Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1959-09-01 / 9. szám
FRATERNITY 7 there was no question of church and state being in a condition of hostility; nor was there any perceptible impact of the Counter-Reformation in this area either. The troubles that the Reformed church and people in the Turkish area had to face were of a different nature. They were in the nature of constant exactions by the occupying power, and of forced labour for public works. Yet, thus it came about by the grace of God that central Hungary came out of the century- and-a-half long Turkish occupation impoverished, yes, but still Reformed in faith. In that area no Counter-Reformation had decimated the ranks of the Reformed Church, though great tracts of the country were depopulated of all inhabitants. Thus it is that central Hungary, the so-called Trans and Cis-Tisza Church Districts of the present- day Reformed Church, has remained till now the stronghold of the Reformed Church of Hungary. With the weakening of Transylvania there began a period of inconceivable trouble for the people of the Protestant faith. Church buildings were seized, ministers were expelled, church members suffered all kinds of indignities and even imprisonment, and there was compulsory conformity with Roman Catholicism. The Protestant members of the national assembly were helpless in seeking redress, yet they continued to press their case with such persistence that at the coronation of Leopold I they were able to secure from him an oath to defend the constitution as it then stood. By 1662, 400 complaints had come before the assembly about confiscations of churches. But the new king turned out to be as absolute a monarch as any of those who had gone before him, and these complaints were either removed from the agenda of the national assembly or promises were given which were never fulfilled. The royal line remained blindly ignorant of the growing result of their folly, viz., that the national Hungarian cause and the cause of the Reformed faith were slowly but surely becoming one and the same thing in the eyes of the Hungarian people.
