A man for all seasons: Exile, suffering and martyrdom in the autobiography of Miklós Bethlen
A man for all seasons: Exile, suffering and martyrdom in the autobiography of Miklós Bethlen

Summary/Abstract: This paper attempts to evaluate the historical anthropological process of self-fashioning performed by count Miklós Bethlen. In doing so, the aim of my interpretation is to delineate those cultural and historical contexts that influenced Bethlen’s habit of constituting and fashioning a self in his ego-documents. Taking as a point of departure Bethlen’s twofold liminality, I argue that he identified himself with the prototype of the early modern Calvinist martyr, so that he could provide an account of his life imitating the so called récit martyrologique as a narrative genre. Bethlen’s self-fashioning displayed in his memoirs, letters and political projects, reveals his special commitment to Puritan theology and devotional culture as well.

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