In the long 18th century described as the period of “peaceful Re-Catholicization” or
“Catholic Restoration” in the writings about the ecclesiastical history of different
congregations, the Roman Catholic Church used every means to push Protestants into
the background and to render their lives impossible. As a result of intensified ReCatholicization, diverse means were employed to confront the communities and
individuals, from the occupation of churches or schools and collective punishments,
through the public humiliation and terrorization of individuals, to bloody torture and the
annihilation of their livelihood. The partly violent spreading of Catholicism resulted in
many controversial cases in the Carpathian Basin, which were reported on many
publications in Western Europe. The examination of the early printed books in the
Lutheran collection of books in Halle (Franckesche Stiftung) has brought numerous
relevant texts from a Hungarian perspective to the surface, which allow studying the
danger-fraught life circumstances of Protestants in the Carpathian Basin in the 18th
century through the eyes of an external observer.