BAKOCZ, TAMAS (BOKOTS), CARDINAL (1442-1521), Hungarian ecclesiastic and statesman, was the son of a wagoner, adopted by his uncle, who trained him for the priesthood and whom he succeeded as rector of Tetel (148o). Shortly afterwards he became one of the secretaries of King Matthias I., who made him bishop of Gyor and a member of the royal council (149o) . Under Wladislaus II. (149o-1516) he became successively bishop of Eger, archbishop of Esztergom (1497), cardinal (1500), and titular patriarch of Constantinople (1510). From 1490 to his death in 1521 he was the leading statesman of Hungary and mainly responsible for her foreign policy. It was solely through his efforts that Hungary did not accede to the league of Cambrai, was con sistently friendly with Venice, and formed a family compact with the Habsburgs. He was the only Magyar prelate who aspired to the papal throne. In 1513, on the death of Julius II., he went to Rome and barely failed to secure his election as pope. He returned to Hungary as papal legate, bringing with him the bull of Leo X. proclaiming a fresh crusade against the Turks. But the crusade degenerated into a jacquerie which ravaged the whole kingdom, and much discredited Bakocz. He lost some of his influence at first after the death of Wladislaus, but continued to be the guiding spirit at court, till age and infirmity confined him almost entirely to his house in the last three years of his life.
Bakocz was a man of great ability but of no moral principle whatever. His whole life was a tissue of treachery. He was false to his benefactor Matthias, false to Matthias's son Janos Corvinus whom he deprived of the throne by arts of chicane, and false to his accomplice in that transaction, Queen Beatrice. His attempt to incorporate the wealthy diocese of Transylvania with his own primatial province was one of the principal causes of the spread of the Reformation in Hungary. He left a fortune of many mil lions. His one redeeming feature was a love of art.
See Vilmos Fraknoi, Minas Bakocz (Hung.) (1889).