November–December 1456
This letter was addressed to Henry of Eckenfelt, a Carthusian monk of the Austrian community of Gaming and later prior of the Carthusian community in Prague. Because it mentions the deaths of John of Capistrano (on October 23) and of Count Ulrich II of Celje (November 9), it must have been written no earlier than the end of 1456. The author of the letter is unknown, but hints in the text suggest that he may have been a prominent public figure with a leadership position in a large city-state, and someone with ties to the highest political circles in Austria and Hungary. The letter is a compelling example of an attempt to make sense of the events of Belgrade, and of much else besides, at what was for the author a moment of great instability and uncertainty. Its mention of what scholars now recognize as Halley’s Comet is also striking.
Source: Trans. J. Mixson, from Bernard Pez, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (Augsburg-Graz: Veith, 1721), vol. 2, pt. 3, 343–7.
In Christ Jesus, who has mercy on all, [to] my brother and dear friend:
It has been quite some time since I resolved to write to you (as if to one who spends his time in contemplation of the divine) regarding the marvelous events of this year. I have been motivated by this reason, namely that insofar as I am (as you know) out in the world, overwhelmed by temporal cares and immersed in these storms, you might be like one aroused from the sweetness of sleep, and pray to God for me. Truly, I have been delayed and prevented from writing up until now, far more than I would have liked, because of the constant press of business that arises from the affairs of the metropolitan and republican citadel over which I preside.
Listen, therefore, what comes to my mind regarding these matters, and what wonders occupy my mind. I have been thinking on the four heavenly plagues which in this year, as I see it, have brought only pain. Throughout the world, in my judgment, there is nothing at all that is not disturbed by unusual trouble or quiet. To take the matter up, that is, to begin with the first thing that comes to mind: at the beginning of the year that ominous comet appeared to me – and not only to me, but to many others – when the court of the most serene lord emperor gathered in Neustadt around the most recent feast of John the Baptist.1 It was a new thing indeed, not a common occurrence, but a rare one. Back then I would often rise from my bed at the hour of matins,2 and sometimes in the shadow of the night I would go out with the crowd; sometimes they were even armed. It was such a novelty that there was no one who did not get up to go and see the portent. In every alleyway of the city, through the streets, on the walls, and in the piazzas alike, everyone stood around in bunches. Each crowd said that the comet was a portent of something different. But all were united in sharing this one common opinion: that the comet signaled the fall of Hungary and the Slavic lands, and that future evils would soon come to ours.
While I was staying in the city of the emperor, and I considered these things, I was utterly amazed. Then I grew quiet within, and said to myself, “What’s the use of such talk? Or what of all the talk do you think will change what will happen?” But then after a few days, and when the comet had still not disappeared, I saw daily the letters of the father and lord cardinal legate [Juan Carvajal] which he had sent from the Apostolic See to Hungary, and in which he sought aid against the tyrant emperor of the Turks. I saw then and began to sense deeply that even though no one among the Catholics, or very few, would come to the aid of the faith, nevertheless the Author of the Christian condition (insofar as he owed it to his creation) did not want his faith to perish or fade away – and indeed that it could never perish.
Thus, when the army came together at Belgrade with few crusaders, with no leader for the Christian army, without any clear orders, with no properly formed battle lines or clamor of arms, [God] scattered, struck down and destroyed in war and glorious victory the armed ships of the Turk, along with his people. Indeed, he struck down the Turk himself with wounds, and compelled him to retreat, and he fled.
You can rest assured that we embrace the kind of faith that is expressed both in love as well as in words. If the Author of that same faith had not by his power and mercy driven the arrows and arms of the Turk from the walls, all of our fatherland would now be subdued and destroyed by his tyranny. But what more? By God’s providence (to whom be the highest praise forever), we have been given victory against the attack on our faith; the persecutor of the Christian religion has been put to flight. And with that, the story of the fight of the faithful has echoed in the halls of princes, in the castles of the nobility, in every house, cottage, and hovel.
But let me ask you, my Henry, to speak truthfully from your conscience: has anyone, up to now, embraced any great act of penance for our evil deeds? Has God been appeased by any kind of devotion we have taken up? Or is it rather the case that the evils of men have grown, and continue to grow, daily? There is no ecclesiastical rank nor secular power that does not daily pile sin on to sin. And although we can see that God fights to bring aid to all of us, still we see no armies arising to lead a new expedition against the Turk.
Therefore our God, who has forever understood our negligence and our human condition, and who foresaw the evils of the current year, took from this world that religious friar John of Capistrano, a man distinguished for his divine teaching and always inflamed with devotion, who after many labors in the faith and after seeing the victory of the Christian people [at Belgrade] was taken up (or so we might piously believe) into the highest heaven. Oh, with how many voices did that brother so often call out across the world! How many times did he try to arouse the people in his sermons, that we might run to God! But the holy man could not do as much as he wanted or desired by the force of his words. He has now passed away and gone far away from us up into the heavens, so that he would not have to see the evils that followed after his death (and which we now pass through, as through storms and tempests).
But what am I to do? I send that friar to the grave in his holy rest because there are many more portents up to this point in the year that I need to relate to you. I speak of that armed man, the magnificent John Hunyadi, Count of Beszterce and regent governor of Hungary. How many victories, would you say, has he enjoyed in his day? How many wars has he waged against the infidels? None knew better than he how to order his troops and to take the field against the Saracens and Asians. He was the terror of the infidels. Italy and Asia can bear witness to you about that more than our household. Horrid death took him from before our human eyes this year, and he departed from us to be buried in a foreign land.
But the tears had hardly dried from the eyes of those who mourned him before their eyes became wet again: this year the distinguished Count Ulrich of Celje was slaughtered by many wounds in Belgrade, in a foreign land.3 Oh, my brother, who will not feel pity for that same prince in the days to come? He was a magnanimous and powerful prince, full in the abundance of his households. I will pass over the [details of the] circumstances, should someone reprove him.4 I will say this: with my own eyes I saw him leave everything behind, and sail down to meet the Huns [i.e., the Ottomans]. And I know that he did it in support of the faith. He also made a king out of the innocent Ladislaus. He abandoned his palace, his wealth, and men and followers. It is unparalleled: he restored King Ladislaus to his kingdom, which for so long had been deprived of its king, and that had for so long desired to have its king return. To satisfy the kingdom’s desire, [the count] therefore took to the water and brought the king to his kingdom. And he brought the king not only to the center, but to the farthest reaches of the realm. [The count] stood boldly with him in the kingdom; he might have departed for his own good, but it was unfitting for a noble prince to do such a thing. He stood firm, therefore, and remained until death, pouring out his blood through so many wounds. But let me stop here and move on in silence to other matters, for these things are known to all.
I will tell you of another wonder. How could I pass over the crusaders, and not marvel at them? Never. Listen. You saw previously, when I began to speak with you, how astonished I was that so many simple, unarmed, and poor men, untrained in war, unskilled with the bow, flew so quickly into battle, and sailed so well in their ships. But now I am struck with even greater wonder: that such a great misfortune should arise in this holy affair, that such a great sloth should begin to creep in along the frontiers (where the defense of the faith ought to be most useful!) that without fruit, without utility, and with only loss, without even laying eyes on the armies of the cross, everyone should turn back to their own business […].5
My Henry, the stars of the heavens have seen an astonishing turn of events in this world, and in this year seem even to have begun to err in their very movements. According to the judgment of those who are learned in this art, Mars, which is in Cancer this year, ought to find conjunction with Jupiter, but seems to me quite distant from that conjunction. And as it leaves Cancer, because it has wandered in this way, it causes the vines and the wine, the flowers and fruits of the vine, to perish across almost all of Germany. And as if that were not enough, there is so much pestilence and death daily that all of Italy seems overrun with human bodies.
These are the things that I have chosen to describe to you in general. The evils that afflict me personally, and which I suffer alone (and many others, no less) are so many that they cannot be captured in a brief letter.
1 Another allusion to Halley’s Comet. See document 22, n. 1. The feast of John the Baptist is on June 24.
2 A Christian canonical hour in the round of prayers known as the Divine Office, observed in various ways between midnight and sunrise.
3 After Hunyadi’s death in August, Ladislaus V had named Ulrich II his successor as captain general of Hungary. Ulrich II came to Belgrade to challenge Hunyadi’s son Ladislaus, who had become the commander of the fortress. Agents of Ladislaus Hunyadi assassinated Ulrich on November 9, 1456. Ladislaus Hunyadi himself was then captured and executed in Buda in March 1457.
4 Here likely a delicate reference to the divisive circumstances surrounding Ulrich II’s assassination. See document 34.
5 The letter continues here at some length, offering a survey of affairs of the day, focused mainly on royal and territorial politics across Central and Western Europe.