Search
Search Results
-
The Impact of Péter Bod’s Translation of a Text about Galley Slaves
131-172Views:8Within 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). -
Die Erinnerungsgeschichte der Verfolgung ungarischer Galeerensklaven protestantischen Bekenntnisses im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts
91-113Views:8In 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.