Fraternity-Testvériség, 1958 (36. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)

1958-08-01 / 8. szám

FRATERNITY

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the religious movements abroad, essayed to preach the Gospel in its simplicity and purity. The sermons of Pelbart Temesvári, for example, went through as many as 52 editions between the years of 1498 and 1521, although admittedly they had to be published abroad in the city of Hagenau, and often again in other places.

Then again, the humanistic movement of the early sixteenth century was another factor that prepared the way for the Reformation, since it undermined the authority of the Church. Thus in Hungary the Renaissance affected not only the culture and art of the people, it also played an important role in inducing a reform in religion. It produced, too, men like Nicolaus de Lyra, of Normandy, one of such “humanist preachers” whose specialty was in biblical exposition. So influential was he that we might well claim for him the truth lying behind the popular saying of a later age: “Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset." (“If Lyra had not lyricised, Luther would not have danced.”)

Thus it happened that large numbers of the priesthood were in part prepared for the movement of reform when finally it reached Hungary, with the result that the Reformation took its own free course in Hungary, and became something distinctive and unique and fully Hungarian in its form and substance.

The Reformation in Hungary Before the Rout of Mohács

In the year 1526 the Turks slaughtered the Hungarian army at a town on the Danube called Mohács, near the present Jugoslav border, wiping out the flower of the nation. In 1541 Suleiman the Turk pushed still further north and entered into and took possession of the royal city of Buda. But Suleiman conquered a land that had already come to know many of Luther’s tenets. In 1521 the Primate of Hungary had already felt compelled to issue the order that the papal bull which denounced the Lutheran doctrines must be read

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