1520-1711.
1520-1711. The Reformation made rapid headway in Hungary. From the very
beginning, Protestantism in Hungary had a political element, in that its
rise was coeval with the accession of the Catholic Austrian dynasty so
unwelcome to many Hungarians. Theological and political opposition thus
gave a more than ordinary impetus to the study of all the questions and
problems agitated during the Reformation. The most prominent result of
that movement was a revival of the national feeling; and coupled with
that, a regeneration of Hungarian Literature. The vast intellectual
revolution of the fifteenth century, commonly called the Renascence,
had, of course, left its traces in Hungary too. One of the most popular
of Magyar Kings, Matthew Corvinus (1458-1490), invited a number of
Italian scholars and artists to Hungary, such as Anton Bonfini, of Ascoli
(1427-1503), Marzio Galeotto, of Narni, in Umbria (1427(?)-1497), Peter
Ranzanus, of Palermo; Thaddeus Ugoletus, of Parma; Bartholinus Fontius;
Felix of Ragusa; etc.
These scholars and artists, ably assisted by the Hungarian John Cesinge,
or Janus Pannonius (1432-1472), and chiefly by the generous and refined
king himself, brought some new leaven into the stagnant intellectual
life of Hungary. In addition to the university founded by King Lewis the
Great, at Pécs (1367), a new university was founded at Pozsony, where
the Danube enters Hungary; the king’s famous library (the _Corvina_)
became the delight of scholars; and a printing press was established
at Buda (1473). The king’s victorious campaigns against the Hussites
(see Jósika’s novel, “_The Bohemians in Hungary_”), the Turks and the
Austrians, gave rise to numerous poems and songs composed by unknown
poets; and his age, called the Age of the Hunyadis, the king being a
Hunyadi, bade fair to be one of great intellectual brilliancy too.
However Matthew’s premature death and the ensuing political troubles put
an end to such prospects. It was left for the passions roused by the
Reformation to kindle the fire which the torch of the Renascence had been
unable to light. In all the countries where the deep influence of the
Renascence preceded that of the Reformation, the intellectual capital of
the country was not impaired, even when its political was. In Hungary,
the Renascence left too slender traces to guard the nation from falling
into lawless writing about the topics of the day, regardless of the
rules and classical measure so deeply impressed by the Renascence on the
more fortunate nations of Italy, Spain, France and England. Hence the
immense mental and emotional stir imparted by the Reformation was not
sufficient to raise up great writers in Hungary. In fact, Hungary was,
on a smaller scale, in a mental condition exactly similar to that of
Germany. There too the Renascence had scarcely begun to do its beneficial
work, when the Reformation swept everything before it. The consequence
was the same. Luther himself, although one of the geniuses of language;
Fischart, a very demon of language; and Hutten, the great champion of
thought and liberty, together with numerous minor lights, were, in spite
of efforts without number, debarred from creating a great German national
literature. It was only much later, when the Renascence had done its work
in Germany too, that the Germans, following in the wake of the Greeks,
Romans, French, English, Spanish and Italians, were able to create a
great national literature of their own. The same remark holds good for
Hungary too.
Protestantism in Hungary assumed all the aspects it had taken in
Germany and Switzerland. There were Lutherans proper, and Calvinists;
Anabaptists and Unitarians. The Geneva of Hungary was the town of the
“_cives_,” Debreczen, east of the middle Theiss, in a large plain.
Melius, or Peter Juhász (1536-1572) was the “pope” of the Magyar
Calvinists; as Matthew Biró de Déva, 1500(?)-1545, was that of the
Lutherans. Both preached in Hungarian and published a number of doctrinal
and controversial writings in Hungarian; and both were followed by
many a writer whose enthusiasm was the better part of his ability. The
Bible, portions of which had been translated into Hungarian before the
Reformation, was now published in Magyar in its entirety. This most
excellent translation, executed chiefly by Caspar Károlyi, was printed at
Vizsoly, in the county of Abauj.
The number of Hungarian poets writing in Hungarian during the sixteenth
century is more than one hundred; most of them being Protestants. In the
first years of the Reformation, their works were mostly of a religious
character, such as psalms and prayers. Amongst these we may mention the
religious poems of Andreas Batizi, Matthew Biró, and Gál Huszár. The
constant wars with the Turks or infidels added a peculiar intensity to
the religious passions of the time; and accordingly the first Hungarian
drama, “The Marriage of Priests” (_A papok házassága_), published
in Cracow (then belonging to Poland) in 1550, and written by Michael
Sztárai, was in reality an exposition of Protestantism in the form of a
drama. “Moralities,” and mordant satires against priests and the Catholic
Church generally, were frequent. Didactic poetry, so closely allied with
the moralizing spirit of early Protestantism, was ably represented by
Gabriel Pesti, whose translation of Æsop’s “Fables” appeared in 1536
(in Vienna); and by Caspar Heltai, who likewise translated fables from
ancient authors, 1566.
From the second half of the sixteenth century we possess a great number
of rhymed stories, taken from the Bible, from foreign novels or from
Hungarian history. One of the most famous of the authors of such stories
was Sebastian Tinódy, whose “_Chronicle_,” or poetical narrative of
contemporary events appeared in Kolozsvár, in Transylvania, in 1554.
As a poetical work it is scarcely of any value, with the exception of
the music accompanying it. As a faithful picture of the Hungary of that
time it will continue to be valuable to the patriot and historian. The
language is heavy; the form is unshapely. In some respects superior to
Tinódy were Stephen Temesváry and Matthew Nagy de Bánka; the latter
being the bard of the great John Hunyadi. One, Albert Gergei, of whose
personal circumstances nothing is known, composed, chiefly from Italian
sources, the story of a young prince fighting innumerable foes and
surmounting difficulties of all sorts in search of the fairy whom he,
in the end, does not fail to win. This story (“_Argirius Királyfi_”)
has ever since the sixteenth century been the most popular chap-book
amongst the lower classes in Hungary. Its _naïveté_ and good epic tone
render it agreeable even to a more cultured taste. Another poet of the
second half of the sixteenth century, Peter İlosvai, composed, probably
from the floating folk-poetry of his age, a poetical narrative of the
life of Nicolas Toldy, one of the most popular heroes of the Magyars,
who lived in the fourteenth century, under King Lewis the Great, and was
of Herculean strength. His feats are sung in İlosvai’s poem (published
at Debreczen in 1574) in an effective, if rough, manner. A number of
Magyar novels may also be found; but nearly all were translations from
German or Latin novels of the time. The sixteenth century produced even
a few Magyar works of historic and philologic character. John Erdősi,
or Sylvester, wrote the first grammar of the Magyar language (1539);
Gabriel Pesti gave, in 1538, a short dictionary of the Magyar language;
John Decsi de Baranya published in 1588 a collection of about 5,000
Magyar proverbs; Stephen Székely de Bencéd and Caspar Heltai published
“World-Chronicles,” in 1559 and 1575 respectively. Very many memoirs and
journals of that time are still unpublished.
We must now mention the greatest of all the Hungarian poets of the
sixteenth century, whose name we have so far left unnoticed because, by
one of the strange freaks of life, the manuscripts of his lyrical poems,
on which rests his great fame among Magyar poets, were first discovered
only twenty-four years ago (in 1874), and some of them even after that
date, and were therefore never largely known to the contemporaries of
their author. This poet is Baron Valentin Balassi (1551-1594). He came
from a magnate family, and so great were the gifts with which nature
had endowed him, that men praised him as a model of heroism, and women
worshipped him as the embodiment of chivalrous charm. In the troubles
of his time, both political and social, he took more than one part; and
he may be considered as at once the Knight Errant and the Parsifal of
Hungary in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Highly cultivated
and sensitive as he was, he could not but respond to the religious
impulses of his time, and so became the author of many a religious poem.
On his wanderings, which took him not only over the whole of his own
country, but even as far as North Germany and probably also to England,
he saw all forms and aspects of life. His lyric sentiments he embodied
in the so-called “Flower Songs” (“_Virág-énekek_”), which are full of
that _verve_ and sweetness so characteristic of the best lyric poets
of Hungary. He also introduced a new form of lyric stanza—the Balassi
Stanza—which consists of nine short lines, the end-rhymes of which are
the same in the third, sixth, and ninth lines, while the remaining three
couples, have each their own rhymes.