Magyar Egyház, 1956 (35. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1956-08-01 / 8-9. szám
10 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ ENGLISH SECTION Stephen Bocskay and the Peace of Vienna . . . The Reformation in Hungary made such rapid progress in a single generation that by the end of the century the papal legate reported that there were no more than three hundred Romanist priests in Hungary together with Transylvania and Croatia. Since the overwhelming majority of the Croatian population was Roman Catholic, at least half of the three hundred priests served this relatively small area. This figure is an additional evidence of the fact, that at the end of the 16th century all but 30,000 of Hungary’s population was Protestant. Leaving aside the well known reasons for the rapid progress of Protestantism, we will merely indicate that under the first two Habsburg kings, Ferdinand I and especially Maximilian I (who was of pronounced Protestant leanings), Protestants were subjected to only minor persecutions. This condition changed radically during the reign of Rudolph I. The new king was brought up by the papacy’s most bigoted tools, the Jesuits, at the Royal Court of Spain. Rudolph not only witnessed but approved the extreme cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, engineered by the Jesuits. In addition he was a man of loose morals, superstitious, morose, in whom the symptoms of mental disease were recognized early. Shortly after ascending the throne he secluded himself in his Prague palace where he spent his time with alchemy, astrology and watch repairing. He left administrative matters with his untrustworthy ministers. Only two problems of national importance interested him. One was the expulsion of the Turks from Hungary which was later to be united with Transylvania. The other was the extermination of the “heretical” Protestants from the liberated country and making all Hungary Mary’s land. The first goal was praiseworthy, and in order to attain it he made a pact with Sigismund Báthory Roman Catholic prince of Transylvania, whose wife, Mary Christina, was a Habsburg archduchess. At first the Turkish campaign brought forth phenomenal victories. Generals George Borbély and Stephen Bocskay, with their Transylvanian troops, succeeded in driving the Turks not only out of the Banat but out of Wallachia as well as far as the lower Danube. (Captain John Smith, founder of the Jamestown Colony in 1607, who served in Transylvania for two years, also took part in this campaign. In recognition of his services he was raised to the Magyar nobility by Prince Sigismund.) Unfortunately the tide of war changed, the early optimistic hopes were dashed, and the prolonged warfare caused great misery, destruction and want in Hungary as well as Transylvania. It became apparent that Rudolph lacked the power to expel the Turks. He did not trust the Hungarians and his German mercenaries could only demonstrate their bravery when pillaging the defenseless population. Finances were also in a poor state. Money was misappropriated by unfaithful stewards before it reached its intended place. Rudolph himself realized that he could not achieve his first goal and therefore sought to attain the second: the extermination of the heretical Protestants. Under Jesuit influence he reasoned that he was unabl to break the Turks because of the Protestants. Moreover he thought that he would need much less strength to destroy the Protestants than to expel the Turks. The King’s plan was aided by an unforseen circumstance. The unstable Sigismund Báthory resigned as Prince of Transylvania and gave the territory to Rudolph. But Sigismund didn’t take everything into consideration. The Transylvanians feared tyrannical Rudolph, but were even more afraid of the strength of the Turks, whose vassal state they were and who were determined to prevent the union of Transylvania with Habsburg held Hungary. So the Transylvanians took up arms against Rudolph, but didn’t fare well. Basta, one of Rudolph’s generals, defeated them and then the terror began in Transylvania. Law was made by the cruel and unprincipled general Basta. His mercenaries pillaged at random, robbed and murdered the defenceless populace. The Jesuits, protected by Basta, were busy expropriating the churches and properties of Protestants right and left. The Unitarians were the first objects of their hatred and the Reformed people were next in line. The Lutherans suffered far less than the other two denominations because they were largely of Saxon, that is, German, background. Transylvania’s misery lasted for ten years and because of the German merecenaries, invasions by Rumanian and Turkish troops, it reached so great a scale that because of starvation cases cannibalism occurred. Meanwhile planned persecution of Protestants was begun in Hungary. It was in addition to the unparalleled misery caused by the Turkish war. Unfortunately the planners of the persecution were Hungarians, royal advisers, mostly priests, bishops and archbishops. The most wicked among them was Stephen Szuhay, bishop of Eger. Misery and persecution combined had brought forth such embitterment that since the King refused to remedy the grievances presented at the Diet of 1604, the Estates declared that unless religious persecution ceases, they would be forced to resort to the right to armed resistance guaranteed them in the Golden Bull of 1222. Rudolph’s answer to the protest was the autocratic addition of Article XXII to the 21 articles enacted by the Diet. In this notorious article he declared that “following the example of
