Nor were the muses silent, in the midst of the heroic combats which marked this sad period. With so many inspiring themes presenting themselves, the poet, the successor of the mediæval troubadour, soon appeared on the scene to perpetuate in song the memory of the glorious deeds. Among others was Sebastian Tinódy, who described in verse some of the most glorious of the episodes in the sad chronicle of the sixteenth century. He visited the scenes of the battles and engagements, sought out the survivors or those who had taken a conspicuous part, the captains and their brave followers, collecting the incidents presented in his ballads. Tinódy did not confine himself, however, to his lyre, but was also an adept in the use of arms, and often took part in the contests of his time, and had more than once been wounded. Another and even more interesting figure was that of Valentine Balassa, who was as gallant a soldier as he was eminent as a poet. His works, consisting in part of religious poems and partly of lyric songs, have been, for three centuries, the favorite reading of the Hungarian people. Some of his writings have, however, come down to us in manuscript only, and present a most valuable example of the poetic genius of the Hungarians of his time. Balassa lived a stirring, eventful and dangerous life, which came to a glorious end on the field of honor. At the storming of Gran, in 1597, he was among the Hungarian besiegers, and the gallant poet received a wound during the engagement, which soon proved fatal.
PASHA’S HOUSE.
In the midst of these perpetual struggles and successive calamities closed the sixteenth century, and began the seventeenth quite as inauspiciously for the Hungarians. Until now they had cherished the hope that the Hapsburg kings would rescue them from the cruel rule of the Osmanlis. But after a lapse of seventy years they not only saw their hopes of liberation from the hated yoke destroyed, but had the mortification of witnessing the continual spread of the Turkish power. Besides, a sharp antagonism of another kind gradually arose between the nation and their king. The national spirit, in spite of the sad condition of the people, asserted itself more and more, and frequently came into collision with the foreign royal dynasty, whose seat of government was without the frontiers of the country. This antagonism was not only of a national, but also of a religious character, for, while the largest part of Hungary was overwhelmingly Protestant, the kings of this period were among the staunchest supporters of the Church of Rome. In addition to this, the kings, who were at the same time emperors of Germany, had brought themselves, by their autocratic actions, into direct opposition to the constitution of the country and to the rights and privileges guaranteed by law. As a consequence a fierce constitutional contest was raging, during the whole of the seventeenth century, between the nation and their kings, which quite overshadowed the struggle against the Turks. In these contests the Hungarian people leaned for support chiefly on the principality of Transylvania, whose rulers, Stephen Bocskay, Gabriel Bethlen, George Rákóczy I., not only made their comparatively small country the bulwark of Hungarian nationality and of the Protestant Church, but raised her to a position of exceptional influence in European politics.
Before continuing to sketch the period of the Turkish rule in Hungary, we will take a rapid glance at the rise of Protestantism amongst the Hungarians.
HUNGARIAN PEASANTS IN AN INN.
The fall of Luther’s hammer upon the door of the castle-church of Wittenberg, as he nailed to it his famous theses, reverberated even in Hungary, and produced an intense commotion in that distant country. The period of the renaissance, the revival of art and literature, had prepared all active and inquiring minds for changes in church and religion. The country had maintained an active intercourse, political, commercial, and cultural, with the western nations, and when Luther began the great work in Germany, which was to mark a new era in the history of the world, his ideas spread like wildfire all over Hungary, and, especially, found favor amongst the German inhabitants, who formed at that time an important element of her population. The cities of Buda, Oedenburg (Soprony), Presburg, the wealthy mining regions in the north, the Királyföld in Transylvania, were settled by Germans. Many of their clergy, attracted by ties of national kinship had finished their studies in Germany, and their merchants were closely connected in business with those of the old fatherland. Owing to the intimate relations thus established between the Germans of Hungary and their brethren abroad, the teachings of Luther gained almost as rapidly ground among them as among their countrymen in Germany, where the new doctrines had first been promulgated. In the course of a few years the new movement had assumed such formidable proportions that it attracted the attention of the whole nation.
The Catholic clergy, threatened in their supremacy, were the first to take the field in defence of the Church thus assailed. Round them very soon rallied that class of the nation which, alone, enjoyed political rights in the land, the entire nobility. In siding with the Catholic clergy, in this conflict against the Reformation and its followers, the Lutherans, the nobility were by no means actuated by religious motives only. Their hostile attitude was rather owing to important political considerations. The throne was then occupied by Louis II., who was of Polish extraction, the same youthful king who, noted for his frivolous character, expiated the errors of his reign upon the battle-field of Mohács. This unfortunate ruler was personally as indifferent to religion as to every thing else involving a serious turn of mind. But his wife, Queen Mary, the sister of the German emperor, Charles V., was all the more enthusiastic in the defence of Luther’s teachings. The queen and her German courtiers, by exerting a baneful influence over the affairs of Hungary, had incurred the ill-will of the nobility, which was identical with the national party. This party, with a view to striking a blow at the German and Lutheran sympathizers surrounding the king, enacted from the outset most rigorous laws against the Lutherans. Thus, as early as 1523, a law was promulgated declaring Lutherans and their protectors (clearly indicating by the latter term the German courtiers of the king) foes to the Holy Virgin Mary, the patroness of Hungary, and as such, punishable with death and confiscation of their property. The persecutions against the adherents of the new faith began immediately. Luther’s works and writings, which had been largely imported into Hungary, were seized and consigned to the flames. The Reformation, nevertheless, steadily gained ground.