The Renaissance - Four Times Over. Exhibitions Commemorating Matthias’s Accession to the Throne
The Renaissance - Four Times Over. Exhibitions Commemorating Matthias’s Accession to the Throne

Summary/Abstract: The three Hunyadis, John Hunyadi and his sons László and Matthias, rose from the anonymous lesser nobility to become the most significant political figures of Hungary in the second half of the 15th century. The past two years have abounded in anniversaries connected to their lives. June 6, 2006 was 560 years to the day that the Diet meeting in Pest elected John Hunyadi, Voivode of Transylvania, to act as regent for the boy king Ladislas V (1440–1457). On July 22, 1456, John Hunyadi won a decisive victory at Belgrade over the armies of Sultan Mehmed II. Hunyadi’s feat—carried out with a small standing army combined with peasants rallied to fight the infidel by the Franciscan friar St John of Capistrano— had the effect of putting an end to Ottoman attempts on Hungary and Western Europe for the next seventy years, and is considered to have been one of the most momentous victories in Hungarian military history. The bells ringing at noon throughout Christendom are, to this day, a daily commemoration of John Hunyadi’s victory. The year 2006 saw historians observe the 550th anniversary of that event as well with an international conference and an exhibition.

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