A legkorábbi Pázmány-portré „rejtélye“

Abstract The earliest authentic representation of Péter Pázmány is registered by special literature as his portrait as a Somascan monk. It is based on the white hooded garment Pázmány is wearing in the picture. It is obviously not part of a Jesuit's or an archbishop's or cardinal vestments. The interpretation as Somascan, the source of which is the handwritten catalogue of the Pannonhalma collection which preserves the picture, was probably based on the preclusion of other possibilities. To refute this assumption, there are more than one arguments. We know that Pázmány was not entitled to put on the Somascan habit — which was otherwise taken for him from Rome to Prague in July 1616 because his de facto admission into the order was held up (and finally cancelled), and more important still, we can cite Lodovico Ridolfi, chargé d'affairs of the Habsburgs house in Rome, claiming that the habit of the Somascans did not practically differ from that of the Jesuits. In the pertinent catalogue edited by Giancarlo Rocca only a black habit differing in cut from the habit of the Jesuits is mentioned. Upon our inquiry the central archivist of the order P. Maurizio Brioli C.R.S. also answered he had no idea of the white garment in the picture, and there was no trace of it in the order's documents, including the clothes of the novices. Consequently, the depicted habit cannot be Somascan. In the enumeration of Pázmány's earlier positions a post was overlooked, which may be the clue to the solution. It is the provostship in Turóc. Turóc was originally founded by the Premonstratensians, and the Hungarian members of that order were wearing a white mozzetta of a similar cut to Pázmány's in the painting as late as the 18th century. Most probably, Pázmány had to emphasize, also in externalities, mainly during his 1616 summerdiplomatic missions, particularly when facing the Protestant estates, that he was no Jesuit any longer (and hence was liable to take the archiepiscopal chair under the act of 1608). He could hardly have done it in a more evident manner than wearing this white mozzetta, which simultaneously expressed a monastic and a prelatic character. It is interesting, however, that at the time of the painting of the picture — dated between the beginning of his provostship at Turóc on 25 April 1616 and 28 September, Pázmány as a candidate for novitiate was temporarily the member of the Somascan order de iure canonico. Under the white mozzetta with capucinum of Premonstratensian origin he is wearing however a Jesuit's habit with the collar and there is a biretta similar to the Jesuits' on his head