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

1958-10-01 / 10. szám

18

FRATERNITY

fleeted from his mission, and even under constant persecution we never find him leaving for easier fields of service, never yielding ground, but rather working ever closer and closer in his preaching tours to the very walls of the Bishop’s palace.

We first learn of him when he was forbidden to preach in 1554, and then hear of him being in and out of prison. But wherever he went he set up his printing press, and produced hymn books for the people in as large quantities as he was able.

His theological position is hard to determine, as the facts seem to contradict each other. He never raised any objection either to the Lutheran form of service or to Lutheran’s doctrine of the Sacrament. On the other hand, he evidently worked with acceptance in areas where the Swiss views were gaining the ascendancy. We actually find him writing in 1557 to Buliinger, Zwingli’s successor, asking him to suggest how the Hungarian form of service might best be unified; and then we find him publishing on his printing press Bullinger’s reply, in which the latter outlines a purely Helvetic form of worship.

SPREAD OF THE REFORMATION THROUGHOUT HUNGARY

Amongst the German Population

During the forties and fifties of the sixteenth century, the Reformation spread like the strands of a net, whose mesh grew ever tighter and tighter till it brought in all the scattered groups of German-speaking people in the cities. It was only then that the movement spread out from the rather self-sufficient cities and towns to the Slovak and Hungarian villages immediately around them. The five free royal burghs of Kassa, Lőcse, Bártfa, Eperjes and Kisszeben went over en bloc to the Lutheran Reformation. In 1546 these cities held a Synod for this end, and in 1549 they signed their “Confessio Pentapolitana” with the double purpose of declaring both positively that they stood with Luther’s teaching and negatively that they were inclining neither to the Anabaptists nor to the Swiss. (To be continued)