Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/65

Rh on horseback. The Sultan sends a troop in pursuit, but the fugitives reach the Hungarian frontier in safety. Here a new danger arises, for the other Hungarian, Hajmási, has also fallen in love with the princess and challenges Szilágyi to fight. He is, however, defeated, and retires from the scene in a repentant mood.

The early part of the seventeenth century was in Hungary, as everywhere else in Europe, the age of the anti-Reformation. It has already been said, when speaking of the influence of the Renaissance and the Reformation, that all great intellectual movements having their origin in other countries, profoundly affected Hungary too. The "fair" Danube rises in distant lands and flows into Hungary, where she receives the tributary streams of that land. So is it with the current of the nation's thought; foreign and native elements combine in it, and any great change without must sooner or later profoundly modify it. Those changes are reflected in the nation's literature.

The dominant idea in the seventeenth century was that of undoing the work of the Reformation, and the centre of the movement was Spain. In Hungary, Cardinal Peter Pázmány, the Bossuet of Hungary, was the intellectual leader of the Catholic revival, and the most remarkable author of his time. During the sixteenth century Protestantism had attained the greatest importance and influence in Hungary. The greatest thinkers, and leading men, were all Protestants. Balassa was perhaps the only Catholic among them.

The majority of the nobles were Protestant, and it happened twice that the Palatine, the representative of the king, was of the same faith. At the end of the century, the Papal Nuncio returned to Rome with