Itt-Ott, 1990 (23. évfolyam, 114-117. szám)

1990 / 117. szám

here, a fountain from which flowed a new moral and religious life for many generations.” He was born in 1498, allegedly the son of a Kronstadt tanner named Georg Grass. Much of Honter’s early years are shrouded in legend. Folk-etymology explains his adopted name with the anecdote that once, when he was about to drown, he grabbed hold of an elder bush, called hontert in Saxon (Teutsch 1925, 253). He is supposed to have learned to fear God and to have a longing for higher things from his mother, while he was still going to school in Kronstadt, from where he proceeded to the universities of Krakow, Wittenberg and Basel, there to learn the art of printing with the calculated aim of using this skill to help advance his homeland. For all of this, there is no proof. We do know that he studied in Vienna, and that he spent some time in Krakow and in Switzerland. Honter himself testified only that he had spent years away from home, that he had learned to know the world on many a journey, and that he always thought fondly of his beloved Transylvania, to which he claims he could not return because of the “Zwietracht” — dissension, discord, strife — raging there. There has been speculation that he meant the unrest after the collapse following Mohács, but one cannot be sure. Around 1530, he wrote a small book about the earth and the stars. During the following two years, he may have paid Kronstadt a visit — so it would seem from some woodcuts of the town, which he could hardly have made from memory. In 1532, he produced a Latin grammar of some note in Krakow, before going home, via Kassa, with a library of books, and, more importantly, with expert printers in tow (Teutsch 1925, 254).

Honter, whom an unnamed source of Teutsch calls “a man of unique learning and piety, of great courage, the most famous poet, orator, philosopher and mathematician of his era, an expert artist,” was evidently invited to return to Kronstadt by the patricians of the city. We know that Johannes Fuchs, who was to become Chief Judge in Kronstadt, and who had attended the Imperial Diet of Augsburg in 1530, had urged him to return. That Honter was indeed sought after is shown by his rapid rise in the city’s high society: he became magister of the local school, was elected almost at once to the Council of 100, and was presented various gifts of welcome in the name of the city, including a heavy, gilded silver cup on the occasion of his wedding in 1535 (Teutsch 1925, 255).

Honter’s most important achievement after his return was the establishment of a press, probably the first in Transylvania, one that was to function for the next fifty years, long after its founder’s death. At first he used it to turn out only textbooks: Latin and Greek works, geography books with maps that he himself cut, and a description of the world in Latin hexameters (Teutsch 1923, 39). But by 1538, Honter seemed to be teaching the new religion in private, and in the following year, in two introductions to excerpts from St. Augustine, which he published, he took a clear position on the side of Luther: all things, he wrote, were to be judged solely by the Word of God, to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be taken away.

And he began to preach to the people, who gathered daily in ever greater numbers around his house

(Teutsch 1925, 255). He led the religious debate with the clerics of other Saxon towns. By 1540, the yearly entry for Catholic masses is missing from the ledger of Kronstadt, and in October, 1542, the mass was officially abolished in the Kronstadt Chapter. The city had rid itself of the “popish,” “in honor of God and of his Holy Name”. In November of that year the representatives of the entire Burzenland (Barcaság) region gathered to discuss “the pure preaching of the Gospel and of the reformation of religion,” and by December Kronstadt had control over the region in the form of local church visitations. Jeremias Jekel, Kronstadt’s parish priest, had married that summer, as had the priest of the wealthy town of Tartlau. And when Jekel moved to Tartlau in 1544, Kronstadt elected Honter to take his place as Stadtpfarrer.

Honter laid out the written foundations of the new Saxon church in a booklet of fourteen chapters titled Reformatio Ecclesiae Coronensis ac Totius Barcensis Provincia in 1542 and again in 1543, in which year Melanchton saw fit to reissue it with his own foreword in Wittenberg. Luther, to whom Matthias Ramser, Stadpfarrer of Hermannstadt, as yet unsure of himself, had sent Honter’s book for an opinion, is said to have exclaimed on reading the work: “Das ist wahrlich ein Apostel, den der Herr dem Ungerland erweckt hat” — and replied to Ramser, in a letter of September 1, 1543: “All you have asked me you will find in this book, better than I could write it... Read this booklet and seek the counsel of the teachers of the congregation in Kronstadt; they will give you the most useful guidance in the improvement of your church.” In 1547, Honter reissued the book in an expanded and bilingual (Latin-German) edition as the Kirchenordnung aller Deutschen in Siebenbürgen — the Order of Worship of all Germans in Transylvania, which was, however, far more than just a book of agenda (Teutsch 1925, 255).

As might be expected from their eager approval, in addition to Scripture, Luther’s and Melanchthon’s teachings form one basis of Honter’s work. But the author, who had had his eyes on the whole of the German reformation, drew also from many other practical sources, and adapted many points to local needs. He explained first why the new church is in fact the true old church — one of the constant themes of the Reformation everywhere. One must go back to Scripture as the only source of truth. Only men who lead irreproachable lives must be called as pastors, men who know the Bible, but who are, in addition, educated, learned men. They are to teach the people the unadulterated Gospel, yet in simple form, and in their mother tongue. They must profess and teach a belief in Christ. Honter expounded upon the Lutheran view of baptism, communion, and marriage, and repeated the Lutheran “truths” about the Catholic mass, confession, the abuses of excommunication and of the multitude of saints’ and holy days. He proved that an unmarried clergy was contrary to the teachings of St. Paul. And he taught how provisions should be made to care for the sick, the orphans and the widows, how to deal with the imperfections of worldly life, that the freedom of the Christian is a freedom in Christ, and that a Christian should not bow to mere human authority. There is also

ITT-OTT 23. évf. (1990), téli (117.) szám 25