Hamburg, Bisterfeld met Sir Thomas Roe, one of the most experienced English diplomats, who was happy to hear the Transylvanian offer (which was similar to offers he had often received from Gábor Bethlen in the 1620s as his ruler’s representative in Constantinople). Roe informed Bisterfeld, however, that it would be futile for him to travel to England, since it had become clear by that time that King Charles I did not have the financial means necessary to join the coalition.21 It also turned out that the Dutch were not ready to give up their neutrality towards the emperor, and although Johann Joachim Rusdorf, the diplomat of the exiled Palatinate court (and also Bethlen’s correspondent from the previous decade) was enthusiastic to have met Bisterfeld, it was Salvius who became his most important negotiating partner.22

On his way to Paris, Bisterfeld also informed the Swedish government about his mission. Axel Oxenstierna and his colleagues were eager to bring him to Stockholm.23 Bisterfeld declined the offer, most probably because, in Hamburg he was closest to each potential negotiation partner and also to prominent members of the European academic network. He nevertheless informed Salvius about the developments and suggested that if the Swedish resident envoy received plenipotentiary powers, he would also make sure that his prince would send him one so that the parleys on the details could start.24 In early January 1639, the Swedish plenipotentia to Salvius was sent from Stockholm, but a letter by György Rákóczi I reached Hamburg at the same time in which he ordered Bisterfeld to return to Gyulafehérvár. The prince also wrote letters to the French and Swedish diplomats in which he did not even mention the planned alliance and only asked for their support in finding a successor to Alsted, who died on November 9, 1638.25

This unexpected development, which seems to have seriously damaged Rákóczi’s credibility among his potential allies, was the result of the problems of communication and the Transylvanian prince’s efforts to secure the secrecy of his negotiations. As Bisterfeld explained to Salvius in a note, György Rákóczi I was expecting d’Avaugour to return to his court with the necessary accreditation by April 1639, so he did not need to risk the potential discovery of his intentions were his correspondence to fall into the wrong hands. As the prince expected the final parleys to take place at his court, there was no need to mention the issue to the diplomats in Hamburg, and Bisterfeld’s further stay in the western part of Europe also seemed unnecessary. On the other hand, Bisterfeld’s request for plenipotentiary powers to be sent to Hamburg did not reach György Rákóczi I in time. For the sake of secrecy, the German scholar did not correspond directly with the prince, but rather sent his messages to Alsted – but since the elder professor was dying, Bisterfeld’s messages were only forwarded with delays, and Rákóczi acted before having received the most recent news from Hamburg.26

The professor listened to the prince’s summon, but he clearly was not in a hurry. In late March 1639, Grotius already knew that Bisterfeld was going to go to Paris again, but it was early May when the professor actually arrived. In the meantime, he visited the United Provinces again: in March he sent a letter to Rákóczi from Amsterdam, and in April he met Karl Ludwig in The Hague.27 When already in Paris, he had long conversations with Jean de la Barde, a secretary of the Chancellery, and he had the impression that the French court was still ready to conclude the alliance, although, rather surprisingly he did not reflect on why d’Avaugour never returned to Transylvania.28 He also made sure to keep the interest of Swedish diplomacy alive, and he shared the contents of his parleys with Grotius, and also, by letter, with Ludwig Camerarius, the Swedish resident envoy in The Hague, whom he must have met during one of his stays in the Dutch capital.29 Bisterfeld then returned to Transylvania across the Mediterranean. In mid-July, he was already in Venice, but we do not know exactly when he arrived in the principality. Rákóczi’s envoys in Constantinople were still forwarding his letters to Transylvania in late August. He put his final report for the prince on paper November 1639 in Medgyes/Mediaş/Mediasch.30

Bisterfeld as a Diplomatic Correspondent

Bisterfeld and György Rákóczi I’s expectations were proven overly optimistic in the months and years to come. The professor’s impressions in Paris did not deceive him: the French were positive about the chances of cooperation with the Transylvanians, d’Avaux received an order to discuss the articles of the future treaty with Salvius, and a plenipotentia was signed for Louis Fleutot, the envoy to be sent to the principality.31 Rákóczi was already exchanging messages with d’Avaugour about the best possible route for Fleutot, and he started laying the ground at the Sublime Porte to gain the sultan’s consent for his campaign in Hungary. During the summer and autumn of 1639, Transylvanian ambassadors visited Constantinople and consulted frequently with the French ambassador there about the possible ways to win the support of the sultanic administration. Their preliminary inquiries with the Ottoman dignitaries yielded no success, but this was not the primary reason why there was no Transylvanian intervention in the Thirty Years’ War immediately after Bisterfeld’s journey in Western Europe.32

Contrary to the French court, the Swedish administration lost all interest in any kind of cooperation with György Rákóczi I. In March 1639, shortly after having received the news that Bisterfeld had been summoned back to Gyulafehérvár, the State Council announced that in the future it would not take the Transylvanians seriously, and no further development could move them from this position.33 Neither the repeated inquiries of the French diplomats nor the incoming messages from Transylvania could convince Axel Oxenstierna to dedicate attention to the issue again, and even the complaints of Johan Banér, the chief commander of the Swedish army in Germany, fell on deaf ears. Salvius dropped various remarks in his letters to the Regency Government according to which the involvement of more allies in the war, such as the prince of Transylvania, would further Swedish success, but to no avail. The Swedish government’s reaction, which involved several irrational elements, did not change. Even when Banér’s successor, Lennart Torstensson took matters into his own hands and arranged a treaty of alliance with György Rákóczi I (the agreement of Gyulafehérvár, signed on November 16, 1643), Axel Oxenstierna’s government refused to ratify it. They rightfully pointed out the formal shortcomings of the text, but did nothing to address them, and thus the Swedish–Transylvanian cooperation in 1644–1645 was never formalized by a fully legitimate international treaty.34

The tension due to the Swedish reluctance eventually poisoned Rákóczi’s contacts with the leaders of French diplomacy as well. In d’Avaux’s correspondence with his colleagues in 1640 we find a growing number of ironic and, later, sarcastic remarks on the Transylvanian prince, and after a while, Rákóczi also did not conceal his frustration that the promises he had been made were not kept. The prince stopped answering the letters from Jean de la Haye, the representative of the French Crown at the Sublime Porte, and he told Bisterfeld to ask d’Avaugour whether the French considered the Hungarians simpletons who would not start to wonder after such a long time whether they were merely being mocked by their partners.35 This formulation, which is so foreign to Bisterfeld’s usually moderate style and suggests the direct interference of the prince in composition of his letters, directs our attention to the latter’s function as a mediator between the Transylvanian court and its potential allies.

Bisterfeld was a good choice to serve as the bearer of György Rákóczi I’s message to the court of his potential allies, as only rarely in the seventeenth century was a political mission entrusted to scholars of his kind. Some surviving letters prove that Rákóczi’s adversaries knew about Bisterfeld’s journey, and it clearly raised suspicion among them, but none of these sources suggest that the Catholic elite of the Kingdom of Hungary would have come to any direct conclusions concerning the politics of the Transylvanian prince based upon the fact that Bisterfeld, a professor from the Gyulafehérvár academy, was traveling to Western Europe.36 Bisterfeld’s academic activities during the journey (to which I will return) seem to have served as an excellent pretext. As noted before, the secrecy of the mission was also secured by the fact that Bisterfeld sent his letters to Alsted, thus creating an illusion of a politically neutral (or at least politically irrelevant) exchange between scholars.37

Of course, after his return to Transylvania, Bisterfeld’s position as a scholar ceased to be an asset for political communication. If any of his letters had fallen into enemy hands, the adversaries of the Transylvanian prince would have been just as eager to know why a professor from Gyulafehérvár was sending ciphered messages to French and Swedish diplomats as they would have been in the case of any other person. In this period, Bisterfeld’s involvement had other advantages. For György Rákóczi I, the developments caused serious embarrassment. It was humiliating that he was bombarding his potential allies with new offers, to which they replied with little more than noncommittal words. After a while, it would have been an immense loss of prestige for him to continue knocking on their doors with further suggestions, especially seeing as how d’Avaugour, d’Avaux, and Salvius were not his equals in the seventeenth-century “society of princes.” It would have been unbecoming for him as a prince to refer again and again to how long he had been waiting for a definite answer and to mention how much frustration this had caused for him. As a princely counselor, Bisterfeld did not need to have such scruples, and in his accounts, he could paint the fury of György Rákóczi I in dark colors, much as he could also claim that, if the prince did not soon receive a positive answer to his proposals, he would give up his heroic plan to assist the common cause.38 Before Bisterfeld’s return to Transylvania, János Kemény, another personality from the prince’s court, had already served this function of an “alternative correspondent,” since he had acted as d’Avaugour’s guide during the French diplomat’s stay in the principality. Bisterfeld’s reputation as a professor, however, made him better fit for the task than the young Transylvanian aristocrat. Also, he personally knew many more of the diplomats involved.39

For a while, the prince and the professor maintained a parallel correspondence with the French and Swedish diplomats. In the letters addressed to d’Avagour during the winter of 1639, however, we can already trace a duality. György Rákóczi I limited his messages to news, whereas it fell upon Bisterfeld to urge the figures of French diplomacy to continue negotiations.40 Then, in 1640, the prince stopped writing to d’Avaugour and the envoys in Hamburg. The entire correspondence with d’Avaux and Salvius went through the Gyulafehérvár professor, who could be regarded being of the same rank as they were. In February 1640, Jean de la Haye wrote to Bisterfeld from Constantinople (parallel to his letter to György Rákóczi I), but we do not have any further evidence that they established a more or less continuous correspondence in the same manner as the diplomats in Hamburg did. The resident embassy of the prince in Constantinople could take care of this connection (whenever Rákóczi was ready to communicate), and since the French diplomat and Bisterfeld were not personally acquainted, maintaining contact with the professor would not have brought any specific advantages.41 In any case, in the autumn of 1643, we again have evidence that De la Haye sent news to Bisterfeld from the Sublime Porte.42

After György Rákóczi I’s decision to abandon the diplomatic exchange with the French and Swedish representatives, he was involved again only when a new correspondent appeared on the horizon. In the summer of 1641, when Count Zdenko von Hoditz, a Bohemian exile and colonel in Swedish service, contacted him, Rákóczi answered the letter in his own name, as he did again when Lennart Torstensson initiated contact in July 1642.43 The Swedish field marshall maintained parallel correspondence with the prince and the professor during the negotiations leading to the agreement of Gyulafehérvár, and the separate contact with Bisterfeld also proved useful in this. The French disapproved of two points in the agreement of Gyulafehérvár (which theoretically bound them as well). They therefore sent their plenipotentiary to sign a separate treaty with György Rákóczi I (the so-called treaty of Munkács/Mukačevo on April 22, 1645). It would have been beneath the prince’s dignity to ask directly for Torstensson’s approval for this move, but this could be easily arranged by having Bisterfeld write to the field marshall about Rákóczi’s concerns, even if it only took place after the treaty had been signed.44

Upon his return to Transylvania, the professor requested the cipher which had been in use during earlier Swedish-Transylvanian contacts and also a list of the people to whom he should write.45 Nevertheless, as one would have expected, he did not write anything he wanted. The sources suggest that Rákóczi controlled the content of the letters that Bisterfeld sent to the diplomats in his own name. Some of the drafts which survived were written in the professor’s hand, but they have a number of corrections by the prince.46 At the same time, it would be a mistake to see Bisterfeld only as a medium through which György Rákóczi I could express his wishes. The prince counted on the professor’s expertise and judgment. Bisterfeld played an important role during the negotiations directly preceding the conclusion of the agreement of Gyulafehérvár and the treaty of Munkács. He himself drafted several of the articles, and he also made corrections to the text in the final round of revisions.47

Although we do not know of any opinion papers from Bisterfeld in which he would have given direct advice to the prince on political issues, the lines penned by Jacob Rebenstock, quoted in the introduction to this essay, testify that the professor (who seems to have befriended the lieutenant colonel representing the Swedish Crown at the Transylvanian court) was one of the most important lobbyists in support of a united stand for the Protestant cause in Rákóczi’s circles.48 In all likelihood, it was Bisterfeld who helped the prince keep his spirits high and convinced him that he should keep the importance of the task in the forefront of his mind instead of the recurrent frustrations he faced when offering his services to the Protestant cause. Shortly before making the final decision, Rákóczi had serious doubts as to whether he indeed had a divine calling to take up arms and thus serve the confessional cause. It was again Bisterfeld who assisted him and counterbalanced the counsel of István Kassai, the prince’s other intimate advisor, who was urging the prince to pursue peace instead.49

Last but not least, Bisterfeld not only provided services for the prince himself. He also mobilized some family connections. Several people maintained contacts between the court at Gyulafehérvár and d’Avaugour’s residence in Danzig at the turn of the 1640s. Prominent among them was a young Scot, Andrew Gawdy, who later had a spectacular career as a high-ranking officer in the Transylvanian army (and thus is known in the secondary literature in Hungarian as András Gaudi). Gawdy helped transmit Bisterfeld’s letters in 1639, 1641, and 1643, whereas in 1639 and 1640, this role was played by Pál Göcs and Ferenc Jármi, Rákóczi’s Transylvanian clients, who had good connections in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Jármi later was also the envoy of his prince at the congress of Westphalia).50 In the late summer of 1642, however, a new person knocked on d’Avagour’s door. Peter Wiederstein, who had brought the professor’s letters this time, was Bisterfeld’s nephew (the son of his half-brother). He had settled in Transylvania, and he later inherited his uncle’s house and part of his library.51 His involvement in Bisterfeld’s political endeavors can be seen as a logical extension of his uncle’s position and further proof that the illusion of scholars being relatively harmless in the field of power politics could prove both convincing and useful in these turbulent years.

Political Role and Academic Career

Even before his mission to Western Europe, Bisterfeld was involved in parleys concerning György Rákóczi I’s potential involvement in the Thirty Years’ War. A letter from November 1637 testifies that he maintained a network of correspondents and supplied the prince with current news concerning developments in the German theaters of war and the related Protestant courts.52 Heinrich Meerbott told the Swedish State Council in the autumn of 1637 that his mission was so secret that, apart from the prince, only Alsted “and another theologian” knew about it.53 On the basis of Bisterfeld’s letter to the prince, it is easy to identify this other person as Alsted’s son-in-law and faithful follower.

Bisterfeld was unquestionably eager to accept the 1638 mission, which made it possible for him to travel as far as Paris. As noted earlier, at that time, he did not yet have anything comparable to Alsted’s network or reputation, and while he was waiting for answers from the various courts, he was able to visit many of his fellow scholars and make acquaintances with useful contacts. In a friendly letter written in the early phase of the mission to Samuel Hartlib, who was one of the most important figures in the international Protestant network, Bisterfeld expressed his joy over the possibility to meet a number of great scholars if, as he hoped, he would be able to travel to England.54 Although he had visited Britain in the 1620s, the connection to Hartlib’s circle was most likely made during John Dury’s journey to Transylvania. Bisterfeld was one of the signees of the position paper on the union of Protestant churches compiled by prominent Transylvanian church authorities at the request of the Scottish irenicist theologian in 1634.55

As mentioned earlier, Sir Thomas Roe dampened Bisterfeld’s enthusiasm when he declared the journey to England pointless from a political perspective, and thus the German theologian had no excuse to cross the Channel. He nonetheless remained active as a scholar. While making arrangements regarding the creation of an anti-Habsburg coalition in the interest of the Protestant cause, he also defended his church on another battlefield. As a response to the Antitrinitarian treatise of Johann Crell, published in Raków (Poland) in 1631, he published his De uno Deo … mysterium pietatis in Leiden, with the renowned Elsevier publishing house. The work was a logical link in the chain of theological attacks upon the Transylvanian Anti-Trinitarians (who, known as Unitarians, were one of the four accepted confessional groups in the principality) in the second half of the 1630s. The Mysterium pietatis was a success (it was rereleased three times), and Bisterfeld made important contacts in Hamburg and the Netherlands which he later maintained. In the long run, Andreas Rivetus and Johann Rulitius proved his most important correspondents, but he also established (or renewed) contact with Johann Adolf Tassius, Joachim Jungius, Gisbert Voetius, Johann Moriaen, and Marin Mersenne.56 Hugo Grotius, who often complained about being overburdened by his tasks as a Swedish resident envoy in Paris instead of being able to dedicate himself to his research on the law of nations, wrote with noticeable envy in April 1639 that, according to news he had heard, Bisterfeld was trying to secure a tranquil academic position for himself.57 As noted before, this accusation was quite unjust. While the publication of his book and his introduction to the scholarly networks unquestionably furthered Bisterfeld’s career ambitions, they also served the interests of Rákóczi’s foreign policy by providing credible camouflage for political negotiations.

Bisterfeld made a very good impression in the Western European Calvinist academic world. At the recommendation of Rivetus, in 1639 he received an offer from Leiden University to serve as a substitute for a regular professor and teach for a semester, and in May 1640 the curators invited him to take over the position of Antonius Walaeus, a professor of theology who had passed away the previous year. The invitation letter also noted that another professor, Antonius Thysius, was mortally ill (he died a year later), thus it is clear that Bisterfeld would have been very welcome in Leiden if he had decided to leave Transylvania.58 This widely respected institution of higher education (which a Hungarian visiting student, Márton Szepsi Csombor, had labeled “Paradisus terrestris” only a few years earlier) clearly would have opened an entirely different career path for Bisterfeld than what awaited him in Transylvania, even if his salary would have been smaller.59 In addition to Leiden’s prominent rank in the academic world, the work environment offered by the university also made it an attractive option. Suffice it to mention the famous library, in contrast to all the problems and enormous costs Bisterfeld had to face when trying to transport the books he had purchased during the 1638–1639 mission to Transylvania.60 Furthermore, István Geleji Katona, the Reformed bishop of Transylvania, informed György Rákóczi I that Bisterfeld was not only attracted by Leiden’s prestige but also by other motivations: the professor had been recently widowed, and he was planning to marry the daughter of Ludwig Camerarius. The bishop feared that the ambitious plans concerning the Gyulafehérvár academy were collapsing, and he left no stone unturned to please Bisterfeld and Piscator (who had just recovered from a serious illness) while at the same time making scathing remarks and insisting that Bisterfeld and Piscator start meeting the obligations of their office in more than just name only.61

In the spring of 1641, it seemed that the endeavors of Geleji Katona were bound to fail and that Bisterfeld was going to return to Western Europe; he even informed Salvius of his plan. However, during the summer the letter by Count Hoditz arrived in Transylvania, and with new hopes on the horizon concerning military assistance for the Protestant cause, György Rákóczi I managed to convince the professor to stay.62 The prince also informed the curators in Leiden that the Gyulafehérvár academy needed Bisterfeld’s services.63 Nevertheless, in 1642 the issue of the invitation from Leiden was still on the table. Furthermore, Jan Amos Comenius thought that Bisterfeld had already arrived in the Netherlands, and he was looking forward to meeting him there.64 The Leiden curators eventually became frustrated with the long delay of the project, and they blamed György Rákóczi I for hindering communication. As the prince seems already to have given permission for Bisterfeld to leave in the previous year, however, it is more likely that the Gyulafehérvár professor gave up his plans concerning the position in the Netherlands because of the new wave of negotiations, initiated by Torstensson that year.65

Bisterfeld’s plans to reestablish his family with an offspring of a prominent member of the international Calvinist network also failed. The forty-one-year-old Anna Katherina Camerarius married none other than Paul Strassburg, the former resident envoy of Gustav Adolph II in Transylvania.66 All in all, we can say that the German professor paid a huge price for the position he acquired among the prince’s political counselors. His marriage to Anna Stenczel, a Saxon burgher’s daughter from Kolozsvár/Cluj/Klausenburg, in June 1643 offers a fairly clear indication that he had finally resolved to remain in Transylvania. He and his wife acquired land and a mansion in Tövis/Teiuş Alba/Dreikirchennot far from Gyulafehérvár, and in 1644, they bought a house in Nagyszeben/Sibiu/Hermannstadt, the center of the Saxon communities of Transylvania.67 His decision to settle in the principality for good, however, must have left a bad taste in Bisterfeld’s mouth. Otherwise, he hardly would have told Comenius (whom he finally met in the early 1650s) that “scholars and artisans summoned to Hungary receive an invitation to perpetual imprisonment.”68

Various factors contributed to Bisterfeld’s decision to stay in Transylvania. The salary may have played a part, albeit not a prominent one. Although the sum (500 talers annually) was competitive on an international level, payment was often delayed. Geleji Katona mentioned such problems as early as 1640, and in 1649, the Transylvanian treasury already owed the professor 600 talers.69 Bisterfeld’s fellow scholars in Western Europe believed that György Rákóczi I simply refused to let him go. This interpretation, however, seems unconvincing for two reasons. First, in 1641, Bisterfeld was already preparing to depart with the prince’s knowledge. Second, had Rákóczi been exerting pressure to limit his mobility, Bisterfeld hardly would have pursued work in his field of expertise with the fervor that he showed in the 1640s. He continued, for instance, to nurture Alsted’s legacy, even at the expense of his own research. In 1641, he published an index for the late professor’s magnum opus, the Prodomus religionis triumphantis, which was published in Transylvania. Over the course of the following years, he fulfilled the wishes of István Geleji Katona and served as a professor not only in name. He continued the program of publishing new schoolbooks, which had been launched by the three Herborn scholars in the previous decade to elevate the educational standards of the Gyulafehérvár academy.70 His achievements were praiseworthy and not at all obvious: his fellow professor, the aforementioned Philipp Ludwig Piscator, could not boast half as many publications. For Bisterfeld, who remained a dedicated supporter of the idea of continuing Reformation, the move to Gyulafehérvár was a sacred mission (as he put it in one of his letters when he accepted the Transylvanian invitation),71 and he tried to live up to his commitment to this mission to the best of his abilities.

It would be quite logical to think of the role Bisterfeld played in Transylvanian foreign policy as a part of this program. We find relatively few references to the fight against the Antichrist in his accounts of current political events (especially if we compare these to Meerbott’s), but these accounts nevertheless show that he was influenced by Alsted’s attempt to unite the Ramist encyclopedist approach with Millenarist thought. He was, after all, one of the contributors to his master’s Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis, a rational attempt to interpret the Bible’s account of the Apocalypse and calculate the end of times.72 Everything was in place, therefore, for Bisterfeld to feel that serving the fight against the Antichrist and assisting the cause of the empire’s German Protestants in distress was a personal duty; back in 1629, he had presided over several disputations in Herborn on the right of resistance.73 This attitude also explains why Bisterfeld was not satisfied when György Rákóczi I concluded the Peace of Linz in the summer of 1645. Although the documents secured the liberty to practice religion in Hungary with unprecedented precision, they did not fulfil the professor’s expectations, whose aim was to assist Protestantism in a much wider circle. Of course, in his letters to the Catholic d’Avaux and Abel Servien, the other representative of the French Crown at the peace congress of Westphalia, Bisterfeld did not refer to the fight against the Antichrist, but he did give voice to his fear that the Peace of Linz might become a hotbed for even worse conflicts.74

Bisterfeld’s understanding of his task as a multi-faceted sacred mission must have played an important role in his decision in the early 1640s to forfeit the offer of a professor’s position at a renowned Western university and a wife who, through her family and her family’s connections, would place him in the center of the international Calvinist network. He did not have many opportunities to formulate his stance clearly in writing, but the few occasions when he did are revealing. In a letter to Cardinal Mazarin after the conclusion of the Treaty of Munkács in 1645, he made only a modest remark on how God had called him to the light of public service from the tranquility of the school,75 but to Lennart Torstensson he had more to say. Having read the aforementioned lines penned by Jacob Rebenstock, the Swedish Field Marshall assured the professor of his gratitude for his earlier deeds, at which Bisterfeld wrote the following: “Although I am unworthy of the great praise Your Excellence showers on me so graciously, I can state as much with good conscience that I am almost a martyr of the common cause. It is not only our enemies who want to destroy me, but also those who place their private interest before the public good and the welfare of the motherland. But even so, I am faithfully serving God, all of Christianity, my gracious lord, Hungary, and Transylvania.”76

The mention of martyrdom in the passage cited above was not a general reference to Bisterfeld’s willingness to make sacrifices. It was, rather, a hint at a direct threat upon his life. Other evidence also suggests that Bisterfeld felt that several people around him were reacting with malice to his involvement in the world of politics, and he was afraid that he might be assassinated. He was especially suspicious of the reactions of the Catholic members of the Transylvanian elite.77 We do not know whether these fears were well-founded, but Bisterfeld’s role in the principality’s political decision-making network was unquestionably unique, even compared to the prominent personalities of the Transylvanian Calvinist church. In the early autumn of 1643, when György Rákóczi I sought counsel as to whether the planned war followed divine will, Bishop István Geleji Katona and Pál Medgyesi, his court preacher, noted in their opinion (signed together with Bisterfeld) that, unlike the professor, they had very little knowledge of the diplomatic backdrop. The position paper mirrored a very cautious position, and although (in line with the prince’s wishes) it proclaimed the planned military intervention a heroic deed which served God’s plan, it repeatedly called Rákóczi’s attention to the contention that it was not the duty of members of the clergy to make such political decisions, and from a tactical perspective it was even unfortunate to ask them to do so.78

Bisterfeld’s involvement in Transylvanian politics made him stand out not only among the leading personalities of the local church but also among most of the intellectuals from the west who stayed in the principality for a time. Martin Opitz, one of the most important poets of German Baroque literature, who had taught in Transylvania for a short while in 1622 at the invitation of Gábor Bethlen, informed Axel Oxenstierna from Danzig in the 1630s about developments in the principality. According to his letters, he continued to maintain contacts with Transylvanians, but there is no evidence that he ever would have tried to influence György Rákóczi I’s foreign policy.79 Simiarly, one finds no indication in the sources that Philipp Ludwig Piscator made any effort to influence Transylvanian foreign policy, and the same is true of Isaac Basire, who as an exiled Anglican pastor spent some time at the Gyulafehérvár academy before it was destroyed by the invading Tatar armies in 1658.80 It was only Comenius, who tried to convince the Rákóczi family of the need to assist the international Protestant cause by political and even military means, but his plans, supported with contemporary prophecies, fell upon deaf ears. The dynasty turned to Bisterfeld for advice, and it was the Gyulafehérvár professor, who deemed it unlikely that the visions were of divine origin (much to the disappointment of his Moravian colleague).81

This development in the 1650s may seem to be in direct contradiction with Bisterfeld’s earlier attitude. However, if the professor’s radical program of military intervention indeed had its foundations in the dire position of Calvinism in the Holy Roman Empire, this changed with the Peace of Westphalia. It is easy to imagine that, after the Reformed creed had secured recognition in German territories, Bisterfeld – who had settled in Transylvania in the meantime and enjoyed a prestigious reputation among the members of the ruling family – had no desire to see more decades of bloodshed. Comenius’ position was profoundly different, since as bishop of the Bohemian Brethren, he saw with despair that the peace treaties signed in Münster and Osnabrück delegated the treatment of religious issues in his homeland to the hands of the Habsburg dynasty.82 Although his opinion on various political questions was still sought (such as the choice of Zsigmond Rákóczi’s bride in 1649 and the Cossack request for support against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1651), Bisterfeld’s position in the Rákóczi family’s foreign policy changed after 1648. As a teacher, he was still an ardent supporter of the idea of the continuing Reformation, and the princes could make use of his network of correspondents (which no longer seems to have included the Swedish and French diplomats) in the pursuit of their diplomatic aims, but there is no indication in any of the sources that he was still playing a role as someone who initiated policies.83 His unique, prominent role in György Rákóczi I’s diplomatic efforts, which parallelly assisted the policy-making of the prince with advice and masterminding the communication, was no longer necessary after the Peace of Westphalia.

Funded by the European Union (ERC, SMALLST, 101043451). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Archival Sources

Arhivele Naţionale ale României Direcţia Judeţeană Sibiu [National Archives of Romania: County Directorate, Sibiu] (ANR DJS)

Colecţia de acte fasciculare

Colecţia de documente medievale

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich) (BSB)

Clm 10359.

Hessisches Staatsarchiv, Marburg (HStAM)

Rep. 4f Siebenbürgen

Koninklijk Huisarchief [Royal House Archives], The Hague (KH)

G 015 Collectie Handschriften, 1e serie

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian National Archives State Archives] (Budapest) (MNL OL)

A 98 Magyar Kancellária Archívuma: Transylvanica

E 190 Magyar Kamara Archívuma: Archivum familiae Rákóczi de Felsővadász

E 204 Magyar Kamara Archívuma: Missiles

X 1904 Mikrofilmtár: Mike Sándor gyűjtemény

Prímási Levéltár [The Primate’s Archives] (Esztergom) (PL)

Archivum Saeculare Acta Radicalia (AS AR)

Riksarkivet [State Archives] (Stockholm) (RA)

Diplomatica, Turcica bihang Transylvanica

Oxenstiernasamlingen

Salvius samling

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The Integration of Bohemian and Hungarian Aristocrats into the Spanish Habsburg System via Diplomatic Encounters, Cultural Exchange, and News Management (1608–1655)

Tibor Monostori
“Momentum” Holy Crown Research Team, Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.171

The composite state of the Spanish Habsburgs had a fading military, financial and diplomatic predominance in Central Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century. The Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy was, to varying extents, integrated into the Spanish Habsburg system. This article presents three forms of integration and diplomatic relationship. First, it examines diplomatic and political encounters in the main governmental bodies and diets advising the emperor in decision-making, or more specifically, in the Imperial Privy Council in Vienna and during the diets of the kingdom of Hungary. Spanish Habsburg politicians and diplomats acted in many powerful ways to establish connections with Bohemian and Hungarian aristocrats so that they follow and adjust to their political agenda. Bohemian families (Slavata, Martiniz) had close relations and alliances with Spanish councilors in Vienna (who acted as ambassadors of the Spanish king), and several Hungarian aristocrats had interactions with them during the diets in order to secure the long-term interests of the dynasty in the Kingdom of Hungary. Second, the exchange, purchase, and influence of cultural goods and objects (e.g., books and gifts) and the ways in which these cultural goods were put to use, as well as the migration of people, show that the relationship went well beyond power politics and formal diplomatic relations. Personal and cultural influence and even early signs of acculturation can be clearly detected in several Bohemian and Hungarian families (e.g., the Forgách, Pázmány, and Zrínyi families), who ordered and read hundreds of books from Spanish Habsburg authors (including several books from Spanish Habsburg diplomats) and cities and exchanged diplomatic gifts with their Spanish counterparts. People, including influential figures (soldiers and nobles), also moved among Habsburg political centers, prompted by diplomatic or family relations between Spanish Habsburg politicians and Bohemian or Hungarian families. Third, information gathered in Vienna radiated to all Spanish Habsburg states in different layers of granularity, density, and confidentiality. Top Spanish diplomats could access and transmit classified documents and the texts of international contracts obtained from Central European aristocrats and events. They also sent thousands of reports to their superiors about general news in Bohemia and Hungary. At the same time, lower-ranking nobles often struggled to keep up with and understand international events and trends and failed to get information about the key results of wars and imperial diets, since they lacked access to the network and the seniority to exert adequate influence.

Keywords: Spanish Monarchy, early modern diplomacy, Habsburg Studies, Central European aristocracy, early modern Hungary, early modern Bohemia

Introduction

Scholars have made efforts to define the nature of the Spanish Habsburg Empire (as that of any other global empire) and its importance in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Is it best understood, they have asked, as a form of imperialism, a network, or a system?1 The smaller, Central European branch of the dynasty has been treated as something resembling a satellite of Madrid or a little brother.2 The intensity of relations between the center and this periphery gradually grew (though in a very uneven fashion and with setbacks) throughout the sixteenth century, reaching its peak during the Thirty Years’ War, after which it gradually faded. There is growing evidence in recent Hungarian secondary literature that the kingdom of Hungary became a substantial element of the Spanish Habsburg system to a different extent in some areas: either in diplomacy, world trade, warfare, or European power politics in general or in more than one of these.3

Much has been written about the interactions between the two main branches of the Habsburg dynasty (the Spanish Monarchy and the Central European Habsburg Monarchy) in general and in the first half of the seventeenth century in particular.4 Relations between Madrid and the Kingdom of Bohemia and Hungary, respectively, have also been the subject of inquiry,5 including, specifically, case studies on diplomatic relations.6 However, historians have not yet compared the impact of the global empire on the two states. What were the main differences and similarities? This is important, since if we look at hard metrics and the quantity and quality of relations and interactions, we can draw meaningful conclusions concerning cultural and diplomatic history. More precisely, historical patterns and human and social strategies can be detected and analyzed, as can the role and significance that the Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy played in the Spanish Habsburg courts in Europe.

In the discussion below, I present three points. I offer a detailed comparison (the first to my knowledge in the secondary literature) of the two kingdoms when it comes to their general and diplomatic relations with the Spanish Monarchy, both in a quantitative and a qualitative fashion. I then examine the unique and different ways in which Bohemian and Hungarian aristocrats were integrated into the Spanish Habsburg system in diplomacy. Finally, I identify similar or identical patterns in the behaviors of the ruling elites of both lands. I put particular focus on diplomatic encounters, cultural exchange, and news management. I offer several cases in the course of this investigative journey based on archival sources or printed material, devoting somewhat more attention to cases from Hungary.

I selected the chronological scope of the essay for several reasons. In 1608, Guillén de San Clemente, who had served as the Spanish ambassador at the imperial court since 1581, died, and his successors witnessed a gradually growing, then fading intensity in the intra-dynastic relations after a relatively less eventful stage during the reign of Emperor Rudolf II (1576–1612). The most important and influential ambassadors were Baltasar de Zúñiga y Fonseca (1608–17), Iñigo Vélez de Guevara, Count of Oñate (1617–24), Francisco de Moncada, Count of Osoña, Marquess of Aytona (1624–29), Sancho de Monroy y Zúniga, Marquess of Castañeda (1633–40), and Francisco de Moura Corterreal, Marquess of Castel Rodrigo and Count of Lumiares (1648–1656). At the same time, news about the conflicts and compromise between the Habsburg dynasty and the Hungarian estates started to spread across the lands of the Spanish Monarchy.

On the other hand, 1655 was the last year in which Spanish Habsburg diplomacy made an effort to have a real, tangible, and decisive influence on a kingdom-wide political and diplomatic event: the election and coronation of the new king of Hungary, Leopold I (1657–1705), and the new palatine of Hungary, Ferenc Wesselényi (1605–67), during the Hungarian diet organized in Pozsony/Pressburg/Bratislava.

The Case of Bohemia: Integration and the Early Stages of Acculturation

The multidimensional relationship of the Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy and nobility with the Spanish Monarchy was defined first and foremost by their geopolitical situation and their material and human resources.

Bohemia was in a unique position. Its kings were prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Their votes were essential to elect the King of the Romans, who became de facto Holy Roman Emperor. For the rulers of the Spanish Monarchy after the reign of Charles V (1519–56), keeping that title in the hands of the Central European branch was of the utmost importance. At the same time, the capital of the Bohemian lands hosted the imperial court between 1578 and 1618, before its move to Vienna. These facts had several consequences.

First, Bohemian magnates were eligible for the most prestigious imperial councilor roles on the Imperial Privy Council or the War Council. In those political positions, they interacted with Spanish Habsburg envoys in a business-as-usual fashion. Vilém Slavata of Chlum and Georg Adam Martinitz, for instance, were among the privy councilors (in 1637–52 and 1638–51, respectively),7 and Václav Eusebius František, prince of Lobkowicz, held the presidency of the Imperial War Council (1652–65). They established intense relations with the representatives of the Spanish Embassy in Vienna when it came to joint decision-making between the two Habsburg branches. In addition, the Spanish ambassadors were councilors of state themselves, too, in Spain, and they were regularly invited to the sessions of the Imperial Privy Council. The Bohemian magnates attended most sessions during their membership. In contrast, no Hungarian aristocrat was granted such a significant role until 1646, when Pál Pálffy (1592–1653), future palatine of Hungary (1649–53), became privy councilor. That said, neither he nor his Hungarian successors enjoyed actual and regular influence on this political body advising the emperor in imperial decision-making since they lived far from the imperial court.

Second, the presence of people of Spanish origin and, in general, the Spanish cultural milieu were much more tangible and quantifiable in Bohemia than in Hungary. When the Spanish Monarchy intervened in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and the anti-Habsburg alliance of Protestant princes (which included Bohemian magnates) was defeated in 1620 (the Battle of White Mountain), many of their confiscated lands in Bohemia were given de iure to nobles and military commanders from Spain or from the Spanish Netherlands. Baltasar de Marradas y Vic, for instance, received Hluboká and Vltavou. Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Buquoy, was given the lands of Nové Hrady, Rožmberk, and Vltavou. Martin de Höef Huerta was granted Velhartice. Guillermo Verdugo received Doupov. Nothing comparable happened in Hungary in these decades.8

Marriages also made the bonds between the Spanish and the Bohemian nobility closer. Members of the Pernstein, Dietrichstein, and Popel de Lobkowicz families married Spanish damas, and their descendants maintained strong relations with Spanish diplomats. In 1603, the High Chancellor of Bohemia, Zdenko Adalbert Popel de Lobkowitz (1568–1628),9 married Polisena, the daughter of Vratislav Pernstein (1530–82, High Chancellor of Bohemia from 1567 until his death) and María Manrique de Lara (1538–1608), a Spanish noblewoman. Zdenko Adalbert had a close friendship with Ambassador Zúñiga. His palace and that of the Pernstein family were social and political centers of the Spanish imperial party or faction10 in Bohemia, lasting well into the 1620s. Spanish ambassadors sometimes visited Hungarian aristocrats in Hungary. The marquess of Castañeda traveled to visit Palatine Miklós Esterházy (1583–1645) in person, for instance, in the 1630s. But these kinds of excursions were rare and individual cases.

Third, the methods with which information was gathered and shared between Bohemian aristocrats and Spanish diplomatic envoys were also more direct and thorough, with many connections to the Spanish Habsburg information centers worldwide. After Cardinal Francis of Dietrichstein (1570–1636), who was born in Madrid and served as imperial privy councilor, returned to Moravia in the Bohemian lands, he maintained his wide network with Spain and the Spanish Netherlands through agents across Europe.11 Other Bohemian-Spanish nobles held correspondence with members of the Spanish Habsburg courts. No similar case is known for Hungary, except for Martin Somogyi, whose role I discuss later.

Fourth, Bohemian aristocrats, with the indispensable support of Spanish envoys, applied for and were granted the honor of becoming members of the Spanish military and religious orders. Several members of the Kolowrat, Beřkovský de Šebířov, Pruskovský de Pruskov, and Popel de Lobkowitz families received the order of Santiago, including the aforementioned Georg Adam Martinitz and Joachim Slavata, the son of Vilém Slavata of Chlum. Ulrich Franz Libsteinský de Kolowrat received the order of Calatrava.12 No Hungarian nobleman received this honor.

Fifth and last, many aristocrats and their family members were “hispaniolized.” They learned and used the Spanish language,13 and they deliberately dressed in Spanish clothing.14 Also, many books were printed in Spanish in Bohemian cities.15 Bohemian noblewomen entered the households of the queen consorts of Spanish origin at the imperial court.16 In Hungary, these ties were much less present, if at all. With very few exceptions (like that of Cardinal Péter Pázmány, archbishop of Esztergom17) the aristocrats did not speak, write, read, or understand Spanish.

In summary, the Bohemian aristocracy was tightly integrated into the Spanish Habsburg political and sociocultural system. Several family members born in Bohemia were partially assimilated. This was a significant change compared to the reign of Ferdinand I (1526–1664) when one in 14 members of the court came from the Spanish Habsburg lands.18 That is, imperial courtiers of Spanish Habsburg origins disappeared (except, of course, for the court of the Habsburg Empresses born in Spain). Instead, some members of the Central European aristocracy represented the interests of the Catholic King.

The Case of Hungary 1: Ottoman Wars and International Trade

In recent decades, historians have tended to take for granted that, compared to the Bohemian (and Polish) aristocracy, Hungary’s relations with the Spanish monarchy were more sporadic and accidental.19 In reality, these relations were also strong and pointed to equally important and substantial connections and structures, even if they were expressed more indirectly, many times via the imperial court or in other fields of diplomatic activities.

The Kingdom of Hungary held a unique position from the perspective of Madrid. As an antemurale Christianitatis, it constituted a bastion against the Ottoman Empire. It possessed large Protestant lands and estates, which, together with the power politics of the Principality of Transylvania, led to delicate political negotiations between the dynasty and the Hungarian aristocracy throughout the seventeenth century. In addition, Hungary had plenty of material and human resources, including copper, slaves, horses, cattle, and light cavalry units (hussars). These facts also had several consequences.

First, Madrid needed to take the Hungarian front against the Ottomans into consideration when the court designed the yearly military strategy in the Netherlands or against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. If needed, they sent soldiers (thousands from the Spanish Netherlands during the Long Turkish War between 1591 and 1606).20 Dozens of military engineers (many of them chief engineers) came from Spanish Italy (Milan and Naples) to be employed by the Habsburg Monarchy to strengthen the defense system. As stated constantly in the diplomatic reports in the Austrian State Archives and in the Simancas General Archives in Spain, the political situation in the east was a recurring subject. In 1639, the Marquess of Castañeda sent his language secretary, Marcos Putz, to meet with Miklós Esterházy and get the latest updates on the Ottoman Empire and Transylvania. The palatine granted him a long audience.21

Second, Spain strategically needed material and human resources. The Spanish diplomatic corps was actively involved in speeding up and facilitating international and intra-dynastic trade. More than once, the ambassador Count of Oñate intervened in the exportation of Hungarian copper, a strategic resource for the military organization of the Spanish Monarchy. Copper was a vital material in the foundries of the Spanish Monarchy for the production of bronze cannons for the navy.22 It is clear from the data from multiple European archives that at least 30 percent of copper exports from Hungary went to the Spanish Monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1622, the Count of Oñate described in detail the possible commercial routes, the status of the negotiations between the imperial court and the German merchants, and the payment alternatives.23

Galley slaves were also in high demand, and the Spanish navy needed them in significant numbers. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, Spanish diplomats facilitated the transfer of slaves captured at the Ottoman-Hungarian border towards Italy24 with the help of Hungarian aristocrats, such as Pál Pálffy.25 On the other hand, Hungarian galley slaves (captured by Ottoman troops) also filled the Mediterranean. One of them, Ferenc Egri (Francisco Egri in the Spanish sources), managed to escape and spent decades in the Spanish military service in Naples. Once he had returned to Central Europe from Naples, Pálffy helped get him a yearly pension from the emperor. His papers and biography were read by several imperial privy councilors in Vienna.26

The latter magnate, who was described and praised by Castel Rodrigo after his election to the role of palatine in 1649 as “very biased” towards both Austrian and Spanish services,27 maintained excellent relations with multiple Spanish statesmen, such as Miguel de Salamanca, secretary of state in the Spanish Netherlands in 1647.28 One decade earlier, the Count of Oñate had paid Pálffy 50,000 forints for 3,000 oxen for military purposes at the request of Heinrich von Schlick, president of the Imperial War Council.29

In the 1630s, both Oñate and the Marquess of Castañeda held multiple talks in imperial circles (including with Miklós Esterházy) about the recruitment and regular payment of several thousand Croatian-Hungarian soldiers. The Spanish Embassy in Vienna paid for these troops and managed the end-to-end financial cash flow as well, including the negotiations with Spanish and Italian asentistas and bankers. It was Castañeda who in 1637 contracted Colonel Péter Forgách and his 1,100 hussars, who moved to the Spanish Netherlands and entered Spanish service. A Croatian-Hungarian unit (after many changes) remained there for the next few decades.30

Hungarian horses were bought in significant quantities on the horse markets of Vienna and Raab/Győr in Hungary by Spanish diplomats, both for symbolic purposes as a sign of strength and for military purposes. In 1616, 30 horses were transferred to Brussels, 24 of which were for Archduke Albert, governor of the Spanish Netherlands (1598–1621).31 In 1634, at least 14 were purchased for the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, brother of Philip IV.32

The Case of Hungary 2: News Management and Political Micromanagement

The strategic importance of the Ottoman wars and the exotic nature of the Ottoman Empire as subject filled the works of art and the regular news in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.33 In the diplomatic corps, special focus needed to be put on the translations, since the texts of international treaties and alliances and the intercepted enemy letters had to be translated too.

It is not a coincidence that the aforementioned Jacques Bruneau, who at the beginning of the 1620s served as Archduke Albert’s diplomatic envoy in Vienna, sent to Brussels a copy of two Central European treaties and detailed some of their linguistic aspects. Both the Peace of Nikolsburg, between the prince of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen (1613–29), and Emperor Ferdinand II (1619–37), and the Treaty of Khotyn, between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire, were signed at the end of 1621.

Brussels and the ruling elite of the Spanish Netherlands had been eager to receive news from the eastern branch of the dynasty since the Twelve Years’ Truce between Spain and the Dutch United Provinces had expired in April 1621, and the parties resumed hostilities at full speed. The emperor’s willingness to assist the Spanish Netherlands depended heavily on whether he remained engaged in war with the prince of Transylvania. Bruneau, like others in the Spanish Habsburg diplomatic corps, started his career as a translator (secretario de lenguas)34 and then moved up the ladder and held many prestigious positions. Since the translation activities in Brussels were less structured and sophisticated than in Madrid, he wanted to make sure that the secretariat in Brussels did not spend time unnecessarily translating texts. He sent the first text in Spanish (translated from the original Latin by the Count of Oñate), but he kept the original version in Latin to avoid any misunderstandings. Bruneau sent the text of the second treaty in Italian a bit later since the councilor of the emperor who possessed it was absent:35

Envío los artículos de la paz en Hungría así los que tocan a los estados del reino en general, como al Betlen Gabor en particular. El señor conde de Oñate los ha hecho traducir en español, […] pienso convener tenerlos también en latín como originalmente se han concebido y concluido. Falta en ellos la entrada y remate, que el embajador mismo no los ha alcanzado de otra manera. [… ] Y también espero de tener los de la paz de Polonia con el Turco, y un consejero del emperador que los tiene está ausente algunos días ha.36

In the kingdom of Bohemia, the local elite corresponded frequently in German with the emperor and his councilors and oftentimes in Spanish with the actors of the Catholic monarchy. In contrast, in Hungary, aristocrats like Palatine Miklós Esterházy exchanged letters in Latin with the Spanish ambassadors in Vienna37 and with imperial politicians and councilors.38

Even further to the east, knowledge of Latin remained crucial in relations with the Ottoman Empire. It is not a coincidence that the most formal translation service in Vienna belonged to the Imperial War Council and was responsible for the relationship with Constantinople (Hofkriegsratsdolmetscher).39 Often, double translations were needed, as was the case with a letter, a copy of which is kept in Brussels, the former capital of the Spanish Netherlands, sent by a diplomatic envoy to the archdukes, signed by the Ottoman governor of Budin (Buda), Karakaş Mehmed Pasha, to Gábor Bethlen, prince of Transylvania in 1620. It was translated first from “Turkish” into Hungarian and then from Hungarian into Latin, word for word: “ex Turcico in Ungaricum, et ex Ungarico in Latinum, de verbo ad verbum translata.”40

In 1644, the Spanish ambassador reported to his king that the archbishop of Esztergom, György Lippay (1600–1666, who served as archbishop in 1642–66) had brought some intercepted letters to Vienna which shed light on the diplomatic activities of France in Constantinople. The French, he claimed, aimed to convince the Ottomans to give license to the prince of Transylvania to attack the lands of the emperor:

Estos días ha venido aquí el arzobispo de Estrigonia con algunos otros cavalleros úngaros sin el palatino [Miklós Esterházy] por su poca salud haciendo gran ruido de que Rákóczi armaba y se entendía con Torstenson comprobándose esto con cartas intercetas deste en que ofrecia facilitar la licencia del Turco para acometer los Estados del Emperador por medio de los ministros de Francia que están en aquella Corte.41

These letters were probably the ones that another Spanish diplomat used in an anti-French pamphlet in Münster during the Westphalian peace congress the same year.42

Hungarian diets and internal politics constituted a much more complex political environment than those of Bohemia (after 1620). Both the election and coronation of the new Hungarian king and the faction politics were closely monitored by the Spanish Embassy.43

Several archival sources from Spain, Hungary, and Vienna show that a light form of political and diplomatic micromanagement on behalf of the representatives of the Catholic king still existed in 1655.

Over the course of 1654 and 1655, the Marquess of Castel Rodrigo focused on the election of the new Hungarian king, Leopold I, and the election of the new palatine. Though the secondary literature does not yet offer a nuanced picture of the full scope of his activities in Pozsony, it is evident from the sources that he made an effort to intervene decisively in the outcomes of the diet. The variety of sources across Europe also shows the nature of such interventions and the ways in which the study of the primary sources can shed light on the motivations of the principal actors from a Spanish Habsburg perspective.

Prince of Auersperg Johann Weikhard (1615–1677) was one of the most influential politicians of Leopold I. Once a privy councilor and the grand steward of the emperor and also a holder of the Order of the Golden Fleece (the most prestigious Habsburg chivalric order, granted by the king of Spain), he fell from grace in 1669. That year, he wrote an essay against the Marquess of Castel Rodrigo, his archenemy.44 He listed several points against the Spanish ambassador, starting with his aggressive interventions in Hungarian politics. Castel Rodrigo wanted Ban of Croatia Miklós Zrínyi (1620–64) to be the palatine:

Als er arbitrium in Hungaricis rebus agiren wollen, und procuriert, dass Nicolaus Sarinius Palatinus in Ungarn werden solle, da doch schon damahls suspectus de infidelitate gewest ist,45 […] [and when he learned that Ferenc Wesselényi was elected palatine of Hungary, it caused him great pain:], sumo dolore illius.

While laying the groundwork for his presence at the Hungarian diet in Pozsony, Castel Rodrigo wrote letters to Hungarian magnates46 and spent significant amounts of money on buying weapons to strengthen his household on his journey to the diet.47 He also requested and received from the Spanish Council of State around 20 thousand escudos for his extraordinary costs,48 and he wrote multiple letters and treatises about Hungarian politics, e.g., about György Lippay.49 Castel Rodrigo often played the mediator role between the Hungarian magnates and the imperial ministers to decrease the number of political and confessional conflicts at a time when Madrid desperately needed a peaceful and stable Vienna during the last years of the Spanish-French War (1635–59).

In summary, in Hungary, for geopolitical reasons, the aristocrats were physically less integrated into the Spanish Habsburg circle of news and the Spanish cultural milieu, which meant that they had less access to political favors, patronage, and political sponsorship. In other areas, however, cooperation was equally important or sometimes more important from the perspective of Spanish Habsburg strategical goals, even if this cooperation was less interpersonal and relied less on physical presence. These goals included the assurance of accessible material and human resources, reliable political allies and diplomatic contacts in the ongoing fight against the Ottoman Empire, and reliable ties to figures with influence in the Hungarian diets.

Common Patterns: Representation, Legal Matters, and Book Culture

Alongside the substantial differences between the two kingdoms in terms of their relationship with the Spanish monarchy in diplomacy, however, many common patterns can also be seen. In these cases, the ruling elites of both states performed similar activities and were engaged in these endeavors in a similar fashion.

While Hungarian noblemen did not enjoy the benefits of most of the Spanish military orders, the most influential aristocrats received yearly pensions (Péter Pázmány and members of the Forgách family, for instance), and several of them were members of the most prestigious Habsburg order, the Order of the Golden Fleece. Miklós Esterházy (1628) and Pál Pálffy (1650), for instance, were granted this honor, as was Miklós Zrínyi (though after the timeframe of the present essay, in 1664). In comparison, between 1608 and 1655, six Bohemian noblemen received it: two members of the Lobkowicz and the Dietrichstein families, one member of the Martinitz family, and one of the Slavata family.

Coronations and rights to the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns constituted common subjects. The most outstanding case was that of the Oñate treaty (1617), signed by both branches of the dynasty. By signing this document, the Spanish king waived his right to inherit the kingdom of Hungary and Bohemia in a political situation when he could have argued that (due to the childless status of several Austrian heirs) it would be logical and even beneficial if the Spanish monarch were to take over these kingdoms. The feasibility of such a claim would nevertheless have been questionable, since it failed to consider, for example, the Kingdom of Hungary’s status as an elective monarchy.50 Also, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several Spanish princes and princesses waived their rights formally, in writing, to the line of succession of Hungary. These events show and highlight the dynastic unity of the Habsburg family and testify to the fact that, theoretically, there was always a possibility for a reunion of all Habsburg territories under one dynastic ruler.

In several instances, the fate of Bohemian and Hungarian aristocrats and nobles intersected. Margarita de Cardona, the confidante of Empress and Queen Consort Maria (1528–1603), daughter of Charles V, forged a strong relationship with Martin Somogyi, a to-be gentilhombre in the court in Brussels.51 An orphan, Martin got into the household of the Dietrichstein family in Moravia, and he moved to Brussels as a page in the 1590s, where he started his career as the vice-captain of the bodyguard of the governors of the Spanish Netherlands (Archduke Albert and his wife, the Spanish infanta Isabel). Cardona (the wife of Adam von Dietrichstein and the mother of Franzis von Dietrichstein) even requested a Spanish knighthood for Somogyi, a request Archduke Albert repeated some years later, though without success. Instead, Somogyi continued to build his career in the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands. He undertook diplomatic missions and remained in close touch with Franz von Dietrichstein, and he became one of his principal informers from Brussels52 In 1620, he became a baron.53 By the 1630s, he had become a landlord (of Bothey in the province of Namur in the Spanish Netherlands and of Štáblovice in Opava/Troppau/Opawa in Moravia) and a tenant of a castle (Vichenet in Namur). Martin Somogyi made several contributions to cultural relations. In 1620, he sent a copy of the second part of Cervantes’ Don Quixote from Brussels to Franz von Dietrichstein.54 A few years later, Diego Muxet de Solís, a local writer in the Spanish Netherlands, dedicated his plays and poems to Dietrichstein at Somogyi’s suggestion.55

Instances of cooperation between Bohemian and Hungarian magnates occurred, naturally, among the Catholic prelates during the Catholic revival. As has been noted in the secondary literature in Hungarian, Philip IV and his ministers kept an eye on Péter Pázmány, archbishop of Esztergom, and later paid even more attention when Pázmány became cardinal. The literature has dealt extensively with the history of Pázmány’s most important diplomatic mission to Rome in 1632 (which has most recently been strongly linked to the Spanish Cardinal Borja’s famous protest the same year).56 New sources revealed that the aim of the Pázmány’s travels, which was to advance the establishment of a league between the Spanish king, the emperor, and the Catholic estates of the Holy Roman Empire, was a cornerstone in the foreign policy of the Count-Duke of Olivares. In 1629, Spanish Habsburg diplomacy conducted in Vienna by the Count of Castro, the Duke of Tursi, Jacques Bruneau, and the Marquis of Cadereyta had begun carefully to pave the way for the mission.57

Although no thorough comparison of Bohemian and Hungarian aristocratic libraries has been conducted yet, the first results show clearly that both groups of magnates wanted to equip themselves with knowledge of the best of Spanish Habsburg culture.

The libraries of Hungarian Catholic aristocrats were full of hispanica, mostly in Italian and Latin translations.58 In 1614, Cardinal Ferenc Forgách ordered and received 206 books from Frankfurt, 30 percent of which were by Spanish authors or writers from the Spanish Monarchy.59 In Pázmány’s private library, a similar proportion of books by Spanish authors can be found.60 The book catalogue of the Zrínyi family in 1662 included at least 91 items in the same category (out of 731).61

Studies of the Bohemian libraries have been more thorough.62 A logical next step in the research in both countries might be to attempt to grasp the influence that the wide variety of military, scientific, ecclesiastical, legal, historical, etc. treatises had on the readers and their political and private activities.

Although the interests of Bohemian and Hungarian aristocrats seemed to differ (e.g., the former group included more volumes for pure entertainment in their libraries), the most popular authors were present in the book collections of both territories: Pedro de Mejía, Luis de Granada, Antonio de Guevara, Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (a diplomat himself who spent several months in Vienna between 1634 and 1641), Juan Antonio de Vera y Figueroa (the count of La Roca, ambassador of Madrid in Venice between 1632 and 1642, and author of the famous 1620 treatise The Ambassador), and many others. One might reasonably assume that when Bohemian and Hungarian magnates discussed their lectures, actual political events, or their encounters with Spanish culture and persons, they could easily refer to a similar corpus of experiences and perceptions.

In conclusion, from the perspective of Hungary’s relevance to the Spanish Habsburg system, money and strategic geopolitical interests were the primary factors. Hungary was important for the Spanish Empire because of its material and human resources (copper, horses, slaves, and soldiers). As a consequence, a peace between the Ottoman Empire, the Principality of Transylvania, and the Central European branch of the dynasty helped Madrid focus on its fight against France and the Netherlands and strengthen the position of Catholicism. Since Hungary was not part of the Holy Roman Empire and the integration of Hungary’s aristocracy into the Habsburg central government organs and councils was far less advanced than in Bohemia, Spanish diplomacy made fewer efforts to build more meaningful and deep connections and interactions with them through, for instance, marriages, the migration of Hungarian noblemen to the Spanish Netherlands or Spain, or the granting of memberships in religious and military orders. Patronage, favors, and political sponsorship, as a consequence, played a smaller role. Spanish Habsburg diplomats in Prague and Vienna were well aware of the details of all these connections, and they made decisions, intervened, or facilitated solutions whenever necessary.

In contrast, Bohemia constituted a strategic land for Madrid for different reasons. As part of the Holy Roman Empire and as a territory that was historically more integrated into the Central European Habsburg lands, Bohemia needed to be more closely linked to the Spanish Habsburg system of diplomacy and favors. In addition, the Thirty Years’ War created a very specific opportunity for the Spanish Habsburg elite. The defeat of the Protestant nobility in Bohemia freed up a huge amount of land for the Catholic aristocracy, and the emperor distributed some of these lands to Spanish noblemen who were fighting and living in Central Europe. Cultural assimilation, family ties (including marriages), and joint political decision-making in the central government organs in Vienna made relations between Madrid, Spanish Habsburg diplomats, and the Bohemian elite much closer in these areas than Spanish Habsburg relations with the Hungarian aristocracy.

As Bohemia and Hungary were neighboring lands with shared interests and common goals, many similar patterns can be detected as well, however, first and foremost in matters of cultural assimilation (book culture and cooperation in the Catholic revival) and questions of dynastic inheritance (coronations and the rights to the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns).

Archival Sources

Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels (AGRB)

Secrétairerie d’État et de Guerre

Secrétairerie d’Etat Allemand

Archivo General de Simancas, Simancas (AGS)

Archivo Histório Nacional, Madrid (AHN)

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian National Archives State Archives], Budapest (MNL OL)

P 287 A Forgách család gácsi iratai

Moravský Zemský Archiv [Moravian Land Archives], Brno (MZA)

Rodinný Archiv Ditrichštejnů [Dietrichstein Family Archive]

Prímási Levéltár [Esztergom Primate Archives], Esztergom (PLE)

Archivum Ecclesiasticum Vetus

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna (ÖStA)

Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA)

Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv – Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv

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Martí, Tibor. “Az 1625. évi soproni országgyűlés a Habsburg dinasztia spanyol ágának szemével: Ossona gróf bécsi spanyol követ jelentései” [The Diet of Sopron (Ödenburg) in 1625 as seen through the eyes of the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty: reports of Count Ossona, Spanish ambassador to Vienna]. In Amikor Sopronra figyelt Európa: Az 1625. évi soproni koronázó országgyűlés [When the eyes of Europe were on Sopron: The Hungarian Coronation Diet of 1625], edited by Péter Dominkovits, Csaba Katona, and Géza Pálffy, 245–367. Sopron–Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Győr-Moson-Sopron megyei Soproni Levéltára, MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2020.

Martí, Tibor. “Hungarian Members of the Order of the Golden Fleece: The Importance of a Habsburg Chivalric Order in Seventeenth-Century Hungary.” In Eagles Looking East and West: Dynasty, Ritual and Representation in Habsburg Hungary and Spain, edited by Martí, Tibor, and Roberto Quirós Rosado, 249–70. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.

Martí, Tibor, and Roberto Quirós Rosado. “Dynastic Links between Far Lands: The Kingdom of Hungary and the Spanish monarchy in the early modern age.” In Eagles Looking East and West: Dynasty, Ritual and Representation in Habsburg Hungary and Spain, edited by Martí, Tibor, and Roberto Quirós Rosado, 15–26. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.

Martí, Tibor, and Tibor Monostori. “Olivares gróf-herceg külpolitikai koncepciója és Pázmány Péter 1632. évi római követsége” [The foreign policy of the count-duke of Olivares: The beginnings of Péter Pázmány’s legation to Rome in 1632]. Történelmi Szemle 51, no. 2 (2009): 275–94.

Martí, Tibor, and Tibor Monostori. “A Spanyol Monarchia értesülései a Magyar Királyságról: Castañeda márki titkárának ‘interjúja’ Esterházy Miklós nádorral (1639)” [Information flow to the Spanish Monarchy about the Kingdom of Hungary: the “interview” of the secretary of the Marquis of Castañeda with Palatine Miklós Esterházy (1639)]. Lymbus Magyarságtudományi forrásközlemények, 2015, 123–39.

Monostori, Tibor. “Transilvania en el horizonte político-ideológico de Saavedra Fajardo.” Res Publica: Revista de Filosofía Política 19, no. 1 (2008): 351–66.

Monostori, Tibor. “Egy magyar arisztokrata Spanyol-Németalföldön a Flandriai Hadsereg szolgálatában: Forgách Péter koronaőr lovasezredének szerződtetése 1637-ben” [A Hungarian aristocrat in service of the Army of Flanders in the Spanish Low Countries: The contract of Péter Forgách’s regiment of cavalry in 1637]. Lymbus Magyarságtudományi forrásközlemények, 2019, 157–74.

Monostori, Tibor. “A besztercebányai réz a spanyol Habsburg és portugál globális hadiipar, kereskedelem és pénzügypolitika szolgálatában” [Copper from Banská Bystrica (Neusohl) in the service of Spanish Habsburg and Portuguese global military industry, trade and finance]. Fons 27, no. 1 (2020): 33–60.

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“Secret Correspondence” in Habsburg–Ottoman Communication in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

 

János Szabados
University of Szeged
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.194

For the Habsburg Monarchy in the seventeenth century, it was very important to collect, send to Vienna, and evaluate up-to-date information on the Ottoman Empire. Following the Long Turkish War (1591/1593–1606), it was necessary in the 1620s to organize, alongside couriers and other channels of correspondence (e. g. the Venetian post), a cost-effective and sustainable system with which to transmit news and, in part, intelligence. In this essay, I present the historiography of the “institution” known as the “Secret Correspondence” and the history of the organization and reorganizations of the system. I also establish a typology of the people involved in the correspondence, namely 1) letter forwarders, 2) letter forwarders who also wrote secret reports, and

3) spies who wrote secret reports regardless of their location (in this case, the person was more important than the information). In the first half of the seventeenth century (1624 to 1658), the system of “Secret Correspondence” had to be reorganized several times (mostly due to lack of funds). In each case, the main challenge was to find and continuously employ the right people, so the role of the recruiter was also important. The political situation in the abovementioned period had an obvious impact on the functioning of the system, too. My research is based on documents from the Viennese archives (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv; Kriegsarchiv, Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv), which have helped me to offer a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the “Secret Correspondence” than found in the existing secondary literature.

Keywords: Habsburg-Ottoman diplomacy, intelligence, flow of information, information channels, typology of the informants

Introduction

Interest among scholars in Habsburg–Ottoman diplomacy has increased in recent decades. The peaceful period of the first half of the seventeenth century (1606–1663) is of particularly strong interest.1 In this essay, I investigate a vital channel of communication between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, namely the institution known as the “Secret Correspondence” (Geheime Korrespondenz). The continuity of the correspondence between Vienna and Constantinople had a great impact on relations between the two empires. It was of primary importance for the Habsburgs mostly, as it helped them closely monitor the policies of the Ottoman Empire and have direct and prompt access to the relevant pieces of news and information with which to shape their European policy, especially during and after the Thirty Years’ War. In the discussion below, I look at the secondary literature on this “Secret Correspondence,” outline the history of its establishment in the first half of the seventeenth century (1623–1658), look at the historical and political context, and introduce the diplomats involved in its organization. Moreover, I examine the parallel information channels and establish a typology of those involved in the transmission of letters and intelligence. I also describe the roles of these actors in the network’s operation and offer some examples of how their activity as letter forwarders or spies impacted their careers. My intention is to offer a more nuanced understanding of how the Habsburg communications and intelligence system functioned in the Ottoman Empire and to demonstrate that the “Secret Correspondence” was primarily used as a form of infrastructure, which, of course, also made espionage more effective.

Historical and Political Context

The Battle of Mohács in 1526 determined the politics of the following decades, as the Habsburg Monarchy became a direct neighbor of the Ottoman Empire, which was expanding through the Kingdom of Hungary. The longer period of peace after 1568 provided an opportunity for secret diplomacy to develop,2 but the Long Turkish War at the end of the century (1591–1606) interrupted this process. The Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606 provided a new possibility to resume peaceful diplomatic relations, especially during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648).3 Both empires were already entangled in conflicts in various theaters of war and were forced to maintain peace with each other, though this peace was fragile and had to be affirmed on several occasions (1615/1616, 1618, 1625, 1627, and 1642). After the Thirty Years’ War, the two empires did not start a new war with each other but rather extended the peace again in 1649.4 Each peace treaty was accompanied by a solemn grand embassy, but these embassies were not necessarily sent only on the occasion of a new affirmation of peace.5 The envoys (with the rank of ambassador or internuncius) also played a role in the organization and operation of the “Secret Correspondence,” but the actual operation was the responsibility of the “experts” in charge of the Aulic War Council (Hofkriegsrat) and the resident ambassadors in Constantinople. Nevertheless, for various reasons (for instance, the death of a member or changes in the underlying political situation), it became necessary to reorganize the system several times by the mid-seventeenth century (until 1658).

The Revolution of Communication in the Early Modern Period

The early modern period saw a revolution in communication that had less to do with the invention of printing and more with changes in infrastructure.6 The postal system developed rapidly, and this contributed to better and faster correspondence. In the Holy Roman Empire, the Thurn und Taxis family owned the post office as a fief. In the Hereditary Lands of the Habsburgs, the postal service belonged to the Paar family, although the institution of postmaster existed for a time in the Kingdom of Hungary as well.7 This system, with its very well-functioning infrastructure, enabled faster and easier communication, which also had a positive effect on European societies and cultures.8 Parallel to the official correspondence, there existed an unofficial form of communication, mostly conducted in ciphers (i.e., secret writings of various kinds) which was used to transmit important and non-public information.9 There is a very substantial literature on early modern intelligence.10 With regard to the Ottoman Empire, two works are worth highlighting. John-Paul Ghobrial has examined the complex flow of information in Constantinople, London, and Paris in the late seventeenth century,11 and Ioanna Iordanou has offered a thorough analysis of the extensive European and non-European (i.e. Ottoman Empire) intelligence network of Venice.12

In the discussion below, I examine another form of communication that was specifically established between Vienna, Constantinople, and most of the European areas of the Ottoman Empire, namely the so-called “Secret Correspondence.” Since a comprehensive reform of the postal system took place in the 1620s, it is reasonable to assume that the founding of the “Secret Correspondence” was also connected with this reform, though no sources have yet been found providing clear confirmation of this. One document makes clear the relevance of communication during the legation of envoy (internuncius) Johann Jakob Kurz von Senftenau (1623–1624), as Ferdinand II ordered the restoration of the post office in Altenburg/Mosonmagyaróvár, Raab/Győr, and Komorn/Komárom and Révkomárom/Komárno in the autumn of 1623.13 It must be added, however, that in the case of the Imperial Post and the Post of the Hereditary Lands of the Habsburgs, they were official and public structures. In contrast, the “Secret Correspondence” was in principle an unofficial channel of communication.

The Secondary Literature on and Terminology Concerning the “Secret Correspondence”

In contrast to what has been stated in the secondary literature, in my view, the network of “Secret Correspondence” primarily provided an infrastructure for more fluid communication between Vienna and Constantinople, and this infrastructure was always dynamically adapted to the circumstances. Some elements of the system have been addressed in the scholarship, but the mechanisms of its operation in the first half of the seventeenth century have not yet been explored in detail, and this has led to misunderstandings in the interpretation of certain sources. The system of “Secret Correspondence” was already known to scholars in the early twentieth century. Numismatist Carl von Peez drew attention to the work of correspondents in Buda, Belgrade, and Sofia who were active after 1665, but he did not systematically explore the function of the system in the second half of the seventeenth century.14 This applies to the earliest Hungarian scholars on the subject. Sándor Takáts and Gyula Erdélyi mentioned the actors in the system by name in their essays, and they emphasized that the appearance of foreign (i.e., non-Hungarian) participants crowded Hungarians out of the intelligence system.15 Peter Meienberger also devoted a few pages in his book to the “Secret Correspondence,” and he made important observations about the operation of the system and treated it separately from the intelligence service.16 The establishment of the system was first outlined by István Hiller, who based his conclusions on the mission of the aforementioned Johann Jakob Kurz von Senftenau. Hiller interpreted the “Secret Correspondence” as an intelligence system, but his findings prompted certain points that need further clarification, including, for instance, the function(s) of this system.17 Dóra Kerekes examined in more detail the correspondents of the second half of the seventeenth century, focusing on the role of the Orientalische Handelskompanie (Oriental Trade Company) in the “Secret Correspondence.”18 She also explored the activities of the interpreters (in her terminology, the “Secret Correspondents”) who resided in Constantinople during the Great Turkish War (1683–1699), from where they wrote and sent secret reports.19 On the basis of her research on the abovementioned period, Kerekes concluded that the “Secret Correspondence” could be regarded as an intelligence system in the modern sense.20 However, the system of “Secret Correspondence” seems to have been more complex than mere espionage and can be seen rather as an intelligence and messaging system. I will explore this in more detail below.

The Reasons for Organizing the System and the Manner in which it was Implemented

During the second campaign (1623–1624) of Transylvanian prince Gábor Bethlen (1613–1629), which he launched against the Habsburgs in the Kingdom of Hungary five years after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War,21 Johan Jakob Kurz von Senftenau, Habsburg envoy to the Ottoman Porte, was commissioned with the establishment of a new system of communication. The aim was pragmatic: to replace the flow of information, which had been weakened by Bethlen’s attacks, with a financially more optimal system of mail transmission (which could be maintained between Belgrade and Constantinople for less than 500 talers a year) that would be less dependent on Venice.22 In accordance with his instructions, the diplomat recruited suitable people, primarily merchants in Buda, Belgrade, and Sofia. They were contracted to forward letters between Vienna and Constantinople twelve times a year for a certain sum. This solution was indeed more affordable since it cost 240 talers per occasion to send couriers.23 On his return journey from Constantinople, Kurz recruited people whom he thought qualified for the task and who were willing to undertake it. Thus, Hironimo/Girolammeo Grassi (240 talers)24 in Sofia, Matteo Sturani25 (240 thalers) in Belgrade, and Giovanni Pellegrini (160 talers) in Buda took on the task of forwarding the letters, and thus the costs in Belgrade and Sofia were kept below the prescribed 500 thalers.26 They were merchants from Ragusa (see table), and Grassi and Sturani had provided their services to the Habsburgs before.27 The operation of that newly established correspondence was presumably the responsibility of war councilor Count Michael Adolf Althan,28 secretary of the Aulic War Council and later also a war councilor Gerhard von Questenberg,29 and resident ambassador of Constantinople Sebastian Lustrier (1623–1629).30

Typology of Members of the “Secret Correspondence”

Before presenting the functioning of the system, I offer first an outline of the terms used to refer to participants in the system. My intention is to clarify the roles these actors played, at least to the extent possible on the basis of the sources. The meaning of the term “correspondent” as used in the sources seems problematic. It may have referred to someone who was both a “correspondent” or “spy” and a “letter forwarder.”31 Indeed, within the system, several functions can be clearly distinguished, even if some of terms sometimes seem ambiguous. Accordingly, for those who merely forwarded letters, I suggest the term letter forwarder. Those who primarily reported on important events should be called spies. The last category, and the most difficult to define, is those who forwarded letters and wrote spy reports. In their case, two subcategories can be distinguished, namely people who primarily spied and sometimes also forwarded letters and people who were contracted primarily to forward letters, but in some cases wrote secret reports as well. These people also received a salary from the Court Chamber, unlike, for example, Marino Tudisi, who was recruited as a private servant of Count Althan.32

Attempts at Reorganization between 1628 and 1658

The “Secret Correspondence” needed to be reorganized several times in the first half of the seventeenth century. Lustrier, the Habsburg resident ambassador at the Porte who was most interested in uninterrupted communication between the two powers, frequently used the new channel, but he also warned the court of the shortage of funds due to the war.33 By the end of the 1620s, after the negotiators of the two empires had successfully agreed to extend the peace in 1627 in Szőny, the system was in dire need of reorganization.34 The task of dispatching the ratification to Constantinople was entrusted to Baron Johann Ludwig von Kuefstein, a recent convert to Catholicism, who entered the Habsburg–Ottoman diplomacy as a homo novus.35 He was also instructed, however, to reorganize the “Secret Correspondence.”36 He was prepared for his journey by Michael Starzer (1610–1622), the former agent at the Porte, and Johann Rudolf Schmid (1629–1643), a former Ottoman captive and the next resident ambassador.37 However, due to the lack of a suitable “specialist,” only the aforementioned Marino Tudisi accompanied him as an expert.38 Presumably because of his earlier studies in Italy, Kuefstein preferred the Ragusan citizens as future letter forwarders, too. He enlisted the help of Tudisi on his way to the Sublime Porte. In Belgrade, he recruited Tomaso Orsini for Buda, Francesco Vlatchy/Vlatky for Belgrade, and Marco Cavalcanti for Sofia.39 During his stay in Constantinople, however, Kuefstein preferred sending letters through his courier, Wolf Leuthkauff, which obviously had an impact on the frequency of the correspondence.40 Orsini, for example, proved unreliable,41 thus Kuefstein had to use other channels and modify previous arrangements on the return journey. As a result, he first made an agreement in Sofia with a person called Stefano Vukovicz (Vuković).42 Nevertheless, in Belgrade the aforementioned Vlatchy/Vlatky then undertook to organize the entire correspondence between Constantinople and Komárom, and he himself proved ready to write secret reports. This is probably why he received the rather high sum of 700 thalers.43 In Komárom, Kuefstein entered into a contract with János Papp to transmit letters for 100 thalers a year.44 Thus, Kuefstein succeeded in his mission to reorganize the “Secret Correspondence.”

In the years that followed, the new resident ambassador Schmid was responsible for controlling the system, which he did together with the imperial interpreter in Vienna, Michel d’Asquier (1625–1664).45 Schmid also made use of the “Secret Correspondence,” but he sometimes bribed couriers en route to Buda and used the Transylvanian and Venetian postal services as well.46 Little is known about the identity of the letter forwarders from this period (see table). Since pieces of news from the Middle East were very important for the court because of the Thirty Years’ War, Schmid also recruited Francesco Crasso/Grassi, a doctor who had previously worked in Buda and was also of Ragusan origin.
Dr. Grassi was primarily an intelligence agent (spy), and not only for the Habsburgs, of course.47 Schmid also relied on the services of Andrea Scogardi (originally Johann Andersen Skovgaard), also a doctor, who, after his resettlement, kept the resident ambassador regularly informed about Moldavian and Transylvanian affairs.48 Johann Rudolf Puchheim, the grand ambassador assigned to the Porte in 1634, also tried to recruit new people, but there are no relevant data on the long-term impact of this.49 Because of financial problems, when they submitted a report to the emperor, Schmid and d’Asquier tried to get the impression that running the network was of primary importance.50 However, by the 1640s, the system was on the verge of collapse, since there were not enough resources to run it because of the costs of the Thirty Years’ War.

After Schmid’s return from Constantinople in 1643, the task of rebuilding was inherited by his successor, Alexander Greiffenklau (1643–1648). The court was preoccupied at the time with a series of attacks (1644, 1645)51 by the Prince of Transylvania, György Rákóczi I (1630–1648), against the Kingdom of Hungary. These attacks also impeded communication between Vienna and Constantinople. Moreover, the Ottoman war against Venice for the possession of Crete (1645–1669)52 virtually eliminated the possibility of using the Venetian post service, though that passage had been favored by Greiffenklau. Since the resident ambassador was unable to relaunch the “Secret Correspondence,” Hermann Czernin von Chudenitz, the grand ambassador assigned to the Porte in 1644, was charged with the task. However, it seems that this effort was not successful either. Both Czernin and Greiffenklau endeavored to get their letters to Vienna by all possible means, mainly through couriers, embassy secretaries, the Ottoman postal service, and sometimes even through Poland. The temporary disappearance of the “Secret Correspondence” was not necessarily their fault. Indeed, the political situation at the time had a strong impact on communication and determined the options available, namely that diplomats were forced to rely on trusted confidants.53

After the campaigns, the system was revived once again. Greiffenklau was commissioned with the reorganization for the second time. However, despite the efforts of imperial courier Johann Dietz, the reorganization did not succeed because of the war against the Venetians.54 After the resident’s involvement in a political assassination, the situation was further complicated, because it had some diplomatic consequences.55 As for the intelligence, Greiffenklau primarily relied on the Hungarian-born renegade, the grand dragoman of the Sublime Porte (1629–1657), Zülfikâr Ağa.56 The unexpected death of Greiffenklau in 1648 again offered Schmid new opportunities. In 1647, he had already suggested using the services of the German-born renegade interpreter, Hüseyin Çavuş, who went by the pseudonym Hans Caspar and who subsequently became an important spy in the intelligence network of the Habsburg–Ottoman frontier.57

In 1649, Schmid was sent to the Porte as a member of the Aulic War Council to negotiate to extend the peace.58 He introduced there the new resident ambassador, Simon Reniger,59 and he reorganized the “Secret Correspondence.” During Schmid’s diplomatic mission, he recruited competent agents in Buda, Belgrade, and Sofia who were suitable as actors who would forward letters (cf. table), and after some bargaining, he was able to agree on their remuneration.60 In his secret report, he emphasized the importance of regular payments in the future to keep the system running.61 At the same time, he tried to set up the forwarding of letters via Transylvania, which seemed to be the shortest route.62 Communication channels were thus re-established for a while.

In 1650, Johann Rudolf Schmid again (as a baron and grand ambassador) took the ratified document of the peace treaty to Constantinople.63 According to the references, during his embassy, he regularly used the “Secret Correspondence” network, and he tried to replace the lost links (e.g. in Sofia) and provide the actors in the system with adequate payment for the future, thus making Reniger’s work easier.64 In his secret report, he emphasized again that salaries were to be paid regularly to facilitate the rapid flow of information. His suggestions were no doubt inspired by his previous bad experiences.65

From that point on, communication between Vienna and Constantinople seemed relatively stable. The main channels were couriers, correspondence via Transylvania, Ottoman chiauses (çavuş), and the “Secret Correspondence.” Obviously, extraordinary events could cause disruptions. The death of imperial courier Johann Dietz during his mission in the autumn of 1651 led to a serious delay of several months, as all channels were simultaneously interrupted for various reasons.66 However, the increasing number of excursions on the frontier made it essential to get the letters to their destinations as quickly as possible, and usually at least one channel was used to get the information to the right destination. In the autumn of 1652, the death of the letter forwarder of Belgrade (Baggio, recruited by Schmid) caused a further slowdown, and the position in Belgrade remained precarious for the rest of the year.67 According to one of Reniger’s reports to Schmid, between December 1653 and 1654, he sent only one letter out of nine through the “Secret Correspondence” network. This mere fact offers an indication of the seriousness of the problems outlined.68 In 1653, the death of Hungarian palatine Pál Pálffy (1649–1653) caused a disruption on the Transylvanian route, but this was soon resolved diplomatically, although the election of Ferenc Wesselényi as palatine in 1655 caused further interference.69

The main source of information in Constantinople in the early 1650s was Dr. Scogardi, who regularly reported to Schmid,70 and in Buda, mainly during the time of Kara Murad Pasha (1650–1653),71 the German renegade Hans Caspar.72

In the mid-1650s, the “Secret Correspondence” and the whole communi­cation and intelligence network entered a difficult phase. The new pasha of Buda, Sari Kenan (1653–1655),73 took a dim view of the secret transmission of information and assaulted the judge of Óbuda, who was then acting as a letter forwarder. Even the other letter forwarder in Buda, Vuichich/Vuičić (see table), did not dare carry out his duties, and consequently a general atmosphere of fear prevailed in that period.74 Since the sending of letters via Transylvania also seemed uncertain at the time, communication between Reniger and the Viennese court took place via Poland for a few months.75 Finally, the imperial courier Natal de Paulo, also of Ragusan origin, managed to restore the system by filling in the missing links. Furthermore, Hans Caspar found himself in a difficult situation during the time of Sari Kenan, and this was reflected in the low number of reports written by him.76

A completely new situation was brought about by the campaign of Prince of Transylvania György Rákóczi II (1648–1660) against Poland in 1657.77 The channels of communication were entirely changed by the absence of Leopold I (who traveled to Prague and then to Frankfurt), the campaigns, and the move of the Sultan’s court to Adrianople.78 From the available correspondence it seems that the difficulties of “Secret Correspondence” were not fully overcome in 1656, as no suitable persons could be found in Buda or Belgrade. Only the mission of the courier Natal and secretary of the Aulic War Council Peter Franz Hoffmann was crowned with success, and after that, the secret channel of communication was again in operation in 1657.79 Reniger had to follow the Sultan’s court to Adrianople at the end of 1657, and this brought about a dramatic change in the conditions of the channels of communication, because someone else had to be left in Constantinople. However, this topic is beyond the scope of this paper.80 In terms of gathering or passing on intelligence, Hans Caspar was less active than he had been in the early 1650s, and the war had a strong impact on his circumstances and his work as a spy.81

Thus, although the operation of the “Secret Correspondence” was impeded by numerous financial and personal obstacles between 1624 and 1657, efforts were made to restore this important channel of information for Vienna as soon as logistical, financial, and infrastructural circumstances allowed.

Motivation(s), Opportunities, and Risks

If one looks at the members of the system based on the typology outlined above (see table), some conclusions can be drawn about the motivations and risks of being part of the “Secret Correspondence.” As early as the 1630s, the letter forwarders were aware of the importance of their activities and tried to take advantage of them, and they sometimes blackmailed the diplomats.82 Schmid seems initially to have been rather distrustful of the Ragusans, who at that time enjoyed the support of Count Althan, as the case of the so-called “interpreter trial” shows.83 Later, Schmid changed his mind on that matter.

As the letter forwarders were mainly merchants, their main task was to forward letters from both directions (i.e., between Vienna and Constantinople). In their case, therefore, the emphasis was on the task itself rather than the person who executed it. Therefore, letter-forwarding can be regarded as a more easily replaceable function than spying. Their activities were not without risk, however. The sources reveal that in some cases they put their lives at risk. This is also indicated by the fact that Johann Rudolf Puchheim wrote the name of one of the letter forwarders in cipher in his report.84 Greiffenklau in 164585 and, later, Schmid in his 1649 mission pointed out that, due to the Ottoman war against Venice, it seemed difficult to find people among the Ragusans for the task. They were generally on good terms with Venice but were Ottoman vassals as well.86 It was thus necessary to agree on the abovementioned punctual and regular payment.87 A similar example can be found during Schmid’s mission as ambassador when he authorized Baggio, the letter forwarder in Belgrade, to trade in Moravia on behalf of the emperor to ensure the smooth flow of correspondence.88 This means, therefore, that certain letter forwarders had enough bargaining power in matters affecting their own livelihoods, although Baggio could not benefit for long from the opportunity he had won. Nevertheless, even before his death, the Belgrade transporter complained about the lack of payment and obstructed the forwarding of letters.89 The death of the aforementioned courier Dietz illustrates how the loss of a single key person could paralyze the communication system since he was also the one who would have delivered the payment to the letter forwarders. In the mid-1650s, because of the risks, the Ragusan merchant colony in Belgrade forbade their members to participate in the “Secret Correspondence.” This offered Baggio’s successor (Giorgio Cortey) the possibility of bargaining again. In the end, they solved the problem by depositing the letters from Constantinople in a certain house, where Cortey could later pick them up.90 In 1655, the magistrate of Óbuda, who had also been involved in the forwarding of letters, was badly beaten and imprisoned. This was presumably done as a warning to the Ragusans in Buda. That is why the letter forwarder in Buda (Peter Vuichich/Vuičić) decided to move to Belgrade.91 Lazaro, the letter forwarder in Belgrade, was also arrested in 1656, for which he was later compensated by the Habsburg court, as was the magistrate of Óbuda.92

According to the available data (see table), almost all the Balkan letter forwarders were Ragusans, so in their case, there was no ethnic or religious diversity. It was certainly no coincidence that the imperial couriers who recruited Balkan letter forwarders in the 1650s (Natal and Michel de Paulo) were most probably also of Ragusan origin. They were presumably more able to contact the merchants. This also confirms that the Viennese court was aware of the importance of the “Secret Correspondence.”

However, the circumstances of the spies differed from those of the letter forwarders. In their case, not only was the function they played important. The identity of the person himself and his position (e.g., physician) also mattered. Dr. Grassi seemed to be useful for intelligence purposes in Buda (in the 1630s), Constantinople (in the late 1630s), and later the Middle East during the campaign of Murad IV against the Safavids.93 The other doctor, Andrea Scogardi, also reported from both Constantinople and Iaşi.94 In both cases, there is evidence that they provided intelligence not only for the Habsburgs but Ragusa and/or Venice also enlisted their services (Scogardi was also involved in political assassinations), which offers a clear indication of their significance.95 They were also primarily engaged in their profession, so as spies, they were news sources and were not involved in the forwarding of letters. They obviously put themselves at considerable risk by engaging in espionage activities, but as they were doctors, it was quite difficult to replace them, so they did not have to fear strong reprisals. As a group, the spies were more ethnically diverse. Grassi was Ragusan, while Scogardi had been born in Denmark. As for religion, the latter had protestant (Lutheran) roots, but he converted to Catholicism during his studies in Italy.96

The situation of people belonging to the third category was also different from that of ordinary letter forwarders. In their case, the identity of the person in question and his position again played a key role. Matteo Sturani, also of Ragusan origin, was recruited as a letter forwarder in Belgrade in 1624, and he wrote secret reports from Poland in the 1630s.97 After the death of Alexander Greiffenklau, he seemed a potential candidate for the post of resident ambassador, but because of his Ragusan origins and his age, he was eventually dismissed, and Simon Reniger was chosen instead.98 One of the reasons why Simon Reniger was considered more suitable for the post was that, unlike his predecessor, he had followed Schmid’s advice.99 Francesco Vlatchy/Vlatky also reported regularly, but later he proved more unreliable, since he did not receive his regular salary.100 Thus, despite his claims to the contrary, he does not seem to have taken on the risky task out of conviction, but rather for money.

Hans Caspar in Buda was not only useful for espionage, but he also forwarded letters on several occasions. For example, he sometimes copied and forwarded letters to Vienna sent by Reniger, which had been unsealed by the Pasha of Buda. Moreover, he regularly forwarded letters sent by Ottoman chiauses.101 Later, because of the events in Transylvania, Hans Caspar had to leave Buda and those lost access to the infrastructure that had previously enabled him to transmit the information he had acquired. This event proved to be a decisive factor in his later life.102 Nevertheless, Caspar was still seen as a potential spy, as evidenced by diplomatic reports, for example, when he tried to blackmail
Dr. Johann Friedrich Metzger, who had been sent to the camp of the Pasha of Buda (Gürcü Kenan), because the Pasha was ordered to move against György Rákóczi II.103 In this third and last group of the “Secret Correspondence,” therefore, both the functions of the individuals involved and the ethnic composition of the group seem to be mixed, but at the same time, the careers of these people can be traced.

Conclusions

Several important conclusions can be drawn from the present study. First, the Christian vassals facilitated the flow of information between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. Ragusa, through its merchants, played an important role in the communication and intelligence system built up by the Habsburgs in the first half of the seventeenth century, known as the “Secret Correspondence.” However, when they had the opportunity, the Habsburgs also used Transylvanian couriers to transmit letters. Second, the functions of acquisition and transmission of information are clearly distinct, so the term “Secret Correspondence” should be understood as referring to the infrastructure itself. Within this system, reports written by spies were also transmitted. Third, it follows that the role of the letter forwarders was merely to transmit information (hence the function itself), and the actual identity of the person who did this was almost immaterial, whereas in the case of the spies, the identity of the individuals in question was a key factor. Fourth, it is also clear from the cases presented that, although the intelligence officers were sometimes able to bargain, the spies and letter forwarder spies were better embedded in the system because of their position and therefore were less likely to rotate. Fifth, the organization of the system shows that the experience gained over the decades was accumulated and put to good use. This is illustrated by the fact that Johann Rudolf Schmid tried to offer Simon Reniger, his successor, the best conditions for the transmission of letters. Thus, Reniger, unlike his predecessor Greiffenklau, regarded Schmid as his master, who introduced him to the mysteries of Habsburg–Ottoman diplomacy. Sixth, personal skills were essential to the organization and operation of the system, as diplomats could use their Italian language skills to liaise with transporters and spies. Likewise, couriers responsible for recruiting new transporters had to rely on their personal talents and language skills to a great extent, too. In sum, talent, professionalism, and a personal network of contacts were key factors in facilitating Habsburg–Ottoman diplomacy in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Table 1. Letter forwarders and Spies in the Service of the Habsburgs between 1624 and 1658

Resident ambassadors in Constantinople	Letter forwarders, their citizenship, and religion)	Letter forwarder spies, the ircitizenship and religion	Spies, the ircitizenship and religion	Citizenship (total)	Religion (total)
Sebastian Lustrier (1623–1629)	Buda Giovanni Pellegrini (1624–1627?), Ragusan, Catholic Tomaso Orosini (Oct 1628–Jan 1629), Ragusan, Catholic	Buda –	Buda Hans Caspar(?), Ottoman Empire, Islam (orig. Catholic)	Ragusa: 2 Ottoman Empire: 1	Catholic: 2(3) Islam: 1
	Belgrade –	Belgrade Matteo Sturani (1624–1626?), Ragusan, Catholic	Belgrade –	Ragusa: 1	Catholic: 1
	Sofia –	Sofia Girolammeo Grassi (1624–?) Mario Cavalcanti (17. Oktober 1628–10. September 1629?), both Ragusan and Catholic	Sofia –	Ragusa: 2	Catholic: 2
Johann Rudolf Schmid (1629–1643)	Buda (from 1634), Ragusan, Catholic	Buda Lupo Lupino (appr. pseudonym), Ragusan, Catholic A noble Turk (appr. Hans Caspar), Ottoman Empire, Islam	Buda –	Ragusa: 2 Ottoman Empire: 1	Catholic: 1 Islam: 1
	Belgrade –	Belgrade Francesco Vlatchy/Vlatky (1628–1632?), Michael Medani (1633?) Both Ragusan and Catholic	Belgrade –	Ragusa: 2	Catholic: 2
	Sofia Stefano Vukovich (Vuković), Ragusan and Catholic	Sofia –	Sofia –	Ragusa: 1	Catholic: 1
	Iaşi –	Iaşi –	Iaşi Dr. Hans Andersen Skovgaard/Andrea Scogardi (1641–1643?), orig. Denmark and Lutheran, later Catholic	Denmark: 1	orig. Lutheran, converted to Catholic faith: 1
	Persia –	Persia –	Persia Dr. Francesco Crasso/Grassi (1637–1638), Ragusan, Catholic	Ragusa: 1	Catholic: 1
	Constantinople –	Constantinople –	Constantinople Dr. Francesco Crasso/Grassi (1640–1642), Ragusan, Catholic Zülfikâr Ağa (1629–1643), Ottoman Empire, Islam	Ragusa: 1 Ottoman Empire: 1	Catholic: 1 unknown
Alexander Greiffenklau (1643–1648)	Buda Peter Vuichich (Vuičić) (ab 1646?), Ragusan, Catholic	Buda –	Buda Hans Caspar, Ottoman Empire, Islam	Ragusa: 1 Ottoman Empire:1	Catholic: 1 Islam: 1
	Belgrade A person who sent some letters back for fear in 1645	Belgrade –	Belgrade –	Ragusa: 1	Catholic(?): 1
	Sofia –	Sofia –	Sofia –	–	–
	Constantinople	Constantinople	Constantinople Dr. Johann Hans Andersen Skovgaard/Giovanni Andrea Scogardi (1644–1645), orig. Denmark and Lutheran, later Catholic Zülfikâr Ağa (1643–1647), Ottoman Empire, Islam	Denmark: 1 Ottoman Empire: 1	orig. Lutheran, converted to Catholic faith: 1 Islam: 1
Simon Reniger (1649–1665) between 1649 and 1658	Buda Peter Vuichich (Vuičić) (1649–1655) Marco Vuichich (Vuičić) appr. brother of Peter (1655) Elias Luschick (Lušič) (1656?), all of them Ragusan and Catholic	Buda Hans Caspar, Judge of Óbuda (János Baán?), Ottoman Empire, unknown	Buda –	Ragusa: 3 Ottoman Empire: 1	Catholic(?): 3 –
	Belgrade Bagio di Simme/Drasili(?) (1649–1653) Giorgio Lamberto di Corti/Cortey/Cortrai (1653–1655) Lazaro Ginreta (1655–1657?), all of them Ragusan and Catholic	Belgrade –	Belgrade –	Ragusa: 3	Catholic: 3
	Sofia unknown	Sofia	Sofia	Ragusa(?): 1	Catholic(?): 1
	Constantinople	Constantinople	Constantinople Dr. Johann Andersen Skovgaard / Giovanni Andrea Scogardi (1653–1656), orig. Denmark and Lutheran, later Catholic Nikusios Panaiotes (Panajoti) (1649–1665), Ottoman Empire, Orthodox Zülfikâr Ağa (1649–1657), Ottoman Empire, Islam	Denmark: 1 Ottoman Empire: 2	orig. Lutheran, converted to Catholic faith: 1 Orthodox: 1 Islam: 1

Archival Sources

ELTE Egyetemi Könyvtár és Levéltár [ELTE University Library and Archives] (ELTE EKL)

G4 (Kuefstain, Acta et epistolae)

Tomus (Tom.) IV, V.

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA)

Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv (HHStA)

Staatenabteilungen

Türkei I. Kt. 109, 110, 112, 113, 124, 126

Polen I. Kt. 57.

Kriegsarchiv (KA)

Protokolle des Wiener Hofkriegsrates (HKR Prot.) Bd. 304, 313.

Alte Feldakten (AFA) Kt.

Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv (FHKA)

Hoffinanz Ungarn (HFU) Kt. 339.

Sammlungen und Selekte (SUS)

Alte Postakten (APA) Kt. 6.

Reichsakten (RA) Kt. 302 (Fasz. 185A)

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Strohmeyer, Arno. “Trendek és perspektívák a kora újkori diplomáciatörténetben: A konstantinápolyi Habsburg diplomaták esete” [Trends and perspectives in early modern diplomatic history: The case of Habsburg diplomats in Constantinople]. Történelmi Szemle 59, no. 2 (2017): 177–98.

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A Special Form of Diplomatic Encounter: Negotiations in Constantinople (1625–1626)

Zsuzsanna Hámori Nagy
Research Centre for the Humanities
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 12 Issue 2  (2023):3–36 DOI 10.38145/2023.2.224

In this article, I present a case study of a special form of diplomatic encounter that took place as secret negotiations between the resident ambassadors of France, England, Holland, and Venice and the Transylvanian envoys in Constantinople in 1625–1626 about a prospective alliance between Prince Gábor Bethlen and the anti-Habsburg powers during the Danish phase of the Thirty Years’ War. My analysis of this special form of negotiation offers a comprehensive overview of the practices deriving from the most characteristic circumstances and setbacks of diplomatic activity in Constantinople, i.e., what solutions (if any) were found to resolve problems of precedence, information brokerage, poor economic conditions, and bribery and corruption. I address, furthermore, the private interests of the participating Transylvanian diplomats and consider the extent to which these interests corresponded to the interests of their sending polity and especially of Gábor Bethlen. My discussion sheds light on the ways in which, in general, everyday challenges and networks of relations in Constantinople influenced the diplomacy of small states in the Ottoman orbit, specifically Transylvania in this case, when entering into an alliance with major powers outside the bonds of their Ottoman tributary status.

Keywords: diplomacy, Constantinople, Gábor Bethlen, Principality of Transylvania, Ottoman Empire

An Ottoman Tributary State in the Thirty Years’ War

The princes of Transylvania participated1 in the Thirty Years’ War on four occasions, belonging to different anti-Habsburg coalitions. Three of these interventions came about under the reign of Prince Gábor Bethlen (1580–1629, ruled from 1613), who from the first moment engaged in the conflict on the side of the Winter King, Frederick of the Palatinate.2 In his first military campaign, he entered the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary in September 1619, and in November, he participated in the unsuccessful siege of Vienna. By January 1620, the estates of the Kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia had entered into an alliance with those of Austria. Bethlen was elected king of Hungary in August 1620, but due to his allies’ defeat at the Battle of White Mountain in November of the same year, he started negotiations with Ferdinand II and concluded peace by January 1622, renouncing his royal title. His second intervention was of a much smaller scale: although he constantly negotiated with Frederick through emigrants from the Palatinate, it was not possible to join his army with those of Frederick’s generals after he reached as far as Moravia during his second military campaign of autumn 1623. Therefore, in May 1624, he concluded peace with Ferdinand II again.

His last effort to join an anti-Habsburg coalition was made in 1626, and this time the preparations seemed more fruitful than they had been three years earlier. An international coalition of Protestant powers to help the Winter King regain his throne and title was created in the form of the League of The Hague in December 1625 with the participation of England, Denmark, and Holland. The participants invited other interested states to join their coalition, such as the Principality of Transylvania and France. As for Transylvania, Prince Gábor Bethlen made a great step to become a member of the anti-Habsburg league by marrying Catherine, sister of the Elector of Brandenburg, in the spring of 1626.3 He started military maneuvers against Ferdinand II shortly afterward, in the summer of 1626, but joined the alliance officially only later, between November 1626 and February 1627 by the signature of the Treaty of Westminster and its ratification by Holland and Denmark.4 By this time, however, much to the disdain of his new allies, he had already concluded the peace of Pozsony/Bratislava with the emperor. As for France, despite the support it gave in the form of indirect warfare against the Habsburgs and the dynastic connection with England,5 both confessional and internal political tensions, which reached their climax with the Huguenot uprising starting in 1625, prevented its adherence to the League of The Hague.6

Direct contacts between Transylvania and interested parties such as England, France, Venice, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark were maintained during the 1620s through formal and informal channels with the help of public and secret envoys. However, the Principality of Transylvania as a small state in the Ottoman orbit was not able to build anything resembling the networks of permanent embassies throughout Europe that the main players in international diplomacy had started to build. The only exception was Constantinople where, following from Transylvania’s status as an Ottoman tributary, a resident envoy called a kapitiha was always present beside the occasional, more solemn embassies discussing current affairs or bringing the yearly tribute to the Porte.7 Constantinople had a special status in European and Transylvanian diplomacy as a center for information exchange,8 which in practice meant the permanent diplomatic presence of all major and minor powers. It is thus hardly surprising that, from the middle of the sixteenth century, negotiations at the Porte played a crucial role in maintaining contacts between the Western states and Transylvania.9 From the perspective of the historian, this means that, in contrast with the negotiations conducted sporadically through direct contacts, the practices and methods used during these negotiations and the personal interests of the individuals and polities involved can be more easily reconstructed and analyzed, since the negotiations themselves were continuous and some of the parties left behind a well-preserved corpus of diplomatic correspondence.

Negotiating in Constantinople: Challenges and Solutions

Constantinople was the primary scene to reach one of Gábor Bethlen’s main foreign political goals in the mid-1620s: the granting of permission by his Ottoman overlord to enter an alliance with anti-Habsburg European partners and engage in military actions within these frames. The resident ambassadors at the Porte were Philippe de Harlay, count of Césy10 of France, Sir Thomas Roe11 of England, Cornelis Haga12 of Holland, Zorzi Giustiniani13 of Venice, and László Balásházy14 of Transylvania. They worked together closely to this end in the summer of 1625. The participants worked diligently at the requests of their sovereigns, whose political interests happened to coincide with those of the prince of Transylvania for a short time. However, their collaboration was made difficult by problems of diplomatic precedence and questions of bribery and treason, and they ended with dubious results.

An investigation of the first factor (disputes over precedence and especially the competition between the French and English resident ambassadors) prompts reconsideration of the widely accepted view in the Hungarian secondary literature concerning the primary role of Thomas Roe in supporting Bethlen’s efforts at the Porte. As it is well known, in addition to the diplomatic ranks of different envoys, the order in which Western powers established diplomatic contacts with the Ottoman Empire also had an informal impact on encounters among diplomats in Constantinople.15 It was the task of the permanent French ambassador to guard his own declared precedence, which was constantly challenged by the others. Césy was accused by his successor at the post of resident ambassador, Henry de Gournay, Count of Marcheville, of having allowed the Venetian bailo to proceed at his right and having let the ambassador of Holland to represent Transylvanian, Moldavian, Wallachian, Swedish, and Polish interests.16 On the eve of the negotiations with the Transylvanian resident, Césy was outraged by the cooperation never seen before of the Venetian bailo and Thomas Roe in some ecclesiastical appointments, which caused further disappointment when Giustiniani was not willing to pay him a visit together with the newly arrived Venetian ambassador, Simone Contarini, in April 1625.17

Temporary enmities and conflicts of interest gave rise to short-lived coalitions among the diplomatic players in Constantinople, while political confrontation was sometimes overridden by confessional interests. One of the most typical dividing lines was of a denominational nature. Over the course of the 1620s and 1630s, the opposing parties formed by the French and Habsburg resident ambassadors against those of England and Holland were trying to outbid one another in their negotiations with the Ottoman authorities in order to remove or keep in position the Greek patriarch of Constantinople, who was known to have accepted Protestant doctrines.18 In contrast, the long-lasting conflict between French and Habsburg interests on the European political scene made the ambassadors of the rival powers enemies, a situation in which English support was not always provided to the French despite the dynastic ties formed in 1625. Thomas Roe was equally missing personally from the coalition of the French, Venetian, and Dutch ambassadors, who conspired against the Spanish agent arriving at the Porte in the summer of 1625, as well as from their conferences with the Transylvanian resident during the same period.19 Roe’s personal absence was not the consequence of the plague raging in Constantinople that summer but rather was part of a practice he followed to avoid Césy and thus answer the problem of rivalry. Césy also adopted this practice from the very beginning of Roe’s mission: although he ordered twelve torchbearers to accompany Roe when entering Constantinople, they both avoided public encounters and met only on private occasions.20

This throws into question Roe’s primary role in the negotiations of 1625, which he contended was “the main motive and actor of the present affair.”21 While Roe was constantly informed through the other residents’ letters and acted in Bethlen’s favor separately from the others, it is important to note that Césy was also frequently absent due to illness in the summer of 1625. For the most part, it was Haga, Giustiniani, and Balásházy, together with different interpreters (more on them later), who were present at the negotiations. Gábor Bethlen had already asked Ottoman permission to seek protection from the friends of the Porte and ally with them against the Habsburgs, but this first license was given only “by word of mouth.”22 The aim of the meetings of summer 1625 was to redact the text of a document granting this permission in line with the interests of the involved parties, who insisted that their sovereigns could not be explicitly named therein. Balásházy showed the others a draft that would have licensed Bethlen’s alliance with them, encouraged him to wage war on the emperor, and offered military aid for such an enterprise.23 The final draft was redacted by the bailo of Venice.24 Despite the joint efforts, all the resident ambassadors were left dissatisfied, as the document that was sent to the prince of Transylvania mentioned the kings of France and England, the Republic of Venice, and the Netherlands as friends of the Porte with whom the prince of Transylvania was allowed to unite, but it made no reference to him waging war on the emperor.25

The solution to this failure lay in the combination of two characteristics of Ottoman diplomacy. The first was the prevalent tendency for the Ottoman power to include something different in the documents it issued than had been previously agreed on. The second can simply be called the practice of bribery when it came to any political decision in Constantinople, which meant various sums of money and gifts26 for officeholders of every rank, from interpreters to scribes at the chancellery. In the particular case of Bethlen’s license, the meaning was not lost in translation, but the ambassadors’ refusal to pay the sums demanded by the Ottoman interpreter and head of scribes for the correct formulation of the text might have contributed to the problem. The direct approach of the chancellery would not necessarily have resulted in the right formulation of any document, however. For example, bribes paid to scribes resulted in only slight changes in the text of the ’ahdname sent from the Porte to Poland in October 1623.27 No less could have been expected in the much smaller case of redacting a letter of permission, even if the sums requested had been paid.

When discussing the details of the text of the license, the resident ambassadors could count on their interpreters and to some extent themselves. Césy was sometimes represented by an interpreter named Olivier.28 Balásházy, who spoke Latin (and probably Italian as well) translated some letters himself. Indeed, he considered it a dire mistake that Cornelis Haga “involved those beys” whose ignorance he blamed for the questionable outcome.29 He must have been referring to Grand Dragoman Zülfikâr Ağa,30 the Hungarian-born Ottoman interpreter employed by the Transylvanian embassy permanently during the first half of the seventeenth century, and Yusuf Ağa,31 who as chiaus served as an intermediary between Transylvania and the Porte. It was the kaymakam who ordered Zülfikâr to translate all documents brought by the Transylvanian envoy32 and thus it seems that the dragoman’s presence in Transylvanian affairs could not be ignored in this case, as he emerged as some kind of expert on the region at the Porte.33 Haga wrote to Roe upon first hearing Bethlen’s demand about the license that the three of them (himself, Giustiniani, and Césy) thought it appropriate to entrust Zülfikâr with the negotiations concerning the license and gave their word to pay him one hundred thalers each if the business was finished according to the expectations of the prince. Still, they did not find him trustworthy. Balásházy, however, convinced them that Bethlen had already rewarded him with a carriage and horses for his services.34 After the fiasco, by emphasizing Haga’s role in requesting Zülfikâr’s help, Balásházy, as a representative of the Transylvanian embassy, probably wanted to dilute the blame for the disastrous outcome, which he saw as a consequence of having involved the grand dragoman.

Further complications arose from the fact that Zülfikâr and Yusuf, with Olivier as a witness, promised the head of scribes (reisulkuttab), who was acquaintance of theirs, another four hundred thalers in August 1625 when visiting him at his house. Balásházy offered to pay this latter sum in the name of his master, with the ambassadors paying their share of the other four hundred.35 However, the Venetian and Dutch ambassadors informed Roe about their decision that they would only pay Zülfikâr once the business of the permission had been completed to their satisfaction. They explained their refusal with the contention that they had not been authorized by their sovereigns to make such payments.36 The resident ambassadors do not seem to have had much faith in Zülfikâr’s good intentions concerning the second four hundred thalers either, and they seem to have thought that he wanted it for himself. Sooner or later, however, and against their better judgment,37 they all paid their original share of one hundred each in exchange for what they called the services of Zülfikâr in general.38 The first one to pay was Roe, and Balásházy was clever enough to play on the sentiments of competition among the ambassadors when praising him as the one who “not only superseded but defeated the others.” Upon hearing of Roe’s contribution, the others also started to pay, first, some smaller portions to Zülfikâr, and some money was even offered to Yusuf to compensate for his journey to present the letter of license to the prince.39

As noted above, Haga, Giustiniani, and Césy originally insisted on waiting until the business had been successfully conducted in a manner that would meet the expectations of the prince of Transylvania before making any payments. Ultimately, the matter was indeed resolved and met the prince’s expectations. No matter how much the ambassadors complained that the finalized document lacked any encouragement to Bethlen to wage war on the emperor but mentioned their masters,40 Balásházy argued that Gábor Bethlen was pleased with the letter of license. All the more so, as he indicated that Bethlen had not made the request for permission “out of necessity but for his wellbeing,”41 which corresponded to his original request mentioning “security and caution.”42 It can also be said that the original draft was provided by Bethlen to Balásházy, and the Ottoman chancellery returned to this version from the one that the ambassadors presented.43 This suggests that the aim of Bethlen in the summer of 1625 was to be permitted by his Ottoman overlord to adhere to the League of The Hague in formation, without actually starting any military maneuvers yet, for which he first needed to have his conditions fulfilled by his future allies.

Without elaborating on the details of the preliminaries of such a treaty, it is clear that they were discussed primarily by envoys who were sent directly to the involved parties, of which the ambassadors at the Porte knew very little. In this respect, Constantinople was a scene of secondary importance, as none of the resident ambassadors at the Porte had received any authorization to conclude a treaty of alliance with the Transylvanian envoys. Although Bethlen informed his emissaries in Constantinople about the preliminaries and sent them copies of his main stipulations to be discussed with the representatives of the anti-Habsburg party, several factors hindered the development of such negotiations at the Porte. Apart from the great distances to be covered and the slow pace at which anything could be delivered using postal services (of which the ambassadors continuously complained), the presence of a traitor among the members of the Transylvanian delegation also caused many a problem during the crucial year of 1625.

The suspicion that there was a traitor in their midst arose first among the envoys in March 1625, when Césy, Roe, and Haga noticed the close contact between Balásházy and the imperial resident. Roe suspected that Balásházy was influenced in this not by any duplicity on Bethlen’s part, but rather because of his own status as a member of the Catholic fold. They also heard rumors according to which Balásházy had displeased his lord and would be replaced. To answer the challenge of possible information leakage, they decided to write separately to the prince and forwarded the copy of the sultan’s letter written to him by their own secret courier.44 At the beginning of 1626, Césy wrote about Balásházy’s treason as a fact and used it as a pretext to send his other interpreter, Tomaso Fornetti,45 to Transylvania with instructions he believed to be in accordance with the direction of French foreign politics. I discuss this in more detail later in the essay, but is worth quoting Césy’s complaint that he could not communicate with the ambassador of the prince without the resident being present; and when he was not there, the ambassador, who spoke neither Latin nor Italian, turned for help to the kaymakam’s domestic interpreters, which had even more disastrous consequences from the point of view of information leakage.46 Roe had a more balanced opinion and admitted that he had not managed, with his inquiries, to discover the identity of the traitor. Indeed, he stood by Balásházy, saying that he “hath suffered much affliction,” but nothing had been proven against him, and he might well have been wrongly accused.47

Balásházy’s perspective can be reconstructed with the help of his letters. In August 1625, the ambassadors confronted him with their finding that either he or the interpreter of the Transylvanian embassy was a traitor, as one of them had passed on all the secrets to the imperial party. In order to prove that he always spoke the truth, Balásházy offered to have Olivier translate all the documents that the prince had recently sent to the Porte and that had been read to the kaymakam, as well as the reply that was going to be sent in a few days. He also offered to investigate the possibility that perhaps a domestic servant or the interpreter was the traitor.48 It is worth considering who this interpreter (not to be confused with the Dragoman Zülfikâr) might have been. The sources reveal that he was a man by the name of István Futó (referred to as “Stephanus alumnus” by Balásházy), who had studied at Bethlen’s expense in Constantinople to become a Turkish scribe. Although there exists no information concerning when he entered into service, he might have taken up some tasks of interpretation during the pourparlers of the resident ambassadors. Habsburg diplomatic correspondence reveals that Futó was able to transfer information about Transylvanian affairs to the Habsburg embassy for years before 1626 when he finally left the Porte.49

It is hard to determine the extent to which Balásházy was involved in this affair, but his silence could be interpreted as telling. There is no sign of any further mention of the issue of treason or of any investigation in his letters for about half a year, which suggests that he did not really launch any inquisitions or if he did, he concealed the findings. By December 1625, it was too late. He had lost all credit in the eyes of the resident ambassadors except for Roe, whose trust he especially held dear. A letter written to Roe reveals that both of them considered Yusuf Ağa the source of rumors concerning Balásházy’s treason. When the resident confronted him with this in the presence of the Transylvanian ambassador Pál Keresztesi and the agent Bornemisza, Yusuf denied ever having said anything against him, but he said he had heard talk of István Futó having given Transylvanian letters to the Habsburg resident.50 After this letter was written to Roe, Balásházy disappeared almost entirely from the sources, but he remained for eight more months at the Porte, probably hiding in shame. It was only in June 1626 that the prince appointed Tamás Borsos as a new resident and dismissed Balásházy for “certain reasons.”51 For the last time, Roe stood by his colleague (or possibly friend) when he wrote a letter of testimony to Gábor Bethlen calling Balásházy the prince’s “true and faythfull servant,” whose abilities he found exceptional. Roe’s letter also reveals that the suspicions that fell on Balásházy “proceeded from an enemye” and that “Stephano” finally fled, for which Balásházy accused himself.52

Contrary to Roe’s testimony, Borsos, Balásházy’s successor at the post of resident, reported that Balásházy, who had been condemned by everyone, “was not His Highness’ orator but that of the German emperor.” Furthermore, against Balásházy’s objections, he was only willing to take over the building of the Transylvanian embassy with an inventory, as he claimed to have found at least two hundred thalers worth of damage caused by his predecessor.53 Balásházy was indeed imprisoned in the summer of 1627, and the amounts of money promised by him to several officers (including one hundred thalers for the head of scribes and a carriage to someone unknown) were ordered by the prince to be paid from his own holdings.54 Incidents of residents at the Porte going bankrupt were not uncommon. Césy was also accused by his successor, Marcheville, of causing damage to the building of the ambassadorial residence,55 and when Marcheville himself went into bankruptcy and fell into disgrace, Césy was still present in Constantinople and ready to continue his mission as resident ambassador, as he had not been able to leave the city between 1631 and 1634 because of his unpaid debts.56

Harsh financial conditions, accumulation of debts, and unpaid salaries in the middle of the monetary crisis of the era affected larger and smaller players alike,57 while definitely posing greater problems for such minor characters as Balásházy or even the Turkish scribe Futó. One cannot help but suspect this is what may have driven them to sell the property of the embassy or even some precious information. In a letter written by Futó in 1624, he desperately begged for money from his relative, the secretary of the prince, as he had none left. He was afraid of an approaching peril and said that if he did not get help soon, his soul would be corrupted.58 This suggests a connection between his financial crisis and his passing on diplomatic documents to the imperial resident, which started in late 1624 or early 1625. As for Balásházy, no indications of any such correlation have been found in the sources so far, but he also might have been involved in the scheme to some extent. He otherwise seems to have been a talented diplomat who spoke languages, could argue convincingly, and navigated comfortably among the authorities and officials at the Porte, but his last effort to defend himself from the charges he faced was unsuccessful. In the long run, however, this incident did not break his career as a diplomat entirely, as he represented Prince György Rákóczi I as a member of his delegation at the negotiations concerning the Treaty of Eperjes/Prešov with Ferdinand II in 1633.59

The Impact of Networks of Relations on Negotiating in Constantinople

The discussion so far has touched on several practices used in negotiations in Constantinople and the circumstances surrounding the negotiations. In the last section of this essay, I concentrate on how the resident ambassadors at the Porte reflected on the fact that the negotiations of a treaty of alliance with the prince of Transylvania were basically impossible in Constantinople. I also consider why, if they were aware of this fact, some of them still pursued these efforts without any authorization from home. As I will show, apart from practical reasons, this might have been due to interpersonal relationships similar to the apparent friendship between Roe and Balásházy. Césy’s friendship with the Transylvanian nobleman Ferenc Bornemisza, Bethlen’s agent at the Porte accompanying Transylvanian ambassadors to Constantinople three times in 1625–1626, can also be traced as a factor in the background.

There is a difference between the opinions of the representatives of the two greatest powers involved, that is the resident ambassadors of England and France, about maintaining contacts with Bethlen through Constantinople. Roe, though having spent less time in Constantinople than Césy, warned the Transylvanian ambassador János Gáspár in May 1625 that a treaty should not be concluded at the Porte, as the sole ambassador of England or France could not take upon himself the diverse interests of so many contracting parties, while the grand signor himself might have wanted to be admitted to such a league.60 He also sensed that Bethlen “did only enterteyne us, and that his resolutions depended upon some other place.”61 Nevertheless, he was well aware of the significance of Bethlen’s prospective joining the anti-Habsburg coalition with respect to Frederick of the Palatinate and his wife, Elisabeth Stuart, so he related everything in connection with his moves and underlined the importance of winning him for the common cause. Both James I and Charles I were, however, unwilling to take up diplomatic relationships with the prince of Transylvania directly before the end of 1625, when the English party, partly at Roe’s urging, ultimately considered Constantinople quite a detour for correspondence with the prince.62

As for Césy, a change of attitude can be noticed when considering his negotiations with Transylvanian envoys about the preliminaries of a future treaty. When giving an audience to Gáspár in May 1625, he showed a reserve similar to Roe’s and suggested that these matters should directly be discussed with the French court through the envoy who had already visited the prince.63 The ambiguity of his instructions of October 1625, together with the delay caused by slow delivery by the post services and the information leakage to the Habsburg resident, however, pushed Césy to get in touch with Bethlen directly through his interpreter. In a letter of October 5 which Césy received in early 1626, Louis XIII wanted a confident person, i.e., Césy, to communicate his intentions regarding the preliminaries with the Transylvanian resident at the Porte. On October 30, he warned his ambassador to accept all propositions of a league from the other interested parties or from the Transylvanian resident but only to inform the sovereign and give an opinion about it.64 By the time this latter message reached Césy at the beginning of February 1626, he had already sent Fornetti to Transylvania with the king’s propositions, as he did not dare share them either with the resident Balásházy or the ambassador Keresztesi in December 1625, as the imperial party had already learned of some of the details.

As mentioned in his letter to Louis XIII, Césy’s other reason for sending his own courier to Transylvania was his close connection with his friend and confidant Ferenc Bornemisza who, according to his instructions given to Fornetti, was the only person the interpreter should open up to when arriving at the princely court. Césy told Fornetti to let Bornemisza and Bornemisza only translate his instructions and to deal with Bethlen secretly, solely in Bornemisza’s presence.65 Ferenc, the Francophile scion of the wealthy Bornemisza family of Kolozsvár/Cluj most probably stayed for some time in France after studying in Olmütz/Olomouc and Freiburg. He and his brother László were employed in diplomatic missions under the reign of Gábor Bethlen, and they both traveled to the Porte several times, László in the 1610s and Ferenc in the 1620s.66 Ferenc Bornemisza stayed by the side of János Gáspár in April–June 1625, when Bethlen’s demands concerning the letter of permission and the first version of the preliminaries were declared to the resident ambassadors.67 He is also mentioned together with Keresztesi in Balásházy’s letter to Roe about Yusuf’s allegations, which suggests that he was also present at the Porte in December 1625.68 He returned as Bethlen’s special emissary in May–June 1626 with the prince’s approval of the conditions sent by Césy through Fornetti.69

This last mission means that Bethlen granted what Césy had requested through Fornetti. Conforming to his demand, he delegated Bornemisza with credentials to the Porte to address the preliminaries of the treaty. The prince did so even though he had reservations about and expressed his distrust in Bornemisza to the ambassador of Brandenburg present at his court in April 1626.70 The reasons behind Bethlen’s distrust are yet unknown. He may have thought that Bornemisza was involved in the scandalous case of Futó and Balásházy, who were still at the Porte at the time. In any case, by assigning Bornemisza the task of negotiating in Constantinople, Bethlen was able to remove someone he did not trust from his court. All the more so, as the Porte was a scene of only secondary importance with regard to the preliminaries of an anti-Habsburg treaty, and the prince continued to discuss the details through agents sent directly to the powers involved. When the direct negotiations reached a dead end with France in the middle of 1626 (just before Bethlen entered into war against Ferdinand II), Bornemisza was withdrawn from Constantinople. This, together with the news that Bethlen had directly sent his courier to France without informing his emissary in Constantinople earlier,71 was as much of a surprise for Bornemisza as for Césy and Fornetti, and it must have contributed to the development of feelings of mutual dissatisfaction. The Bornemisza family’s hatred of Bethlen culminated in 1629 when they “no longer wanted the race of the prince.”72 Still, their real loss of influence came about under the reign of György Rákóczi I, as a result of which Ferenc moved from Transylvania to the Kingdom of Hungary in the second half of the 1630s.73 As for the relationship between the Bornemiszas and the dragoman family Fornetti, it survived until at least 1629, when Francesco Fornetti was involved in the correspondence and financial transactions between the Transylvanian brothers and the merchant Jean Scaich of Galata.74

After Fornetti’s fruitless mission in Transylvania in the spring of 1626, Césy also felt deceived and frustrated to see that the negotiations of a treaty of alliance were going on, but not through his mediation, and his role had been limited to that of an informant.75 The fact that he had been personally misled probably contributed to his loss of faith in Bethlen’s good will. When he learned of the instructions of the direct envoy sent by Bethlen to France, Césy considered some of the points lies. Furthermore, by judging the permission acquired in 1625 as adequate, he was willing to obtain Bethlen’s next license of summer 1626 to wage war on the emperor only half-heartedly, as he did not trust that Bethlen really wanted to attack Ferdinand II.76 This time it was indeed Thomas Roe who played the primary role in convincing Ottoman dignitaries to give Bethlen permission to enter into war and in appointing auxiliary troops for him.77 From the perspective of French diplomacy, it was right before the beginning of the military campaign of the prince of Transylvania that the court also questioned Bethlen’s sincerity, but Louis XIII insisted that Césy continue to keep in touch with him in the most polite way.78

Conclusions

As a comparison of the relevant diplomatic correspondence reveals, the negotiations over procurement from the Ottomans of permission for Gábor Bethlen to join the anti-Habsburg powers and the preliminary discussions of the details of a future treaty were marked by unique collaboration among otherwise unfriendly participants. This comparison also reveals, however, that this initially fruitful collaboration, which essentially resulted from a temporary overlap of the political interest of the participating powers, was limited by several down-to-earth factors, such as the sums demanded by the Ottoman interpreter and head of scribes and the information leakage to the Habsburg resident. European ambassadors in Constantinople relied mainly on information coming from the prince of Transylvania when intervening on his behalf at the Porte. This is probably why Gábor Bethlen was content with the resulting document of license, even though the resident ambassadors who had worked to obtain it were not, as their rulers were mentioned in the text redacted in the autumn of 1625. French diplomatic circles became definitively estranged from Transylvania by the summer of 1626 because of the recurring question of the permission given by the Ottomans, which, however, did not mean the end of collaboration with the English and Dutch resident ambassadors.

From the perspective of Transylvanian diplomacy, Constantinople was a scene of primary importance concerning issues related to its status as an Ottoman tributary state, which in this case was the question of obtaining the aforementioned permission. Although the resident ambassadors tried to help get such documents, they were mostly unaware of their real importance from the point of view of Bethlen as vassal of the sultan. As a scene of secondary importance, the Porte emerged merely as a place to exchange information on the preliminaries of a future treaty of alliance, but one that made it impossible to conclude anything due to the lack of detailed instructions and the information leakage to the imperial party. While negotiating his joining the anti-Habsburg coalition created in the form of the League of the Hague in December 1625, Gábor Bethlen paid attention and formally demanded the permission of his Ottoman overlord. His rhetoric during the Constantinople negotiations presented him as an influential player in international politics but also made it quite clear that his wellbeing depended upon the permission of his Ottoman suzerain. It was partly this ambiguity that can be blamed for the loss of trust among French diplomats in the Transylvanian prince’s goodwill and the termination of their negotiations. Finally, this was complemented by the fact that the personal initiatives of the resident ambassadors, which were in part responses to practical challenges and derived in part from their rivalry, their sense of self-importance, and their personal relationships, were doomed to fail, which might have also contributed to their loss of faith in Bethlen’s sincerity regarding his proposed aims.

Funded by the European Union (ERC, SMALLST, 101043451). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Archival Sources

Archivele Naţionale ale Românei, Direcţia Judeţeana Cluj [National Archives of Romania, Department of Cluj/Kolozsvár]

Colecţia Sándor Mike

Archives diplomatiques, Paris (Ad)

Correspondance politique Turquie, 133CP3, Correspondance et

documents divers, 1620–1628.

Correspondance politique Turquie, 133CP4, Le Comte de Césy, le Comte de Marcheville, ambassadeurs, 1629–1637.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (BnF)

Ms fr. 15584, Recueil de lettres, pour la plupart originales, et autres pièces, relatives à l’histoire de France, principalement sous les règnes de Charles IX, Henri III, Henri IV et Louis XIII (1477–1657). XLV Règnes de Louis XIII et de Louis XIV (1628–1657).

Ms. fr. 16150, Papiers de l’ambassade de Philippe de Harlay, comte de Césy, à Constantinople.

Ms. fr. 16156, Lettres du Roy, des secrétaires d’Estat et principaux ministres à Mr de Césy, 1619–1625.

The National Archives, London (TNA)

SP 97/11.

SP 97/12.

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