| The Intelligentsia | 7. EDUCATION AND CULTURE | Intellectual Openness |
Among the various social functions, cultural activity was the quickest to recover after the disastrous events at the turn of the century. The first book in Hungarian was published in 1610. Entitled Az Virtusnak és Voluptasnak egymással való vetélkedésekről [On the rivalry of Virtus and Voluptas], it was translated by János Petki and printed at Heltai's press in Kolozsvár. The first foreign-language publication, printed at Szeben in 1611, was a book of Latin poems. This cultural regeneration was not complete, however, for it lacked the lively polemics and optimistic expectation of progress that had prevailed in the 16th century. Instead, there emerged a certain Neo-stoicism, a preference for ignoring everyday problems and finding solace in more abstract intellectual pursuits. The heated debates inspired by Protestantism had given way to the tranquillity of resignation.
The change can be readily attributed to Transylvania's altered circumstances. A succession of desperate and even foolhardy initiatives in the 16th century, followed by the Fifteen Years' War, had driven home the unpalatable fact that the country was not master of its destiny; it remained caught between the millstones of two great powers. The evolution of the churches also induced a certain tranquillity. Their respective structures and constituencies became set; with further proselytizing proscribed, the churches abandoned all hope of eliminating their rivals and concentrated on internal affairs.
The highest stratum of the intelligentsia consisted of men who had been part of István Báthori's entourage, and had accompanied the Calvinist aristocrats from eastern Hungary who became Transylvania's rulers. The Calvinist Báthori's court, where the highest European standards prevailed, was the last of its kind in Hungary. Distantly related to some past princes, István Ecsedi Báthori was an uncommonly cultured nobleman and a writer of some distinction. His career might well be construed as a realization of the stoic {2-215.} ideal. After early successes in politics and on the field of battle, the much-esteemed and tremendously wealthy aristocrat became lord chief justice, and then withdrew from public life. He would have been more than welcome at the Habsburgs' Prague court, one of the most splendid in Europe. Instead, the man who was probably Hungary's most aristocratic landowner retired to his rather sombre castle at Ecsed, there to assemble a court that was materially simple but culturally resplendent. Báthori corresponded with, and invited to his court many distinguished contemporaries, including the foremost representatives of late humanist and mannerist culture. János Rimay, perhaps the most active political organizer in the early 1600s, joined Báthori's entourage for a long spell. Through him, and perhaps directly as well, Báthori kept in touch with a circle of Hungarian, intellectual aristocrats that had drawn the attention of no less than Justus Lipsius. The most important factor linking the court with the development of Transylvanian culture was that the first two princes elected after 1606 had been close to Báthori. Zsigmond Rákóczi had been one of his political associates. Gábor Báthori had been raised by the lord chief justice at Ecsed, although, by the time István Báthori died in 1605, he had already joined István Bocskai's entourage.
In Hungary, like elsewhere, the adoption of a late humanist, stoic attitude represented not so much a rejection of action as an acknowledgment of impotence. This became evident at Kassa: as soon as Bocskai was presented with an opportunity for effective action, he found himself surrounded with people who were imbued with this philosophy of withdrawal, such as István Báthori, who had resigned as lord chief justice, János Petki, Mihály Káthay, János Rimay, Péter Alvinczi, and Simon Péchi. These men, along with the country's aristocratic elite, came to form Bocskai's court at Kassa.
In light of the links between Stephen Báthori, on the one hand, and Bocskai, Zsigmond Rákóczi, and Gábor Báthori, it is scarcely {2-216.} surprising that the first books to be published after the turn of the century dealt with stoicism. János Petki drew on Silius Italicus to take up an ancient theme, the conflict between virtue and pleasure. His interest in neostoicism was sparked by a well-defined event: after having served as Bocskai's chancellor, he was dismissed from office by Gábor Báthori. A sense of uncertainty and doubt had spread among his contemporaries, and this generated demand for a late-Renaissance type of work that helped men to find their bearings amidst life's turmoil. A collection of maxims attributed to Cato appeared in several Transylvanian editions in the course of the 17th century. The revival of two typical 16th century genres, the romance and the epic poem, probably also reflected this tendency to withdraw from reality. Kolozsvár's press put out two such works in 1624: György Enyedi's Gismunda, earlier editions of which had appeared in 1577, 1582 and 1592, and Péter Huszti's 1582 opus, Aeneis. There followed the publication of epic poems; the last, by István Szőllősi, concerned the campaign of 1595, and was published in 1635.
The works identified with the late Renaissance and neostoicism underscore the secular tendency in postwar Transylvanian culture. Of the eighteen Hungarian-language works published between 1611 and 1630, ten dealt with non-theological subjects. Between 1630 and 1650, on the other hand, only 37.5 percent fell in that category.
At first glance, this suggests regression from the previous, slowly emerging secularism in culture. In fact, the second period was marked by changes that would be better qualified as progressive. As noted earlier, attendance at foreign universities began to rise in 1640 and, during that decade, reached a level unmatched in the preceding and following centuries. Publishing activities also intensified at this time. While only eighteen Hungarian titles were published between 1611 and 1630, eighty appeared over the next two decades. To be sure, these included a higher proportion of theological {2-217.} and religious works, but the really significant change occurred in the nature of secular works.
The growth in publishing was attributable in part to a press, established by Gabriel Bethlen at Gyulafehérvár, that seems to have markedly increased its output in the 1630s. Although many of its titles were authored by Bisterfeld, Alsted, and Piscator, this press would play a significant role in the development of Hungarian publishing.
An even more important development was the establishment in 1640 of a press at Várad. The founder was Ábrahám Szenczi Kertész, who had studied in the Netherlands and was supported in his initiative by the prince. For him, the press was purely a business proposition; there is no evidence that he was driven by any ideological considerations. In 1642, he published the era's only book by a Transylvanian Jesuit: Mátyás Nyéki Vörös's Dialógus [Dialogue], which had first appeared in Vienna six years earlier. Szenczi's publishing list was eclectic. It included almanacs; works by well-known preachers as well as by Comenius; and compilations of canon law. He also put into print the major juridical work of the times, a compilation of all laws that were in effect in 1653, under the title Approbatae Constitutiones; and Gáspár Károlyi's revised translation of the Bible, which became known as the Váradi Biblia. The printing of the latter work had begun in Várad when the Turks laid siege to the town. As noted, one of the conditions of capitulation was that the Hungarian defenders could take away the printing press, and the printing of the Várad Bible thus was completed in Kolozsvár. Between 1640 and the surrender of Várad, Szenczi published 113 works, seventy of which were in Hungarian.
As regards thematic change, the romances and epic poems evoking the past gave way to accounts of the military successes of contemporary rulers, notably György Rákóczi I. There were also fewer works inspired by stoicism. The last Transylvanian publication that reflected this philosophy appeared the 1640s: it was János {2-218.} Laskai Matkó's erudite translation of the works of Justus Lipsius. Such treatises apparently lost much of their audience, for they no longer reflected the dominant outlook of the intelligentsia. Laskai himself was laboring in the entourage of István Bethlen, at a time when the latter was already out of power and past his fruitless attempt to regain it.
Another new phenomenon was the appearance of books on scientific subjects. The earliest dealt with language: dictionaries, a theoretical study of translation, and a 'little grammar', István Geleji Katona's famous Grammatikácska. This interest in language extended to the ruler's family. The future prince György Rákóczi II and his younger brother, Zsigmond, both collaborated with János Erdőbényei in compiling a dictionary. Indeed, the number of relevant published works fails to reflect fully the revival of interest in linguistic matters. The first wave of Hungarian language reform emerged in the 1640s and 1650s, and while it eventually spread all over Hungary, Transylvania remained the centre of a debate over the respective merits of etymological versus phonetic spelling. The former approach, which involved a clear distinction between suffixes and formative syllables (e.g. embervel instead of emberrel) was championed by Bishop István Geleji Katona; the latter, a moderately purist approach, was advocated by Pál Medgyesi, court chaplain to György Rákóczi I. Realistically, only educated people would have been able to adopt the rules proposed by the bishop, which was why Medgyesi favored taking colloquial usage as the norm. There followed a lively and, at times, heated debate. Geleji worried about linguistic simplification and impoverishment, while Medgyesi and his followers wanted to facilitate the expression of even complex thoughts. The two approaches were eventually reconciled through the efforts of Miklós Tótfalusi Kis, a printer who had pursued studies in the Netherlands.
These linguistic debates also touched on the art of translation. Translations had never been literal, and Gáspár Károlyi had already {2-219.} produced a perfectly good translation of the Bible, but Medgyesi felt the need to lay down that Hungarian versions 'should not read as a translation, nor be written in an awkward language: translations should be in idiomatic Hungarian, and not follow the Latin, German, or English style [of the original]'.[102] It is noteworthy that with regard to translation, this famous Calvinist preacher and his fellow theorists were in full agreement with the 17th century's finest literary stylist, the archbishop of Esztergom, Péter Pázmány. Transylvanians and Protestants were obviously not alone in their concern for the Hungarian language.
The Transylvanian debates over Hungarian usage touched on another, more local problem. It was evoked by János Szalárdi, the prince's archivist at Gyulafehérvár, in his account of the disastrous campaign in Poland: the Transylvanians, he observed, misunderstood the situation in Poland because they were generally ignorant of history. The reason for this was that only foreigners wrote historical works, and 'even if these came into the hands of our [literate] countrymen, a tenth of the latter have no understanding of Latin and thus lack access to much useful and necessary information'.[103] Szalárdi argued that political information had to be disseminated in the Hungarian language.
Thus promoters of the Hungarian language had two motivations. Translators of religious works aimed to spread the message of their faith, while Szalárdi wanted to enable a wider circle of people to participate in the political process. In the latter half of the century, a third factor would come to the fore: the need to make scientific knowledge more accessible.
There was some concern for the mother tongue among the Romanians as well. Indeed, their problems were much greater than those of the Hungarians. No learned works existed in their language, for the Orthodox Church resorted to Old Slavonic. Thus, despite the publication in 16th century Transylvania of several Romanian-language works, that language had yet to be standardized. {2-220.} Simion Ştefan, an Orthodox priest at Lugos and future vladika of Gyulafehérvár, undertook to translate the Scriptures, and he observed in 1643 that 'we endeavored, to be best of our abilities, to make the translation intelligible to all readers; and if there are some who fail to understand the translation, the blame lies not with us but with those who scattered the Romanians, leading the latter to use a mixed-up vocabulary instead of a common tongue'.[104]
In fact, the major problem was not that the widely dispersed Romanians spoke a variety of dialects. The Reformation raised a more serious problem, for the introduction of the vernacular in education and publication threatened to separate Romanians from the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox clergy was divided on the question. The vladika Ilie, whom the prince eventually expelled from Transylvania, fought against such application of the vernacular. His successor, the Bible-translator Ştefan, argued instead for cultivation of the mother tongue. His catechism and psalm translations stimulated the emergence of Romanian vernacular culture in Transylvania at a time when a similar process was under way in the voivodeships: the publication of books in Romanian began in Moldavia and Wallachia as well. The parallel development of Romanian vernacular culture in Transylvania and the voivodeships gave rise to some heated theological debates, for the Transylvanian process was influenced by Calvinism, while that in the voivodeships remained within the confines of Orthodoxy. The complex relationship between the two could not be fully worked out, for the cultural revival in Transylvania was aborted by the Polish disaster.
The Saxons, in contrast, had no problems with regard to the mother tongue. For one thing, their culture was going through a transitional decline; they published abnormally few books and did not concern themselves with linguistic matters. For another, they continued to have access to the products of western, and especially German culture, which had become more unified thanks since the Reformation. Typically, in their schools, the more literary German texts were read out in Transylvania's various Saxon dialects.
{2-221.} The historico-linguistic treatises of Johann Troester and Lorenz Töppelt only appeared at the end of this period. Inspired by the 16th century myth of Geta-Gothic-Transylvanian Saxon continuity, these authors sought demonstrate its validity by means of etymological similarities. This late manifestation of humanistic scholarship had no impact on everyday language.
Apart from these linguistic explorations, the cultural activism that emerged in the 1630s and 1640s also focused on historiography and medicine. A work on mathematics appeared in Hungarian, although it served more as a handbook for routine calculations than as a synthesis of the latest developments in the field. It is typical of the cultural level of Transylvania that this practical approach should prevail at a time when, in much of Europe, mathematics came to regarded as a key that would unravel the mysteries of the universe. The same pragmatism was manifest in the published studies on history and medicine. Historians probed the causes and lessons of the Polish disaster; medical works dealt, in unspectacular but useful fashion, with ways of avoiding the recurrent epidemics.
In historiography, apart from Gáspár Bojti Veres's investigation of Bethlen's idiosyncratic Machiavellism, the most significant works were produce by the members of the 'Várad school'. Sámuel Köleséri, a graduate of Leiden, wrote a history of Várad in the Puritan spirit of Pál Medgyesi. János Szalárdi, who was low-born and may not have pursued higher studies, became private secretary to György Rákóczi I; in Siralmas magyar krónika [Sorrowful Chronicle of Hungary], he produced the best analysis of the events since the battle of Mohács. Szalárdi is one of the most fascinating figures of the times. As noted, he was inspired by the Prince of Liechtenstein's park to speculate about the value of work, and it was also he who formulated the need to use the vernacular for political information. When, in the early 1660s, he began to write history, his reliance on sound sources and efforts at accuracy did not set {2-222.} precedents, but his attempt to identify history's lessons was more novel. He sought to unveil the past 'so that future generations can fully understand our great decline and, having gazed in this mirror, clear away its evil consequences.'[105] Szalárdi makes the historian's inevitable pledge of impartiality, and while he evokes parallels between the history of Hungarians and Jews, his work is neither self-serving nor guilt-ridden. This is what distinguishes him from earlier Transylvanian historians as well as from his contemporaries. He passionately takes a stand on historical questions, and does not fail to enumerate the recurrent mistakes that mark the period since the Hungary's partition. However, he does not regard these as offenses against moral precept or divine law but simply as historic errors and ill-conceived choices. Transylvania's decline, in his view, was brought about by ignorance of international relations. Political science flourished in royal Hungary at the beginning of the 17th century, and his work could just as well be included in this category of scholarly endeavour: the historian Szalárdi attributes the dismal state of the country to the repeated misreading of the national interest.
In the medical sciences, a similarly pragmatic approach is found in Az döghalálról [On the Plague], a work published by Máté Csanaki in 1634. He broke no new ground in acknowledging the problem of infection and considering the necessity for remedial action. These conclusions had been drawn much earlier with respect to the overcrowded conditions in medieval towns.
Csanaki's work is nevertheless noteworthy, for it throws light on the expansion of scientific knowledge in Transylvania — the third significant element in the cultural revival of mid-1600s. The physician Máté Csanaki was an avowed disciple of Paracelsus, the founder of modern medicine: 'Many illnesses that were pronounced incurable by Galenus' students have been cured by Paracelsus and his gifted followers'.[106] Others explored different branches of the natural sciences, but it is difficult to assess the {2-223.} extent of their knowledge, for the work of most Transylvanian intellectuals lay more in the realm of theology than in science. Clues to scientific knowledge are found in the prefaces to collected sermons, in some sermons, and even in the titles of books. Thus the titles of István Geleji Katona's theological works, Titkok titka [The Secret of Secrets] and Váltság titka [The Secret of Redemption], clearly indicate that the author, who studied at Heidelberg, had become acquainted with elements of hermetic philosophy, which aims to ferret out the secrets of nature. Hermes Trismegisthos, a master of the occult sciences, was not unknown in Transylvania; people read, and cited from a work that was attributed to him. They were also familiar with the leading scientific thinkers of the day, the founders of modern natural science, including both those approached these questions from a philosophical perspective and those, like Tycho Brahe, who resorted to direct observation to unlock nature's secrets.
| The Intelligentsia | 7. EDUCATION AND CULTURE | Intellectual Openness |