Abstract » Kármán
Budapest 2010
Encyclopaedism, Pansophia, and Universal Communication, 1560–1670
Gábor KÁRMÁN
An Attempt for Millenarian Foreign Policy? The Journey of Bengt Skytte to the Rákóczis, 1651–52
The journey of the Swedish Councillor of State, Bengt Skytte, to Hungary and Transylvania in 1651–52 is well known in Hungarian historiography. Ever since the major part of his letters to Queen Christina were published in Hungarian translation at the end of the 19th century, he has been seen as a prominent source of description for the foreign-policy plans of György Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania, and his brother Zsigmond, who had a leading role in the politics of the Hungarian estates. Skytte himself was generally regarded as an envoy sent by Queen Christina to map the possibilities of co-operation between Sweden and Transylvania.
In 1963, Nils Runeby published an account of Skytte’s journey, in which he argued that the Swedish Councillor was not sent by the Queen to Eastern Europe, rather that he had taken the task upon himself on his own initiative. In this, he was influenced by the ideas of a radical Protestant group centred around Jan Amos Comenius that had seen the marriage of Zsigmond Rákóczi with Henrietta Maria, the sister of the Elector of the Palatinate, as a sign of the fulfilment of their dreams, a renewed Protestant co-operation against the Catholic Habsburgs. The present paper is a critical re-reading of Runeby’s thesis, contrasting it to – mainly Hungarian – sources that were not at his disposal at the time of writing. Runeby’s results, that Skytte was not an envoy of the Queen, seem to be well-founded.
Unfortunately, it remains more problematic to give a definitive word about the interpretation suggested by Runeby: even after the publication of the rich materials of the Hartlib Papers, we lack any data on the direct connection between Comenius and Skytte. However, due to the later pansophic plans of Skytte – such as his proposal to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg in 1667 to found an ‘Universitas Brandenburgica Gentium, Scientiarum et Artium’ – it is clear that their ideas were close to each other and some peculiarities of the journey suggest that even a personal connection existed.
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