DIPLOMACY IN POLAND-LITHUANIA 301ladder as Bishop successively of Tina (Dalmatia), of Csanad in the Banat, and
of Pecs. In 1563 he was the star of the Hungarian delegation to the third session
of the Council of Trent. His speeches on subjects such as the Trinity and on the
elevation of the Host, published in Venice in book form, put him in the forefront
of theological debate. His friendship with prominent Cardinals like Hosius and
Moroni, soon earned him the rank of imperial councillor.
Dudith's arrival in Cracow in 1565 as imperial ambassador was followed by a
grand sensation. His task was to extricate the Queen, Catherine of Austria, from
the disgrace of her separation from Sigismund-August, and, failing a reconcilia-
tion, to arrange the succession in a way advantageous to the Habsburgs. The
Jagiellonian dynasty was heirless; Arians and Calvinists were pontificating in the
Sejm; and Union with predominantly Orthodox Lithuania was imminent. There
was concern lest Poland should slip from the Catholic orbit altogether. Yet the
King was intractable. His reply to Dudith's suggestion of renewing conjugal life
with the Queen was 'Piu tosto la morte'; and he was quite unwilling to override
the elective principle by monarchist intrigue. At this point, in 1567, Dudith sud-
denly renounced his clerical vows, and married a girl, Regina Straszowna, whom
he had wooed in the Queen's suite. It was notorious enough that the reverend
ambassador of his Most Catholic and Imperial Majesty had habitually consorted
with heretics and astronomers. But now as an apostate and a seducer, he was
excommunicated from the Church, deprived of his benefices, and banished from
the Empire. Yet he did not lose the Emperor's personal favour. Maximilian, who
composed an Excusatio on Dudith's behalf, could not save him from the Vatican's
wrath; but he did retain him as a confidential agent. Dudith was soon married for
a second time, into the Protestant Zborowski family, and involved with them in
the anti-Habsburg rebellion in Hungary. He stayed in Poland, received the indy-
genat, and set to work as the imperial party manager during the ensuing inter-
regna. In 1574, it was Dudith who first learned of the death of Charles IX of
France and whispered the news into Henry Valois's ear. It was Dudith who, fol-
lowing the Election of 1576, advised the Emperor to make war against the suc-
cessful candidate, Stefan Bathory; and for his pains, was banished once again, this
time by his fellow Hungarian and student companion. He died in Breslau in 1589,
having written a treatise on comets. His son, Andrzej Dudycz, the love-child of his
apostasy, died in Moscow in 1606 as chancellor of the first False Dmitry.^15
Dudith's adventures in Poland were symptomatic of the Habsburgs' difficul-
ties there over a much longer period. Despite many obvious advantages, the
Habsburgs regularly failed to realize their considerable ambitions. As the lead-
ers of the Catholic world, they were in full alignment on religious and ideologi-
cal issues, especially when Polish Catholicism assumed an increasingly devout
and political character in the course of the seventeenth century. As neighbours
along a secure and undisputed frontier in Silesia and the Carpathians, they had
no territorial anxieties. Facing the Turks in the east, and the Swedes and
Prussians in the north and west, they shared a certain strategic interest with the
Republic; and as chief stable for the supply of royal brides, they were constantly