Mary of Hungary

Queen of Hungary (r. 1521-1526), regent of the Netherlands (r. 1531-1555)

• Born: September 17, 1505
• Birthplace: Brussels, Brabant (now in Belgium)
• Died: October 18, 1558
• Place of death: Cigales, Castile (now in Spain)

Both as queen consort of the Hungarian kingdom and as regent of the Netherlands, Mary of Hungary showed significant governmental and administrative skills that were highly regarded in her time. She continued the Spanish-Austrian empire’s centralization of the Low Countries.

Early Life

Like most daughters of royal families of the age, Mary of Hungary’s fate was to be a pawn in family politics from the moment of her birth. Born the fifth child of Philip I and Joan of Castile, she was barely six months old when she was selected to play an important role in the eastern European politics of her grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I .

Mary spent the first nine years of her life at the court of her aunt, Margaret of Austria , in Malines (now Mechelen, Belgium), and was brought up with her oldest brother, Charles (later Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ), and her elder sisters Eleonora and Isabella.

Maximilian’s efforts to bring the Kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia under Habsburg dominion had led him to arrange a double marriage treaty with King Vladislav II of Hungary and Bohemia in March of 1506. According to this treaty, the daughter of Vladislav, Anne (later Queen Anne of Austria ), would be married to one of Mary’s brothers, while Mary herself would be the spouse of Vladislav’s younger child. Although not yet born when the treaty was signed, this younger child was, nevertheless, assumed to be the male heir to the throne.

The expectation expressed in the treaty materialized with the birth of prince Louis (later King Louis II). In 1514, Maximilian had his granddaughter brought to the Austrian territories to prepare her for her role as future queen of Hungary and Bohemia. The double marriage was contracted in Vienna on July 22, 1515. Because of the young age of the couples, the actual consummation of the marriage was postponed, and Mary and Anne held a joint princess-court in Innsbruck to 1521.

After Anne married Mary’s brother, Archduke Ferdinand (later Ferdinand I , Holy Roman Emperor), in Linz, she traveled to Hungary to be crowned queen. She arrived in a country that was in the shadow of the ever-increasing threats and attacks of the Ottoman Turks on its southern borders, weakened further by chaotic political circumstances, an impoverished royal court, and a weak king, barely sixteen years old. In the summer of 1521, Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent led an attack against the southern border of the Hungarian kingdom. On August 28, 1521, the Turkish troops seized Belgrade, the key fortress on its southern defense line, hereby leaving the central areas of Hungary and the royal residence of Buda defenseless against further attacks. After the sack of Belgrade, the Ottoman troops withdrew, only to return five years later in 1526, when they would conquer a large part of the country and bring an end to the independent Hungarian kingdom.

Life’s Work

Mary was crowned queen of Hungary on December 11 in the royal coronation town of Székesfehérvár. Shortly after the celebration of her wedding with Louis II in Buda (January, 1522), the royal couple traveled to Bohemia, where Anne also was crowned queen of Bohemia (June, 1522). On their marriage, Mary received a great amount of property and other rights as morning gifts from her husband, a practice in accordance with the rights of the queens of Hungary and Bohemia. The gifts made her one of the country’s richest feudal lords, and they gave her the power to influence large numbers of people and to gain significant political power.

Mary’s efforts to centralize royal power came to an abrupt end with the defeat of the Hungarian troops by the Turks at the Battle of Mohács (August 29, 1526), a battle that also caused the death of her husband. Mary fled from Buda to Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia), where she tried to secure the Hungarian crown for her brother Ferdinand, against the claims of John Zápolya (King John). She also acted as a regent for her brother until Ferdinand’s coronation on November 3, 1527.

Mary’s next years were marked by serious financial difficulties and by uncertainty about her future position. Despite her family’s renewed efforts to arrange a second marriage for her, she vowed to stay a widow. This decision, together with the skill she had demonstrated in state matters, persuaded her elder brother, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to appoint her as his regent in the Netherlands in 1531, after the death of the previous regent, Margaret of Austria.

As regent of the Netherlands, Mary devoted her intelligence and administrative skills to furthering the traditional Burgundian-Habsburg aims of territorial unification, resulting in the annexation of the provinces of Groningen in 1536 and Gelder and Zutphen in 1543. She promoted the centralization of the government, aided by collateral councils dealing with the state, finance, and everyday administration (1531). Throughout her regency, she stayed in contact with her brother and discussed with him policy, financial, and administrative matters, and asked his advice, but she did not hesitate to act according to her own judgment.

Mary of Hungary mediated between the imperial demands and the interests of the Netherlands. She was able to translate the frequently unrealistic expectations of her brother into more practical requirements, and she had enough authority to govern the Netherlands in a period of wars, famine, and religious dissent.

In addition to politics, Mary of Hungary was keenly interested in the intellectual currents of her age. At the Buda court earlier, she came into contact with the ideas of Humanism and the teachings of Martin Luther . After the death of her husband, both Desiderius Erasmus, whom she admired greatly, and Luther dedicated treatises to her. Though never formally conceding to Luther’s teaching, she showed interest in and sympathy to Reformation ideas in the earlier years of her life, as well as in the years after assuming the regency. She tried to persuade the aging master scholar Erasmus to return to the Netherlands. Throughout her life Mary’s passion for hunting and her love of music provided outlets from her strenuous political responsibilities.

With the abdication of Charles V in favor of his son, Philip II, in 1556, Mary of Hungary resigned her responsibilities as regent. Mary and Charles left the Netherlands, accompanied by their sister, Eleonora, to sail to Spain, where they planned to spend their final years in retirement.

In the last two years of her life, Mary was repeatedly put under pressure by her nephew Philip to return to the Netherlands and to continue her regency or act as an adviser in state matters. After having declined the request several times, ultimately, she could not resist the pressure, which mounted after Charles ordered her belongings packed and made ready for travel. Before she could embark, however, she became seriously ill, and she died about a month after the death of her brother, Charles.

Significance

Mary of Hungary’s situation and choices made her an exceptional figure of her times. After the dramatic loss of her crown, lands, and husband all by the young age of twenty-one she was faced with the few possibilities traditionally open to women in such a position: remarrying, entering a convent, or taking care of her ill mother. Instead, as a highly talented and strong-willed individual, she chose to accept the extremely difficult task of governing the Netherlands. For the rest of her life, Mary devoted herself completely to the interests of the House of Habsburg.

Bibliography

Daniel, David P. “Piety, Politics, and Perversion: Noblewomen in Reformation Hungary.” In Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Private and Public Worlds, edited by Sherrin Marshall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. This chapter summarizes the generally known facts about Mary’s life against the background of the Reformation.

De Jongh, Jane. Mary of Hungary, Second Regent of the Netherlands. New York: Norton, 1958. This traditional biography is still the best source of general information on the subject in English, with thorough knowledge of sources and an enjoyable style.

Goss Thompson, Glenda. “Mary of Hungary and Music Patronage.” Sixteenth-Century Journal 15 (1984): 401-418. Using the records of Mary’s regency period, this study analyzes the evidence of significant music patronage.

Kubinyi, András. “The Road to Defeat: Hungarian Politics and Defense in the Jagiellonian Period.” In War and Society in East Central Europe, edited by János M. Bak and B. K. Király. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. This study provides a very thorough analysis of politics in pre-Mohács Hungary.

Spruyt, Bart Jan. “Mary of Hungary and Religious Reform.” English Historical Review 431 (April, 1994). This article investigates Mary’s attitude and actions regarding the Reformation from the years spent in Hungary and in the Netherlands.

Tracy, James D. Holland Under Habsburg Rule, 1506-1566: The Formation of a Body Politic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Analyzes the effect of the Habsburg Dynasty on the Netherlands, including the years of Mary’s regency.