Causa der drei „Kaschauer Märtyrer”
Causa of the three „Kaschauer Martyrs”

Summary/Abstract: The Lutheran religion became from 1549 exclusively permitted religion in Košice. City of Košice belonged to the Diocese of Erlau according to canon law. When the City of Erlau fell into the hands of the Turks on October 12, 1596, Bishop of Erlau along with the Canon was enable to belong in 1597 to Košice. The period was very restless. It was also the time of the martyrdom of the holy three Kosice martyrs: Markus Stefan Crisinus, born in 1589in Križevci (Croatia), was raised by the archbishop to the Canon of the Graner chapter. He administered the goods of the former Benedictine abbey in Krásna nad Hornádom.Melchior Grodecz, was born 1581 in today’s Cieszyn in Poland, but after the political changes in 1618 the Jesuits from Bohemia were all denounced. Some Jesuits founded a new places in Poland and Hungary. So Melchior Grodecz came to Humenné, later to Košice.Stefan Pongrácz, born in 1583 in the village of Alvinc near the town of Alba Julia in Transylvania, present-day Romania. Pongrácz went to Košice in 1618 at the request of the imperial captain Andreas Dóczy.On the night of September 6 – 7, 1619, they were questioned in the royal house in the presence of the Calvinist preacher Peter Alvinci and the burgess Melchior Reiners. The lives of the Catholic priests were spent in the captain’s house by the ordeal associated with beating, burning and slapping in their bodies. Death also evoked displeasure in Protestant circles. After the exhumation of the bodies in Košice and after several relocations, the remainsof the Jesuit martyrs Stefan Pongrácz and Melchior Grodecz are kept in Trnava. The remains of Marko Crisinus are located in Graner Cathedral. The beginnings of the cult to the martyrsgoes back to the year 1628. The process of veneration was very long. The honor to the Kosice martyrs was confirmed and approved by the Catholic church only in the beatification on 15January 1905 in Rome by the Pope Pius X. This effort was definitely ended on July 2, 1995, when John Paul II canonised three martyrs.

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