Petrőczi Éva: "Nagyságodnak alázatos lelki szolgája” Tanulmányok Medgyesi Pálról - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 4. (Budapest - Debrecen, 2007)

An English and a Hungarian Anti-Episcopal Dialogue from the i6th-i7th centuries

An English and a Hungarian Anti-Episcopal Dialogue from the i6,h-i7"' centuries rA."

Numerous experts of history and church-history analyzed the ecclesiastical situation in England during 1588-1589 when the Puritans lost their stability and - as a very unwise, but otherwise understandable reaction - totally lost their self-control and were, almost literally, spitting into the face of the most remarkable authorities of the Anglican Church. One of the best case-studies of the situation was given by Henry Offley Wakeman: “Flushed with their success in the neighbouring countries of Holland and Scotland, conscious that Englishmen were rapidly more and more Calvinis- tic in their religious beliefs, irritated by the attempts of the bishops, halfhearted though they were, to enforce a minimum of ceremonial uniformity by the advanced Puritans thought that the time had come to declare open war upon what remained of Catholicism in England. All that was traditional and Catholic seemed to them to be popish. They rejected the required ceremonial; they refused to read the services of the Prayerbook because both seemed to them to breathe the spirit of popery. They tried to supersede episcopal by presbyterian government, they poured the venom of their wrath, in the Martin Marprelate Tracts, upon episcopacy itself, in 1588, because they instinctively felt that Catholicism and episcopacy were bound up together. Ubi episcopus ibi ecclesia.”3

Exactly thirty years after Offley Wakeman, in 1944, Ralph Barton Perry was throwing light upon another aspect of the fight of the episcopal- anti-episcopal circles. According to him. “A considerate portion of the English Protestants were governed by political rather than by religious motives. They felt a nationalistic resentment of the pretensions pf the papacy, and an anti-clericalism that ranged from a high-principled distrust of priestly privileges to a frankly sordid coveting of ecclesiastical property.”4

Finally, at the end of this survey-unit, let me quote the above mentioned Elizabeth Appleton’s recent description of some characteristics of the Marprelate controversy: “One major characteristic of this battle of words is that it was at once political, religious, historic and literary. It was a battle for power: the Puritans versus the Church and the Crown, especially in its early campaigns. It was a battle over religion: the Puritans wanted reforms and the overthrow of bishops and of episcopacy; Elizabeth wanted reforms in the church but was determined to retain the status quo as regards episcopacy. It was a historic battle witnessing the rise of the Puritans and of Puritan organisation in England, curbed temporarily in Elizabeth’s reign. And it was a literary battle, Oxford and his aides winning out (but 3 4

3 WAKEMAN, Henry Offley: An Introduction to the History of the Church of England, Rivingtons, 34 King Str., Covent Garden, London, 1914, 331.

4 PERRY, Ralph Barton: Puritanism and Democracy, The Vanguard Pr., New York, 1944, 67.

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