Petrőczi Éva: "Nagyságodnak alázatos lelki szolgája” Tanulmányok Medgyesi Pálról - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 4. (Budapest - Debrecen, 2007)
The Apocalyptics of the Hungarian Puritans
The Apocalyptics of the Hungarian Puritans rAs Leiden, with spending half a year in Cambridge and then returning to Leiden. Medgyesi was not a scandal-monger type among the Hungarian Puritans, he strengthened the calmer Amesian tone in our church life. As, for instance, with an extremely important handbook of homiletics, published in 1650. Medgyesi payed an homage with his Doce nos orare to Ames’s Marrow of Divinity with transplanting its text and ideas into his own work.6 7 The very part in which Ames is mentioned openly (by name) is the one upon the methodology of Sunday sermons in the Doce praedicare chapter. At that time - partly due to the Lutheran influence - the majority of the Hungarian Calvinist pastors used only some overburdened biblical loci, the so-called pericopes. Medgyesi was totoally gainst this dull practice which spoiled the dignity of the Lord’s day. He mentions the master as „that Amesius of great fame” who „blames those who are glued to certain partsof the Scriptures, therefore losing and hiding its real essence.” Even the majority of the other, the non-Amesian works of Medgyesi, like his extremely popular Praxis pietatisor his Dialogus politico ecclesiasticus (Bártfa, 1650), a dialogue on the synod-presbyterian system were very far from the apocaliptical way of thinking and arguing.7 A basic change in Medgyesi’s tone appers only from 1653, the death-year of George Rákóczi L, Prince of Transylvania. From this time on the government went into the hands of George Rákóczi II. who was a fanatic and impatient hunter of titles and positions, with no trace of political wisdom. This unquiet princely person dragged his country into a very unhappy military expedition the purpose of which was his becoming King of Poland. He expected a continuous Swedish support (morally and practically), but straight after his arrival to Poland the Swedish army simply left the stage. The prince himself was led - instead of back to Hungary - to the territory of one our country’s most blood-thirst enemies, the Tartars and his army was captured by this legendary and barbarous nation as well. After his shameful arrival to Hungary Rákóczi was bereft of his throne by the enraged Sultan who wanted to punish the incredible disobedience of his vassal and the Turks distroyed the whole of Transylvania. Thousands of its inhabitants were unmercifully massacred, all of its towns turned into ruins. Even the ashes of long ago deceased Transylvanian princes were thrown 6 MEDGYESI, Pál: Doce nos orare, Bártfa, 1650, RMK I., 832. More fully about it see my article entitled Some Features to the Portrait of William Ames. 7 The details of his life and career can be found in Eugene ZOVANYTs Encyclopaedia of the Protestant Churches in Hungary, ed. By Alexander LADÄNYI: Magyar Református Zsinati Sajtóosztály, Budapest, 1977, p. 397-398. and E. PETRŐCZI: The Background Story of a Translation, in this volume. 83
