Valery Rees
Renaissance Ideas on Hungarian Soil
Much has been written about "Mátyás Király", King Matthias, both in legend and by way of historical analysis. This paper considers him in the context of the Renaissance, perhaps a slightly different perspective from how he has traditionally been viewed. In particular it considers the claim, made originally by Bonfini, that he tried to turn Hungary into a second Italy.
[...]
[...] Matthias had received a thoroughly humanist schooling covering Latin, history, mathematics, and astronomy as well as the practical aspects of diplomacy, and it appears that Matthias was a very willing and able pupil. His favourite reading as a boy had been Quintus Curtius's lively biography in Latin of Alexander the Great and Silus Italicus's epic of the Punic wars. Matthias modelled himself on the ancient heroes of Greece and Rome. In 1458 Pope Calixtus III had called him "the man sent by God". He was certainly conscious of his providential role as defender of Christendom against the Turks, but he looked to the classics of the ancient world for his inspiration.
His great talent was to put what he learned from the classics to practical effect in the everyday affairs of his kingdom. It is interesting to consider how his studies of the Greek philosophers may have enhanced his understanding of the essential unity of mankind, and the high standards of moral and ethical conduct he applied to his everyday affairs. Certainly these are reflected in that devotion to his subjects' welfare that earned him his place in Hungarian folklore.
Better documented is the influence the Roman historians, especially Caesar, had on his understanding of the need for a highly trained, tightly disciplined army which could perform complex manoeuvres. Matthias decided to reintroduce Roman practices to his own army. This could only be done if an army stayed together long enough to practise. So among his earliest laws are measures designed to improve the quality of the traditional threefold levy, and this was later supplemented with a standing army of Hussite and Polish mercenaries.
All this involved huge expense, so reforms of the tax system soon followed. These raised more money, but they also brought in their wake two other types of change. First, the centralizing tendency characteristic of the "new" monarchies of the 16th century: Medieval tax systems operated on a local basis whereby both the funds for raising the militia and the command over it went to the local count or castellan. Now, the king had increasing control over the troops. Legislation enabling these changes had to be passed by the Estates, which began to meet more regularly and to enjoy more power. Through these parliaments the lesser nobility helped the king reduce the might of the great barons by a series of modest but steady changes, not unlike Tudor reforms in England, designed to enforce the king's law and eliminate corruption.
The second effect was a social one. Matthias began to promote young churchmen of peasant origin who entered the church to receive a basic education. With his encouragement they could now rise on their own merits to positions previously reserved for the nobility. The majority of the nobility, both great and small, remained illiterate. Not uncultured: the oral culture based on Hungarian epics and religious ballads is rich indeed. But Matthias took on the ambitious idea of making his nation the new home of classical learning and was ready to promote any who showed talent in this direction.
[...]
[...] In 1476 Matthias married Beatrix of Aragon, younger daughter of the King of Naples. Though only 17, her beauty and accomplishments were as striking as her courage, and the magnificence of the wedding celebrations, of which we have an eye-witness account, was symbolic of their importance.
With Beatrix came Francesco Bandini. He had entered her father's service after spending years with Ficino in Florence, at the very heart of the Platonic Academy. In Hungary he rapidly became King Matthias's friend and closest adviser. It was Bandini who advised the king in matters of taste and style, and, more important, became the living link between the king and Ficino.
Another Italian humanist particularly associated with the queen (though he did not come to Hungary until the mid-1480s) was Antonio Bonfini. In 1486 he wrote the Symposium which, while it may have been a fictional account of proceedings at the Hungarian court, bears a curious likeness to facts known about the speakers and shows at least the tenor of discussion in which the king loved to engage, and in which Beatrix was able to play an intelligent and constructive part.
From the late 1470s classical learning began to blossom in Hungary. The new queen appears to have acted entirely according to the quotation from Ficino: she made beautiful gardens in Hungary with fountains and fruit trees not previously known. She took on enthusiastically the task of redecorating the palace at Buda, and turning Visegrád into a haven of beauty and tranquillity described by an emissary of the Pope as "paradiso terrestri". She gathered to the court the finest musicians in Europe. And through her protégés, Bandini and Bonfini, and possibly her own contribution, she promoted the arts of eloquence and informed debate. Her husband was free to concentrate on the duties of the portico and hall: "ordaining laws" and "governing empires", and, increasingly through the 1480s, he was attracted to the work of the innermost sanctum, the "mysteries of the heavens", both astronomy and spiritual work. As Ficino wrote in a letter to the king, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul. You labour in vain, O philosopher, while you are trying to grasp all things if you do not take hold of the soul, for through that you will be ready to take hold of the rest." Matthias did increasingly turn towards things of the soul, and Ficino dedicated to him the third book of De Vita - on obtaining the life of the heavens. This does not mean that he abandoned his passionate interest in the world - the two were seen as entirely compatible. Indeed according to the humanist view the one is a reflection of the other. Therefore the later years of his reign saw building, diplomacy, learning, letters and the arts all in full flood of development, with royal patronage at an all time high. But the spiritual aspect of the work does seem to have exerted a powerful influence on the king.
After Beatrix's arrival there was an ever-increasing flow of visitors from Italy: not only her personal guests, merchants and adventurers, but also Renaissance scholars, writers, artists, stone-masons and architects, all looking to Matthias for patronage and work. The style of architecture Matthias favoured was fully intended to be a revival of the aesthetic principles of ancient Greece and Rome. The governing idea, elaborated from the works of Filarete, was that a prince may lawfully engage in works of public magnificentia for the greater glory of his nation or of God, without incurring penalty for the sin of pride or lavish excess. Likewise, the great Corvina library, filled with every known text of Latin and Greek, many of them beautifully copied out and illuminated at the great Italian manuscript houses, was intended not only for the king's personal delight but to encourage both the nobility and the Church to take an active interest in intellectual pursuits and to make use of this wonderful collection. Matthias wished to establish Buda as a centre of European learning. The university he founded at Pozsony under Vitéz had rather faded away after Vitéz's death, but during the 1480s he tried to persuade Ficino to come in person and set up a Platonic Academy in Buda. A modest start was made under Bandini in the Dominican Cloisters with plans for an impressive expansion. Though Ficino never came, he certainly endorsed the academy, sent newly translated philosophical works as soon as they were ready, and wrote in 1481 of the citadels of Pallas at last rising again in the court of Matthias. Not so much a second Italy, but a revival of ancient Greece.
[...]
Valery Rees
studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge. She teaches Latin at St. James Independent School, London. Work on the Ficino Letters and travel in Hungary and Transylvania have assisted her research on the Renaissance in Hungary. She is currently engaged in a study of the humanist circle at the end of the 15th century.
