Péter Pázmány

Péter Pázmány de Panasz, S.J. (, ; ; ; ; 4 October 1570 – 19 March 1637), was a Hungarian Jesuit who was a noted philosopher, theologian, cardinal, pulpit orator and statesman. He was an important figure in the Counter-Reformation in Royal Hungary.

Pázmány's most important legacy was his creation of the Hungarian literary language. As an orator he was dubbed "the Hungarian Cicero in the purple". In 1867, a street in Vienna, the Pazmanitengasse, was named after him.

Biography

Early life Pázmány was born in 1570 in Nagyvárad, in the Principality of Transylvania (today Oradea, Romania), the son of Miklós Pázmány, vice-ispán of Bihar County. As a young man he was educated there and, under the Jesuits, in Kolozsvár (Cluj), which is where he converted from the Calvinist Reformed Church of Hungary to Roman Catholicism in 1583, partly under the influence of his stepmother, a Catholic. In 1587, he entered the Society of Jesus.

Upon entering the Jesuit Order, Pázmány went through his novitiate at Kraków, after which he studied philosophy in University of Vienna (1589–1592), and then theology at the Collegio Romano in Rome (now the Pontifical Gregorian University) under St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J. (1592–1596), after which he was ordained to the priesthood there. He was made a Doctor of Theology in 1597. Pázmány also built Jesuit colleges and schools at Bratislava (Pressburg), and Franciscan monasteries at Nové Zámky (Érsekújvár in Hungarian) and Kremnica, all located in modernday Slovakia.

Pázmány played a considerable part in the politics of his day. It was chiefly due to him that the Diet of 1618 elected Archduke Ferdinand to succeed the childless Matthias. He also repeatedly thwarted the martial ambitions of Gabriel Bethlen, and prevented George I Rákóczi, over whom he had a great influence, from allying with the Ottoman Empire and the Protestants.

Pázmány was created a Cardinal Priest by Pope Urban VIII in the consistory of 19 November 1629. He received the red hat of a cardinal from the pope on 31 May 1629 at which time he was assigned for his titular church to Saint Jerome of the Croats.

Works The Four Books of Thomas à Kempis on the imitation of Christ (Hungarian, 1603), of which there are many editions Christian Prayer Book, 1606, translated in English by Christianfaith.info Diatribe theologica de visible Christi in terris ecclesia (Graz, 1615) Vindiciae ecclesiasticae (Vienna, 1620); Sermons for every Sunday in the Year (Hung., Pressburg, 1636) The Triumph of Truth (Hungarian, Pressburg, 1614)