István Werbőczy

Who was István Werbőczy?

István Werbőczy or Stephen Werbőcz was a Hungarian jurist and statesman who first became known as a scholar and theologian of such eminence that he was appointed to accompany the emperor Charles V to Worms, to take up the cudgels against Martin Luther.

He began his political career as the deputy of the county of Ugocsa to the diet of 1498, where his eloquence and scholarship had a great effect in procuring the extension of the privileges of the gentry and the exclusion of all foreign competitors for the Hungarian throne in future elections. He was the spokesman and leader of the gentry against the magnates and prelates at the diets of 1500, 1501 and 1505. At the last diet he insisted, in his petition to the king, that the law should be binding upon all the gentry alike, and firmly established in the minds of the people the principle of a national monarchy.

The most striking proof of his popularity at this time is the fact that the diet voted him two denarii per hearth for his services in 1505, a circumstance unexampled in Hungarian history. In 1517 Werbőczy was appointed the guardian of the infant Louis II, and was sent on a foreign mission to solicit the aid of Christendom against the Turks. On his return he found the strife of parties fiercer than ever and the whole country in a state of anarchy.