Abstract » Ács
Prague 2009
Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and Prophecy: Eschatological Expectations between East-Central and Western Europe, 1560–1670
Dr Pál Ács
Humanist Historical Research and Apocalypticism: Hungarian Relations in Johannes Löwenklau’s Historia Musulmanae Turcorum (1591)
The present paper is about the Turkish Histories (Annales Sultanorum Othmanidarum 1588; Neuwer musulmanischer Histori türckischer Nation, 1590; Historiae Musulmanae Turcorum, 1591) written by Hans Löwenklau (Joannes Leunclavius). The German humanist was one of the best orientalists of the 16th century. Firstly he provided a good Ottoman History for a western audience on the basis of the original Turkish histories. He had a number of Hungarian relations. He took a part in the war against the Turks in Hungary in 1594. Then he died some weeks later in Vienna. He was a Calvinist (or Crypto-Calvinist) having good connections with the freethinkers of the contemporary Republic of Letters. All his writings were put on the Roman Index. He used for his works Hungarian sources: the so-called Codex Verantius and the Codex Hanivaldanus. While the first of these manuscripts belonged to the famous Hungarian humanist Antal Verancsics (Antonius Verantius), the other one was more striking: it had been translated to Latin by Tarjuman Murad alias Balázs Somlyai, a Hungarian-born chief interpreter at the Ottoman Porte. On one hand Löwenklau was a typical 16th-century intellectual, on the other he was close to the scholarly and religious movements of the 17th century. His works are infiltrated by apocalyptic expectations, prophecies about the end of the Ottoman Empire, and the reunion of the Roman Empire as well. At the same time Löwanklau had very deep and serious scholarly aims. The ordinary Hungarian audience had an aversion to this combination of apocalypticism and scholarly research, so it is not surprising that Hungarian historiography is silent about this great historian of the time.
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