Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

With the death of King László V, Matthias' (Mátyás' in Hungarian) hour of destiny struck and he was not surprised. In his heart, he always knew that one day he would become King of Hungary.

It took some time before the election of the new king could be arranged. Mátyás' way to the throne was paved with great skill by János Vitéz, Bishop of Nagyvárad, his former tutor and the finest diplomat in Hungary. In January, 1458, when the election of the new monarch was being discussed by the chief lords at Buda, Mihály Szilágyi appeared with an army of tens of thousands in support of Mátyás. On a cold winter's day the army, recruited from the lesser nobility, marched to Buda on the ice of the Danube, hailing Mátyás Hunyadi as the new King of Hungary, and no one in the High Council dared oppose his election. Mihály Szilágyi was simultaneously appointed governor of the country.

The news spread like wildfire, and Hungary's people took to the streets in jubilation. Finally Hungary had her own son as king!

However, Mátyás was still in Prague as the prisoner of George Podiebrad, then Governor and later King of Bohemia. One evening at dinner Podiebrad received the news that his prisoner was now King. He immediately offered Mátyás his own seat at the head of the table in an act of symbolic homage and, thinking of the future, urged his daughter Catherine to "weave a crown of the most beautiful flowers in the palace, and place it upon Mátyás' head with your own hands." The wily Podiebrad followed this act with a more profane, monetary deal. He demanded and received (from Mátyás' mother) 40,000 golden forints for the new King's release together with the promise that Mátyás would marry Catherine.

The Trouble with the Uncle

When Mátyás returned to Hungary, his joyous reception was in sharp contrast to the tattered, lawless nation he found.

Hunyadi foes were still in power, including the Palatine László Gara and Miklós Újlaki, the second most powerful leader. Mátyás could not be crowned with the Holy Crown, because it was in the possession of Emperor Frederick III, who, as a Habsburg, himself aspired to the throne.

Furthermore. the country's lands were in disarray. The Uplands in the North were in the hands of the Czech Hussite leader, Giskra. and in the South, the shadow of the Turkish menace loomed over the Balkans, although the Turks did not dare conduct a large-scale war after their defeat at Nándorfehérvár.

Paradoxically, the most acute threat to Mátyás' rule was none other than his best friend and uncle, Mihály Szilágyi, who sought to assume guardianship over the eighteen year-old King.

Despite his young age, Mátyás was mature and determined to stand on his own without a guardian. He resented his uncle's patronizing and often tactless "guidance," and in a skillful maneuver he shifted Szilágyi to Southern Hungary to assume the post of Captain General. Then, he proceeded resolutely to put his own mark on the conduct of state affairs, often ignoring his uncle's ideas. The greatest obstacles to his efficient governing were the feudal aristocrats and the great landowners, so he broke their power and filled the principal offices of the country with ordinary nobles, the old supporters of the House of Hunyadi. In a separate action, the King demoted the Palatine, László Gara, after he had refused to appear before him when summoned.

Szilágyi, furious at being slighted by an "ungrateful kid," resigned and allied himself with Gara, Újlaki and others to put Frederick III on the throne. Then he went so far as to crown Frederick with the Holy Crown. Nevertheless, Mátyás' army, led by Simon Nagy, defeated their attempts at a take over. Szilágyi's rebellion against Mátyás led him to draw his sword against the King during a later confrontation - an impetuous act which resulted in his arrest and sentencing to death.

Still, Mátyás was fond of the irascible old warrior and commuted his death sentence to a prison term. Shortly thereafter, Szilágyi escaped from jail, only to be captured and killed by the Turks.

Cunning Trio Against Mátyás

Mátyás' (Matthias') stand against Szilágyi and his firing of Gara from the Palatinate gave notice that he was a man of mettle; and indeed, these affairs marked the beginning of a dazzling performance on both military and diplomatic fronts. By using a judicious mixture of strength, charm and guile, he succeeded in stabilizing his own and Hungary's position within a relatively short time.

In the first five years of his rule he was pitted against the three most wily leaders of his age:

Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Czech Giskra, a superb warlord with an astonishing ability to survive; and George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, who was perhaps the shrewdest of all.

Podiebrad was a "collector" of secret and not so secret pacts with other rulers. Originally, he had conducted an alliance with Mátyás, but he also signed a pact with Frederick III against Mátyás, and still another with the King of Saxony against Frederick III. In addition to these, Podiebrad made an alliance with the Bavarian King against both Frederick III and Mátyás. He also aspired to the Hungarian throne.

Every inch a king, Mátyás held his own against these adversaries. During the first five years of his rule, he actually gained the upperhand over them in this diplomatic-military chess game. As his chief advisor, he chose Bishop János Vitéz, a man of exceptional talent and diplomatic experience whose Latin orations were used as models in the textbooks of European universities. (In 1465 he was named Archbishop of Esztergom.)

In breaking up this devilish triangle of adversaries, Mátyás first concentrated on Giskra, capturing a number of his fortresses in a prolonged and difficult campaign in mountainous Upper Hungary (Felvidék).

When Giskra was finally cornered, Mátyás switched tactics. His mail-clad fist of war became a hand stretched out in friendship. Mátyás offered Giskra 40,000 golden forints and a high position if he would disband his troops and allow them to join the Hungarian army as mercenaries. His army weakened, the astonished Giskra gladly accepted the offer. As a result, Hungary rid itself of a dangerous enemy and gained many thousands of seasoned soldiers for its army. Subsequently, Giskra became Mátyás' faithful general, then his envoy to the Sultan. He later joined the Hungarian aristocracy by marrying the Palatine's daughter.

The "Black Army"

In gaining Giskra's men, Mátyás laid the foundation for his famed "Black Army," so named after the color of their uniform. It was composed of Magyar, Czech, Polish, Serbian and German mercenaries and its existence rendered obsolete the time-honored, but cumbersome method of raising troops by calling upon the nobility. Mátyás personally supervised the organization and training of this army of about 25,000 troops, who were under exemplary discipline.

Aside from its efficiency and ever-readiness, the Black Army promised Hungary a sharp reduction of Magyar casualties, offering a respite from decades of heavy war losses during which it was chiefly Magyar blood that had been shed defending Christianity.

The deal with Giskra had been struck in 1461. Two years later, Mátyás sent his army against the Turks in the Balkans, where he captured the key fortress of Jajcza and other important strongholds. At Jajcza he applied one of his favorite tactics: to reduce his own casualties, he starved the enemy into surrender.

With his power growing, Mátyás had little difficulty in enticing former enemies at home like Miklós Újlaki and others back to his side by promising them forgiveness and high positions. In 1464, Frederick III, finding himself weakened and outmaneuvered on the Hungarian front, capitulated and concluded a pact with Mátyás. He returned the Holy Crown to Hungary in exchange for 80,000 golden forints and for the promise that should Mátyás die without a male heir, Frederick III or his heirs would inherit the Crown. Mátyás agreed, never imagining that he, in the prime of his manhood at twenty-four, would ever lack male heirs.

With Giskra in his camp and Frederick III neutralized for the time being, Mátyás felt he could bide his time with Podiebrad. He had kept his word and married Podiebrad's daughter Catherine. Unfortunately, she died a few years later in childbirth together with their newborn son. With them, Mátyás' hopes for having an heir early in his reign were gone.

Mátyás knew that, his alliance with Podiebrad notwithstanding, the old fox was aspiring to the Hungarian throne, but he also knew that this danger was remote. He himself entertained similar aspirations toward Bohemia. He had been harboring a not so secret ambition to become emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to strengthen Hungary's position against the Turks. Bohemia seemed to be a stepping stone in that direction, since it had the right to vote in the election of the emperor.

The Art of Raising Taxes

Mátyás' most urgent problem on the domestic front was to raise money for his permanent military force.

He boldly introduced general taxation, something unheard of in Hungary. At the same time he made great efforts to promote economic prosperity, thereby increasing his tax revenues. He created new sources of tax money on various pretexts, and he allowed the nobles to fulfill their military obligations by paying a hefty sum into the treasury - a wise move since Mátyás was much better off with his professional mercenaries anyway. He collected "aid" every year from the cities, and also dipped into the income of the Church. State monopolies on gold, silver and salt mining, together with custom fees, added to the treasury.

Though taxation was far heavier under Mátyás than under his predecessors, the taxpayer in his time was in a far better position to pay. In recompense, Mátyás endeavored to raise the status of the common citizen, and in particular the tax-paying peasants who were never so well off as under Mátyás' rule.

During Mátyás' reign the income of the Hungarian treasury rose to approximately one million golden forints per year, equivalent to the incomes of the French and English kings.

Bohemia - Stepping Stone or Stumbling Block?

Unfortunately, the money flowing into the treasury was just as quickly doled out to cover the expenses of Mátyás' wars abroad, primarily in Bohemia. The hoped-for "stepping stone" toward the emperorship was becoming a stumbling block for Mátyás, sapping his time and resources for almost a decade.

Although he was successful in keeping Podiebrad down, the wily King turned out to be an elusive enemy in war as well as in peace. Mátyás' first chance for a showdown with Podiebrad was heaven-sent - via the Pope. The Holy See - joined by Frederick III as the ruler of the most Christian Empire - declared Podiebrad, an ally of the Hussites, a heretic unworthy to sit on the throne of Catholic Bohemia. At the same time the Pope offered to recognize Mátyás as King of Bohemia, Silezia and Moravia if he would defeat Podiebrad.

After a difficult campaign, a compromise treaty was signed by the two kings in Olmütz in 1469, where on behalf of the nobility Mátyás was crowned King of Bohemia, Moravia, Silezia and Lausitz. Following the ceremony, Archbishop János Vitéz sighed with relief saying: "Finally, our task is finished."

But Mátyás corrected him: "No, János. We have just begun."

The King was right. Podiebrad may have been down but he was not out. He still had his throne in Prague.

A Love Affair - with Consequences

For the time being, Mátyás basked in the glory of his new crown. With a great entourage he visited Breslau where Mayor Krebs greeted him with a magnificent parade and colorful festivities that continued into the evening. At the time Mátyás was still single, having lost two wives who failed to give him an heir. Countesses and princesses in glittering gowns flocked to a gala ball, each hoping to catch the eye of the handsome, eligible king. However, Mátyás' eyes were arrested by the beautiful face of a commoner - the mayor's daughter, twenty year-old Barbara Krebs.

That evening saw the beginning of a romance that would flower for six years. Unable to marry Barbara because she was not of royal blood, Mátyás, with the mayor's consent,. took Barbara as his mistress. In Buda, Barbara, a self effacing woman, lived in a secluded wing of the Royal Palace until she gave birth to a boy. The child was christened János after his grandfather.

The city of Breslau was not only to be the city of his greatest love, but the scene of his greatest military triumph as well. But this was still years away - years of trouble at home and abroad.

A Conspiracy Foiled by Kindness

The trouble abroad was caused by Podiebrad, who persuaded Frederick III to form a common Austrian-Czech-Polish front against Hungary. Militarily, Mátyás could take care of this threat, and his hopes

of being King of all Bohemia were rekindled when Podiebrad died in 1471.

However the wily old King frustrated Mátyás' ambition even from the grave. According to a scheme he had devised before his death, the fifteen-year-old son of the Polish King Casimir, Wladislas, was appointed King of Bohemia - and not Mátyás. After ten years of fighting and two and half million golden forints spent, all he had to show for his efforts was the possession of Moravia, Silezia and Lausitz.

To make matters worse, trouble awaited him on the home front. While he was visiting Breslau, he received alarming reports from Cracow and Buda of a conspiracy in the making. The list of conspirators included his old confidant, Archbishop János Vitéz; his beloved Ianus Pannonius, the bishop-poet; Miklós Újlaki and others who wanted to dethrone Mátyás and replace him with King Casimir of Poland. Reports from Cracow indicated that Casimir had already set out with his troops to join the conspirators' forces in Hungary.

Thus, Mátyás found himself at the most critical juncture of his reign. A weaker man would have caved in a situation like this, but the truism, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going," was never so true as in his case. After covering the distance between Breslau and Buda with incredible speed, he appeared in Buda at the most inopportune moment - for the conspirators, that is. The master-minds of the conspiracy, surprised and frightened by the King's unexpected appearance, withdrew to their castles expecting a bloody crackdown by their ironhanded ruler.

Nothing of the sort happened. Mátyás' penchant for preferring shrewdness to violence prevailed again and he simply feigned total ignorance of the whole affair. He invited one conspirator after another to a private audience in a seemingly haphazard way and with an air of innocence. To each he offered either a high position or an estate, and then appealed to their patriotism in asking them to rally against the imminent attack by Casimir on Hungary. Not a word was spoken of conspiracy or disloyalty.

Mátyás simultaneously initiated a whispering campaign about the growing list of conspirators - turned - loyalists, prompting the holdouts to climb on the royal bandwagon before it was too late. When Mátyás convened the national assembly, his adversaries found themselves in moral straits, and could do nothing but support the King.

The only loser was King Casimir. When his army appeared near Buda to join the "rebels," he found his supporters had absented themselves. Casimir's great expectations turned into a hasty withdrawal, and his army disintegrated in the process.

János Vitéz in Esztergom and Ianus Pannonius were the last holdouts. While Mátyás was ready to forgive, the Archbishop's lack of compunction landed him in prison - a sentence which was soon changed to house arrest in his palace. Shortly thereafter, János Vitéz, one of the most brilliant men of his era, died.

Mátyás concluded a four-year armistice with Poland.

At Breslau a "Siege-in-Reverse"

The armistice was soon breached by Casimir through the influence of Frederick III. Although the Poles and Hungarians had always been close friends, dynastic reasons clouded Casimir's judgement when, at the end of the summer of 1474, a united Polish-Czech army, 80,000 strong and supported by Frederick III, set off "to sweep Mátyás' army off the face of the earth." This event was to take place at Breslau, where the Hungarian king's available forces numbered only 8,000 men.

Mátyás was realistic enough not to expect victory in a conventional battle. He split his forces into three groups: group one moved into the walled city proper, taking the heavy artillery inside; group two occupied the foreground around the city walls; group three was a mobile force assigned to harass the enemy with guerilla warfare.

Mátyás also accumulated supplies inside the city walls and ordered everything along the perimeter of Breslau to be burned to withhold supplies from the besiegers.

Once Kings Casimir and Wladislas arrived at Breslau with their armies, they found themselves in a baffling situation. They had expected to defeat Mátyás in an open battle, but the Hungarians simply avoided such a confrontation. The only option open to the two kings was to undertake a siege for which they were not prepared. The food supplies they had brought were gone before they could decide what to do.

Their best chance lay in defeating group two of Mátyás' army, occupying the foreground of the city walls. In the attack which followed, the defenders trained their big cannons, used in the past to destroy walls, on the invading human phalanx. The attackers became the targets of a siege-in-reverse.

Mátyás gained a great victory in this battle. Casimir and Wladislas, their decimated troops dead or dying of starvation, were finally forced to propose peace talks. Their immediate concern was to get food from the "beleaguered" city for their starving men. A tragi-comic situation indeed!

Mátyás not only granted permission, but in a gesture of chivalry, he donated so much food to the "besieging" troops that each soldier could eat his fill for the first time in many a day.

Mátyás was feeling especially magnanimous because a delegation had just returned from Italy with the news that Princess Beatrix from Aragonia, daughter of the Neapolitan king, had accepted his proposal of marriage.

He then received a different kind of news from Buda. Barbara Krebs, the mother of his natural son, had taken up the veil and had moved to spend the rest of her life in a cloister.

The Pull of the Renaissance

Mátyás was thirty-three years old when he married Beatrix in a splendid ceremony, followed by a glittering reception where four hundred place settings of pure gold were laid out for the honored guests. Beatrix was a proud Italian beauty, a spoiled child of the Renaissance, who lost no time in transforming the Court to her own Italian taste. Mátyás himself had been under the spell of the Renaissance long before

Beatrix' arrival. He was a Renaissance man governed by an austere Hungarian morality. An autocrat in the Macchiavellian sense, he eschewed poison, daggers or firing squads as tools of government. Mátyás was exceptionally intelligent; his level of culture equalled that of a Renaissance knight. Fluent in Hungarian, German, Greek, Latin, Rumanian, Bohemian and Italian, he also had a profound knowledge of theology, and his official letters displayed both literary and diplomatic talent.

This clever, cultured and autocratic king was also the finest sportsman of his country. Even during his adolescence the fame of his horsemanship was rumored abroad: he was, without a doubt, the undefeated champion of the continent in lance-thrust.

The following excerpts from an essay by the Hungarian historian Géza Istványi describe the magnificence of Mátyás' Renaissance court:

"Excelling in war and in policy, Mátyás was also a master at framing his Renaissance personality in suitably lavish forms. Triumphal processions and colorful ceremonies followed his victories and accompanied meetings with other rulers and his own marriage. Vienna, Breslau, Olmütz and Iglau saw his pomp, and his Court at Buda, the center of his empire, was richer than that of the Italian princelings of the day. Mátyás finished the building of the royal palace, which had been planned and started in the time of Sigmund. The sombre Gothic structure was left unchanged, but the decoration showed all the colors of the Renaissance. The walls were covered with the ornamentation of the quattrocento: palmettos, dolphins, volute pillars, rosettes, one winged putti.

Finely carved doors whose frames wore garlands, marble staircases, bronze candelabras and white fountains spread the dazzling images of the new age everywhere. Inlaid tables, carved furniture and fireplaces. Florentine carpets on the floor and walls, together with the finest works of Hungarian and Venetian goldsmiths and silversmiths decorated this splendid Court, and a legion of artists, native or foreign, found constant employment.

The ambassadors from the courts of Europe wrote enthusiastically of the festivals and ceremonies; nowhere was there such refinement, except perhaps at the court of Burgundy. The court musicians had been brought from Italy and France, and their choir in the royal chapel aroused the admiration of the envoy of the Holy See. Not only was there the music of the age, but national music was not forgotten, and minstrels sang of the triumphs of János Hunyadi.

But the character of the Court was given by the humanists. From early childhood. Mátyás had been accustomed to being surrounded by great scholars, and on more than one occasion he had taken them with him to the wars, to converse with them and give them the opportunity of recording the history of his campaigns.

At first, they had been Hungarian classicists who had graduated at Italian universities: János Vitéz, Ianus Pannonius, Péter Garázda and Miklós Báthory. But soon the fame of his court spread to Italy, and Italian humanists began to visit Buda. Galeotti collected anecdotes about the king. Naldo Naldi wrote of the great library, the director of which was Taddeo Ugoletto, and Antonio Bonfini wrote the history of the Hungarians in the style of Livy.

It was Bonfini who gave the king his surname of Corvinus, tracing Mátyás' descent (flatteringly) from Marcus Valerius Corvinus by the raven in the Hunyadi arms.

Mátyás was happy in the company of his humanists, and loved to talk with them of the problems of history and astronomy, of theology and philosophy. He listened with attention to poetry, and to the historical works of the scholars of his Court, and rewarded them richly. But he was always in some way apart from them, and they never influenced him in his decisions.

As a true humanist, he read much himself; he loved books passionately with the love of a connoisseur and was an enthusiastic collector. For his library he built a lavish house in the hall of which, surrounded by columns, was a slender white marble fountain by Verrocchio. He had agents in Vienna and in various cities of Italy, copy or illustrate codices for him.

In Buda. too, a workshop was set up for the copying of books; the finest artists worked for him: Attavante, Bozzordi, the del Flore brothers and other famous Florentines. In their day the volumes in the Corvina, as his library was called. were world-famous, and included the finest Renaissance codices. In the great libraries of Europe and America there are still a few treasured volumes that bear the sign of the raven and the miniature portraits of King Mátyás and Queen Beatrix. These volumes, bound in leather and richly chased with gold, were fine specimens even in an age where such fineness was abundant.

The 500 codices in the library were a considerable number for those days. Even the great library of Florence contained but 1,000 books.

Renaissance humanist culture was not limited to the royal Court. Respecting the classic age, yet loving of the new one, the style of the Renaissance spread and yielded a new Hungarian ideal, the Christian Renaissance hero with the Hungarian touch, inspired by Mátyás. His Court was no mere phenomenon floating in a vacuum. He gave all the assistance that a monarch could offer to Hungarian humanists who visited his Court: he established a university at Pozsony with the help of János Vitéz, and planned another in Buda.

Such was his influence that culture took firm root in Hungary, and no subsequent storm succeeded in tearing it out; neither the devastation and dominion of the Turks, the political decay of the nation, nor the appalling decrease in population could destroy the influence which had had its encouragement from him. Much of Mátyás' work was doomed to perish with him, much of his memorial was destroyed in the later misfortunes of the country; but it remains to his merit that he paved the way for the great cultural period of the sixteenth century and for the subsequent development of Hungarian national literature and cultural life."

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The royal Court of Mátyás and Beatrix reflected a splendor befitting a great power. And during Mátyás' reign Hungary was indeed a great power. The population of Hungary at the turn of the 15th century was four million, as many as in contemporary England. The Austrian Empire, together with Bohemia and Silesia, numbered about 5.5 million. By force of numbers alone. Hungary was an important factor. Of her four million people roughly 77 percent were Magyar, forming an absolute ethnic majority in the Carpathian Basin.

Mátyás' utmost desire was to found a dynasty which would preserve Hungary's position for generations to come. Unfortunately, his hopes remained unfulfilled; Mátyás and his Queen had everything they wanted in Buda - except what mattered most: an heir to Mátyás' throne.

Thus Mátyás' only hope for a successor lay in his natural son, John (János) Corvinus, who in his early years was raised by Erzsébet Szilágyi, then later educated at Court and given the title of Duke, much to Beatrix's resentment. The more János' status grew, the more Beatrix's animosity poisoned the atmosphere. The Queen believed that a spell cast by Barbara Krebs had caused her to be sterile. The relationship between the king and queen worsened further because Beatrix was looking beyond Mátyás' death, hoping according to ancient custom to remain queen by marrying the next king should she outlive Mátyás.

Triumph at Kenyérmez

With family affairs deteriorating, the problems of state kept Mátyás as busy as before. Abroad, two enemies remained: Frederick III, whose ultimate goal was to pull Hungary into the Habsburg orbit, and the Turks.

Turkish harassment culminated in a major attack in 1479, with united Turkish armies marching into Transylvania. Voivode István Báthory and his troops fought valiantly at Kenyérmez until he himself was wounded. The Turks were on the verge of victory when trumpets blared from behind the hills signaling the arrival of Mátyás' army. Suddenly, the Turks found themselves trapped in a valley between two lines of fire.

With their seemingly imminent victory turning into instant defeat, those who were still alive fled into the woods, only to be hunted down by their pursuers. The Turks lost 30,000 men that day. The hero of the victory was Mátyás' legendary general, Pál Kinizsi, a physical giant of a man whose stentorian voice erupting into a battle cry was enough to frighten any enemy. According to legend,. this latter day Samson first attracted Mátyás' attention when he offered the King a cup of water using a millstone held in one hand as a serving tray. Kinizsi's hands were huge and either could handle a sword with equal skill. In fact, he often rode into battle brandishing a sword in each hand. Pál Kinizsi, the terror of the enemy, was said to be afraid of only one person: Benigna, his wife, a

woman who reached barely above his waist.

Mátyás in Vienna

After their defeat at Kenyérmez, the Turks kept a low profile in the Balkans, giving Mátyás a chance to turn his attention to his most tenacious enemy, Frederick III. Frederick's endurance was not of a military nature, for in war he was inept and timid, but rather a diplomatic one. Only Podiebrad, now long gone, could surpass him in intrigue, in switching alliances and breaking promises. Had Mátyás devoted his attention to him rather than to Bohemia, it might have meant a short-cut toward realizing his ambition to be Frederick's successor.

It was only in 1485 that Mátyás made Frederick feel the full weight of Hungarian power. After capturing a number of Austrian cities, Mátyás finally took Vienna and made it his seat of power, imagining that here at last he was at the threshold of fulfilling his dream of becoming Holy Roman Emperor.

But the capture of Vienna proved to be of only ephemeral significance, and his dream just a dream. The emperor had already designated his son Maximilian to be his heir, with the approval of the German dukes, who preferred one of their own blood on the imperial throne.

"Mátyás the Just"

In 1486, Mátyás issued a printed Code of Laws that brought to fruition his life-long effort to bring equal justice to all. There was order in the country, the encroachments of the landowners and the petty sovereigns were controlled, and justice worked smoothly and expeditiously. With his Code, Mátyás did for the Magyars what Justinian had done for the Romans. Mátyás' Code was a shining example to the rest of Europe, still groping to codify antiquated legal systems.

The king was not content with merely knowing that his laws were in force. Eager to explore public opinion first hand and to check on how officials behaved toward the people, he would don a disguise and wander through the cities and countryside, observing and learning, to correct abuses in his realm.

Even-handed Justice

One example that reflects the spirit of even-handed justice embodied in Mátyás' Code is Clause 41 of the Law which dealt with the collection of church tithes. After the harvest, it was custom of tithe-collectors to inspect a peasant's property in horseback in order to estimate the crop stacked in the fields and to collect the portion due. Regarding this custom, Clause 41 contains the following instructions:

We have ordained furthermore, that the tithe-collectors must be satisfied with the oath of the tithe-payers. If they are not satisfied with it, it shall be in their power to examine the stacks. If they find more than the peasant has declared, they shall take away the surplus and shall make him pay the tithes proper in addition.

But if they find there exactly the amount the peasant has said, they shall pay him a gold piece as a compensation for the damage caused by upsetting the stack. If they deny the payment of this, it shall be the peasant's right to take away the horse of the tithe-collector. And that the peasant be able to do so with greater ease and comfort, we ordain by this law that the tithe-collectors, before examining the stack, should dismount and tie up their horses in the court or house of the tithe-paying peasant.

Thus the peasant's honor was held in esteem before the law, and those who doubted it were obliged to pay for their mistrust.

Mátyás and the Sheriff of Kolozsvár

Perhaps the best known anecdote about Mátyás arose from one of his walks among the people of Kolozsvár.

The Sheriff of Kolozsvár was notorious for abusing his authority by forcing the humble folk to saw and chop wood for him without payment. One day, as Mátyás happened to walk the streets of Kolozsvár in disguise, the sheriff fell on him and ordered him to split wood in the public square. The king meekly set about the work, but carved his initials onto every log he split.

When the next day Mátyás made an official visit to Kolozsvár on horseback, the Sheriff was among a group of other officials paying their respects to the King.

Spotting the sheriff, Mátyás inquired as to the status of his office. Humbly, the sheriff assured the king that he was carrying on his business according to the law. Thereupon, Mátyás sent for the logs he had split the day before and pointed to the initials he had carved on them. This proved the sheriff to be an abuser of the people and a liar before the king. The sheriff promptly fell on his knees begging for mercy, but Mátyás had him severely punished as an example to would-be violators of his law.

There are more stories and legends in circulation about Mátyás than about any other Hungarian king. These stories abounded during his lifetime, and have been handed down through generations as illustrations of his even-handed justice.

No wonder that he went down into history as "Mátyás the Just," and that the people loved him as they had loved no other king. When he died in Vienna in 1490, the most fitting epitaph was carved not on his gravestone, but in the hearts of his people: Mátyás is dead and justice has gone with him.

They were right, for the shining light of Mátyás' reign turned abruptly into darkness after his death. But through those dark times, and others that followed, the great era of Mátyás served as a beacon of remembered glory.

Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary