ABSTRACT
A correspondence between the humanist intellectual Caspar Dornau and his friend Caspar Waser in Zurich, begun in December 1604, informed the latter about the rapidly evolving events in Hungary, where a few weeks earlier the conflicts between the crown and estate opposition had escalated into an armed uprising under the leadership of the Transylvanian noble Istvan Bocskai. In Dornau's view those responsible for the bloodshed in Hungary were undoubtedly Catholic rabble-rousers at the Vienna Court and their political and confessional spearhead, the Jesuits. In his view, the nobility, claiming its 'ancestral freedom rights' had merely been looking for shelter 'in the bosom of the Reformed Church'.1 In later letters and essays Dornau, an enigmatic and multifaceted personality with pronounced Calvinist sympathies, appeared likewise to be a defender of Estate rights and freedom of religion in Bohemia and Hungary. This was illustrated both by his political treatise Menenius Agrippa published in 1615 by Wechel in Frankfurt,2 and by the essay commemorating the rebels executed on 21 June 1621 in Prague, which was published under the pseudonym of Adrianus Vaposcus and castigated Ferdinand II as 'tyrant', 'butcher' and 'Antichrist'.3
