Petrőczi Éva: "Nagyságodnak alázatos lelki szolgája” Tanulmányok Medgyesi Pálról - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 4. (Budapest - Debrecen, 2007)
An English and a Hungarian Anti-Episcopal Dialogue from the i6th-i7th centuries
important and mighty, but most likely less stubborn and rigorous figure of the Elizabethan ecclesiastical hierarchy. As we see from the above quoted passage, he was - at least sometimes - ready to mollify Whitgift’s rigidity. Finally, before coming closer to the Throckmorton’s text itself, let me quote G. R. Elton, the greatest expert of the Tudor era. As we see from his interpretation, the Puritans were not as „white” and the conformists (episcopals) as „black” as the Dialogue tries to prove. “In the meantime (during the i58oies) disorder reigned. Some bishops, especially John Aylmer of London, the centre of Puritanism, did something to enforce conformity, but others encouraged the prophesyings... In any case, the government turned to a more energetic expression of nonconformity from about 1580 onwards... In 1583, Whitgift succeeded Grindal at Canterbury. An uncompromising opponent of Puritanism since his Cambridge quarrels with Cartwright, he was just the man for the queen’s purpose.... The general synods of 1589 (the date of Throckmorton’s Dialogue) proved to be agreed only in their desire for an ill defined presbyterian model. When it came to action there was a split between those who wanted to attack the bishops and those who were content to resist passively. The extremists did the movement little good, especially when the publication of the violent and scurrilous, but clever and amusing Martin Marprelate attacking the bishops, provoked the queen... At the top the Church was not ill-served. Elizabeth’s bishops, though neither so splendid, not so influential as her father’s, included able scholars and administrators in men like Parker, Cox, Aylmer and Sandys...”7 As we have seen, according to Elton’s evaluation, Aylmer was (remember also the Diary of Richard Rogers) a more smooth character. But Whitgift, and the more aggressive, the „Marprelatistic” sorts of Puritans are appearing in this era-marking book like real scandal-mongers. The late 16th-century fellow-souls of our stormy man of Sárospatak, János Tolnai Dali whose five-years-long stay in England (during the i63oies) strengthened his anti-episcopal behaviour. The Puritan’s actions were very provocative; therefore we can’t be really shocked by the similarly militant reaction of the episcopacy: “Whitgift, a hard vigorous man of few scruples when he saw his way clear, brought a different air with him: he swept along on the prophetic storms of conflict and persecution rather than on the gentle winds of indifference of accommodation which more correctly interpreted the queen’s own attitude to the vexed question of uniformity in religion. If the bishops did not lack worthy men, neither did the lesser clergy... the Puritan movement derived much of its strength from the inadequacy of the 7 An English and a Hungarian Anti-Episcopal Dialogue from the i6,h-if1' centuries 7 ELTON, Geoffrey Rudolph: England under the Tudors, Methuen, London and New York, 1985, 312-313,421. 96
