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Article

Catholic Reform in the Shadow of the Ottoman Wars—The Kingdom of Hungary and the Council of Trent

by
Viktor Kanász
1,2
1
HUN-REN PPKE-PTE Vilmos Fraknói Vatican Historical Research Group, 1056 Budapest, Hungary
2
Hungarian MoD Military History Institute and Museum, 1056 Budapest, Hungary
Religions 2025, 16(8), 1034; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081034
Submission received: 2 July 2025 / Revised: 29 July 2025 / Accepted: 6 August 2025 / Published: 11 August 2025
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ecclesiology in Context: Exploring the Historical, Cultural, and Theological Dimensions of the Church)
Versions Notes

Abstract

Ecclesia semper reformanda est, as the medieval saying goes. This proved particularly true of the medieval church structure in the first half of the 16th century. The various movements of renewal slowly broke up the forms that had developed during the Middle Ages. In order to address the problems that arose, the Church responded to the old practice of reformatio in capite et in membris by convening a universal synod. The Council of Trent was called to renew the Church and to develop the necessary reform programme. Its convening and its work during its various sessions was a matter not only for Rome but for the whole universal Church, and accordingly it was attended by a varying number and in varying compositions of bishops and other leaders of the Western Church. Despite this, the Hungarian bishops were reluctant from the outset to participate in the work of the Council and to travel to Trent. In my study, I seek to answer the following questions: What was the reason for this reluctance? What was the impact of the spread of the Protestant Reformation and the Ottoman wars on the bishops, and was the case for defending against the Ottomans a rhetorical phrase or an actual reason for this? Which Hungarian bishops travelled to Trent, what activities did they carry out, and on the basis of their speeches and letters, what issues were they concerned with in connection of the renewal of the Church?

1. Introduction

The Council of Trent (1545–1563) made a decisive contribution to the internal reform of the Catholic Church, to the development of a Catholic confessionalisation that was in many respects different from medieval Christianity, and to the fundamental transformation of the Church. Its importance and role are, therefore, particularly significant. In this context, it is interesting to note that, although the bishops of the Kingdom of Hungary, as part of the Christian world, were invited and expected by the Pope to attend the Council, the attitude of the Hungarian bishops was initially rather ambivalent, and they did not even attend the first session. In the subsequent sessions, they opposed on several occasions the conciliar decisions that were afterwards adopted, and, after all, the promulgation and implementation of the conciliar decisions in Hungary itself were a long time coming.
Although research into the history of the Council has long been a subject of study,1 and the history of the council’s reception in Hungary is also becoming well known (Fata et al. 2019), the contemporary Hungarian assessment of the Council and the participation of Hungarian bishops are hardly known in international academic literature.2 Therefore, in this study I will examine why the Hungarian bishops did not initially attend the Council, who attended the second and third sessions, to what extent the interests of King Ferdinand I and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire contributed to the attitude of the Hungarian clergy towards the Council, and also whether this had an impact on the course of the Council and its decisions.

2. The Beginning of the Council

In the first half of the 16th century, the medieval ecclesiastical structure was in a serious crisis. The various renewal movements were slowly breaking up the forms that had developed during the centuries of the late Medieval period. The most radical of these movements was the Protestant Reformation. Its starting point was in the Holy Roman Empire, where there was a long-standing opposition to the papacy. It was led by an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, who was able to formulate the wide-ranging criticisms of the papacy and certain abuses of the Church in plain language. He also received strong political support from the imperial estates under the rule of Charles V, while Luther was already moving further and further away from Rome on theological and dogmatic issues, which was already raising the spectre of a schism.
To deal with the problems that arose, of which Luther’s radical movement was only one, the Church responded according to its ancient practice by convening a general council under the banner of reformatio in capite et in membris. The Council of Trent, which sat between 1545 and 1563, was responsible for drawing up the church’s reform programme. Its convening and its work during its various sessions was a matter not only for Rome but for the whole universal Church, hence the Pope accordingly sent invitations throughout Europe, and many bishops from the Western Church, in varying numbers and in different compositions, attended and shared their views on a particular issue.
The Council was in great demand throughout the Church, but numerous opposing views hindered progress. One important controversy was the question of conciliarism, which had come to a head at the Council of Constance (1414–1418) (Bárány 2016). This was further complicated by the influence of the monarchs, notably Charles V, on the Council, and by differences in opinion about the participation of Protestants. There were also serious disagreements between the Emperor and the Pope. At the heart of this was the question of whether the head of the Church or the Emperor should be the initiator, the dominant figure, and under whose influence the meetings should be conducted. On one hand, this was manifested in the choice of venue. The Emperor wanted the Council to meet in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, while the pope preferred a venue closer to Rome. Eventually a compromise was reached and the Council Fathers met in Trento (Trient)—in northern Italy, but part of the Empire, in 1545.3
Apart from the exact location, another obstacle to convening the Council was King Francis I of France, who feared that if the Council Fathers were successful in resolving the religious differences, the religious riots that had so limited the Emperor’s power in the German territories would cease. The ’Most Christian King’, therefore, sought to hinder the initiatives in every way possible, including for a long time preventing the French bishops from attending the Council. Rome was, therefore, initially hesitant about convening a universal Council, but later became an important stronghold for the renewal of the Church through the Council. The Council finally began its work in 1545, but after much deliberation it was moved to Bologna because of a growing epidemic situation. This provoked protests from the Emperor, which eventually led to the suspension of the Council (Pieper 1894, pp. 147–48; O’Malley 2013, pp. 121–26).
The nuncios were the main link between the Pope and the individual monarchs and were used by the Holy See for the Council. As local representatives of the Holy See, the nuncios took an active part in the organisation of the Council and in the conduct of its proceedings. Their tasks in Hungary can be divided into two parts: inviting the bishops and facilitating their presence and travel.4

3. Inviting the Bishops of Hungary and Organising the First Session

As part of the Orbis Christianus, the prelates of Hungary were also expected and invited by the Pope. Already in October 1536, Pope Paul III had instructed Giovanni Morone, who was serving as the nuncio to King Ferdinand I, that it would be necessary to invite the Hungarian prelates to the planned council (Bunyitay et al. 1906, pp. 9–100; Orbán 1944, p. 339). The Hungarian ecclesiastical elite took a rather pragmatic and pessimistic approach to the controversy surrounding the Council. This is perfectly illustrated by the letter of the papal envoy, Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro, dated 11 November 1538, in which the head of the Hungarian Church, Archbishop Pál Várday of Esztergom, told him that what was needed was not a council but universal reform and an army against the Turks.
Despite this, Paul III invited Várday to the Council, but the Archbishop excused himself from attending in his letter of 13 December 1541, because of the religious situation in the Kingdom of Hungary and the preparations against the Ottomans. On 29 July of the following year, the Pope informed the Archbishops of Esztergom and Kalocsa that the long-delayed Council would finally begin in Trent on 1 November (Kollányi 1905, p. 346). However, the situation remained unchanged, and in December of the same year, King Ferdinand himself, citing the serious situation in the country, asked the Pope to exempt Várday from travelling to the Council (Laczlavik 2014, pp. 63–64).
Ferdinand appointed Márton Kecseti, Bishop of Veszprém, to represent the Hungarian bishops at the Council. However, he did not make the trip, probably due to Sultan Suleiman’s campaign in Western Hungary that year (Tóth 1999, p. 342). Thus, no one represented Hungary in the first phase of the Council. This was a peculiar occurrence, as the only country not represented at this stage, apart from the Kingdom of Hungary, was Poland.5 However, it should be noted that the Council of Trent started as a small affair. Nevertheless, at the Diet of the estates of Hungary in Pozsony (Bratislava) in 1548, the Council was again put on the agenda, and the following request was made: ‘the estates appeal to the royal majesty, that both with his own authority and that of the imperial majesty, he may be able to appeal to our holy father to hold a universal council without delay, in order to reconcile the differences and conflicting opinions in the matter of religion.’ The King accordingly requested the Emperor to arrange for the Council to be convened as soon as possible (Fraknói 1903, pp. 71–72).

4. Reasons for Absence

The question arises as to what might have been behind the attitude of the Hungarian clergy towards the Council in the 1540s. There are three main points that can be grasped. The first and most important of these was the Ottoman conquest. Since the 14th century, the Kingdom of Hungary had been at constant war with the continuously expanding Ottoman Empire. In the process, not only did the two states border each other, but Ottoman forces seized more and more Hungarian castles and territories, for example, the most important southern castle, Nándorfehérvár (Beograd), fell in 1521 (Fodor 2016, pp. 48–93; Pálosfalvi 2018; Cseh 2022). The decisive defeat came in 1526, when the armies of Hungarian and Czech King Louis II were defeated on the battlefield of Mohács by Sultan Suleiman I. Most of the Hungarian bishops were killed there, as both archbishops and five bishops died in the battle, and, also, the King did not survive that day.6
A serious problem was the succession conflict that ensued after the death of the King. For the Hungarian holy crown, the main contenders were Ferdinand I of Habsburg, the ruler of the Austrian hereditary provinces, brother of Emperor Charles, and János Szapolyai, one of the country’s greatest lords, and Voivode of Transylvania. Both were crowned, and a long period of civil war of varying intensity began.7 This also confused church relations.
The papacy could not remain neutral on the issue. Pope Clement VII’s initial cautious, tentative diplomacy, which was also open towards Szapolyai, came to an end in 1529, and the peace treaty concluded between the Pope and Charles V in Barcelona brought the papacy under strong Habsburg influence. As a consequence, Pope Clement VII recognised Ferdinand as the only legitimate king of Hungary and in December 1529 excommunicated Szapolyai, with whom he also severed relations. The situation improved somewhat under Pope Paul III but only returned back to normal after Szapolyai’s death in 1540 (Fraknói 1903, pp. 43–58; Nemes 2016).
Relations with the bishops also became difficult—while before the Battle of Mohács they were in direct and regular contact with Rome mainly through the nuncio in Buda, from the reign of Ferdinand the nuncio was generally based outside the country in Vienna, which severely limited the possibilities of meeting and maintaining contact with the Hungarian bishops (Theiner 1860, pp. 676–802; Fraknói 1884). It should also be remembered that the advancing Ottoman armies occupied a large part of the individual dioceses, and often even entire dioceses. These problems came at the worst time possible, as the Church was also faced with the rapid spread of the Protestant Reformation (Varga 2019; Molnár 2023).
In the shadow of the civil war and the constant Ottoman attacks, the bishoprics in Hungary suffered very serious damages, and this made it much less likely that bishops would leave their dioceses for long periods of time and stay away from their episcopal see and the kingdom.
These problems—which persisted later—were well summarised in 1562 by András Dudith, one of the Hungarian Council Fathers of the Third Session, who in his first speech concluded why the Hungarian episcopate was represented only by envoys and why they did not all come in person. He said that the main problem, apart from the old age and illness of the bishops, was that they had to stay in their own diocese because of the attacks of the Turks and heretics, since the estates of many of the bishops bordered on Turkish territory. In addition, many bishops were so poor that if they did not receive income from the treasury, they would not be able to support themselves, not only in the Council, where everything was particularly expensive, but also in their own diocese (Frankl 1863, p. 55).

5. The First Hungarian Bishop at the Council—Session II

At the end of the 1540s, many thought that the question of the Council had been taken off the agenda for good, but then one of the presidents of the first session, one of the three former papal legates, Giovanni Maria Ciocchi Del Monte, was enthroned as Julius III (Brunelli 2001). The Pope clearly saw that it was necessary for the Holy See to continue the Council and so, although it was not supported by Henry II or Charles V, it was allowed to continue on 1 May 1551, again in Trent.
At the time of the second session, the nuncio Girolamo Martinengo was serving at the court of Ferdinand I. The question of the Council was the central theme of his mandate from 1550 to 1554. The nuncio had already been instructed to find out Ferdinand’s opinion on the Council (Goetz 1965, pp. XI, 1–2). Martinengo tried to encourage the participation of the Hungarian prelates. On 17 January 1551, he received 12 certified copies of the Pope’s bull Cum tollenda of 14 November 1550, which he was to send to Bishop Friedrich Nausea of Vienna and other German church leaders, as well use them to persuade the Hungarian and German prelates to participate.8
At the same time, it seems from Martinengo’s letters that the Hungarian bishops were still not eager to get on the road, although we know from his report of 22 April that this was still on the agenda.9 Finally, on 6 May, the nuncio reported that the Bishop of Zagreb, Pál Gregorjánci, and Bishop Mátyás Zaberdini (Zabardy) of Knin (Tinini) had been selected as envoys. Ferdinand would also send the Bishop of Vienna, Friedrich Nausea, on his own behalf and on behalf of Austria.10 The reason for this, according to Martinengo, was that the Hungarian prelates overall did not want to go to the Council. They, therefore, cited their own and their country’s poverty, and asked for only one bishop to be sent—although they had originally wanted two.11 At the end of July 1551 the issue was still open, although a report of 24 July said that ‘His Majesty has recently told me that he will soon send the Hungarian prelates to Trent’.12
Finally, in 1551, a Hungarian bishop, Pál Gregorjánci, one of the monarch’s loyal subjects of minor noble birth, took part in the work of the Council of Trent and spoke out in favour of the communion under both kinds on the subject of the Eucharist.13 However, the scholarly archpriest did not remain among the Council Fathers for long, because in January 1552, King Ferdinand sent him to Rome to help clear up the murder of George Frater (George Martinuzzi/Utješenić).14 The bishop did not stay long in the Eternal City, and soon returned to Trent, where he became involved in a long dispute with the envoy of the King of Portugal over the precedency of the sessions (Frankl 1863, pp. 4–6).
The Council ultimately failed because of Maurice, Elector of Saxony: when he unexpectedly turned against Charles V in the spring of 1552 and pushed his troops south through Augsburg in March, the alarmed Council Fathers suspended their proceedings in April 1552 and quickly returned home.15 Although, according to reports reaching Hungary, the Council was postponed for only two years, it was not until ten years later, in 1562, that the Council Fathers, now including several Hungarians, met again.

6. The Unfolding Hungarian Participation in the Third Session

Already in 1560, the Pope had signalled to King Ferdinand and Archbishop Miklós Oláh of Esztergom that he intended to convene a general council, and the letters of invitation arrived. Oláh had the delegates selected at the provincial synod of 1561 and tried to cover the costs—he wanted to cover the expenses from the donations of the participants.16
For the third session, which opened in February 1562, the Hungarian clergy sent Bishop András Dudith of Knin (Tinnin) and János Kolozsvári of Csanád (who fell ill and died in Trento), and Ferdinand, as King of Hungary sent Bishop György Draskovich of Pécs to Trento.17 Besides them, others from Ferdinand’s territories arrived, headed by the Bishop of Prague, in his absentia, Draskovich. The Council Fathers were obliged to speak in Ferdinand’s interests, to consult with each other and to inform the Emperor of all important developments. Ferdinand’s instructions were also specific: to try to bring the Protestants back into the Church, and, therefore, to act with gentleness and caution in their cause, and to strive for peace among Christians in the interests of anti-Turkish unity (Frankl 1863, pp. 32–34). It is worth noting in particular that Dudith, who later married a Polish courtier and converted to Protestantism, became one of the best Latin orators of the Council thanks to his excellent humanistic education. Later on, however, he succeeded in negotiating this privilege for Ferdinand’s lands.
It is an interesting question whether the then-forming Principality of Transylvania represented itself at the Council. According to some sources, the Holy See also indicated to George Martinuzzi, the famous leader of the eastern part of the country, to send an envoy. In 1561 the separate invitation of János Szapolyai (John Sigismund) and Transylvania was also discussed, but this plan failed due to the opposition of Ferdinand I (Tóth 1999, pp. 344–46).

7. Bishops’ Participation in the Council

The activities of the Hungarian bishops who appeared at the second and third sessions were clearly determined by the intentions of Ferdinand I, and their activities were motivated by the Ottoman conquest and the spread of the Protestant Reformation.
The relationship between Ferdinand and the papacy was rather unstable during the period.18 Although he was a brother of Emperor Charles V, his relationship with Pope Julius III became particularly estranged during the second session. This was due to the assassination of George Martinuzzi on 17 December 1551, when the Pope, after much persuasion by the King, had just created the Bishop of Várad a cardinal, and in a short time King Ferdinand’s mercenaries had killed him. Martinuzzi’s murder resulted in excommunication, from which Pope Julius III only granted the king a temporary exemption and set up a commission to investigate the matter. A thorough investigation began, led by Martinengo. After the investigation, which ended in 1554, Julius III finally acquitted the ruler and his accomplices in February 1555 (Kanász 2019). The scandal erupted at the beginning of the second session of the Council in 1552, and Bishop Gregorjánci was forced to leave the Council Fathers in Trent in order to hurry to Rome and try to clear Ferdinand.
At the time of the third session, tension arose with Pope Pius IV over the Council. Ferdinand was keen to reform the Church internally, and he wanted to present his ideas to the Council through his envoys, which did not coincide with the papal curia’s ideas.19 Ferdinand also opposed rigid positions on the invitation of Protestants and on the reconciliation with them. In addition, there were serious tensions over dogmatic issues: while the Pope and a large part of the Council did not support communion under both kinds, Ferdinand had a long-standing and very strong intention to allow it. His men, such as Draskovich and Dudith, expressed the Emperor’s views in several speeches at the Council.20 In doing so, they bluntly stated that the demand for communion under both kinds in Bohemia, in the German territories and in Hungary was so strong, that to prohibit it would cause enormous problems for an already endangered Catholicism. Moreover, that this had military implications for Hungary is illustrated by a speech by Draskovich, in which he presented that Ferdinand was forced to fight the Turks, the natural enemy of Christianity, which was only possible with the help of the German Protestants. Who, however, when they asked for help, would come forward with religious complaints and urge the use of the communion in both kinds (Frankl 1863, p. 104).
A similar friction between the Pope and the Emperor was caused by the question of continuity: whether the Council of 1562 should be considered a continuation of 1552 or a new one (Frankl 1863, pp. 74–78). In addition, although Ferdinand supported the acceptance of the obligation of residence, he favoured a more permissive version of it, and his bishops took the same position. The special position of the Hungarian bishops was also argued, pointing out that, among other things, as royal councillors they had to leave their diocese in times of war or in the course of a diet.21 Because of these matters, the Emperor was dissatisfied with the work of the Council and even called for a new one to be convened in Germany. Draskovich and his fellow bishops, who represented the interests of their Emperor, slowly became hostile figures in the eyes of Rome.22

8. The Promulgation of the Council and the Implementation of the Reforms

Despite the diligent work of the bishops, the promulgation of the Council’s provisions in Hungary was slow and difficult. The first to attempt to implement the programme of the Council of Trent in Hungary was Archbishop Miklós Oláh of Esztergom. He wanted to publish the decisions of the Council officially in Pozsony in 1564, but King Ferdinand refused to do so because of the decrees he was not in agreement with, such as the discipline of communion under one form for the laity. After him, György Draskovich published the decrees of the Council in his dioceses of Zagreb and Győr (Raab), but only there (Fazekas 2003; O’Malley 2013, p. 186; Tusor 2024, pp. 563–67). Nevertheless, the decisions of the Council slowly became a practice in the Hungarian Catholic Church for the next century and also became the starting and alignment points of the Catholic confessionalisation. Thus, it was in the spirit of the Council of Trent that Péter Pázmány and his successors began the great reform of the Hungarian Catholic Church.23 At the same time, the Council contributed to the redefinition and strengthening of the papacy, and emergence of the Baroque papacy.24 When the attention and interest of the popes turned to the Carpathian Basin, this provided Rome with the necessary opportunity to offer significant diplomatic and financial, even military assistance to liberate the Kingdom of Hungary and expel the Turks.25 Thus, in the end, the Trent reforms in Hungary, together with the consolidation of the papal throne, led to the rise in Baroque Catholicism in Hungary in the 18th century, despite anti-Ottoman wars and Protestant pressure.26

9. Summary

The Council of Trent, which sat between 1545 and 1563, fundamentally reformed the Church that remained loyal to Rome, including Catholicism in Hungary. However, due to the Ottoman conquest and the Protestant Reformation, the Hungarian bishops did not participate in the first session of the Council and were represented, thereafter, only by delegated bishops.
In the second session, which began in 1551–1552, the Hungarian clergy was represented in Trent by Pál Gregorjánci, Bishop of Zagreb, and in the third session, which opened in February 1562, by András Dudith, Bishop of Knin and János Kolozsvári, Bishop of Csanád, and by Bishop György Draskovich of Pécs, on behalf of Ferdinand I as King of Hungary. The bishops did not remain silent spectators of the council but tried to influence the events with their repeated contributions, speeches and background discussions.
Their conciliar work was accord with the ideas of King Ferdinand I. They advocated the possibility of reconciliation with the Protestants, the most complete possible internal reform of the Church and, because of the traditions of the Czech provinces and the pressure from the Hungarian and German sides, the acceptance of communion in both kinds. They also considered it important to establish a Christian peace as complete as possible and to calm religious unrest, because both Ferdinand and the Hungarian bishops saw this as a cornerstone of successful defence against the Turks.
As their ideas provoked serious disputes among the Council Fathers, and several conciliar decrees took a contrary position to their ideas, neither the Emperor nor the Hungarian delegates were fully satisfied with the work of the Council. Despite that, they wanted to promulgate the decisions of the Council as early as the 1560s, but the King did not support the promulgation. He decided so because it would have effectively meant the enactment of a law, especially on the part of the state. This, burdened with geopolitical peculiarities and naturally mixed with the conflicts between the estates and the central government, could have immediately sparked a religious war with the Hungarian nobility, which was then predominantly Protestant. However, the Habsburgs wanted to consolidate their vast acquisitions of 1526 and stabilise their possessions, as exemplified by the Treaty of Drinopol (1568) and by the Treaty of Speyer (1570).
Thus, the decisions of the Council were slow to be put into practice in the Hungarian Catholic Church. Nevertheless, they became the starting point for the organisation of the Catholic denominations, but they only became fully established after the end of the anti-Ottoman wars and the liberation of Hungary in the 18th century.

Funding

This paper has been implemented with the support provided by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, financed under the STARTING 150580 funding scheme, and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

1
On the Council, (Pastor 1924, pp. 99–128; Jedin 1973), more recently (O’Malley 2013; Schmidt 2013, pp. 163–88; Walter and Wassilowsky 2016; Haag 2018, pp. 903–78; François and Soen 2018; Minnich 2023; Firpo 2023). On the the papacy at that time: (Setton 1984).
2
On Hungarian aspects: (Frankl 1863; Fazekas 1998; Tóth 1999).
3
On 10 September 1536, the Pope informed King Ferdinand I that he had convened the Council that the King had also urged for 23 May of the following year (Kollányi 1905, p. 328). On 15 November the monarch expressed his joy at the convening of the Council, from which he expected the wounds of the Church to be healed (Kollányi 1905, p. 329).
4
For example, the nuncios forwarded the inviting bulls from Rome (Jedin 1973, vol III, p. 332; Goetz 1965, XII, Letter 4), to Dandino Martinengo, Rome, 14 October 1550, (Squicciarini 1998, p. 59; Koller 2016). On the impact of the Council on the nunciatures, whereby the nunciatures increasingly focused on issues within the Church and less on political tasks, (Feldkamp 1994, p. 41).
5
Nevertheless, they were aware of what was happening at the Council, as it is illustrated by the letter written by Canon Bentivoglio to Bishop George Martinuzzi of Várad on 23 May 1547 (Károlyi 1881, pp. 159–64).
6
(Ágoston 2021, pp. 159–68; Varga 2019, p. 65). On the of bishops’ appointments: (Tusor 2016b).
7
(Pálffy 2009, pp. 35–48). On the era: (Oborni 2004; Fodor and Varga 2020).
8
(Goetz 1965, XII, letter 4), to Dandino Martinengo, Rome, 14 October 1550, (Squicciarini 1998, p. 59). According to an undated source, the Holy See also indicated to the actual leader of the forming Principality of Transylvania, Bishop George Martinuzzi of Várad (Oradea), later Cardinal, that the Holy See should send a bishop or learned person from Transylvania to the Council (Óváry 1879, p. 200) (CXCIX.), (Fraknói 1903, p. 505). One peculiarity of the document is that it refers to Transylvania as Regno di Transiluania.
9
(Goetz 1965, letter 22), Martinengo to Dandino, Vienna, 22 April 1551.
10
(Goetz 1965, letter 24), Martinengo to Dandino, Vienna, 6 May 1551.
11
(Goetz 1965, letter 30), to Martinengo Dandino, Vienna, 7 July 1551.
12
(Goetz 1965, letter 33), Martinengo to Dandino, Vienna, 24 July 1551.
13
(Frankl 1863, p. 4; Tóth 1999, pp. 342–43). His presence there is also referred to in (Druffel 1880, p. 127; Jánosi 1996, pp. 70–74; Varga 2010, p. 126). The bishop wrote letters from Trent to Hungary, to Tamás Nádasdy, who later became palatine. MNL OL E 185. Gregorjánczi Pál–Nádasdy Tamás No. 7–8.
14
On the murder of George Martinuzzi: (Kanász 2019).
15
On the campaign of Maurice, Elector of Saxony and the news of the Vienna nuncio: (Kanász 2022).
16
(Frankl 1863, pp. 8–9). This, of course, proved insufficient, and the archbishop had to settle the problem by order of the king. (Ibid. pp. 66–68).
17
(Frankl 1863, pp. 6, 85–89; Steinherz 1897, pp. 338–40; Tóth 1999, pp. 344–46; O’Malley 2013, p. 170). “Before he had started, he had chosen envoys from Pope Pius IV in a meeting in the city of Tridentom, and sent Antal Muglicius, Archbishop of Prague, as Emperor, and György Draskovich, Bishop of Pécs, as King of Hungary, to Tridentom. He also ordered two of the clerical order to be sent as soon as they had been ordained by the Pope, and from them he chose János Kolozsvári, Bishop of Csanád and András Duditius, Bishop of Tinnin, of whom the first was to be paid by Ferdinand, and the second with the money collected from the other chapters.” (Istvanffius 1685, p. 267), MNL OL E 21—20.01.1564. Draskovich left for Trent at the end of 1561 (Póka 2021, pp. 56, 105). About his presence on 4 November 1563: “dominus Georgius Draskowyth episcopus absens extra Regnum, in concilio tridentino occuparetur”. MNL OL P 632—I.—XXXV.—No. 80. and the letter of András Dudith to Miklós Oláh of 6 February 1562 and his speeches at the Council (Klaniczay 1982, pp. 770–73, 913–41; Casletanus 2024, p. 92). The separate invitation of János Zsigmond and Transylvania was also discussed in 1561, but Ferdinand I was seriously opposed to it (Steinherz 1897, pp. 280–82).
18
The relationship between King Ferdinand and the Pope: (Fichtner 1980).
19
King Ferdinand’s piety: (Guitman 2019, pp. 22–28).
20
(Frankl 1863, pp. 96–106). E.g. “Consider, Fathers, and consider in your minds, whether what each one in his own way is working so zealously and laboriously at, is worth so much that we, the ambassadors called from far continents, should have to sit here so tediously, to the general displeasure of the better, and so utterly uselessly? Examine, I pray you, whether it was the purpose of convening this Council, that some ancient and obscure questions, which have been long forgotten, should now, after so many years, at the most inopportune moment, be brought before the public eye of these illustrious men? […] Our hair–splitting debates are watched by heretics with mocking laughter and full gloating, and by Catholics with immense pain and tears. […] Would you not wish to restrain the very libertinism of the clergy, from which all our ills spring, by the bonds of the most sacred laws? Woe to you, Fathers, if you miss this opportunity of turning things to the better!” (Excerpt from the fifth speech of András Dudith on the decision of the Council on the Residentia, 4 December 1562) (Klaniczay 1982, p. 923).
21
“But because of the unrestrained clamour of the Turks, misery is so general, because of the heretics, confusion and chaos are so general, that let [the Hungarian bishops] for a moment move away from their sheep, there will no longer remain a firm point in Hungary. It would be the end of religion and of all faith if the archbishop, if the bishops, not only left for some distant land, but even set foot outside the territory of Hungary.” (Klaniczay 1982, p. 918; Frankl 1863, pp. 55–61). On this issue most recent: (Amato 2023).
22
(Frankl 1863, pp. 133–34). All this is eerily similar to the case of the later Archbishop of Esztergom, Péter Pázmány (1616–1637), who ‘achieved’ the dislike of Rome during his 1632 Roman legation (Becker and Tusor 2019).
23
On Pázmány’s church organisational activities: (Kanász 2024).
24
For an overview of the Baroque papacy, see (Tusor 2016a).
25
Compare (Brunelli 2018; Merlani 2023; Mihalik 2025).
26
Compare: (Vanyó 1933; Gőzsy et al. 2009; Tusor 2018; Molnár 2019; Fata et al. 2019).

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