Bernard Adams

As Through the Land of England Once He Passed

Márton Szepsi Csombor and his 1620 Europica Varietas

Csombor, who was born in 1595 in the small town of Szepsi (now Moldava nad Bodvou in southern Slovakia), was the son of parents of whom little is known, though it seems likely that his father was an artisan, member of a guild and citizen of his town. The first solid fact that can be established is that young Márton was at school in Késmárk in 1607, having very likely been sent to the Szepesség (Zips) to learn German. Between 1609 and 1611 he was back in his native Szepsi, and then went on the first of a series of journeys that marked his short life. On this occasion he was accompanied to Transylvania by his tutor, Márton Sámsondi. He then went to school in Nagybánya (now Baia Mare, Romania), where he studied Poetics, Rhetoric, Logic, Greek and Theology until 1613. On leaving, he took a trip to Máramaros (Maramures), and on his return to Szepsi began to plan other journeys. "My mind was drawn in many directions," he writes, "but principally my heart's desire was that I might be able to see foreign countries". This, however, had to wait while he completed his interrupted studies in Gönc (near the present Slovak frontier, northeast of Miskolc) at the local secondary school, which was where Gáspár Károly (translator and printer in 1590 of the first complete Bible in Hungarian) had begun his working life and Albert Szenci Molnár (translator of the Psalms of David, compiler of dictionaries, another much travelled scholar) too had spent some time. In 1615 he took a post as schoolmaster in Telkibánya (a little to the east of Gönc) in order to accumulate "a few forints" for his travelling expenses, as "coming and going without money is a waste of one's self and of time".
Finally he was ready, and in 1616, in opposition to the wishes of friends and well-wishers, he set off to study in Danzig, in Prussia. There were commercial connections, largely concerned with the wine trade, between that port and the Kassa (Kos©ice-Kaschau) region in the sixteenth century; these grew stronger under Gábor Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania (1613-29), and Csombor's presumed commercial background would have given him contacts in Danzig. The school had a celebrated teaching staff, one of whom was the famous Keckermann (Professor of Theology at Danzig and later Heidelberg, and author of widely used textbooks), of whom Csombor would certainly have heard, who enhanced the reputation of the establishment. For both these reasons there had been Hungarian students at Danzig before Csombor went there, including János Frölich, headmaster of the Késmárk school between 1601 and 1608, both of whose sons also studied there. It therefore seems at least possible that the idea of eventually studying in Danzig initially occurred to Csombor at an early age. There was also the consideration of cost: Csombor was not a wealthy man, and the universities of the West - Vienna, Heidelberg, etc. - would have been beyond his means, whereas Danzig was not.
And so he spent over a month walking to Danzig, hitching lifts on carts when he could, thereby establishing a habit that stood him in good stead in his later travels. Even at this stage he must have had his tour of Europe in mind - another reason for going to Danzig as a good starting-point. He arrived there in June 1616 and stayed until April 1618, completing the two senior classes of the school, primarily in Philosophy and Theology, with a view to a proposed career in the Church. From there he set off on the journey that enabled him to make his mark in Hungarian letters, arriving back in Szepsi in early August.
Shortly afterwards he was ordained. In December of that year he was offered the post of schoolmaster in Kassa on the recommendation of Péter Alvinci and István Velechi, and took up the position in early February 1619. This was the beginning of the most stirring period in the history of the region, as the Thirty Years War started and the anti-Habsburg policies of Gábor Bethlen began to make themselves felt. The Bohemian Estates had risen in rebellion against the Austrians in 1618, and Bethlen joined them in the autumn of 1619. Elected Prince of Hungary on 21 September 1619 by a Diet that met in Kassa, Bethlen fought a successful campaign in Upper and Western Hungary, formulated the Hungarian part of the Bohemian-Hungarian alliance in January 1620, and held a joint council with the Bohemians in Kassa on 8 March.

While all this was going on, Csombor was at work on the account of his travels of 1618, which he entitled Europica varietas and published in the spring or summer of 1620. Its ten chapters open with separate dedications to a total of twenty-six "noble and respected masters", almost all citizens of Kassa prominent in trade or politics. This was the first travelogue to be printed in Hungarian, and although the author was doubtless aware of earlier works in this genre - mostly in Latin - he seems little if at all influenced by them, and very much dependent on his personal observations. A wide readership was obviously his aim, and the freshness and immediacy of his writing contributed much more to the popularity of the book than material derived from predecessors could have done.
The work forms an intriguing mélange of travel diary, personal reaction and reminiscence as Csombor passes in swift succession - urged on, as he tells us, by a rapidly shrinking purse - through a number of towns and regions in Europe, meeting a considerable variety of people and seeing much of lasting interest. This is not an autobiographical work in the sense that the author seeks to explain himself, or to justify what he has done; his clear objective is to inform and entertain with an account of experiences that he has long cherished in anticipation and thoroughly enjoyed in execution.
"As the bee, my noble and respected masters, gathers profit not only in her owner's garden but also goes equally to the land of others, returning with legs laden with sweetness in order to delight only him that cares for her, so many of the ancient Greek philosophers deemed it insufficient to live always in Athens... but left without a qualm for distant foreign lands - Sicily, Italy, Gaul and elsewhere - to see, hear, study and gain understanding"; thus Classical authority too is appealed to in Csombor's Prćfatio.
"From my childhood I have been driven by an inclination to see strange places" are the opening words of Occasio itineris, in which Csombor gives a brief outline of his early life, ending as he leaves Hungary to enter Poland. "Our way into Poland lay over Becked, on which hill are many robbers' caves, and it has been a region fatal to many pious persons. With great trepidation we crossed it..." is followed by an elegiac couplet in Latin describing how he set off into "harsh foreign parts" and wept as he left his native land.
Poland is followed by the province of Masuria, which leads Csombor into Prussia. There his first journey ends, as he stays for almost two years in Danzig. After that Occasio continuati itineris sees him off again. "Having reached the year one thousand six hundred and eighteen, I made every effort to leave the city of Danzig that I might see foreign countries and different peoples". On the eve of departure he and his friends sing in his room Psalms 90 and 91, in each of which there are "verses written for the encouragement and cheering of one leaving on a journey", and he leaves by sea for Denmark. From there he moved on to the Netherlands, on the way inserting a brief description of Frisia, although he did not land there. After spending time in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, he moved to Zealand and left from Flushing for England, where, "having sailed with the help of God a day and a night on the Zelandicus oceanus, we arrived at the realm of England in the mouth of the Tamesis, where, going up a whole fifteen miles, we arrived in the metropolis of England, Londinum."
His adventures there are told in the chapter that follows this introduction, and he went next via Dover to France, where he made his way from Dieppe (of which he formed a very poor opinion) to Paris, where he arrived on 27 May and was suitably impressed; the chapter on France is by far the longest. In Strasbourg on 19 July, Csombor enrolled, for the sake of appearances, at the university where Albert Szenci Molnár taught, but he did not stay to study. From France he went to Germany - on 24 July he was in Heidelberg for another flying visit to a Western university town - and thence travelled through Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia back to Hungary, arriving home in Szepsi in early August.

Such is the broad outline of Csombor's itinerary. It comes as no surprise to the modern reader to learn that Europica varietas was a success. Such is the vitality and sparkle of his intensely personal narrative - he himself is the principal character, though by no means the only one, in the scenes that he portrays - that to this day the book holds a strong appeal. He was not slow either to praise what pleased him or to criticise what did not, doing so in objective, good- humoured fashion. The historian, of course, can learn much from him, though he may pull a face here and there at what seem questionable statements by modern standards - two and a half hours to walk from the Tower of London to Westminster? cherries at seventy pence each in 1618? - while the translator would be grateful for more precise indications of distances and prices - what was the rate of exchange? were garas and pénz really worth an English penny? One can only admire Csombor's initiative in travelling so far on obviously limited means when even the relatively wealthy Miklós Bethlen had to economise in the West.
The title of the book too is revealing; perhaps "Europe in all its Variety" would be a fair translation, as what interests Csombor most are the differences between the countries and peoples that he visits, their ways of life, and their cultural achievements. There is variety in the text itself, as he lapses not infrequently into verse in both Hungarian and Latin, more often than not of his own composition, and there is a great variety in the people that he meets and describes, and who are almost unfailingly kind and helpful to a young and obviously personable foreigner. He had no need to offer an apologia to those who had opposed his plans: indeed, one senses that such was his self-confidence that the very idea did not cross his mind. Rather it was his intention to share with his fellow countrymen that greatest of all pleasures: the delight in the strangeness of alien things. It is much to be regretted that his death in 1622, when he fell victim to the plague, deprived him of further opportunities for travel and us of the chance to read about them.

 

Bernard Adams's
translation of Metamorphosis Transylvanić by Péter Apor was published by Kegan Paul in 2003. He is the translator of The Letters from Turkey of Kelemen Mikes (Kegan Paul, 2001) and co-translator, with Kálmán Ruttkay, of József Katona: The Viceroy (Budapest, Akadémiai, 2003)