Propugnaculum sive Clipeus Christianitatis •
Authors: Szilágyi András 
Published: April 2023

Propugnaculum sive Clipeus Christianitatis. Variants of the pictorial representation of a time-honoured European adage in Hungary in the second half of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries. The news of the ill-starred military encounter at Vezekény on 26 August 1652 had unusually strong reverberations in Hungary and Europe. Judged by the contemporaries, those killed in the clash – including four members of the aristocratic Esterházy family – set an inspiring example of moral courage in the teeth of Turkish superiority in numbers: in a hopeless battle they chose perseverance to the end, that is, heroic self-sacrifice instead of surrendering. In addition to numerous quondam utterances including some quality works of literature, testifying to the intrepidity and fighting value of the Hungarian estates, two works of the applied arts – the subject matter of the paper – were also created with the aim of perpetuating the glorious memory of the fallen heroes.

In the years after the accession of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor (1658–1705) and King of Hungary (1657–1705) the politically active Hungarian estates had to acknowledge to their dismay that in the top echelon of the Viennese court the plan of an anti-Ottoman campaign – or any action to retaliate the incessant plundering and captive taking raids causing great casualties – was not on the agenda. A group of the politically active Hungarian estates had to draw the very severe conclusion which was hard to face up to. in order to prevent the slow but sure dissipation of “royal Hungary” they were forced to do something. And since they had no other chance, they were reduced to take the step which was tantamount to the renunciation of the earlier generations’ and their own political credo. Consequently, in their opinion, they were obliged to offer cooperation with the Porte, even if it entailed the degradation of the remains of the country to the status of a vassal state. Obviously, such a step – the ultima ratio – if it were to come about, would entail (would have entailed) serious consequences for the foreign, West European attitude toward the country, the Kingdom of Hungary. In this situation the intention or plan of the malcontens Hungarian lords had to incorporate some response to the prospective and understandable antipathy – and to the intrigues of the Viennese court. They would have to issue manifestos, statements with convincing arguments and forward them to West European towns and courts, first of all to Rome, to the decision-makers of the papal curia from where the greatest influence on public opinion could be expected. The essential message of these manifestos, which are not known among completed documents but survive in fragments in diverse aristocratic archives, was a firm and irrevocable determina tion: the vow and pledge that the population would keep their faith, their religion during vassalage as well and – in this sense – would continue to be the stronghold of respublica christiana, the Christian community. The promotion and stressing of this pledge as well as the demonstration of a peculiar interpretation of the past with the tools of visual art was the original and basic function of the unsigned engraving from the second half of the 1660s discussed in detail in the paper. Oddly enough, it was made at a time – without notable, well known iconographic antecedents – when the Kingdom of Hungary in her helpless situation was getting ever farther away from becoming (one of) the bulwark(s) or safeguard(s) of the Christian community. The client for whom the engraving was made must have been Count Ferenc (Franz) Nádasdy, the mastermind of the failed initiative and head of the anti-Habsburg conspiracy of the aristocracy – himself a sincere advocate and vigorous supporter of reviving Catholicism.

The historic military events of the last one and a half decades in the seventeenth century – the triumphant termination of the Ottoman wars in Hungary, the expulsion of the Turks – overruled the original meaning of the time-honoured adage known all over Europe, the idea that Hungary was one of the safeguards/bulwarks of the western Christian community. Although it might have lost its topicality, it did not fall out of public remembrance. It underwent some modification, some shift of tone, the militant slogan of mobilization giving way to reference to the heroic deeds of the forefathers, to the glorious past, the historical merits of the kingdom, of Hungaria. Added to this – by way of a conclusion – is the profound conviction rooted in historical experience that it was not in vain to persevere above their strength against the pagan world power in calamitous times. To the contrary, the nation owed her well-nigh miraculous survival to it. After all, the fact that her disintegration and perdition could be avoided must have been by the will of divine providence. This idea is conveyed in a visual language by an extremely effective composition, an engraving made in Augsburg in the first decade of the eighteenth century undoubtedly upon a Hungarian commission. What were the Abbot of Pannonhalma P. Aegidius Karner’s ideas or intentions to have this engraving made? In the closing section of the paper an attempt is made to answer this question.