If Mary was consoled by the words of Luther, the friends of the Gospel in Hungary saw danger increasing around them. The king being dead, the ambitious Zapolya at length attained the object of his desire. He was crowned king on the 26th of November, 1526, in the ancient palace of Alba-Royal, which had been for five centuries the abode of the kings. He was not the only claimant of the sceptre of Hungary. The archduke Ferdinand of Austria, relying upon the arrangement entered into with King Ladislaus and supported by the partisans of his sister, the Queen Mary, had himself crowned at Presburg. These two kings, each aspiring to the support of Rome and of her clergy, had only one point in common—their opposition to the Reformation—and in cruelty they were to be rivals of the terrible Turk.

Zapolya published, January 25, 1527, an edict against the Lutherans, and the priests immediately made use of it. The Gospel had gained adherents in all parts of the country, and particularly on the mountains and in the pleasant valleys of the Karpathians, rich in mines of silver and gold. Libethen, a town of miners, had a flourishing church, all the members of which lived in the most charming brotherhood. A rising of the laborers in the mines was the pretext of which the priests availed themselves to stir up persecution. They accused these men of peace of having instigated the revolt. The pastor succeeded in hiding himself in a deep hollow in the mines; but the rector of the school and six councillors were seized and taken to the town of Neusol. ‘Abjure your heresies,’ said the judge, ‘and disclose to us the hiding-place of your pastor, or you will be burnt alive.’ The councillors, alternately threatened and flattered, gave way. Constables (sbirri) descended into the mines and seized the minister. The rector was burnt at Altsol, August 22; but the pastor was taken to a greater distance, near the Castle of Dobrony. His keepers having halted near this building, in the midst of grand and solemn scenery, the priests called upon their prisoner to forswear his faith. Nicolaï—this was the name of the Hungarian martyr—remaining unmoved, was killed with a sabre-stroke and his body was thrown into the flames.[[549]]

Edict Of Ferdinand.

While these things were taking place under the sceptre of Zapolya, his rival Ferdinand issued at Buda, August 20, 1527, an edict for persecution.[[550]] Imprisonment, banishment, confiscation, death by drowning, sword, or fire, were decreed against heretics, and any town which did not execute this royal ordinance was to be deprived of all its privileges.[[551]]

A sky loaded with clouds foreboded to Hungary days of suffering, of blood, and of mourning.

CHAPTER III.
DEVAY AND HIS FELLOW-WORKERS.
(1527-1538.)

The triumph of the Reformation in Hungary was to be slow and difficult, or rather it was never to be complete. The two kings, who after the death of Louis II. shared the kingdom between them, fancied as we have seen, that they should ensure victory to themselves by giving up the Reformation to the Roman clergy. But the only result of persecution was to advance reform. Many of the evangelical Christians at this time quitted Hungary to go to Wittenberg. ‘A great number of Hungarians,’ said Luther on May 7, 1528, ‘are arriving here from all quarters, expelled from Ferdinand’s dominions; and as Christ was poor, they imitate Him in His humble poverty.’[[552]] The reformer welcomed, consoled, instructed, and strengthened them. ‘If Satan employs cruelty,’ he said to one of them, ‘he acts his own part; Scripture everywhere teaches us that this is what we are to expect from him. But for thee, be a brave man, pray and fight in the spirit and the word, against him.[[553]] He who reigns in us is mighty.’ Luther even called to him the Christians of Hungary. He wrote to Leonard Beier, who was in the states of Ferdinand—‘If thou art expelled come hither. We offer thee hospitality and all that Christ gives us.’ The reformer’s charity won hearts to the Reformation. These men, on their return to their own land, became so many missionaries.

Mathias Biro Devay.

Not long after this there appeared at Wittenberg a man who was to be one of the greatest Hungarian reformers. One day, in 1529, Luther was visited by a young man who so completely won his heart that he admitted him into his house and to his table; and, during his stay at Wittenberg, the young Magyar had the privilege of listening to the pious discourses and the witty talk of the great doctor. This student was born at Deva in Transylvania, near the banks of the river Maros, in the waters of which gold is found. The town stands on the road to Temeswar, which passes by the defiles of the mountains and the Iron Gates, at a short distance from the ruins of Sarmizegethusa, the capital of the ancient Dacians, on the site of which the Romans afterwards erected Ulpia Trajana. Here Mathias Biro Devay was born, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, of a noble family. It is supposed that he was one of the disciples of Grynaeus at Buda. In 1523 he went to the university of Cracow, where he matriculated at the same time as his friend Martin of Kalmance. He remained there about two years, and was known as a sincere Roman Catholic.

Devay returned from Cracow towards the close of 1525, and having become priest and monk he showed himself a zealous friend of the pope. He who was to beat down the idol was at this time on his knees before it. It appears to have been in the second half of the year 1527 and the first half of the year 1528 that his mind was enlightened by the Gospel. He embraced the faith in Christ the Saviour with all the frankness and energy of his nature. The catholics, who had known his devotion to the doctrine of Rome, were in consternation. ‘He has been a Roman priest!’ they said, ‘and a man most devoted to our Catholic faith!’ Devay felt the need of getting established in the evangelical doctrine and of qualifying himself to defend it. He therefore went to Wittenburg, and on December 3, 1529, matriculated there.