The Neo-Latin occasional poetry is a rarely explored field of Hungarian literary history. József Batthyány was addressed with almost 160 — mostly printed, but some in manuscript — works of art, poems and speeches during his 40-year service as high priest. The main idea of these was the overwhelmingly excessive appraisal of his pastoral and personal merits. The apropos of the works were the Archbishop-Cardinal’s birth and name days, his investiture into ecclesiastic positions and his diocese visits. In this study I examine the poems from the point of view of their genre, including the theoretical background of some 18th-century poetics, among which the Palaestra by Jacob Masen undoubtedly had the biggest influence on the contemporaneous poetic approach.