Pastors were charged with rebellion, treason, and defamation of the Roman Catholic Church. They were sentenced to death, and told they could forego punishment by converting to Roman Catholicism. About two-thirds of them took this way of escape, even if only on paper, and fled to other countries.

One of the worst examples of religious persecution in European history happened in the decade between 1671 and 1681, when the Hungarian Roman Catholic authorities determined to eradicate Protestantism from their country.

The Sentence

The height of that persecution began in 1674, when the authorities summoned all Hungarian Protestant pastors to a special court in today’s Bratislava, Slovakia. Only those in northern and western Hungary (336 in all) obeyed the call. The rest of Hungary was under the Ottoman administration, which forbade its citizens to travel to Bratislava.

The attending pastors were charged with rebellion, treason, and defamation of the Roman Catholic Church. They were sentenced to death, and told they could forego punishment by converting to Roman Catholicism. About two-thirds of them took this way of escape, even if only on paper, and fled to other countries.

In reality, the death sentence was only a threat. Those who refused to convert were taken to nearby Leopoldstadt, where they were imprisoned, forced to perform hard labor, and tortured for about a year. Again, some converted. Many died of exhaustion, cold, hunger, and beatings.

In March 1675, those who stood firm and survived (about 40) were forced to march almost 300 miles south, to the Italian city of Trieste. From there, they continued further south to the port of Naples, where they were sold to the Spanish as galley slaves. Many died along the journey, and only 29 made it to the galleys.

The Liberation

It was a German physician, Nicholas Zaffius, who discovered the abuse of these prisoners during his stay in Naples, and spread the news throughout Europe. “The true Church of God is a dove,” he wrote in outrage, “not a blood-thirsty tiger.”[1]

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