Nikolaus Csáky

Nikolaus Csáky, Archbishop of Gran and Primate of Hungary

Count Nikolaus Csáky zu Keresztszeg (Hungarian körösszegi és adorjáni gróf Csáky Miklós ) (born December 5, 1698 in Spiš Castle , Zips County , Kingdom of Hungary ; † May 31, 1757 in Preßburg , Kingdom of Hungary) was Archbishop of Gran and Prince Primate of Hungary .

Life

Nikolaus Joseph Csáky zu Keresztszeg was born in the Spiš Castle as the youngest son of the regional judge Stephan V. Csáky and his third wife Maria Barkóczy. Cardinal Emmerich Csáky , who later became Archbishop of Kalocsa , was his older half-brother.

From 1716 he first studied at the Pazmaneum in Vienna . In Rome he continued his studies at the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum . In 1721 he received his doctorate as Dr. theol. He was ordained a priest on September 19, 1722.

Bishop of Oradea

Csáky returned to Hungary on April 5, 1723 and became a canon in Oradea . In 1737 he was appointed Bishop of Oradea . He received his episcopal ordination on February 2, 1738 in Kaschau by the Archbishop of Erlau Gabriel Anton Erdődy (* 1684, † 1744). In his capacity as Bishop of Oradein, he was automatically given the (hereditary) title of head coach of Bihar County . Here he took care of non-ecclesiastical matters: he founded an iron and glass works and a cloth factory in Großwardein to give the poor a job; he also founded a printing company. Over the river Schnelle Kreisch ( ung. Sebes-Körös , Roman.  Crișul roadstead ) he had a bridge built.

Archbishop of Kalocsa

On May 13, 1747, Csáky was appointed Archbishop of Kalocsa. The construction of the cathedral of Kalocsa begun by his predecessor Gabriel II Hermanus von Patarcic (1733-1745) was finished by him.

Archbishop of Gran and Primate of Hungary

On July 30, 1751 he was appointed Archbishop of Gran and Prince Primate of Hungary. He received the archbishop's pallium on February 2, 1752. Maria Theresa held his work in high esteem. Because of his charity, the Empress appointed him the first protector of all educational institutions in the country. He was considered a patron of the poor and the needy. He also built a large number of churches and parsonages across the country.

In the last months of his life he had 20,000 guilders distributed among the poor at once . In any case, the rest of his possessions had mostly flowed to the needy. With each new dignity his charity increased, he often referred more to his cash register than was in it.

Nikolaus Csáky died on May 31, 1757 in Preßburg , the seat of the Archbishops of Gran at that time. The speaker at his coffin distinguished this church prince with the words: "The episcopal dignity made him poor, the archbishopric poor, the primate dignity very poor". His remains were buried in the archbishop's crypt under the Elemosynarius chapel in St. Martin's Cathedral in Pressburg.

literature

• Biographical Lexicon of the Austrian Empire , Volume 3 (1858), page 42 (also available online)
• Magyar Katolikus Lexicon (online: http://www.lexikon.katolikus.hu ), Hungarian

Individual evidence

1. ↑ István V. Csáky de Körösszegh et Adorján (born April 15, 1635 in Szendrö , † December 4, 1699 in Leutschau ) was married three times: 1st marriage on January 6, 1654 to Margit Lónyay de Nagy Lónya († 1670) 2. Marriage on November 14, 1671 to Klara Melith (* 1643, † 1685) 3rd marriage (after 1685) to Maria Barkóczy. With the three women he had a total of 25 children, 8 of them sons.
2. ↑ Emmerich Csáky was a son of István V. Csáky with his second wife Klara Melith.
3. ↑ After Gran (Hungarian Esztergom) was occupied by the Turks in 1543 , the archbishopric was moved to Tyrnau . However, a large number of the archbishops resided in Pressburg, as Pressburg was the capital of Hungary at that time. Only in 1820 did the archbishops return to Gran at the instigation of Cardinal Alexander Rudnay .