III of 1844 repealed the requirements of the royal consent and the six weeks' instruction, and decreed instead that the change of faith must be twice notified to the parish priest within four weeks in the presence of two witnesses. If the parish priest refused to grant a certificate of this fact, the witnesses could draw it up. The second question that arose in this period, that of mixed marriages, had been last regulated by the Diet of 1790-91. The law contained enactments, as mentioned above, concerning the religion of children of mixed marriages, but the cases increased in which the parents made a formal declaration promising to bring the children up as Catholics. In 1793 there was a Protestant agitation against this declaration, and when, in the years 1830-40, the question of mixed marriages was discussed in Germany the controversy in that country influenced conditions in Hungary. In mixed marriages the Catholic clergy continued to demand the signing of a formal declaration. The Bishop of Nagy-Várad (Grosswardein) was the first bishop to order (1839) that only those mixed marriages could have the blessing of the Church in which the religion of the children was settled by a declaration in favour of the Catholic Faith. The Protestants demanded again from the Diet of 1839-40 the suppression of the declaration. The pastoral letter of 2 July 1840, of the Hungarian bishops bound the clergy to passive assistance in mixed marriages in which Catholic interests were not guarded — that is, where the formal declaration was not made. This ordinance aroused much feeling, and several ecclesiastics were fined on account of passive assistance. The bishops now turned to Rome, and the Holy See confirmed the pastoral letter, with the addition that mixed marriages were indeed forbidden, but that such marriages were valid, even when not entered on before a priest, if two witnesses were present. The Diet of 1843-44 allowed mixed marriages to be entered upon before Protestant clergy; the Catholic mother, however, received the right, with the permission of the father, to bring up all of the children in the Catholic Faith. The agitation of 1848 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49, besides changing political and social conditions, also affected the interests of the Church. The Diet of 1848 decreed the equality and reciprocity of all recognized confessions. In 1849 the minister of education and public worship, Horváth, desired to grant Catholic autonomy, but after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution it came to nothing. Large numbers of the Catholic clergy took part in the Hungarian Revolution, a fact which in the following years of absolutism led to their persecution by the Government.