Fraternity-Testvériség, 1960 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1960-11-01 / 11. szám

8

FRATERNITY

HISTORY

OF THE

HUNGARIAN REFORMED CHURCH

By

IMRE REVESZ, Th. D.

Translated by

GEORGE A. F. KNIGHT

IV

THE PERIOD OF REFORM 1789—1848

(Continuation)

One reason for the triumph of the Counter- Reformation in Hungary was the fact that that land remained a feudal state long after the development of democratic forms of government in other European lands. The Roman Church gladly allied itself with the feudal system and taught the Habsburg State to see in Protestantism an abscess in the body politic; moreover, it was never slow in pointing out, firstly, that Protestantism seemed to be very mixed up with what were coming to be called “democratic ideas”, and, secondh-, that Protestants were responsible for a decline in the moral standards of the nation. One Roman Catholic bishop at a Synod in 1822 even blamed Protsetantism for “that terrible philosophy, born in France, which is poisoning the whole of Europe.” The result was that the Court, too, came to think of Protestants as mere revolutionaries, and instituted enquiries to discover how many Protestant ministers were what we would call “leftists” in their political ideas; the blame for their radical political ideas was put on the fact that so many of them had studied abroad.

Then, again, it was during this century that the whole conception of nationalism grew up in