The Eighth Tribe, 1974 (1. évfolyam, 1-7. szám)
1974-09-01 / 4. szám
Page Ten THE EIGHTH TRIBE September, 1974 men to western universities, and he sponsored several prospective young men each year from his own pocket. He used to foritfy these young men against possible un-Calvinistic influences by having pertinent articles of the II. Helvetic Confession drilled into them. For that was the basis of all education and indeed of all life in Bethlen’s Transylvania: Bethlen had the articles of the II. Helvetic Confession printed in the printing presses of Debrecen and distributed throughout the land. Culturally, he endeavored to raise Gyulafehervar to the level of western cultural centers by inviting Italian artisans to work or preferably to settle there. He even had Venitian theaters giving performances in Gyulafehervar. But bringing in the western did not mean giving up Magyar cultural and traditional heritages. He revived many of the Magyar customs of court, garment and even of language, so that Transylvania eventually became the redoubt of Hungarian Culture as well as of Calvinism. It had been frequently speculated “what might have been” had not Bethlen died relatively young, in his 49th year. In the last two years of his life he is very busy diplomatically. The link to the West, which he has been nursing so lovingly is beginning to bear its fruit. The Swedish king, Adolf Gustaf, has defeated the Habsburg forces under Wallenstein, has made inroads on Poland, and now, he and some Calvinist members of the Polish aristocracy want to make an alliance with Bethlen. They want Bethlen to bring his Szekelys into Poland and link up with the Swedes for a drive against the Habsburgs. They offer him the Polish crown. But Bethlen feels his life ebbing away fast. He wants to keep the diplomatic door open to the Swedes for his posterity’s sake, but rather than an involvement in Poland, he wants to make sure, that his life’s work in Transylvania and in the seven Northern Hungarian counties will endure. When he should be in bed he travels back and forth probing the institutions he had set up to see if they’ll endure. In the last month of his life he travels north by coach even though his swollen kidneys give him excruciating pain with every bump. He talks to the aristocrats of the seven counties, pointing out, that the great majority of the small landowners and of the peasantry there being Calvinists, they want to stay with Transylvania after he dies, he asks them to cooperate with that wish. On his way back, he reaches Enyed, just a few miles from his home in Gyulafehervar, and he is so ill, that he can no longer talk. On the morning of November 15, 1629, he signals for pen and paper to be brought to him and he writes his last message: “Ha Isten velünk, kicsoda ellenünk? Senki sincsen, bizonyára nincsen.” — “lf God is with us, who could stand against us? There is nobody, assuredly there is nobody”. Within an hour after that, he died peacefully. But his spirit lives on. His work had not been in vain. Some eight million Calvinists east of Vienna thank him for their faith whether consciously or unconsciously, as do we, many thousands of us in the United States, who stem from there. Barna Szabó Secretary, Board of Elders Hungarian Reformed Church Passaic, N. J. In the field of higher education, Reformed secondary schools were established throughout Hungary in the 16th century, and the so-called Bethlen College was established to train men. A Seminary was founded by Prince Gábor Bethlen in Nagyenyed, hut in 1895 was moved to Kolozsvár. Reformed College of Nagyenyed Reformed Seminary of Kolozsvár “The Lord’s Day. Hence we see that in the ancient churches there were not only certain set hours in the week appointed for meetings, but that also the Lord’s Day itself, ever since the apostles’ time, was set aside for them and for a holy rest, a practice now rightly preserved by our Churches for the sake of worship and love.” —The Second Helvetic Confession
