The Eighth Tribe, 1975 (2. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1975-10-01 / 10. szám
Page 10 THE EIGHTH TRIBE October, 1975 Stephen Szantai, a schoolmaster from Kassa in the north of Hungary, had been influenced by Reformation tenets, and because of his outspokenness in matters of the faith, had been dragged before the court in irons. Nevertheless the King encouraged him even in the court to engage in public debate with the representatives of the Church. This debate had interesting results. The court doctor openly sided with the reformer, the two judges of the debate also secretely gave their verdict for the reformer, and the King actually aided in his escape. One of the judges, Martin Kohmancrehi, a canon and teacher in a Cathedral School, became a devoted leader in the Revolution. Four canons, two of them bishops, joined him in the Revolution. By 1550 the majority of the members of Parliament adhered to the Reformed faith, so in that year the Transylvanian rulers were forced to agree to tolerate the propagation of the Reformed faith in their midst. Four years later the Saxons and the Hungarians together possessed a fully organized Church. The bishop of the Hungarian section was a man named Thomas who had formerly been a Roman Monk. Finally when in 1556 the Habsburg king withdrew his forces from Transylvania, the estates and monasteries of the Roman Catholic Church were taken over and used for schools and other community purposes. From that year on the old Church no longer had any hold on the people and was pushed completely into the background. Turkish occupation did not hinder the spread of the Reformation, but on occasions helped to forward it by uniting the Hungarian people against the Turkish power. However, some of the rulers and the priesthood remained the avowed enemies of this new intellectual ferment that was going on in the Turkish zone. Whenever the chance came they dragged the heretics off to prison or even to the stake. After many years of struggle, the expulsion of the Turks began around 1682. A war of liberation commenced and Turks began to retreat so that in a few years they were driven right out of Hungary. With the weakening of Transylvania there began a period of inconceivable trouble for the people of the Protestant faith. Church buildings were seized, ministers were expelled, church members suffered all kinds of indignities and even imprisonment, and the people were compelled to conform with Roman Catholicism. The Protestant members of the nation’s assembly were helpless. They pressed their case with such persistence that at the coronation of Leopold I, they were able to secure from him an oath to defend the constitution as it then stood. By 1662, 400 complaints had come before the assembly about confiscation of churches, but the new king turned out to be as much of an absolute monarch as any of those who had gone before him. The royal line remained blindly ignorant of the complaints. The years 1671 -1681 became known by the Hungarian Protestants as the ten years of mourning. So terrible was the opposition made to the people’s exercise of their reformed faith that during those ten years the court, under the presidency of the Prince Primate of Hungary, summoned Protestant ministers and teachers to a special court of law (Porsany) to answer for their non-Roman Catholic views. They were accused of disloyality, treason, and the defamation of the Roman Church. At first they were threatened with torture and death. Then they were given a choice of either becoming Roman Catholics or fleeing the country. Of the first group of 33 who were arraigned, one turned Roman Catholic and the others either resigned or went abroad. Next all the ministers appeared. All four hundred were condemned to death. Some were put in irons and thrown into prison for seven weeks on end. This frightened 200 of the ministers to such a degree that they signed a statement that they would cease their activities. Many left the country thereafter. CONDEMNATION TO THE GALLEYS However, 89 of the 400 ministers refused under any threat to give way to this show of force. All of these 89 were imprisoned and then put to heavy labor under the lash. Every means was tried to break their obstinacy. Three died under their treatment, 18 turned Roman Catholic, one agreed to resign from his charge, and one escaped from prison. The others languished for another year in jail, and then in March 1675, 41 of them were forced to march through Austria to Trieste where they were taken by ship to Naples and sold as slaves to be used in the galleys. Some of the 41 died on the road to the sea and never reached Naples and three managed to escape. The 30 remaining were sold and chained to their oars in May of 1675. One of the condemned slaves managed to send a message back to Hungary in which he gave a heart rending account of the horrors he and his fellow ministers were going through at the hands of merciless task-drivers. He described how their whole physical frame was racked by pain and torture under the lash of their beastly masters.
