Fraternity-Testvériség, 1956 (34. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1956-07-01 / 7. szám
4 FRATERNITY Riidolph 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 unable 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 unforeseen 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 the 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 Hapsburg-held Hungary. So the Transylvanians took up arms against Rudolph, but didn’t fare well. Basta, one of 'Rudolp’h 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, and robbed and murdered the defenseless 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 mercenaries and invasions by Rumanian and Turkish troops, it reached so great a scale that because of starvation, cases of 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 embitter- ment 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 of 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 his predecessors, of the Holy Roman Emperors, as well as the Kings of Hungary, he professes the Holy Roman Catholic faith with all sincerity and wishes to see this as the dominant religion in all his countries, especially in Hungary, to cleanse it from all' heresy and to protect it as part of his royal office.” “In view of this he approves and ratifies all the laws enacted in the interest of the Roman Catholic faith from the time of St. Stephen and in the future forbids, under penalty, the discussion of the same in the Diet, because it merely interferes with the handling of more important matters.” This notorious article, which was received with joy only by the C’roatians, bore within itself the death sentence of Protestantism. It is no wonder that dissatisfaction reached the boiling point and only a
