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• The Impact of Péter Bod’s Translation of a Text about Galley Slaves

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  Kund Botond Gudor

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  Within his work on Protestant church history, Péter Bod’s translation of the galley slaves’
  history was one of those 18th century Protestant historiographical approaches, which
  bound the image of the struggling Church to personal sacrifice for the true faith. In 1738,
  he translated Bálint Kocsi Csergő’s Narratio brevis, i.e. the history of the galley slaves’
  suffering, into Hungarian, entitled Siege of a House Built on a Rock. Although it was a
  manuscript, it became a bestseller copied and read all over the Carpathian Basin. Later,
  the image of the Protestant martyr was identified with what he delineated in his works
  God’s heroic Holy Mother Church and St. Heortocrat, namely, a martyr is an individual
  who, in the midst of persecutions and fleeing, does not grow weary in being of use for the
  benefit of his nation, his Church, the common good. In his works on church history, many
  inventories of suffering from the 16th and 17th centuries demonstrate his utilitarian view of
  martyrdom. The secularized view of martyrdom identifies the notion of suffering for
  religion with the struggle that he himself fought against the Habsburg censorship. The 17th
  and18th century Protestant history of suffering turned into an intellectual commitment that
  is unfolding in the midst of difficulties and preserves our nationhood, and can be formed
  along the jus and bonum publicum (public good, and public law).