Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1959-04-01 / 4. szám
8 FRATERNITY eyes on the lovely cathedral of the city. But to get it, he had to seek the aid of the court. He was thereupon supplied with all the guns that he asked for, and in 1604, under the pretext of royal permission for his section, he seized the cathedral and dedicated it for Roman Catholic use. Finding that might can achieve much, he did not stop with this act of confiscation. He went on to seize every single church in this capital city of the province, and then actually forbade Protestant worship even in private homes. To see that these orders were enforced, he imported a company of Jesuits to execute his will. One of the weaknesses of Protestantism in this part of northern Hungary was the fact that the German Lutheran cities would not even consider cooperation with the Reformed Hungarianspeaking nobility. They were under the illusion that the Roman Catholic Church would never treat them as it was treating the “Calvinists”. But now they became sobered by the latest turn of events, and were equally aghast when the archbishop announced that throughout the whole of his diocese the Church would be reorganized according to the decision of the Council of Trent. Freedom of conscience was now definitely at stake. The gauntlet had been thrown down. What the Roman Church had managed to do with royal backing was to turn all Protestants of whatever confession into traitors to the throne. Stephen Bocskai’s Struggle for Freedom Hungarian historians look upon Bocskai as the first Hungarian statesman who, remaining faithful to the Reformation, yet took a “European” view of events. Bocskai saw that only a united Hungary, along with the Kingdom of Transylvania, could face the inevitable future struggle with the Turks and the other enemies of the people that were to be found both within and without the land. (To be continued)
