CHAPTER

V. - HUNGARY,

PICTURESQUE BUDA-PESTH AND THE BLUE DANUBE.

B

UDA-PESTH is without doubt, one of the

most beautifully located cities in Europe. It is picturesquely situated on both sides of the broad majestic Danube river, with its citadel of Buda overlooking the river from west, being 230 feet above it. It is a city of about 750,000,— the second in the Austrian empire. To the beauty of its location, is added the beauty of its public buildings, especially of its symmetrical Parliament House, one of the most attractive buildings in Europe. Just north of Buda-Pesth, about an hour's ride distant, are the ruins of an old fortress, Visigrad, one of the most impressive ruined castles in Europe.

Hungary is Catholic. Of its populaton of nearly twenty millions, nearly nine millions are Hungarians and of these about two millions are Reformed. Protestantism in Hungary did not, as in Bohemia, go back before the reformation. But, in the reformation when the new doctrines entered, the question was whether it would become Lutheran or Reformed. Geographically it was equi

distant from the centre of each of these Protestant churches, Wittenberg and Geneva. At first it inclined toward Lutheranism. But the Magyars are a very peculiar people among the peoples of Europe. They are the only Semitic race in Europe, the rest being of Aryan or Indo-Germanic stock. The Semitic races, like the Jews, always magnified God's sovereignty. So these Magyars found more satisfaction in the Calvinistic doctrines than in the Lutheran.

The great reformer of Hungary was Devay, or as he is more correctly named Matthew Biro of Devay, Devay being his birth-place. Devay studied under Luther in 1529 and came back to Buda, which already had quite a number of adherents of Protestantism. He was imprisoned for preaching Lutheranism but was set free. He continued preaching the Gospel and again visited Germany and Wittenberg in 1541. But later he came under the influence of the Swiss reformers and left Lutheranism to follow Calvin. For no one did Luther grieve more than at the loss of Devay to the Reformed. Devay carried Hungary with him over to the Reformed. In his later life he labored at Debreczin, where he died about 1545.

With Devay labored another reformer, who is known among English readers as Szegedin, but whose name really was John Kiss of Szegedin, Szegedin being his birthplace. He, too, at first, came into contact with the Lutheran reformation and visited Wittenberg in 1543. He returned to Szegled where he introduced Protestantism, especially the mild form of Lutheranism known as Melancthonianism. Compelled to flee, he was imprisoned, but released and removed to Raczkeve, where he became the head of 35 congregations. He was the most learned of the Hungarian reformers, being a writer of poetry, and also of their largest work on theology produced in the reformation, his "Loci Communes" or Theology, published in 1585. This work is Calvinistic, for like Devay he passed from Lutheranism, especially the mild form of it (Melancthonianism), which he imbibed in Germany, over to the Calvinistic views.

Still a third reformer needs to be mentioned, Melius. He, too, went first to Wittenberg in 1556, but by 1559 he embraced the Reformed doctrines. He had been called the Calvin of Debreczin, and Debreczin has been called the Calvinistic Rome of Hungary, for it has been the centre of the Re

formed Church of Hungary ever since the reformation.* He, together with Szegedin, prepared the first Reformed Confession of Hungary in 1561. He labored at Debreczin and led even the young king to become Reformed. Devay having died, Melius, together with Kalmanesch, were the great defenders of the Reformed against Lutheranism. The publication of the high Lutheran creed, the Formula of Concord, in 1580, with its anathemas on the Reformed and its narrow Lutheranism, completed the breach of Hungary with the Lutherans, they were entirely too liberal to accept any such creed as that. Before that, many Hungarians had gone to Wittenberg to study, but now they went to Heidelberg. At that time Socinianism or Unitarianism, with its denial of the divinity of Christ, caused great trouble in Poland and Transylvania, but the Reformed doctrines were successfully defended by Melius. By the middle of the seventeenth century the Second Helvetic Confession of the Swiss was adopted as the creed of the church, which became known as the "Church of the Helvetic confession."

*It is located about 130 miles east of Buda-Pesth.