Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1959-08-01 / 8. szám
4 FRATERNITY dinand II (1619-1637) he had still more scope for his activities, since this king eagerly aided him with the absolute powers a Habsburg monarch had at his command. Ferdinand II was crowned when Matthias II was still alive, and before his enthronement promised to keep the religious law of 1608. But that promise did not stop him from interpreting the law in his own way. Peter Pazmany’s activities took two directions —the recovery to Rome of the feudal magnates, the barons and counts, who owned vast estates, and the strengthening of the priesthood from the lowest ranks up. He was immensely clever at both these aims, for by the thirties of the century he had won back the great majority of the nobility to his Church. When he died in 1637 there was scarcely a Protestant noble family left in the whole of the vast Habsburg domains. With the catholicizing of the nobility there was initiated what was then an unknown conception in Hungary, the German idea of “cuius regio eius religioThe newly-turned nobleman had learned from Germany what he believed was his right, viz., that he could compel all his peasants to accept the religion which he himself professed; thus those who reverted to Rome now enforced the dedication of all Reformed churches on their estates for Roman Catholic use. The Reformed church ministers were simply replaced by priests who were installed in their position, and the people were compelled to learn the tenets of Rome. And so the Peace of Vienna became in time a mere scrap of paper. But in Transylvania and in the Turkish zone the nobility as a whole had not turned to Rome, and Transylvania especially became a stronghold of the Reformed faith, bearing the consciousness that it was called by God to defend that faith with all its might. In 1613 Gabriel Bethlen came to the throne of Transylvania, and he faithfully upheld the freedom of the “four accepted religions” of his princedom. Yet he was liberal to all, even to
