Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise

Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise Stanko ANDRIĆ (Slavonski Brod) The article deals primarily with the failed attempt of Saint John Capistran to win over the Ser- bian Despot George Branković to the Catholic faith on the eve of the planned crusade against the Ottomans that resulted in the defense of Belgrade in 1456. This episode, which took place during the meeting of the two at the diet of the Hungarian Kingdom in Győr in June 1455, is studied here through the protagonists’ correspondence as well as through contemporary chronicles and other relevant sources. The subsequent indirect relationship between Capistran and Branković is followed until the time of the Franciscan’s death. The author also considers the broader context of historical relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the middle Danube region at that time. The life of John Capistran, or John of Capistrano (Giovanni da Capestra- no), a great Franciscan reformer and saint of the “waning Middle Ages,” has been reconstructed by modern historians in much detail, almost to the extent of week-to-week or even day-to-day activities, as is usually done only for kings, princes or the highest of prelates.1 Such a meticulous reconstruction has been made possible by Capistran’s contemporary biographies and especially by his extensive correspondence, and it includes the last stage of the saint’s life, com- prising about seventeen months, which he spent in the Kingdom of Hungary.2 Capistran’s time in Hungary began in the middle of May 1455, in the west- ern part of the country, which he entered from Styria. The first invitation to visit Hungary was sent to Capistran much earlier. Its author was Stephen of Varsány, then the head of the Observant Franciscan custody of Ineu (Hung. Jenő), who sent a letter to Capistran as early as July 30, 1451, from the convent of Petrovci (Hung. Petróc) in Slavonia.3 On May 1, 1455, while staying in Judenburg on the 1 Cf. A. CHIAPPINI, Prospetto cronologico della vita di S. Giovanni da Capestrano, Studi francescani 53, 1956, 203–220; J. HOFER, Johannes Kapistran. Ein Leben im Kampf um die Reform der Kirche, 2nd ed. revised by O. Bonmann, 2 vols., Heidelberg- Romae 1964–1965, especially “28. Exkurs: Chronologie und Itinerar” in: vol. 1, 520–9; Cronologia e itinerario, Vita Minorum 57, 1986, 39–72. 2 Besides HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., vol. 2, 349–419, for the Hungarian section see also Ö. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János élete és kora, 3 vols., Székesfehérvár 1923–1924, vol. 2, 207–400; J. KARÁCSONYI, Szent Ferencz rendjének története Magyarországon 1711-ig, 2 vols., Budapest 1922–1924, vol. 1, 334–8; E. FÜGEDI, Kolduló barátok, polgárok, nemesek. Tanulmányok a magyar középkorról, Budapest 1981, 38 and 467. 202 3 O. BONMANN, G. GÁL and J. M. MISKULY, A provisional calendar of St. John  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise Mur, Capistran informed the newly elected Pope Callistus III (1455-8) about his intention to go to Buda in order to meet John Hunyadi and other Hunga- rian lords who prayed him to come.4 Capistran arrived just in time to join the Hungarian Diet, which was to be held in Győr (Raab) at the beginning of June. In the days preceding this event, he received messengers and letters from some of the most important barons and prelates of the kingdom (including former governor-regent John Hunyadi; palatine Ladislas of Gara; and the cardinal and archbishop of Esztergom, Dionysius of Szécs), all of whom eagerly welcomed the famous friar’s coming to Hungary.5 Fifteen-year-old King Ladislas V did not write to Capistran at that time, as he had no intention of attending the diet. The two had already met earlier in Wroclaw (Breslau) and had exchanged a number of letters in 1453 and 1454.6 Their last such contact was, on Capistran’s side, the letter sent from Munich on September 16, 1454, offering political advice to the young king and soliciting him to take better care of the defense of Hungary, and especially of Belgrade, against an imminent Turkish attack.7 The king re- sponded at the end of October 1454 with two letters signed by his ambassadors, who urged Capistran to come to Hungary without delay because this was of the foremost interest of the faith and of the Church.8 The diet at Győr deliberated on two main subjects. The first was the need for unity and concord among Hungarian aristocracy and the conditions under which they would recognize the king’s full authority. It resulted in a formal dec- laration issued on June 25.9 The other subject of discussion was the Ottoman threat, made all the more pressing when the news reached the assembly on June 21 that the army of Mehmed II, in a renewed campaign of the war started in Capistran’s correspondence [part II], Franciscan studies, annual 28, vol. 50, 1990, 325, no. 308. The letter was unknown to Pettkó and Bölcskey and is still unpublished. 4 L. WADDING, Annales Minorum seu trium ordinum a s. Francisco institutorum, third ed., 25 vols., Quaracchi-Roma 1931–1934, vol. 12, 285–7. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 449, no. 403; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar [part II], op. cit., 388, no. 531. 5 HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., vol. 2, 350, n. 7. For the texts of the letters see B. PETTKÓ, Kapisztrán János levelezése a magyarokkal, Történelmi Tár 24, 1901, 175–7, no. 18–21. The archbishop of Kalocsa, Raphael Herceg of Szekcső, invited Capistran to visit his diocese by a letter dated a little earlier, on May 3, 1455 (BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 450, no. 406). 6 HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., 2: 255–276. For the letters exchanged between Capistran and the king, see M. BIHL, Duae epistolae S. Iohannis a Capistrano, altera ad Ladislaum regem, altera de victoria Belgradensi (an. 1453 et 1456), Archivum franciscanum historicum 19, 1926, 63–64 and 70–71; PETTKÓ, Kapisztrán János levelezése, op. cit., 163–172; BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 420– 435; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar [part II], op. cit., 350–368. 7 BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar [part II], op. cit., 372–3, no. 482. This was probably the first mention of Belgrade in Capistran’s writings. 8 PETTKÓ, Kapisztrán János levelezése, op. cit., 173–4, no. 15–16; BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 441–2, no. 369–370; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar [part II], op. cit., 376–7, no. 494–5. 9 PETTKÓ, Kapisztrán János levelezése, op. cit., 178–180, no. 24. See also F. DÖRY, G.  BÓNIS and V. BÁCSKAI, Decreta regni Hungariae / Gesetze und Verordnungen Ungarns, 1301–1457, Budapest 1976, 384–6. 203  Stanko Andrić the previous year, had captured Novo Brdo in southern Serbia on June 1. Novo Brdo, known also as Novomonte, was the most important mining center in the late medieval Balkans and the main source of income for Serbian Despot George Branković.10 Branković himself was taking part in the diet at Győr. He was a vassal of the kings of Hungary from the start of his rule, his subordinate legal position having been defined by the agreement of Tata concluded in 1426.11 This entitled him to hold numerous possessions in Hungary, and between 1454 and 1455, Branković spent the most critical periods of Mehmed’s campaigns there.12 On the very day when the grim news of Novo Brdo’s capture was brought to Győr, Capistran wrote a lengthy letter to the pope, describing the discussion that subsequently arose at the diet. Clearly enthusiastic about the idea, Capistran detailed for the pope a proposal of John Hunyadi for a large-scale operation. Hunyadi, whom Capistran described as having a great experience in battling the Turks and as one who “knew the Turkish force intimately,” proposed raising an army of 100, 000 experienced men to dislodge the Turks from European soil and perhaps even reconquer Jerusalem. The needed troops could be provided by Hungary (i.e., Hunyadi himself and the king), the despot of Serbia, and three western rulers: the pope, the duke of Burgundy (Philip III the Good), and the king of Aragon and Naples (Alphonse V), the latter also being the one who would command an offensive on the sea. The soldiers’ salaries would be needed for three months only, because further resources would be found on the very territory recaptured from the Turks. In addition, the pope should commit one cardinal to be a spiritual leader of the army; the archbishop of Esztergom, Dio- nysius of Szécs, could fill this role.13 When mentioning the despot of Serbia and his possible contribution to the crusading army, Capistran added: “although he persists in his faith” (licet in sua fide perduret). Soon Capistran was to elaborate on this point much more exten- sively. Though he had only met the despot personally for the first time at Győr, 10 At Novo Brdo mines, largely operated by Saxon mining engineers and Ragusan merchants, silver, iron and lead were extracted; it was especially famous for its argento di glama (auriferous silver, an alloy of silver and one-sixth of gold). On this important late medieval mining center, see now V. JOVANOVIĆ, S. ĆIRKOVIĆ, E. ZEČEVIĆ, V. IVANIŠEVIĆ and V. RADIĆ, Novo Brdo, Beograd 2004. 11 On this agreement, see M. SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ Branković i njegovo doba, 2nd ed., Beograd – Banja Luka 1999, 79–80; Istorija srpskog naroda, 10 vols., chief ed. R. Sa- mardžić, Beograd 1981–1993, vol. 2, 215, with further literature quoted there. 12 On the course of Mehmed II’s war against Serbia in 1454–5, see SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 489–508; Istorija srpskog naroda, op. cit., vol. 2, 294–8. The fall of Novo Brdo was an event of such impact that the Hungarian lords gathered in Buda almost two months later, on July 21, still wrote to the pope about it: WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 294–6; cf. L. THALLÓCZY and A. ÁLDÁSY, A Magyarország és Szerbia közti összeköttetések oklevéltára 1198–1526 (= Codex dipl. partium regno Hungariae adnexarum, vol. 2 / Monumenta Hungariae historica, 33), Budapest 1907, 192, no. 258. 13 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 292–4 = E. FERMENDŽIN, Acta Bosnae potissimum ecclesiastica cum insertis editorum documentorum regestis ab anno 925. usque ad annum 1752, Zagreb 1892, 222–4, no. 953. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 454–5, no. 425; O. BONMANN, G. GÁL and J. M. MISKULY, A provisional calendar of St. John Capistran’s correspondence [part III], Franciscan 204 studies, annual 30, vol. 52, 1992, 289–290, no. 552.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise there had been an earlier contact between the two. The despot had sent a mes- senger to Capistran on March 28, 1455, with a brief letter of recommendation. The letter was probably written in the village of Perlek in the county of Bač (Bács).14 The main message of this correspondence was an invitation for Capi- stran to come to Serbia. Capistran later mentioned this in his letter to the pope of May 1 that is referenced above.15 Now, in Győr, came the crucial moment in relations between the famous Franciscan and the despot. Capistran’s reflections on the meeting with Branković Capistran was still in Győr in early July 1455. On July 4, he composed another long letter for the pope, actually a report on the religious errors and wrongdoings of Serbia’s despot and Serbians in general.16 A few days earlier, a conversation with the despot had convinced Capistran that the despot was hopelessly obstinate in keeping to his “errors.” Branković was so ill disposed to- wards the Catholic faith that one should grieve over all Christianity, feel pity for the despot’s salvation, and abide even more firmly with “our faith.” Capistran’s source of concrete information about the despot and the Serbs was not only their interaction in Győr, but also some “trustworthy people” who reported to him on these issues both verbally and in writing. It can be inferred from the letter’s further text that these informants were primarily the Observant Franciscans of the Bosnian vicariate. In his letter Capistran brought up two principal offences for which he blamed the despot as the primary guilty party. The first was the practice of baptizing Catholics by use of force and of seizing property from those who refused such baptism. As a particularly odious instance of such alleged activity, Capistran described the case of the despot’s own granddaughter, named Elizabeth. Her parents were the despot’s daughter Catherine (or Cantacuzena) and the power- ful Styrian count and ban of Slavonia Ulrich of Celje (Cilli), who were married in 1434. Elizabeth was about ten years old when she was betrothed, in 1451, to John Hunyadi’s younger son Matthias. She was thus, in Capistran’s words, 14 According to HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., 2: 351, n. 9, and BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar [part II], op. cit., 385–6, no. 523, the letter is dated in an unknown place named Poriok or Pvriok (both Hofer and Bonmann examined the deteriorated original). This probably corresponds to the medieval village of Perlek near Bečej (Becse), which was one of the despot’s Hungarian possessions (cf. D. CSÁNKI, Magyarország történelmi földrajza a Hunyadiak korában, 5 vols., Budapest, 1890–1913, vol. 2, 159, s. v. Perlek; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 288). 15 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 287: Saepe quippe postulatus sum (...) Hungariam Rasciamque petere (...) cum instantissimis et efficacissimis litteris DD. Despoti Rasciani (...). 16 The letter is published in FERMENDŽIN, Acta Bosnae, op. cit., 224–6, no. 954. Parts of it are taken over in F. ŠANJEK, Bosansko-humski krstjani u povijesnim vrelima (13.–15. s.), Zagreb 2003, 110–3, no. 16. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 455, no. 427; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar [part III], op. cit., 290, no. 553. The letter has no final datation formula, but before the list of the Serbians’ errors it is said that it was compiled in Győr on July 4, 1455. HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., vol. 2, 351, n. 8, thinks that this is the date of the list only and not of the letter itself, but he does not explain how the letter could have predated the list. 205  Stanko Andrić “born among the Catholics and baptized by her Catholic father according to the rites of the Holy Roman Church.” Nevertheless, when Elizabeth’s mother left her for some time with the old despot “in order to comfort and encheer him,” he, “acting as an enemy of the Roman Church and in accordance with his disgusting custom, had the girl baptized again” (qui tanquam Romanae ecclesiae inimicus, more suo detestabili, eam rebaptizari fecit). Afterwards the despot sent Elizabeth to Hun- yadi’s court in company with Orthodox monks and other large retinue, thereby trying by all means to make sure that the girl be raised as an Orthodox Chris- tian. Hunyadi averted this, however, by banishing, one by one, the “schismatics” from her entourage and gradually educating her so that she became “the most devout and the most Christian.” Such was Elizabeth’s mindset when, at the age of thirteen, she was introduced to Capistran in Győr, and he diligently took care that the Catholic sacrament of confirmation be conferred upon her. Indeed, the archbishop of Esztergom performed the ceremony on the same day that Capist- ran wrote his letter to the pope. The other major offense Capistran singled out was that the despot justified his behaviour in religious matters by invoking a certain bull that the preceding pope, Nicholas V (1447–1455), had given him. Apparently after having exam- ined the despot’s exemplar of the bull in question, Capistran concluded that it was “not entirely honourable” (non satis digna) and obviously a result of the pope’s “being not well informed.” Capistran had it transcribed and enclosed the copy with his letter. Based on this papal bull, the despot professed that his faith was blameless and approved by the Holy See. He also claimed, more specifically, that the pope had granted him the right to establish nine monasteries for the Greek monks in Hungary. These same monks, Capistran added, opposed many Catholic teachings by asserting that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, that there is no Purgatory, that the saints do not enjoy their glory nor do the damned experience their punishment before the general Judgement Day, and so on. Having portrayed the Serbian despot through these two anti-Catholic com- mitments, Capistran appealed to the pope to deal with these “evils and errors” before they caused more damage. In the second half of his letter Capistran provided a list of errors that he attributed specifically to the Rascians (Serbs) in addition to those they shared with the Greeks (articuli in quibus errant Rasciani ultra haereses Graecorum). The list itself is preceded by a remark that these were the evils schismatic Serbs were perpetrating against the friars of the Bosnian vicariate as well as against all adherents of the Roman Church. The list comprises eighteen “articles”: 1) the Serbs baptize Catholic Christians by using force, i.e., seizing possessions from some and incarcerating others; 2) the Serbian “metropolitan” and other clerics prevent the Bosnian heretics of the Patarene creed from converting to the Catholic faith, although these heretics would rather die than adopt the faith of the Serbs; 3) the Serbs mock the divine offices of the Catholics and “violently despise” the practice of bringing the Eucharist to the sick, which they consider an “abomi- 206 nable thing”;  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise 4) they don’t celebrate feasts instituted by the Roman Church nor do they allow the Catholics to celebrate them, imposing instead the observance of Thursdays and Fridays and some other feasts of the Serbs’ own choice; 5) they force the Catholics to violate their fast on the eve of various feasts, saints’ days, or Ember days, and they do not allow them to sell or eat meat on Wednes- day; 6) they force the Catholics to slaughter animals and prepare and sell meat on Saturday for the use of the Serbs, who eat meat on that day; 7) they disregard ecclesiastical immunity and don’t consider those who take re- fuge in a church to be free, but abduct them from there by force; 8) during the ritual of baptism, their monks and priests ask the candidates to re- nounce the Latin faith, fasting on Saturday, and a person named Peter Guignani (Et illi: abrenuntias Petrum Guignani? Et ille respondet: abrenuntio); 9) the Serbs believe that bears used to be men, and that the men of the Pharaoh’s army were turned into bears, and for that reason they don’t eat bear meat; 10) their priests say that the “Romans” (Catholics) have separated from their faith and that “Roman” faith is nothing but an offshoot of theirs; 11) they say their faith will be destroyed by the “Romans,” but that afterwards God will resuscitate it; 12) a person who kills a cat is required by the Serbs to fast on seventy (consecu- tive) Fridays for penance, the one who kills a dog has to fast on thirty Fridays, and the one who kills a “Christian” (i.e., Catholic?) on twelve Fridays only; 13) their baptismal formula is: May this servant of God be baptized in the name of the Father, amen; in the name of the Son, amen; in the name of the Holy Spirit, amen; 14) they only eat those animals which are killed by a blade, and would by no means eat a chicken or a bird strangled with bare hands or a rabbit killed by a dog, and they scoff at those Christians who eat such meat as if they fed on a carrion; 15) they do not care about the obedience to the pope, saying that the Serbian patriarch is their pope; 16) they despise indulgences granted by the churches and the pope, saying that they are without effect; 17) they say that the prayers of the Catholics are worthless and bring no good to them; 18) they disregard the feast of Corpus Christi and the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary except for Annunciation, Purification and Assumption. 207  Stanko Andrić Despot’s granddaughter – “re-baptized” as Orthodox? Though naturally one-sided, Capistran’s letter, recapitulated above, is the most important source for his relationship with the despot of Serbia. It shows that the two men’s meeting quickly developed into a more or less open conflict. Capistran’s denunciation came apparently after his failure to find some common ground in personal conversation with the despot. Now he attacked him with- out compromise. He took the first accusation, that of baptizing the Catholics by force, from the report he got from his Bosnian confreres. (The same accusation is repeated at the beginning of the list of Serbian “errors.”) However, the case of the despot’s granddaughter Elizabeth, which he knew of firsthand and stressed so much, was not a perfect illustration of this practice he found offensive. Capis- tran met Elizabeth personally, and he was obviously told about her history by her prospective father-in-law, John Hunyadi, or people around him. Yet their version of the story was incomplete and not entirely objective. When Despot George had Elizabeth “re-baptized” at his court, probably in Smederevo, he did not act in the arbitrary and malicious way that Capistran implied. His acts had a basis in an earlier agreement concluded between him and Hunyadi. In their long and turbulent relations, hostility and alliance followed each other, mostly dictated by the despot’s attempts to pursue a middle policy between the Hungarians and the Ottomans. A short-lived promise of peace and friendship between the two was reinforced in 1448 when Elizabeth became en- gaged to Hunyadi’s elder son, Ladislas. This engagement was an instrument of reconciliation between Hunyadi and the family of Elizabeth’s father Ulrich of Celje.17 In the summer of 1451, this politically motivated engagement was re- newed in a modified form within a broader settlement between Hunyadi and the despot. Now it was agreed that Elizabeth would marry Hunyadi’s younger son, Matthias. It was also stated that Elizabeth would remain in the Orthodox faith even after she married Matthias and that her entourage would consist of the priests of the Greek rite, as well as of the noble ladies chosen by the despot and his sons. This was the only part of the treaty more in the despot’s than in Hunyadi’s favour.18 The marriage was planned for the end of 1453, but it was later postponed and finally took place in August of 1455 (shortly after Elizabeth’s 17 THALLÓCZY and ÁLDÁSY, A Magyarország és Szerbia, op. cit., 149–150, no. 218. Cf. SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 395. 18 The settlement treaty was issued in two basically identical Latin versions, one for Hunyadi and the other for the despot, both dated on August 7, 1451. The first (here: A) is published in J. TELEKI, Hunyadiak kora Magyarországon, vols. 10–12 [Oklevéltár], Pesten 1853–1857, vol. 10, 305–312, no. 147, and the second (here: B) in G. FEJÉR, Genus, incunabula et virtus Joannis Corvini de Hunyad, regni Hungariae gubernatoris, argumentis criticis illustrata, Budae 1844, 149–157, no. 55. In A, the clause concerning Elizabeth’s Orthodox faith reads: Voluit tamen ipse dominus dezpotus (B: Volumus tamen), ut dum et quando volente Domino prefata puella Elizabet neptis sua (B: nostra) in domum dicti domini gubernatoris traducetur, ipsa in ritu fidei Grecorum permaneat et semper cum ea et in eius obsequiis stent presbiteri de Grecorum ritu nobilesque et eciam domine ac puelle, quos ipse videlicet dominus dezpotus et filii sui ad hoc eligere voluerint (B: quos nos et filii nostri ad hoc eligere maluerimus et voluerint) (TELEKI, Hunyadiak kora, op. cit., vol. 10, 307 = FEJÉR, Genus, incunabula et virtus, op. cit., 152). Cf. SPREMIĆ, 208 Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 428–430.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise meeting with Capistran), though it remained unconsummated and therefore never fully valid because the young bride died merely a few months later.19 The text of the agreement makes it clear that both parties considered Eliza- beth to be Orthodox. It also guaranteed that she would remain so in the future; therefore, the despot did not violate any rule in his later actions. Not only was his care to educate Elizabeth in the Orthodox faith legally justified, there was also nothing of a scandal in Elizabeth’s being Orthodox because her mother Cat- herine (Cantacuzena) was Orthodox, which she remained all of her life. Capis- tran’s choice of words (“born among the Catholics and baptized by her Catholic father...”) shows that he was aware of this latter fact, but preferred not to mention it explicitly. To conclude, it was Hunyadi, not Despot George, who disregarded their mutual agreement of 1451 and infringed on the other party’s rights. The “conversion” of Matthias Hunyadi’s fiancée to Catholicism was an unjust cause that Capistran contributed to actively by arranging that the girl be given the Catholic sacrament of confirmation. (Despot George was probably no longer in Győr in early July and thus he could not protest; he went to Vienna to meet King Ladislas V, and by September he was back in Smederevo.)20 Capistran’s account of this whole affair was quite biased, and it is hard to imagine that he would have taken a more balanced view even if he had been better informed.21 The Serbian despot as a papal protégé The second part of Capistran’s accusations is similarly dubious. Here again the despot could justify his position by a legal argument, which was provided by nothing less than a papal bull. Relying on this bull, the despot, as Capistran put it, “spreads his wings using various pretexts” (multis argumentis dilatat fim- brias suas). For example, George planned to found nine Orthodox monasteries in Hungary. It is not clear whether the bull that allowed this was identical with the one that Capistran was able to read and copy. Capistran’s report can be un- derstood either way, and a bull of such specific content is not otherwise known.22 The bull of Pope Nicholas V, which the despot showed to Capistran, was, in all probability, the well-known bull of October 24, 1453. It was obtained by the despot’s ambassador Junije Gradić ( Junius de Gradibus) from Dubrovnik, who in the autumn of 1453 travelled to Naples and Rome on the diplomatic mission of trying to gain some support for Serbia in the aftermath of the Ottoman con- 19 Matthias Corvinus, the king: tradition and renewal in the Hungarian royal court, 1458–1490. Exhibition catalogue, ed. Péter Farbaky et al., Budapest 2008, 247 (text by Orsolya Réthelyi). 20 SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 535–9. 21 In spite of this, Capistran’s biased account is treated as a trustworthy and sufficient presentation of facts even in some present-day historical works: cf. F. ŠANJEK, Heterodoksno kršćanstvo u našim krajevima u Kapistranovo doba, Croatica christiana periodica XI, no. 19, 1987, 89–90 (the same is repeated in idem, Crkva i kršćanstvo u Hrvata. Srednji vijek, 2nd ed., Zagreb 1993, 395–6; idem, ‘Krstjani’ crkve bosanske, Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 32–33, 1999–2000, 427–8). 22 In Istorija srpskog naroda, op. cit., vol. 2, 444 and n. 35, Sima Ćirković thinks that the bull shown to Capistran contained the reference to monasteries, but this is not entirely evident. 209  Stanko Andrić quest of Constantinople (May 29, 1453). With the help of the recommendations of King Alphonse V, Gradić was cordially received at the papal curia, and Pope Nicholas V issued a very favourable bull for the despot. Calling him “our beloved son,” the pope demanded all Christian rulers, lords, communities and institu- tions to help the despot in his fight against the Turks, and he threatened with anathema those who disturbed him in any way, alluding to some destruction of paintings in the despot’s churches. Although the despot adhered to the Greek faith, the pope stressed that he had joined the union with the Latin Church pro- claimed at the council of Florence.23 There is one more letter sent by Pope Nicholas V to Despot George that we know of, but it was a simple granting of a free pass (salvus conductus), issued in late March 1454 for the purpose of travel planned by the despot and his family.24 Apart from this, the despot is mentioned in only a few other papal documents from Nicholas V’s pontificate. Two of those, if compared, reveal a change in the way the Serbian ruler was perceived from the Holy See. On April 12, 1450, the pope released Hunyadi and some other Hungarian lords from their obligations towards the despot that they had taken on during Hunyadi’s imprisonment in Smederevo in late 1448. Hunyadi was freed from the despot’s custody only after Hungarian representatives had promised, in a written form and under oath, to pay war reparations and give other concessions to the despot; the fulfilment of this agreement had to be guaranteed by leaving Hunyadi’s son Ladislas in the hands of the despot as a hostage. Pope Nicholas V condemned these acts of the Serbian despot as “unfair, inhuman, irrational and unbecoming”.25 Four years later, the bull of July 30, 1454, shows the despot in quite a differ- ent light. This papal decree, which proclaimed that the archbishop of Esztergom had no supremacy over the archbishop of Kalocsa, was issued in response to the petition of King Ladislas V, Despot George of Serbia, Count John Hunyadi and other Hungarian dignitaries.26 In this case, the despot was treated as a respected member of the political hierarchy in a Catholic country who had a right to exert an influence on its church organization. None of the known bulls, however, suits Capistran’s description better than the aforementioned one of October 24, 1453. Its resolute defense of the des- 23 The text of the bull is in G. HOFMANN, Epistolae pontificiae ad Concilium Florentinum spectantes, 3 vols. (= Concilium Florentinum: documenta et scriptores, Series A, vol. I), Roma 1940–1946, vol. 3, 142–4, no. 307. Cf. P. LUKCSICS, Diplomata pontificum saeculi XV / XV. századi pápák oklevelei, 2 vols., Budapest 1931–1938, vol. 2, 324, no. 1329. For King Alphonse’s letter of recommendation, see THALLÓCZY and ÁLDÁSY, A Magyarország és Szerbia, op. cit., 171–2, no. 244. Cf. SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 478–480. 24 LUKCSICS, Diplomata pontificum, op. cit., vol. 2, 325, no. 1333. 25 IDEM, vol. 2, 277, no. 1103 (short summary of the bull). For details about this period in the relations between Hunyadi and the despot, see SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 398–412; Istorija srpskog naroda, op. cit., vol. 2, 263–7. 26 LUKCSICS, Diplomata pontificum, op. cit., 2: 326, no. 1337. This bull, including the names of the three highest petitioners, was summarily quoted in 1513 by Pope Leo X when he confirmed the rights of the archbishop of Esztergom as the metropolitan of Hungary and a papal legate: A. THEINER, Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram 210 illustrantia, 2 vols., Romae 1859–1860, vol. 2, 597–606, no. 803 (especially p. 605).  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise pot, his possessions, and his holy places from any (presumably Catholic) abuse is close enough to what the despot himself could view as the papal recognition of his faith. A puzzling point in this bull is its claim that the despot was one of the Eastern adherents of the Florentine union.27 In fact, his participation in the ecu- menical council of Ferrara and Florence, in 1438–9, either in person or through a representative, cannot be confirmed by sufficient evidence. Branković and the Union of Florence (1439) The idea of the re-union of the Roman and the Greek Churches was eagerly promoted not only by Pope Eugene IV (1431–1447), but, also, mostly for po- litical reasons, by Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus (1425–1448). The large delegation of Eastern churchmen who attended the council included the patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II, as well as the archbishop of Kiev and the metropolitan of “all Russia,” Isidore. After many months of discussions on the main points of controversy between the Eastern and the Western theologies (the procession of the Holy Spirit or the “Filioque” clause, the form of the Eucharist, the doctrine of Purgatory, and the primacy of the pope), a general compromise was reached for the sake of which the Greeks had to yield more ground than the Latins. The Decree of Union, known in Latin as “Laetentur coeli,” was pub- licly proclaimed on July 6, 1439, in the cathedral of Florence in both Latin and Greek. All the Orthodox churchmen except one (the metropolitan of Ephesus) signed it; however, when the emperor and the delegates returned home, their ac- ceptance of the union with Rome was widely condemned and soon the Ottoman victory against the Western crusade at Varna in 1444 ruined Byzantine hopes for political gains resulting from the union. The solemn promulgation of the Union Decree in Constantinople’s Saint Sophia was postponed until the end of 1452, and even then it was an empty ceremony which only showed how widespread and deep-rooted was the hostility of the Byzantine clergy and people towards the union with Rome.28 Preliminary negotiations about a common Catholic-Orthodox synod and a possible union, which were going on during most of the 1430s, were complicated on the Catholic side by the rivalry between Pope Eugene IV and the Council of Basel, which the pope’s predecessor, Martin V, had convoked shortly before his death. Both Eugene IV and the council sought to bring Orthodox leaders to a meeting organized at a place of their respective preference. A number of envoys travelled between both parties and Constantinople. At least one of these delega- tions made the journey through Serbia. When the famous Burgundian pilgrim 27 HOFMANN, Epistolae pontificiae, op. cit., vol. 3, 144: Ceterum cum dispotus ipse cum suis amplectatur et teneat formam fidei, que in sacro ycumenico concilio Florentino ab Occidentali et Orientali ecclesia, que ibi convenit, diffinita est, volumus et apostolica auctoritate mandamus (...). 28 On the council of Ferrara and Florence, see J. GILL, The council of Florence, Cambridge 1959, and idem, Personalities of the council of Florence, and other essays, Oxford 1964. For basic facts about the council, see also Velika povijest Crkve [original title: Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte], ed. Hubert Jedin, 8 vols., trans. J. Ritig, L.  Držić, V. Bajsić and I. Tomljenović, Zagreb 1971–2004, III/2, 542–4 (text by K. A. Fink) and 556–561 (text by H.-G. Beck). 211  Stanko Andrić to the Holy Land, Bertrandon de la Broquière, on his way back to Europe in 1433, was received by Despot George in his summer residence at Nekudim, he saw there “a bishop and a master of theology, who were travelling to Constanti- nople as envoys of the holy council of Basel.”29 Branković was therefore, as early as 1433, at least informed about the current preparations for the union, and he was probably also invited from the Catholic side to take part in the forthcoming synod. It is known that Emperor John VIII sought to involve the Serbian despot in the council of union. With this purpose, the emperor sent an envoy to the despot in 1436, in the person of Andronicus Cantacuzenus, who was a brother of the despot’s wife, Irene. The envoy tried to persuade the despot to send a delegate to the future council or at least to issue a written consent to the union. The despot refused to do any of these, according to Sylvester Syropoulos, a church dignitary of Constantinople who in his Memoirs (written 1450–3) briefly described Can- tacuzenus’ Serbian mission. A younger version of Syropoulos’ work adds that the Serbian despot explained his refusal to send a delegation to the council by his being well acquainted with the “Latins,” with whom he maintained frequent relations; precisely because he was well aware of “their language, intentions, and customs,” he saw no need to take part in the council.30 Strictly speaking, Syropoulos only testifies to the fact that the despot did not intend to take part in the council of union. Thus, he does not necessarily contradict the claims that the despot eventually did take part, which are only found in Western sources. One such source is the quoted bull of Pope Nicholas V from 1453, which stated that the despot had accepted the union of Florence. This seems to suggest that he joined the union afterwards and not necessarily that he was involved in the council itself. More specific is the testimony of An- drew of Santacroce, advocate of the Apostolic Consistory, in his contemporary treatise about the Florentine council, composed in the form of a dialogue. An- drew claims that the despot was present beside the emperor at the opening of the council.31 Although this claim has been evaluated in recent historiography as “completely inaccurate,”32 it could not be proven wrong by obvious evidence 29 Quoted after B. de la BROKIJER, Putovanje preko mora [original title: B. de la Broquière, Le voyage d’Outremer], M. Rajičić (transl.), Beograd 1950 (reprint 2002), 109. 30 V. LAURENT, Les “Mémoires” du grand ecclésiarque de l’église de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le Concile de Florence (1438–1439) (= Concilium Florentinum: documenta et scriptores, Series B, vol. IX), Roma 1971, 164–5 (Syropoulos’ original text) and 598–9 (“redaction B”, i. e. the younger version, from the end of the 15th c.). Cf. I. ĐURIĆ, Sumrak Vizantije. Vreme Jovana VIII Paleologa (1392–1448), 2nd ed., Zagreb 1989, 257–8; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 260–271. Syropoulos, whose work later became known under an ingenious Latin title, Historia vera unionis non verae, took part at the council of Ferrara-Florence as a follower of the leading anti-Unionist, the metropolitan of Ephesus Mark Eugenicus. 31 A. de SANTACROCE, Acta Latina Concilii Florentini, Georgius Hofmann (ed.), (= Con- cilium Florentinum: documenta et scriptores, Series B, vol. VI), Roma 1955, 30: Seculares quidam Grecorum prope imperatoris tribunal in scamno quodam prope terram consederant, in oppositum assistentium summi pontifici; primo dispotus Servie (...). 32 ĐURIĆ, Sumrak Vizantije, op. cit., 258, n. 178; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 212 480, n. 71.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise because there are no data on the despot’s whereabouts for the period around the date of the opening of the council. At least theoretically, the despot could have been in Ferrara on April 9, 1438.33 Besides these two sources, there is also some circumstantial evidence for the despot’s involvement in the Florentine union, such as the fact that Pope Eugene IV mentioned Serbia’s ruler in benevolent terms soon afterwards, at the beginning of 1443, calling him a “beloved son” and deploring the sufferings of his country at the hands of the Turks.34 More than Syropoulos’ report about the unsuccessful mission of Androni- cus Cantacuzenus, it is the scarcity of confirming data in relevant sources that most strongly suggests the despot’s absence from the council. The question must for the time being remain unresolved. The non-attendance of Serbian delegates at the council, where not only the Greeks and the three Oriental patriarchates (Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria), but also the churches of Russia, Moldavia and Georgia were represented, would in any case be curious. If it was a fact, it could probably be explained by a combination of political reasons (such as war and disorder in Serbia; complex relations of the despot with the Turks; and the opposition of the late Hungarian king Sigismund, despot’s suzerain, to a council organized by the pope alone) and also the religious attitudes of the despot him- self.35 It is known that Despot George was close to the anti-Western Hesychasts and it appears that he generally avoided dialogue with the Catholics on matters of faith. He was not just a conventionally devout Orthodox Christian ruler who built and decorated churches and endowed monasteries with lands and revenues, but also, by several indications, a genuinely religious person, seriously interested in the teachings of his faith and a firm adherent of its tradition-hallowed creeds and injunctions.36 Thus, for example, Branković sent a letter with fifteen various theological and canonical questions to, and received written answers from, Gen- nadius II Scholarius, the first patriarch of Constantinople under the Ottoman rule (1454 – 1464). This correspondence with the learned patriarch, who was a prolific writer and an important Aristotelian philosopher, apparently took place in 1455–6, shortly after the despot’s meeting with Capistran.37 33 For the lack of data on the despot’s activity in the spring of 1438, cf. SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 244–7. 34 HOFMANN, Epistolae pontificiae, op. cit., 3: 68–75, no. 261, esp. p. 70. 35 ĐURIĆ, Sumrak Vizantije, op. cit., 258–9, favours political conditions in explaining Serbia’s absence from the council of union. SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 269–271, thinks that the religious profile of the despot was the deciding factor. See also SPREMIĆ, Srbi i Florentinska unija crkava 1439. godine, ZRVI 24–25, 1986, 413–422. 36 A detailed historical portrait of the despot as a religious ruler is provided by V. MILIVOJEVIĆ, Pravoslavlje despota Đurđa Brankovića, Šumadijski anali 6, 2011, 12–35. 37 On these responses of patriarch Gennadius II to Despot George, see G. PODSKALSKI, Srednjovekovna teološka književnost u Bugarskoj i Srbiji (865–1459) [original title: G. POD- SKALSKY, Theologische Literatur des Mittelalters in Bulgarien und Serbien, 865–1459], T. Tropin and D. Aničić (transl.), Beograd 2010, 285, 321–2, 602–603. For a probable historical context of this correspondence, see SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 544–546; MILIVOJEVIĆ, Pravoslavlje despota Đurđa, op. cit., 33. Patriarch Gennadius, then still a layman named Georgios, had taken part in the council of Ferrara-Florence as a member of the Byzantine delegation, and he supported the union at that time, changing his attitude only afterwards. On this point, see C. J. G. TURNER, George Gennadius Scholarius and the 213  Stanko Andrić The time of the council in Ferrara and Florence was a disastrous period for the despot’s Serbia. The devastating incursion of Hungarian troops on the Otto- man territory in June 1437, which made famous the name of John Hunyadi, pro- voked retribution against Serbia and forced the despot to cede the affluent town of Braničevo to Sultan Murâd II. The despot also had to lend auxiliary troops to the sultan’s army, which proceeded to plunder Transylvania in the summer of 1438. Murâd went on to ravage Serbia once more, and the despot had to make new territorial concessions. They did not help; in 1439, Murâd decided to re- move the unreliable buffer state and lead a large offensive in which he conquered most of Serbia, including the despot’s capital Smederevo. The despot withdrew to Hungary, leaving his eldest son to conduct the defense. George spent the sum- mer of 1439 in the following of Hungarian King Albert of Habsburg, who strove in vain to help hold back the Turkish conquest of Serbia. Under such circum- stances, the Council of Florence and its proclamation of the church union were most likely far from the despot’s mind.38 When Sultan Murâd II continued his military advance in 1440 by laying siege to the Hungarian fortress of Belgrade (this was the first of the three great Turkish sieges of the fortress), the despot and his entourage were a long way from their homeland. In the early months of 1440 he was involved in the dy- nastic struggle between the newly elected Hungarian king Wladislas I Jagello on one side and the widow and posthumous son of the late King Albert on the other. Along with his son-in-law Ulrich of Celje, the despot endorsed the lat- ter camp, and he even tried to marry his youngest son Lazarus to the widow queen Elizabeth. Being favoured by most of the Hungarian military aristocracy, King Wladislas prevailed and the despot found himself losing many of his pos- sessions in Hungary. Facing yet another political failure, in May 1440, the despot went to Italy and from there, with the Venetian help, to Dubrovnik and Zeta (Montenegro).39 While he was in Hungary-Croatia, the despot seems to have stayed mostly on the domains of his son-in-law and daughter Catherine, and more precisely in Zagreb. This is confirmed by a source that is in itself very interesting for our present subject. It is the anonymous Russian report about the participation of Isidore, archbishop of Kiev, at the council of Florence. The report includes the description of Isidore’s travel to Italy and back to Russia. His way back led him through Venice, Istria and the Croatian towns of Senj, Brinje, Modruš and Ozalj before he arrived to Zagreb in February 1440. Here he saw Council of Florence, Journal of theological studies, n. s. 18, 1967, 83–103. The assertion that Scholarius was “an opponent of the union with the Latins” (as in SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 544) could therefore be more nuanced. Parenthetically, Podskalsky’s substantial book in its Serbian translation contains a number of bibliographical updates and minor corrections with regard to the German original of 2000, but, curiously, references to two different men named George Branković have remained lumped together in its name index too (fifteenth-century despot George/Đurađ and his seventeenth-century namesake, count and self-styled despot Đorđe Branković). 38 For the Ottoman wars against Serbia in 1437–9, see SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 239–259; Istorija srpskog naroda, op. cit., vol. 2, 244–250. 39 About the despot’s political activities between late 1439 and the middle of 1441, see 214 SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, 272–303, op. cit.; Istorija srpskog naroda, op. cit., vol. 2, 250–3.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise the Serbian despot and his family, “because their Serbian realm (царьство) has been captured by the Turkish emperor Murâd.”40 In recognition of his role in the achievement of the Catholic-Orthodox union, the pope appointed Metropolitan Isidore a cardinal and the papal legate to Lithuania, Livonia and Russia. Isidore’s subsequent fate is well known. Back in Russia, he was decried as a betrayer of Orthodoxy, deposed and imprisoned in 1441 by Tsar Basil II; afterwards, he returned to Italy and continued to work on strengthening the union. In 1452, he solemnly proclaimed the union decree in Constantinople’s Saint Sophia. The next year, Isidore witnessed the fall of the Byzantine capital and was taken prisoner by the Turks, later managing to escape. He died in Rome in 1463 as the Latin patriarch of Constantinople and a diligent humanist scholar.41 These facts make it possible to formulate a plausible hypothesis about the origin of the information found in Pope Nicholas V’s bull of 1453. Although not explicitly stated in the report, it is quite possible that the Russian delegation led by Isidore got in touch with the despot and that some in- formation and views about the council of union were exchanged between them. The despot himself would have presumably been keen to meet the prelate who was the metropolitan of Russia and a Roman cardinal in one person. Isidore, who remained staunchly devoted to the union of the Churches during all his life, could have been the one who informed the Holy See about the favourable opinion of the Serbian despot. This opinion could have been intimated to Isidore in Zagreb in early 1440. In this most turbulent period of his life, despot George was clutching at straws while trying to rescue his family and his state. Had he thought that join- ing the union with the Roman Church would make a difference for him, it is improbable that he would have chosen otherwise. Even if he had accepted the union in some way, though, eventually, in the course of the early 1440s, he had to conclude that it could not benefit him or Serbia. In 1444, George managed to re-establish his realm not by taking part in a Western crusade against the Turks, but by becoming a tributary vassal and an “eternal friend” of the sultan. The remaining fifteen years of Serbia’s survival depended primarily on the quality of this relationship. During most of that time, the despot was in a position to prefer forgetting about his past involvement in the Florentine union, if indeed there had been any. Catholic-Orthodox relations in a troubled region As described above, the second half of Capistran’s letter from Győr consists of a list of Serbian “errors.” In its form, it is a conventional catalogue of heretical 40 J. KRAJCAR, Acta Slavica Concilii Florentini. Narrationes et documenta (= Concilium Florentinum: documenta et scriptores, XI), Roma 1976, 37. Cf. SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 269; ĐURIĆ, Sumrak Vizantije, op. cit., 264, n. 203. The despot’s stay in Zagreb is also mentioned by later chroniclers Maurus Orbini and Jacobus Luccari (Lukarević) (SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 277, n. 13). 41 For Isidore’s biography, see Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vols. 1ff, Paris 1912ff, 26: col. 197–201; ODB, chief ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan, 3 vols., New York – Oxford, 1991, vol. 2, 1015–6. 215  Stanko Andrić teachings and practices, the kind of which was often produced by medieval theo- logians and inquisitors who were dealing with religious groups separated from the established dogma. Capistran’s introductory remarks make it clear that the Observant Franciscans of the Bosnian vicariate had provided the information used in the articuli. Although based on the Bosnian friars’ complaints against the Serbs, it can be presumed that Capistran himself arranged the catalogue. It is not ordered in a particularly logical or systematic way, however. Various categories of religious reproaches are mixed together without much attention for distinguishing practices from teachings and popular beliefs, or various forms of anti-Catholic activity from those features of the Serbian Orthodoxy that were merely different from the Catholic creed and observances. On the other hand, the catalogue is generally conforming to Capistran’s claim that it lists only those “errors” in which the Serbs exceed the errors of the Greeks. Thus it does not touch upon the problem of Purgatory, the form of the Eucharist and the Filioque controversy. As for the primacy of the pope, the question is actually raised in the article 15 (which says that the Serbs disregard the pope’s authority and consider their own patriarch as their “pope”). If Capistran regarded this point as another example of the Serbs’ going “beyond” the Greeks, it can be explained by the fact that, for the Greeks, the supreme authority over the Churches consisted in the pentarchy of the five ancient patriarchates (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem), which did not include the patriarchate of Serbia.42 From the assortment of remaining points in the catalogue, three main groups of reproaches can be distinguished, although many of the listed “errors” cannot be taken as clearly belonging to one category only. A classification that would take into account this vagueness could look like the following: actions and views which are explicitly aimed against the Catholics (articles 1–8, 10, 12, 15–17), ranging from the forcible baptism of the Catholics or imposing on them the Serbian calendar of dietary observances to the opi- nion that Catholic prayers and indulgences are useless; religious observances and theological ideas which differ from their respec- tive counterparts in Catholicism (articles 3, 7, 10, 13–16, 18), such as the at- titude towards the communion of the sick and the legal immunity of the sa- cred spaces, a different baptismal formula, or the notion that the “Roman” faith is derived from the more ancient and more authentic Orthodoxy; popular beliefs and practices which are not based on the official Orthodox teachings (articles 9, 11, 12, 14), including the prediction about the future fate of the Orthodoxy, refusal to eat the meat of the animals killed without letting their blood, prescription of more severe religious penances for kill- ing certain animals than for killing a “Christian” (i.e., Catholic?), and the particularly colourful belief about the human and Biblical origins of bears. 42 At the council of Florence, the Greek party accepted the Pope’s primacy and his right to govern the Church as a whole, but without infringement of the privileges and rights of the patriarchs of the East, he of Constantinople to be second after the pope, then the Alexandrine, after him the one of Antioch, then the one of Jerusalem, according to 216 GILL, The council of Florence, op. cit., 284; cf. Velika povijest Crkve, op. cit., III/2, 544.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise About two thirds of the listed “errors” are more or less openly anti-Catholic in their contents. The catalogue is thus meant to testify to the general hostility of Serbian Orthodoxy towards the Latin faith. Although this picture comes from a certainly biased Catholic source, its allegations are in all probability not simply invented. However, it can be argued that they are subjective, i.e., produced by someone selective and willing to generalize from individual cases. Such could very well be the mindset of the Observant Franciscans in those parts of Bosnia that were increasingly becoming the area of conflicts and frictions between the Catholicism and the Orthodoxy during the first half of the 15th century. One such battleground was the region in the north between Bosnia and Serbia, along the Drina, around the important silver-mining town of Srebrenica and the similarly important intersection of trade routes in Zvonik (now Zvornik). In 1411, the Hungarian king Sigismund gave Srebrenica to the Serbian despot Stephen Lazarević and all the later attempts of the Bosnian kings to regain the prosperous town remained fruitless, or their results were short-lived at best. In 1432, Despot George seized Zvonik. After its first fall under the Turkish rule in 1439, the medieval Serbian state was resurrected in 1444 thanks to a combi- nation of several major factors (the successful “long campaign” in the Balkans led by the Hungarian king and Hunyadi, the problems the Ottoman Empire was facing in Anatolia, and the diplomatic skills of the Serbian despot). In the meantime, Bosnian king Stephen Thomas Kotromanić retook the rich mines of Srebrenica, and the town again became an apple of discord between the king and the despot. The cause was brought before the Hungarian diet at Buda in June 1449, where Stephen Thomas relied on his alliance with the Hungarians and his loyalty to the Holy See in defending his rights. In the spring of 1450, the papal curia empowered the archbishop of Esztergom to mediate a peace between the Bosnian king and the Serbian despot. When the peace was actually made in July 1451, though, the king was a weaker party, only because the despot had better relations with and more influence at the sultan’s court. The Bosnian ruler was happy to pay for the new alliance by renouncing Srebrenica, which he had controlled since 1449.43 As early as the 14th century, both Zvonik and Srebrenica had Franciscan monasteries that belonged to the custody of Mačva (Hung. Macsó) of the Bos- nian vicariate.44 The religious situation in this disputed area of Eastern Bosnia must have been very close to the conditions that are, albeit one-sidedly, reflected in Capistran’s catalogue of the Serbian “errors.” The general dependability of this source is confirmed by what we know about general developments within Serbian Orthodoxy in the Middle Ages. 43 Istorija srpskog naroda, op. cit., vol. 2, 256–260; S. ĆIRKOVIĆ, Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske države, Beograd 1964, 279–281, 289–290; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 409–412, 434–5. For the papal letter of March 1, 1450, to the archbishop of Esztergom, see LUKCSICS, Diplomata pontificum, op. cit., vol. 2, 274, no. 1087. 44 D. KOVAČEVIĆ-KOJIĆ, Gradska naselja srednjovjekovne bosanske države, Sarajevo 1978, 56–60; ĆIRKOVIĆ, Istorija srednjovekovne, op. cit., 213–5, 265; A. ZIRDUM, Karta srednjovjekovnih crkava na tlu Bosne i Hercegovine, Bosna Franciscana IX, no. 15, 2001, 191–2, no. 252, and 199–200, no. 312. 217  Stanko Andrić From the first half of the 14th century, it had become more anti-Latin, partly due to the influences of the Byzantine anti-Western polemic (mediated primarily by the monks of the Serb monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos in Greece), and partly because of the conflicts with Hungary under the Angevines. The ele- vation of the self-governing Serbian archdiocese to the rank of a patriarchate, under the king and tsar Stephen Dušan (1331–55), coincided with the promul- gation of the new law-code which openly spoke of “the Latin heresy” and rigo- rously forbade conversions to Catholicism.45 The likelihood that the Serbian despot behaved as an Orthodox militant or endorsed such militancy in his frontier area with Bosnia is not necessarily con- tradicted by the fact that at other places he acted as a patron of the Franciscans. In Hungary, he was expected to comport himself as a member of the baronial elite, and it is therefore no surprise that in 1438 he founded a Franciscan convent near the town of Asszonypataka (now Baia Mare) in the North-Eastern county of Szatmár, which was in his possession at the time. He assigned the new monastery to the Bosnian (Observant) Franciscans, the same who some time later com- plained to Capistran of the general hostility of the Serbian Church and people towards the Catholics.46 Branković and Capistran in the writings of Enea Silvio Piccolomini Capistran’s letter to Pope Callistus III is not the only source for his discus- sion with the Serbian despot in Győr. Enea Silvio Piccolomini described it in some detail in his On Europe (De Europa or De statu Europae sub Friderico III), completed in 1458, the same year he was elected pope as Pius II. In On Europe, Piccolomini provided a short survey of the recent history of Serbia un- der Despot George and his sons, inserting it into a broader narrative on the expansion of the Ottoman state and its military advances in Europe. Speaking of Sultan Murâd II, at one point he switches to the sultan’s father-in-law, Despot George (the despot’s elder daughter, Mara, was given to Murâd in 1435). Pic- colomini opens the digression by describing the first fall of Smederevo (in 1439) and then writes about Hunyadi’s imprisonment by the despot (in 1448), of which he wrongly believed that it followed the Christian defeat at Varna. Although the despot subsequently took care to inform the sultan about an expedition orga- nized by Hunyadi, thereby causing another rout of the Christians, he neverthe- less fled once more to Hungary when the Turks invaded his country after the fall of Constantinople. As Piccolomini relates, the despot then rushed as far as Austria, where he met king Ladislas V. He was at that time a very old man and, in Piccolomini’s words, spoke with such authority and still had so majestic bodily appearance that he would have deserved to be revered, if only his attitudes in religious matters had been correct. The despot was approached – Piccolomini’s 45 For these general observations, see Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, chief ed. M. Krleža, 8 vols., Zagreb 1955–1971, vol. 6, s. v. “Pravoslavna Crkva”, esp. p. 590 (by S. ĆIRKOVIĆ). 46 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 11, 419, no. 47; FERMENDŽIN, Acta Bosnae, op. cit., 169, no. 777; KARÁCSONYI, Szent Ferencz rendjének, op. cit., vol. 2, 121–4; B. F. ROMHÁNYI, Kolostorok és társaskáptalanok a középkori Magyarországon. 218 Katalógus, Budapest 2000, 9, s. v. Asszonypataka.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise text conveys the inaccurate impression that this too happened in Vienna – by John Capistran of the Friars Minor, “renowned in our times among the preach- ers of the Gospel for his pure life.” The despot agreed to talk to Capistran, and, with the assistance of an interpreter, Capistran explained to him the Catholic teachings, after which the two had a long discussion on sacred subjects. The bot- tom line of all this was Capistran’s attempt to persuade the despot to relinquish “the errors of his nation.” The despot famously replied that he was ninety years old and had never held a religion different from the one which his parents had taught him; his “citizens” so far considered him a wise man, though unfortunate, while Capistran now wanted to make him an old fool; he would rather die by hanging than abandon the tradition of his fathers. Having said this, the despot withdrew. Piccolomini continues to narrate George’s later confrontation with the Hungarian captain of Belgrade, Michael of Szilágy, in which the despot was wounded and imprisoned (in late 1455 and early 1456). This accident, according to Piccolomini, eventually caused the despot’s death.47 The proud demeanor with which despot George faced Capistran’s proposal was destined to become a famous historical episode, especially in Serbian histo- riography. It must be noted, however, that it has been quoted in most modern literature not on the basis of Piccolomini’s original text, but rather after its more recent retelling in the renowned Il regno degli Slavi (1601) by Mauro Orbini, a Benedictine monk from Dubrovnik. In this work, Orbini did not merely render the original story into Italian and into a much poorer style, but he also slightly modified it with a few inauthentic details, such as the statement that Capistran invited the despot to unite with the Roman Church “together with his people” (con la sua gente).48 Piccolomini’s account is a telling supplement to Capistran’s report about his discussion with the despot. Although Capistran didn’t mention explicitly his at- tempt to induce the despot to embrace the Catholic faith, this is actually implied in his remarks about the Serb’s obstinacy in keeping to his “errors,” as well as in 47 Enee Silvii Piccolominei postea Pii PP. II De Europa, Adrianus van Heck (ed. ) (Studi e testi, 398), Città del Vaticano 2001, 67–68. The passage concerning the discussion between Capistran and the despot reads: Cum vero Turci Constantinopolim evicissent atque in Serviam ducere minarentur, secundo auxilia petens ad Hungaros transit et in Austriam usque profectus Ladislaum adiit regem, grandevus iam senex, dignus veneratu, si recta de religione sensisset: ea in eo sermonis auctoritas, ea corporis maiestas fuit. Accessit hunc Ioannes Capistranius ordinis Minorum professor, vite munditia et inter predicatores Evangelii nostro tempore insignis; quesivit an audire se vellet, annuenti quod Romana ecclesia credit et docet exposuit. Diu secum per interpretem de sacris eloquiis disputavit; ut errorem sue gentis relinqueret, magnopere cohortatus est. Ille hoc denique responsum dedit: “Annis nonaginta vitam produxi nec aliam religionem, quam suscepi a patribus, novi. Sapientem me cives mei, quamvis infelicem, hactenus putavere. Tu nunc, quod sepe agitant senes, delyrum efficere cupis. Laqueo vitam finire malim quam patrum traditiones relinquere.” Atque his dictis e conspectu abiit. Tam periculosum est religionem imbuisse dampnatam. 48 M. ORBINI, Il regno degli Slavi. Pesaro 1601, reprint edited by S. Ćirković and P.  Rehder, München 1985, 339; M. ORBINI, Kraljevstvo Slovena, Z. Šundrica (transl.), S. Ćirković et al. (eds.), Beograd 1968, 126–7; M. ORBINI, Kraljevstvo Slavena, trans. S. Husić, ed. F. Šanjek, Zagreb 1999, 400. In his summary of the episode, SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 530, also gives some details, which are not based on Piccolomini’s text. 219  Stanko Andrić the earlier mention that the despot “persisted in his faith.” It is possible that, in their long conversation about religion, Capistran also collected some arguments for his accusation of the despot for holding a very bad opinion on the Catholic faith.49 Yet, Piccolomini’s account, which shows the despot taking an essentially defensive line, seems more realistic. The main argument with which the despot repudiated Capistran’s proposal was not a pretended spiritual or theological su- periority of Orthodoxy over Catholicism, but rather a simple fact that the former happened to be the faith in which he was raised and lived all his long life. The despot refused to renounce it because for him it represented the patrum traditio- nes. The main argument of the despot’s reply to Capistran thus echoes the last- ditch reasoning which the Byzantines opposed to the Westerners in theological debates concerning the union: the tradition, the “faith of the fathers,” is a value in itself and must not be given up.50 In his response to Capistran as reported by Piccolomini, the despot appears reasonable, dignified, and, given his grievous political and personal situation, almost heroic. For a moment it would seem that the chronicler took sides with the despot in this confrontation: could it be that Piccolomini was biased against Capistran? The learned humanist churchman mentioned Capistran in several of his historical works, not always in entirely laudable terms. In particular he reproached Capistran for being avid for fame. One example of this is found in De Europa itself.51 It is not unimaginable that Piccolomini could enjoy showing how Capistran failed to win over a proud ruler of a small and unfortunate Orthodox country in the “Illyricum.” He obviously didn’t have much sympathy with the despot either. Having quoted the latter’s retort to Capistran, Piccolomini made this terse comment: “This shows how perilous it is to be imbued with a damned religion.” He also wrote about Branković’s suspecta fides, in a double meaning of this expression: that of uncertain loyalty, because the despot was an unreliable ally both to the Turks and to the Hungarians, and that of doubtful and undefined religious faith, because “neither he listened to the Roman Church, nor did he follow the law of Muhammad.” In his final sentence about the despot, describing his death, Piccolomini calls him a “perfidious man” (atque hic perfidi hominis exitus fuit).52 Thus it is precisely Piccolomini who stands at the beginning of a series of Western historical writers who perpetuated this negative image of the Serbian despot.53 49 FERMENDŽIN, Acta Bosnae, op. cit., 224: inveni eum adeo male sentientem de fide catholica, et in erroribus suis pertinaci duritia perseverantem (...). 50 Cf. Velika povijest Crkve, op. cit., III/2, 572, 575 (text by H.-G. Beck). 51 PICCOLOMINI, De Europa, op. cit., 83–84. Piccolomini repeated this reproach in his Historia Bohemica (Aeneas Silvius PICCOLOMINI, Historia Bohemica, J. Hejnic and H. Rothe (eds.), 3 vols. (= Bausteine zur slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte, Reihe B. Editionen, n. F. vol. 20), Köln – Weimar – Wien 2005, vol. 1, 576). Cf. S. ANDRIĆ, The miracles of St. John Capistran, Budapest 2000, 87–88. 52 PICCOLOMINI, De Europa, 68. 53 See some quotations from these authors in SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 533– 5, who is wrong in noting that Piccolomini “did not blame [the despot], unlike later writers”. 220  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise Piccolomini’s account seems to be generally trustworthy, corresponding ap- propriately with Capistran’s letter. The meeting between Capistran and the des- pot must have been a relatively well-known episode at that time, both among the Franciscans and the participants of the diet in Győr, and there are many ways by which the story could have reached Piccolomini, then bishop of Siena and an imperial diplomat. Between 1451 and 1456, Piccolomini exchanged numerous letters with Capistran himself.54 He also had contacts with Capistran’s closest entourage, as it is shown by an extensive letter that Capistran’s companions sent him from Vienna on New Year’s Day, 1457, shortly after the friar’s death.55 Al- though an essentially reliable source, Piccolomini was not necessarily accurate in all the details. Thus, for example, he has the despot saying that he was ninety years old; in reality, he was probably ten years younger than that.56 Overall, Capistran’s confrontation with the Serbian despot in Győr is il- lustrative of the friar’s character and attitude in religious matters and otherwise. Not only he was an implacable and intolerant dogmatist, but he also willingly tracked down and fought against any form of dissension. In this struggle he was constantly setting himself various tasks, in relation to which he always had a “maximalist” approach, never considering an obstacle so great that he, with God’s help, could not overcome it. When he did occasionally face insurmount- able resistance, he remembered it bitterly and was not above responding venge- fully. No one before him had the temerity to propose the Serbian despot become Catholic. This was hardly an act of bravery, however; Capistran’s opponent was already on his knees, praying desperately for an urgent help against the Turks. Only when the despot declined to convert did Capistran launch an array of accu- sations at him and his people, blaming them for a deep-rooted hostility towards the Catholics. Shortly after he showed himself ready to receive the despot into the Roman Church, Capistran was composing a lengthy indictment against this same person, seeking above all to persuade the pope that a tougher and less indulgent stance was required in dealing with this “schismatic” Church and na- tion. All these circumstances make Capistran’s attempt to convert the Serbian despot a forceful testimony not so much to the religious and cultural character of the epoch, but primarily to the personality of Capistran himself. 54 Cf. BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part II], 323, no. 301; 368 (and 403), no. 464; 372, no. 479; 378–9, no. 501; 380–1, no. 507–8; 382, no. 512; 383–4, no. 516 and 518; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 309–310, no. 615. 55 Chronica fratris Nicolai Glassberger (= Analecta Franciscana sive chronica aliaque varia documenta ad historiam Fratrum Minorum spectantia, vol. 2), Ad Claras Aquas / Quaracchi 1887, 372–4 = WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 466–8. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 489, no. 569; Bibliotheca hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae aetatis – Novum supplementum, Bruxelles 1987, 485, no. 4365a; ANDRIĆ, The miracles, op. cit., 83–84. 56 This mistake, however, could well be the result of a misprint, especially if we consider that in the early editions of De Europa the despot’s age was conveyed in Roman numerals (Annis lxxxx vitam produxi). The fact that in 1455 the despot was at the age of 80 is indirectly confirmed by another source, Bertrandon de la Broquière, who in 1433 wrote that the Serbian despot was nearly 60 years old (BROKIJER, Putovanje, 109; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, 47 and 579). 221  Stanko Andrić False hopes after the Belgrade victory (1456) After Capistran and Despot George parted company in Győr, they never saw each other again. Capistran started his journey through Hungary, preaching in the towns of Esztergom, Buda and Székesfehérvár, then moved to the south- east of the country following Hunyadi’s invitation to join him in Transylvania. From Cenad (Hung. Csanád), where he was entertained by the town’s bishop, Capistran wrote once more to Pope Callistus III on September 17, 1455. At the beginning of a lengthy letter, Capistran described the place where he had arrived as very close to the Turks, who had already attacked it twice in recent past. To this, he added that the despot of Rascia had made peace with the Turkish sultan. “Dangerous times have come,” Capistran commented and then went on to re- mind the pope in general terms of his responsibility for the Church. He finished this part of the letter by complaining that the pope did not answer any of his earlier letters.57 Indeed, after fruitless talks in Győr and in Vienna, the despot re- turned to Smederevo and sometime in the late summer 1455 he sent an embassy with the tribute and gifts to Mehmed II, asking for peace and accepting whatever conditions the sultan wanted to dictate in return.58 The pope finally replied to Capistran’s letters in December 1455.59 In a letter dated on December 6, 1455, Callistus III only dealt with the privileges of the Observant Family, which he confirmed at Capistran’s request, adding the permission to retain the friary in Judenburg, which had previously belonged to the Conventuals.60 It was only in a second letter, of December 19, that the pope actually responded to the problems raised by Capistran in his more recent let- ters sent from Hungary. The pope started by wondering why Capistran had not received any of his earlier letters, because he always replied whenever Capistran wrote to him. The pope then briefly commented on what Capistran said about the despot: he didn’t like to hear it, but Capistran should not believe that “all our hopes were ever pinned on the mentioned despot.” His help was not so essential that one could not be without it. Instead it should be hoped that God’s mercy would not allow his flock to be destroyed or the savagery of the infidels to prevail. The pope went on to describe his own efforts in organizing a fleet for the cru- sade, and he asked Capistran to keep preaching and animating people in favour of this “common Christian cause”. The pope finished the letter with remarks 57 C. PIANA, Scritti polemici fra Conventuali ed Osservanti a metà del ’400 con la partecipazione dei giuristi secolari, Archivum Franciscanum historicum 72, 1979, 62– 73. Also partly published in WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 326–8. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 461, no. 453; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 295, no. 568. 58 SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 539. 59 In his response of March 24, 1456, Capistran also mentioned the pope’s letter dated November 10, 1455 (which he received on February 6, 1456), but it is missing in the surveys of Capistran’s preserved correspondence. See WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 373–4. 60 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 291–2. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 463, no. 459; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, 222 op. cit., [part III], 297, no. 576.  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise concerning the conflict within the Franciscan order, assuring Capistran that he sought a just solution that would be accepted by all parties.61 It can be supposed that this second letter summarized the contents of one or more earlier papal letters, which, to the pope’s disappointment, never reached Capistran. There the pope probably discussed somewhat more extensively the problem of the Serbian despot, raised by Capistran in his long missive of July 4. Yet even if this lost section of the correspondence between Capistran and the pope is never retrieved, it is fairly clear that Callistus largely disregarded the dramatic intonation of Capistran’s letter. The pope’s comments were even not without some irony in that respect. Another interesting aspect of these comments is their exclusive focus on the threat posed by the “infidels” (i.e., the Ottomans) and the question of whether the despot could be counted on as an ally in repel- ling this threat. It seems that the pope missed (or preferred to ignore) the main point in Capistran’s letter, which was not whether the despot could be considered a reliable ally but that he was yet another enemy to be dealt with. The communication between Capistran and the pope was hindered by long delays. The itinerant friar complained in March 1456 that he had sent five let- ters to the pope before he received the first answer on December 1, 1455. The pope’s response was actually dispatched as early as July 1455, though. Similarly, it was only in late February 1456 that Capistran received the pontiff’s letter of December 6, 1455. It is probable that shortly afterwards Capistran also received the letter mentioning the despot, although he did not quote it in his response from Buda, dated March 24, 1456.62 After Capistran left Buda in the second half of April, he was so much preoccupied by preaching the crusade that he found no time and saw no need to write to the pope until the battle of Belgrade was over. In the meantime, the Serbian despot initiated a conflict with the captain of Belgrade and Hunyadi’s brother-in-law, Michael Szilágyi, who subsequently captured him in December 1455 on one of the despot’s domains in Srijem (Srem, Szerémség). The despot was wounded in his right hand during the clash and 61 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 296–7. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 464, no. 465; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 298–9, no. 580. The passage concerning the despot reads: De despoto autem ex futuris periculis displicent nobis ea, quae scribis, sed sperandum est in misericordia Dei, quae non sinet gregem suum disperdi, et aderit nobis in brachio potenti, adversus quod non praevalebit infidelium feritas. Neque vero credas, omnem spem nostram posuisse nos dudum in praefato despoto, neque ita necessaria esse praesidia sua, ut aliter fieri non possit. 62 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 373–4. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 471, no. 491; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 307, no. 607. For the papal brief of July 20, 1455, see WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 288; cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 456, no. 430; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 292, no. 558. Capistran mentioned it for the first time in his letter to cardinal Carvajal dated in Pest, February 3, 1456 (WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 372–3 = PETTKÓ, Kapisztrán János levelezése, op. cit., 189–191, no. 38; cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 467, no. 478; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 303, no. 594). Capistran stayed in Pest and Buda continuously between late January and mid-April 1456 (cf. KARÁCSONYI, Szent Ferencz rendjének, op. cit., vol. 1, 334; HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., vol. 1, 527). 223  Stanko Andrić later imprisoned in the Belgrade castle. Szilágyi released him in the late winter or early spring of 1456 only after the despot’s family paid a large sum of money and gave two of his Hungarian possessions as a ransom.63 When John of Korođ (Hung. Kórógy), ban of Mačva, wrote to Capistran from Osijek on February 8, 1456, he forwarded him two letters which he had received from the king of Bosnia and the despot of Serbia, respectively, and which contained information on the movements of the Ottoman army. It is not clear whether the despot sent this letter from his jail in Belgrade or that it was of an earlier date. Based on the information available to him, ban John predicted that the sultan would very soon lay siege both to Smederevo and to Belgrade.64 Actually, Smederevo was not besieged before June 1456, and Mehmed II soon gave it up and moved his camps to the surroundings of Belgrade.65 Dur- ing both sieges, the despot was in Hungary, on his domains of Bečkerek (Hung. Becsekerek, now Zrenjanin) and Bečej (Hung. Becse) around the lower Tisa. He maintained correspondence with Cardinal Juan Carvajal, papal legate in Hun- gary since 1455, who stayed in Buda taking care of the organization of the cru- sade. In his letter of June 25, the despot admitted that he had not dared to wait for the sultan’s army in Smederevo. He claimed, nevertheless, to be ready to fight the infidels but first wanted to know about the cardinal’s intentions with regard to the current crisis, stressing that “of all people we can only set hopes in Your Paternity.”66 This was a sincere complaint on the part of the despot, who must have felt isolated in Hungary at that moment. He was at odds with Hunyadi and Szilágyi, and he felt alienated from Capistran. In this way, he was cut off from the core of the anti-Ottoman forces formed in Hungary; King Ladislas V moved to Vienna on the eve of the Turkish onslaught, and Count Ulrich of Celje, the despot’s son-in-law, also avoided being involved in the imminent battle. Cardinal Carvajal was the only relevant person the despot could turn to in this critical situation.67 63 SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 552–6. 64 PETTKÓ, Kapisztrán János levelezése, op. cit., 193–4, no. 42; cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 468–9, no. 482; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 304–5, no. 598. 65 SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 561–2. 66 This letter is only preserved in an Italian translation, having been forwarded to Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, by cardinal Carvajal, who enclosed it with his letter of July 10, 1456. See V. MAKUŠEV / V. MACUSCEV, Istorijski spomenici Južnih Slovena i okolnih naroda iz italijanskih arhiva i biblioteka / Monumenta historica Slavorum meridionalium vicinorumque populorum deprompta e tabulariis et bibliothecis Italicis, vol. 2, U Beogradu / Belgradi 1882, 110–1, no. 1 = V. V. MAKUŠEV, Prilozi k srpskoj istoriji XIV. i XV. veka, Glasnik Srpskog učenog društva 32, 1871, 192–3, no. 8. Cf. THALLÓCZY and ÁLDÁSY, A Magyarország és Szerbia, op. cit., 204, no. 271; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 567 and 587. The text of Carvajal’s letter is in THALLÓCZY and ÁLDÁSY, A Magyarország és Szerbia, op. cit., 467–9, no. 11. Although the letter was signed by despot George alone, Carvajal refers to “le copie delle lettere del despoto de Rasia antiquo et zovene”. 67 HOFER, Johannes Kapistran, op. cit., vol. 2, 370–1, judges more harshly the despot’s attitude expressed in this letter. According to Hofer, the despot only sought to diminish 224  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise The despot wrote to Carvajal again on July 13, 1456, announcing proudly that the Turks were forced to withdraw from under the walls of Smederevo. They had begun to besiege Belgrade, demolishing its walls by cannon fire. Hunyadi and Capistran (reverendissimus pater frater Johannes de Capistrano) were in the des- pot’s town of Slankamen (Hung. Szalánkemén) north of Belgrade, preparing to attack and break the Turkish blockade on the Danube (which indeed successfully took place on July 14). The despot claimed that he, as much as he could, ordered “Hungarians and Rascians” to offer help to Hunyadi. He or his son would be ready to join the campaign personally when the cardinal, together with Hunyadi and other Hungarian lords, would resolve to cross the Danube in order to wage war against the Turks. The despot stressed once more that his men in Sme- derevo and other castles constantly attacked and disrupted the supply lines of the Ottoman army.68 The despot obviously saw in the cardinal a guarantee that his possible full participation in the war would be appropriately accepted and appreciated, something he could not expect from Hunyadi nor from Capistran. But he would be willing to commit all his forces only to a large offensive against the Turks in the Balkans, similar to that which, led by another cardinal, Giulio Cesarini, had ended disastrously at Varna. Unlike then, the despot would join the crusade. Unlike in 1444, the Serbian despot had almost nothing to lose in 1456. Immediately after the victory at Belgrade, Capistran sent to the pope two exuberant accounts of it, dated 22 and 23 July.69 Nearly one month later, and one week after Hunyadi died from a pestilence in Zemun (Hung. Zimony), Capistran was still in Slankamen not far from Belgrade when he composed his last missive for the pope, dated August 17, 1456. Cardinal Carvajal had also moved to the south after the victory and thus he was with Capistran when a messenger from the despot arrived on August 16. Capistran’s letter was imbued with the news and intimations, which the messenger reported. He retold meticulously what he had learned from the “illustrious lord despot, who, while in disagreement with our faith, is nevertheless with us in opposing the Turks, having complied with the intention of Your Sanctity.” The despot had sent forty reconnoiterers after the retreating Ottomans, but they were not able to find out anything about the sultan himself, which made the despot convinced that he was dead. On the other hand, there were rumours that the sultan had fled as far as Sofia where he had the impression of his own passivity and his question in which he asked the legate what should he do with regard to the Turks was no more than a hypocritical affectation. 68 THALLÓCZY and ÁLDÁSY, A Magyarország és Szerbia, op. cit., 204–6, no. 273. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 483–4, no. 544; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 567–8. The letter’s facsimile is in J. KALIĆ-MIJUŠKOVIĆ, Beograd u srednjem veku, Beograd 1967, between 144 and 145. 69 The first, shorter, was written in Belgrade; it is published in WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 429–430. The second, written in Slankamen (or in Zemun), is in BIHL, Duae epistolae, op. cit., 72–75. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 484, no. 546; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 324–5, no. 658–9; ANDRIĆ, The miracles, op. cit., 59. For detailed reconstructions of the siege of Belgrade, see KALIĆ-MIJUŠKOVIĆ, Beograd, op. cit., 127–168; F. BABINGER, Mehmed Osvajač i njegovo doba [original title: F. BABINGER, Mehmed der Eroberer und seine Zeit], T. Bekić (transl.), Novi Sad 1968, 117–123. 225  Stanko Andrić executed many of his high-ranking officers. Furthermore, the despot’s subjects had killed an Ottoman “voivode” in a part of the despot’s former realm, mak- ing him believe he would be able to recapture five castles in that region. The despot was confident this was the right moment to launch an offensive, when more could be achieved with ten thousand soldiers than with thirty thousand at other times. Capistran agreed that the opportunity should be seized and the job finished by liberating “not only Greece and Europe, but also the Holy Land of Jerusalem.” The invincible defender of the Catholic faith, Hunyadi, was un- fortunately dead, but the almost equally excellent and resolute Nicholas of Ilok (Hung. Újlak), whom Capistran spared no words in praising, could be relied upon to take his place.70 Inexcusable in his rejection of the Catholic faith but a useful ally against the Turks: this was Capistran’s final judgment of the despot. It is again interesting to see how this appraisal was reflected in the pope’s responses. There was a final series of letters that Callistus III sent to Capistran after the resounding victory. Three of them are known preserved. The first, dated August 25, was written before any of Capistran’s own accounts of the battle reached the pope, who had learned from other sources about its happy outcome as early as the beginning of August. The second and the third, both from September 16, were a response to Capistran’s letter(s) of July 23 (and 22).71 As for Capistran’s last letter to the pope, of August 17, it seems that it remained unanswered. Yet the pope did receive it, because he quoted it in his letter to the Christian king of Ethiopia, Constantine Zar’a Yâ’qob, dated December 1, 1456. Capistran was dead for more than a month then, and the pope apparently did not know it yet. For his African ad- dressee, a potential ally in subduing the Ottoman might and in the retaking of the Holy Land, the pope described the heroic feat at Belgrade of the “peoples of Hungary” and the crusaders, all led by Hunyadi. He repeated Capistran’s information about the losses suffered by the Ottomans as well as the story about the sultan’s deadly rage against his own officers. He added that “a certain despot in the province of Serbia, who adheres to our nations” (quidam vero despotus in provincia Serviae, nostris gentibus adhaerens), tried in vain through his reconnoiterers to find out what happened eventually to the sultan, which gave reason to believe 70 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 430–2. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 486, no. 558; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 325, no. 660; SPREMIĆ, Despot Đurađ, op. cit., 569–570; ANDRIĆ, The miracles, op. cit., 62. The passage describing the despot reads: illustris dominus despotus, qui licet cum nostra fide non concordet, secundum intentionem tamen Vestrae Sanctitatis conveniens contra perfidos Turcas nobiscum est, nunciavit pridie reverendissimo domino legato et mihi (...). 71 The three letters are published in WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 432–3, no. 59–61. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 487, no. 560; BONMANN, GÁL and MISKULY, A provisional calendar, op. cit., [part III], 325–6, no. 661 and 663–4. In one of the last two letters the pope remarked that a few days earlier he had answered more extensively to the letters which he received from Capistran and that therefore he would be brief this time. It follows from this remark that there was at least one more papal letter addressed to Capistran in the post-Belgrade period, most probably from the first half of September 1456. 226  Saint John Capistran and Despot George Branković: An Impossible Compromise that he might be dead.72 We do not know whether and when the king of Ethiopia received this unusual mail.73 If it was actually sent off, the letter was certainly still on its way to the Horn of Africa when the Serbian despot died on Christmas Eve of 1456, leaving his state on the brink of its final destruction. Stanko Andrić Hrvatski institut za povijest – Podružnica za povijest Slavonije, Srijema i Baranje A. Starčevića 8, HR-35000 Slavonski Brod, Croatia [email protected] 72 WADDING, Annales Minorum, op. cit., vol. 12, 485–8. Cf. BÖLCSKEY, Capistranói Szent János, op. cit., vol. 3, 488, no. 568. 73 This is unlikely, given the fact that the pope’s main messenger for the rulers in Africa and Asia was actually a bragging impostor, a Franciscan friar named Lodovico of Bo- logna. On this personality and his similarly dubious companions, see BABINGER, Mehmed Osvajač, op. cit., 157–160. 227