The Sources of Freedom

This from a letter I got today. The writer is of course from Hungary, a fine man who tries to educate me from time to time. Thought you’d enjoy reading a few of his lines:

There is a part of history the world quite literally little-noted nor long-remembered. After the Reformation, Hungary was Protestant. The Habsburg-led counter-Reformation gave people a simple, easily-understood choice: would you rather be Roman Catholic or dead. In parts of North Africa, you can still find descendants of those sold as galley slaves, fairer-skinned, and still retaining bits of Hungarian.

Stephen Bocskai led the uprising against Habsburg rule and is immortalized as one of the heroes of the Reformation in Geneva, alongside, Calvin and the rest.

Bocskai made possible two firsts, in the (related) secular and sacred realms. In 1568, Transylvania had the world’s first legally-guarantee of universal freedom (“faith is a God-given gift and thus an unalienable right” and ” everyone may follow the religion of his choice, and no one may interfere with persons professing any other faith”) and habeas corpus in 1606. (England introduced something similar in increments, beginning with the Act of 1641.)

I do wonder sometimes about the theories according to which the “anglosphere” or some such was the driving force of modern political systems. I was taught that the first truly tolerant European philosopher was Pierre Bayle, whose wonderful “Dictionary” has a place of honor on my bookshelf. But Bayle came nearly a century after the Transylvanians my friend writes about here. If only the language were more readily accessible, I guess…But then, hardly anyone looks hard at the glories of Rome anymore, except in the movies.