Galley Slave Hungarian Ministers
Thirty Hungarian Reformed ministers were ransomed from slavery in Neopolitan ships on 11 February 1676, by Dutch admiral Michael de Ruyter, for a huge sum raised by Protestants in western Europe. Their story is reflected in a plaintive hymn, “Lift thy head, O Zion, weeping.” The historian Reformed bishop Imre Ravasz tells about it.
The Bloody Court of Pozsony
The years 1671 to 1681 have become known by Hungarian Protestants as the ten years of mourning, so terrible was the opposition made to the people’s exercise of their Reformed faith. During those years, moreover, Protestant ministers and teachers were summoned to a special law court which sat a Pozsony (Bratislava or Pressburg) to answer for the political view that non-Roman Catholics were supposed to hold. And the court was under the presidency of the Prince Primate of Hungary! They were accused of disloyalty, treason and the defamation of the Roman Church.
No account was taken of their humble defense. They were first threatened with torture and death, but finally were given the choice of becoming Roman Catholics, or resigning their charges or fleeing the country. Of the first batch of 33 to be accused, one minister turned Roman Catholic, the others either resigned or went abroad. After that every minister in the country was summoned. . . . All who turned up were the 400 ministers of western and northern Hungary. Of this number , all were first condemned to death, then some were put in irons and thrown in prison for seven weeks on end. The death sentence had only been a threat, but it frightened 200 of the ministers to such a degree that they succumbed and signed a statement that they would cease their activities, and many of that number then left the country.
Condemnation to the Galleys
But 89 of this 400 refused under every threat to give way to the show of force, and all of these 89 were im-prisoned and then put to heavy labor under the lash. Every means was tried to break their obstinacy. Three died under their treatment, 18 turned Catholic, one agreed to resign from his charge, and one escaped from prison. The others languished for another year in jail, and then in March 1765, 41 of them were impelled by forced marches through Austria to Trieste, whence they were taken by ship to Naples and sold as slaves to be used in the galleys. Some of the 41 died on the road to the sea and never reached Naples, and three managed to escape. But the 30 remaining were sold and chained to their oars in May of 1675.
One of the condemned slaves managed to send a message back to Hungary, in which he gave a heart-rending account of the horrors he and his fellows were going through at the hands of the merciless task-drivers, and he described how day and daily their whole physical frame was racked by pain and torture under the lash of their beastly masters.
The Rescue
The terrible fate of these 41 Hungarian ministers reached eventually to the ears of foreign Protestant powers, and it was they alone who were instrumental in having the ministers released; . . . to collect the huge sum the huge sum necessary to buy the galley slaves back.
“February 11, 1676, is a date that will never be for-gotten in the Reformed Church of Hungary. On that day the galley slaves regained their freedom. The Dutch admiral, de Ruyter, who was then at anchor in the bay of Naples, was bidden (to) take them on board his own ship. When his eyes fell on the poor emaciated bodies of those suffering men, re is reported to have said, ‘I have many battles to my credit against all kinds of enemies, but this is my finest victory, in that I have been permit-ted to set free Christ’s innocent servants from an unbear-able burden.’ One of the ministers sought to express the thanks of all to de Ruyter, but the latter stopped, and said that it was not he who should be thanked, for it was God who had wrought their freedom But the ministers replied. ‘Yes, but we ought also to give thanks to the instruments that God uses.”
(History of the Hungarian Reformed Church – trans-lated George A. F. Wright)
This article was reprinted from Calvin Synod Herald, March/April 2001, page 6. Provided by Rev. Al Kovacs
See more abouth the Hungarian Galley Slaves in this back issue of LEBEN