Református ujság - Fraternity-Testvériség, 1940 (18. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1940-05-01 / 5. szám
TESTVÉRISÉG 15 REX MATTHIAS (1440—1940) By ENDRE KASSAI With deep reverence the Hungarian nation celebrated the fifth-hundredth anniversary of King Matthia’s birth. At a banquet of the Members of the Corvin Order of Merit — a distinction conferred on men eminent in the worlds of letters, art and science and so called because Matthias’s family was known by the name of Corvin — the signal merits of the great Hungarian King were expatiated upon by the Hungarian Premier, Count Paul Teleki, who is a direct descendant of that King’s tutor and most intimate adviser. It was — the Premier said — a source of profound satisfaction to the nation that of all our kings, most of them of foreign extraction, it was two Magyar monarchs, St. Stephen and Matthias, who had proved the greatest rulers. When after a succession of Teutonic and Slav kings the Hungarians elected the son of their greatest hero, John Hunyadi, to rule over them, they did so, not only to guard against the danger of foreign interference, but also to throw their national aspirations into relief and to enhance the prestige of the Magyar race. It was greatly to King Matthias’s credit that he was the first, not only in Hungary, but also in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, to organize a regular army. With it he ensured the country’s idependence by defeating first the armies of the German and Bohemian monarchs and then the rebel Prince of Moldavia (present-day Rumania), But he never allowed himself to be carried away into adventurous undertakings by a lust for conquest; on the contrary he pacified his conquered foes so successfully that he was elected King of Bohemia and thought of uniting his old enemies in a league with the help of which he hoped to be able to check the waves of Ottoman imperialism threatening to overwhelm Western Christendom, and to force the Turks to retreat. When Matthias, after establishing peace with his neighbours, embarked on a victorious campaign agins the Turks, he therewith became the champion of European and Western ideas. It was for enlightenment, Christianity and the freedom of the nations that Matthias undertook this mission and inaugurated a struggle against the Turks which succeeding generations were to continue, saving Europe from the destruction attending the advance of an anti- Christian Asiatic Power. Matthias had little sympathy with the privileged Estates; his chief concern being to improve the lot of the common people. To do so he lightened the burdens weighing on the serfs, codified the laws dealing with the administration of justice, rid the national bureaucracy of many abuses, instituted a system of public trial on fixed days, and framed centralists laws for the guidance of the lower-grade authorities and courts. Matthias was one of the greatest kings of the Renaissance. He raised Hungary to such a high level of culture that this country became a veritable centre of Renaissance science and art. The university and large library in Buda were among the best in Europe. To his court he brought Attavante degli Attavanti, Boccachio Veccio, Francesco d’Antonio del Cerio and the del Fore brothers, in order that the presence there of the greatest masters of the age should act as a stimulus to the development of Hungarian art. Hungarian science and literature made such strides that all Europe was impressed. Nevertheless, at Matthias’s court the international values of the humanistic trend of the Renaissance became transformed, imbued with a national character, the vehicles of expression of the creative and formative genius of the Magyars. No Hungarian king had ever been adored by the common people as Matthias was. Today the wail of the pepole when they heard of his death is still a household word in Hungary: “King Matthias is dead; justice is dead!” (Meghalt Mátyás király, oda az igazság.) In all the thousand years of Hungary’s history the imagination of the people never wove so many legends, stories and anecdotes around the figure of anyone else. And the imagination of the people was never at fault. A man whose name was always on the lips of the people because they had taken him to their hearts, was greater, better, more of a man than those of whom books enough to fill a library had been written or whose statues had been sculptured by the score. For science might be mistaken, artists might work to order, but the imagination of the people, their adoration as expressed in anecdotes, tales, ballads and proverbs, was never wrong: it was the revelation of what the heart felt and the mind knew. (Danubian Review) T
