Petrőczi Éva: "Nagyságodnak alázatos lelki szolgája” Tanulmányok Medgyesi Pálról - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 4. (Budapest - Debrecen, 2007)
The Apocalyptics of the Hungarian Puritans
The Apocalyptics of the Hungarian Puritans A fter the era of the Heidelbergian orthodoxy the young Hungarians began to be interested in the Puritan ideas and it led to a basic change in their mentality. Both the authors of the Catholic Baroque and the Puritan writers were putting the stress upon the fate of the individuals , upon the possible ways leading to redemption and upon the punishment of sins in the Purgat orio , instead of (apart from some exceptions) discussing the history of nations and the apocalyptic last days of the world. To concretize the matter: after the Thirty Years’ War our students visited the Dutch and English universities of Groeningen, Franeker, Utrecht, Hardervijk, Amsterdam and Cambridge. Their stay in England was usually much shorter in England than in the Netherlands.1 The position, the historical-political-ecclesiastical evaluation of the Netherlands and England changed a lot in our country from the end of the 16th century and the former one, though being a small country, reached the happy status of stability on a torn and wounded continent. F. Ernest Stoeffler’s basic work summarizes all these events rather briefly, but brilliantly. To Dutch or even English, German etc.ears the details of these events sound like evidences, but -as a sign of our homage after centuries to all the foreign nations which gave an intellectual shelter to our students - let me quote its most important passage concerning the local colour of everyday and religiös life in the Low Countries: „The Union of Utrecht was established ini579 and included the provinces of geldern, Zuthpen, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland and Ommelanden. Catholics which had been living in these provinces now migrated to the South where the Duke of Parma had succeeded in welding together the political unity which is now belgium. Protestants within the ten Southern provinces migrated North. The result was an almost solidly Protestant and dominantly Calévinistic state which finally achieved complete autonomy at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. After these struggles for freedom the enterprising Netherlanders forged ahead on every front. .Their seamen traversed the oceans of the world. Along with England they established colonies in various sections of the globe. 1 More fully about this phase of the Hungarian peregrination see: Joseph BODONHELYTs basic work: Az angol puritanizmus lelki élete és magyar hatásai, debrecen, 1942, (The English Puritanism, Its Spiritual Life nad Influence Upon Hungary) or: Stephen ÁGOSTON: The Roots of Hungarian Puritanism, Kálvin Kiadó, Budapest, 1997. 8l
