1524, eight years after Luther's action at Wittenberg, the royal court in Buda was torn by a violent religious controversy, and a Bill was passed in Parliament ordering all Lutherans to be put to death. Two years later came the battle. National and international, religious and political events struck a blow at the new culture.
The chief effect of the Reformation was to heighten religious feeling and to deepen the reverence for conscience. It also influenced literature, developing the technique of both prose and poetry in a surprising way. The religious revival affected Catholics and Protestants alike. Never had religious convictions obtained a firmer hold upon the minds of men. But the fervour of religious feeling was different from the fanaticism of the Middle Ages. The imagination was more restrained, the element of superstition was suppressed, and religion became more and more an uplifting of the heart, and a submission to the guidance of conscience. It was the most cultivated class of men, the humanists, heirs of the Greek and Roman culture, who stood at the head of the new religious movement. That circumstance made itself felt in all directions, and especially in the development of every branch of literature.
The Reformation gave an impetus to Hungarian prose in two ways: by stimulating biblical translation and by fostering religious controversy.
Luther advocated the principle that the Bible should be made accessible to all, and the invention of printing made it possible. Deeper and deeper did the Hungarian nation drink from those eternal wells of poetry, the Old and New Testaments. It is true, there had been translations of the Bible before the Renaissance, but they were mere fragmentary transcripts.
