The fall of Luther’s hammer upon the door of the castle-church of Wittenberg, as he nailed to it his famous theses, reverberated even in Hungary, and produced an intense commotion in that distant country. The period of the _renaissance_, the revival of art and literature, had prepared all active and inquiring minds for changes in church and religion. The country had maintained an active intercourse, political, commercial, and cultural, with the western nations, and when Luther began the great work in Germany, which was to mark a new era in the history of the world, his ideas spread like wildfire all over Hungary, and, especially, found favor amongst the German inhabitants, who formed at that time an important element of her population. The cities of Buda, Oedenburg (Soprony), Presburg, the wealthy mining regions in the north, the Királyföld in Transylvania, were settled by Germans. Many of their clergy, attracted by ties of national kinship had finished their studies in Germany, and their merchants were closely connected in business with those of the old fatherland. Owing to the intimate relations thus established between the Germans of Hungary and their brethren abroad, the teachings of Luther gained almost as rapidly ground among them as among their countrymen in Germany, where the new doctrines had first been promulgated. In the course of a few years the new movement had assumed such formidable proportions that it attracted the attention of the whole nation. The Catholic clergy, threatened in their supremacy, were the first to take the field in defence of the Church thus assailed. Round them very soon rallied that class of the nation which, alone, enjoyed political rights in the land, the entire nobility. In siding with the Catholic clergy, in this conflict against the Reformation and its followers, the Lutherans, the nobility were by no means actuated by religious motives only. Their hostile attitude was rather owing to important political considerations. The throne was then occupied by Louis II., who was of Polish extraction, the same youthful king who, noted for his frivolous character, expiated the errors of his reign upon the battle-field of Mohács. This unfortunate ruler was personally as indifferent to religion as to every thing else involving a serious turn of mind. But his wife, Queen Mary, the sister of the German emperor, Charles V., was all the more enthusiastic in the defence of Luther’s teachings. The queen and her German courtiers, by exerting a baneful influence over the affairs of Hungary, had incurred the ill-will of the nobility, which was identical with the national party. This party, with a view to striking a blow at the German and Lutheran sympathizers surrounding the king, enacted from the outset most rigorous laws against the Lutherans. Thus, as early as 1523, a law was promulgated declaring Lutherans and their protectors (clearly indicating by the latter term the German