Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1959-07-01 / 7. szám

8

FRATERNITY

HISTORY

OF THE

HUNGARIAN REFORMED CHURCH

By

IMRE REVESZ, Th. D.

Translated by

GEORGE A. F. KNIGHT I

THE CENTURY OF THE REFORMATION 1520—1608

(Continuation)

Stephen Bocskai’s Struggle for Freedom

Eorn in 1557 of a noble family in the capital city of Transylvania he became a high ranking officer in the army, remaining loyal to the Habsburg dynasty. Then in trouble politically he had to flee to Prague where he acted as a kind of royal agent in that city. But meanwhile his eyes had been opened to the fact that from the point of view of the Habsburg the Kingdom of Hungary was not an end in itself, nor of value in itself, but was merely an instrument to be used for their own royal ends. Later on he was in the habit of iterating that Rudolf had “hounded him out of loyalty by gun and sword.” He came in fact to see that the freedom of his people was irrevocably bound up with what he called “the true Christian faith.”

In 1604 he began an active resistance, and at once the nobles in the north flocked to his side, and at the same time the cities opened their gates to him. The Transylvanian nobles gladly and spiritedly acclaimed him as their prince, and in the following year the national assembly of Hungary proclaimed him their prince as well. Bocskai, however, never ascended the throne. What he sought was not his own ends, but the free