Narratives of Adversity: Jesuits on the Eastern Peripheries of the Habsburg Realms (1640–1773)

VIII Jesuits in Banská Bystrica, Kláštor pod Znievom,Sárospatak, and Levoča

VIII Jesuits in Banská Bystrica, Kláštor pod Znievom, Sárospatak and Levoča “Nothing notable to report except fear.” Missing from the synthesized accounts of the Literae Annuae of the Austrian Province are the details of life in the smaller Jesuit communities scattered along the furthest northeastern extremity of the Habsburg lands. In these more remote settings the organizational and formational bases of the Society were put to special tests shaped by the social conditions and unique history of the region, and individual Jesuits found themselves at times under extraordinary pressures . These communities lying along the northern periphery of the Austrian Province generally had embraced Protestant beliefs early and had then held to them steadfastly as the Habsburgs consolidated political control over the region. The towns of Upper Hungary also retained some of the features of medieval Hungary that had been obliterated by Ottoman domination in the Danube Basin. Yet at the same time the currents of Catholic Baroque culture flowed steadily through Upper Hungary during the entire time that the Society was active there, being curbed only by Imperial edits on the eve of the Suppression. Miners and Bear Cubs: Banská Bystrica Banská Bystrica (Besztercebánya, Neusohl, Neosoliensis), was a Royal Town of Hungary in the Lower Tatras, a mining town with a varied population of Hungarians, Germans, and Slovaks that during much 174 Narratives of Adversity of the seventeenth century was perilously close to the frontier of Ottoman Hungary.1 In the seventeenth century Lutherans predominated, and unlike in Košice, were still a majority well over a century after the arrival of the Society.2 Like many communities in the central region of Royal Hungary Banská Bystrica maintained a fierce sense of independence throughout the vicissitudes of the seventeenth century. The walled town’s successful escape from the threat of Ottoman attacks was complemented by its refusal to accept the domination of Hungarian magnates who held sway over the lowlands to the south once that region had been cleared of Turkish forces. The Jesuits had established themselves fairly early in Banská Bystrica, with a residence in 1648, and soon had opened a primary school.3 By then the future was looking brighter for the Society, whose earliest attempts at establishing a presence among these communities had been dealt a major setback by the campaigns of Gabriel Bethlen. The legal power of Catholics was unquestionably in the ascendancy in Royal Hungary, and Protestants no longer had the right granted in the late sixteenth century of judging and punishing members of the Catholic clergy in civil courts.4 Even before the suspension of the Hungarian constitution the support of the Primates of Hungary for the aggressive recatholicization of the Kingdom gave the Society an advantage in any confrontations with Protestant clergy; in this regard Banská Bystrica served as a base of secondary importance for the Society’s activities. After 1724 the town was also the site of a “Domus tertiae Probationis” in which Jesuits 1 Bokes, Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov od najstaršich čias po oslobodenie, plate facing 112. 2 Census figures for Banská Bystrica from 1767: The town 5061 Catholics 2396 Lutherans 2665 Catholics “in pagis” 1664 Lutherans 1187 “Universi Catholici” 4060 Diarium Residentiae Soc. Jesu Neosolij ab anno 1760 exeunte, unnumbered folios , RFUBB. 3 Tomaček, “Náboženské pomery,” 70. 4 Bouydosh, “Quadrennial Reports,”76. 175 Jesuits in Banská Bystrica, Kláštor pod Znievom, Sárospatak and Levoča who would later serve throughout the Austrian Province prepared for missionary work.5 Banská Bystrica presented some unique characteristics to missionaries and educators: it differed not only from the communities of the Hungarian plains, but also from market towns on trade routes leading out of Hungary such as Košice. The long-established economy of silver and copper mining bred a proud and self-reliant attitude among the burghers and among the miners themselves. To an even greater degree than Košice, the social organization of Banská Bystrica was relatively free from the domination of even minor nobility, something that might have given Jesuit schoolmasters pause, since a major tactic of the Society’s program of spreading its schools throughout a region was to enlist local nobles as students and patrons, and ultimately to try to recruit from their ranks.6 Instead the Jesuits were required to adopt a different tactic: they steadily assembled a church and school in the town whose visibility...