Itt-Ott, 1992 (25. évfolyam, 1/119-3/121. szám)

1992 / 2. (120.) szám

rather like a bishop, of all the Lutherans in Transylvania. Just as the Lutherans were working free of Catholicism, a new heresy hit the land as the ideas of John Calvin spread out from Switzerland. The Lutherans shortly thereafter split, and Francis David went with the Calvinist or Reformed wing and soon became the superintendent of that group — what today we call, in the United States, the Presbyterians.

But Francis David began to grow more and more doubtful of any creedal approach to religion, believing that true Christianity required basing religion on the gospel accounts of Jesus. David soon came to reject the Trinity as being non-Scriptural, and to advocate the concept of one, unitary God. In 1566, David preached Unitarianism from his pulpit in the main church in Kolozsvár. The furor spread across the land, as one contemporary account put it:

One heard all over Transylvania in the villages and in cities, even among the ordinary people, the great disputes during meals, during drinking, in the evening and the morning, at night and daytime, in the common talk and from the pulpits, even accusations and fights between... religions.

Transylvania, with its diversity of population and subject to all kinds of cultural and military pressures from surrounding lands, was ever in precarious situation; the ruler wanted at all costs to avoid religious disputes that would threaten the peace of the realm. The king called on all religious parties to refrain from inflicting harm on those in other groups or disturbing their worship. The court physician was an Italian, Dr. Giorgio Biandrata, a man of advanced religious ideas and tremendously influential with the king. Dr. Biandrata managed to get Francis David appointed to be the court preacher, so that the king was subject to a constant presentation of Unitarian ideas and soon came to identify himself with that position. That king, the only Unitarian ruler in all of history, was named John Sigismund; and he was soon influenced to deal with the growing religious disputatiousness in his land by calling a series of religious councils. At each the advocates of the four major religious viewpoints appeared to argue on behalf of their cause — the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians and what, in time, came to be known as the Unitarians. These gatherings culminated in 1568, 424 years ago, with the Diet of Torda and its edict of religious toleration. This was such a remarkable breakthrough in religious freedom, so far beyond anything else up to that time anywhere in Christendom, that it is worth quoting rather fully. The edict declared:

Our Royal Majesty... confirms... that every orator shall preach the gospel by his own (personal) conception, at any place if that community is willing to accept him, or if it isn’t, no one should force him just because their soul is not satisfied with him; but a community can keep such a preacher whose teachings are delightful. And no one, neither superintendents nor others, may hurt a preacher..., no one may be blamed because of his religion. No one is allowed to threaten others with

prison or divest anyone of his office because of his profession: because faith is God’s gift born from hearing, and this hearing is conceived by the word of God.

This was soon followed by a second debate and council which officially recognized the Unitarian faith as an official religion of the land. As he returned to his church in Kolozsvár from this council, Francis David was met by a huge crowd in the streets of the city. David was hoisted upon a large rock from which he preached to the multitudes, and, at least according to tradition, everyone in Kolozsvár was converted to the Unitarian faith. Soon the Unitarians founded a school, a publishing house, and the cause prospered as King Sigismund and Francis David made common cause of a new faith, protected by religious toleration throughout the country. We may delight that it was at the behest of Unitarians that the first enactment of religious freedom took place in the Western world, but that singular achievement was soon obliterated.

King Sigismund died; his successor was Catholic, and the clamor immediately began for suppression of those who rejected the Trinity. The new ruler, however, was fearful of disrupting his realm by religious controversy, so he simply decreed that all existing religions would continue to be accepted as long as they did not introduce any new, innovative religious ideas to upset the status quo. Francis David was, of course, deposed as court preacher and soon was charged with innovation for declaring that it was not proper to invoke Christ in prayer. Dr. Biandrata turned against David and aided in his prosecution. Francis David was already terminally ill, so he lacked some of his old fire and energy in defending himself. He was soon convicted of innovation and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. He was carted off in his sickened condition to a dungeon and died there a few months later in 1579. His days of triumph had lasted a brief decade. His epitaph were these last words scratched into the wall of his cell:

Neither the sword of popes, nor the cross, nor the image of death — nothing will halt the march of truth.

How fitting, though, that David should go down before the charge of innovation, for that has been the hallmark of the Unitarian religion for the last 400 years, and such innovation has always created disruption and controversy ever anew within our ranks. In the present time, new kinds of worship and variant theologies in Unitarian churches create discomfort and disdain; and sometimes the suggestion that the new concepts have no right to seek a place among us.

But it is innovation, also, that makes it so difficult to characterize Unitarianism. 400 years ago, Francis David took his religious stand on the authority of the gospels and for his effort was accused of seeking to return to Judaism by making Jesus into a human prophet. But for the last century or so, Unitarians would not claim authority for their beliefs based on biblical texts. We are a changing, innovative religion, which strives to move through a process of evolution.

Through the last four centuries in Transylvania,

ITT-OTT 25. ivf. (1992), 2. (120.) szám 37