Between Vienna and Constantinople: Notes on the Legal Status of the Principality of Transylvania

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the complex relationship through which the principality of Transylvania was linked to the Kingdom of Hungary. It is only a brief summary of the author's ongoing research and covers only parts of the principality's century-and-a-half-long history. Still, the chapter approaches the legal status of the Principality of Transylvania in the early modern period from a new point of view. In the mid-sixteenth century when the Transylvanian estates repeatedly attempted, on the initiative of Vienna, to join the remaining parts of the Hungarian Kingdom under Habsburg rule, the Ottoman government intervened. Constantinople made it clear that the two parts of Hungary could under no circumstances be held by the same ruler. Yet, despite its obvious limited sovereignty and dependence on the Ottoman Empire, the Principality of Transylvania established a special relationship with Habsburg Hungary. Keywords:Constantinople; Hungary; principality; Transylvania; Vienna