Confessional identity and models of aristocratic conversion in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hungary

Abstract

This article explores the intricate relationship between representations and social practices in the context of aristocratic conversion, non-conversion and marriage. The autobiography of a Calvinist magnate woman, who lived in a mixed marriage and resisted conversion, is discussed and interpreted as a non-conversion narrative. It is compared to other extant documentation (both ego-documents and third-person narratives) regarding the conversion to Catholicism of four aristocratic men, whose political and social positions were enhanced as a result of conversion. The construction of Habsburg rule and its concomitant pressure for Catholicism provides the common political context of both eighteenth-century Transylvania and seventeenth-century Habsburg Hungary, where these stories take place. Offering a further comparative perspective, the study aims to highlight the similarities and differences between Hungarian and European accounts. It also pinpoints the underlying similarities within the conversion models of rival confessions (Catholic and Protestant) and brings to the fore the social practices that entailed the crossing of confessional boundaries. Its most surprising finding is that in the propagandistic climate of the confessional age even the autobiographical narrative was turned into a tool of propaganda against mixed marriages. Amid this confessional rivalry, not only were the appeal of female agency and the story of conversion for love and marriage lost but, in Habsburg Hungary, politics was also excluded from conversion models due to the ambivalent relationship of the elite to the foreign king. Similarly to patterns identified in other regions of Europe, martyrdom played a significant role in both Protestant and Catholic conversion models.