Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
The Protestant communities of Hungary first came into being nearly half a millennium ago. These congregations were the basis out of which today's Lutheran, Calvinist and Unitarian churches evolved. In Hungary, the increasingly popular teachings of Martin Luther were condemned as heretical in 1521—the same year that they were proscribed in Germany. Under the decrees passed by the 1523 Buda and the 1525 Rákosmező parliaments, supporters of the Protestant Reformation were condemned to loss of life and property. In the territories that came under Hapsburg rule after the country was torn in three following the 1526 rout at Mohács at the hands of the Ottomans, Protestant services were held in the open air or in private homes. The structure of worship was consequently altered to the extent that the church service was reduced to little more than preaching the Gospel. In Transylvania, parliamentary assemblies held in 1556, 1564 and 1568 passed decrees granting equal rights of religious worship to the Catholic, the Lutheran and the Calvinist churches. In those parts of Hungary which were under Ottoman rule, which included Pest and Buda, Protestant congregations remained active until the retaking of the country from the Turks. The beylerbey of Buda acted as arbiter in the religious disputes between the Calvinist and Unitarian churches which took place in 1574 and 1575 in Nagyharsány and Buda. Buda, Óbuda, Pest and the villages surrounding Buda that were left deserted after the eviction of the Turks from the country, were populated by foreigners, mainly from German territories. Eugene of Savoy settled German-speaking Catholic families on his Budafok estate in 1736. Until the late 18th century, Protestants were not allowed to settle down in the three towns on the banks of the river Danube, later to be united in the single city of Budapest. A decree issued by Joseph II in 1781 granted Protestant denominations freedom of religious worship and church organisation with certain provisos. These freedoms were expanded under the reign of Leopold II when the Parliament of 1790-91 passed a decree authorising Hungary's Protestants to build churches, complete with tower and bell, facing the street with their main front. Lutherans established their Pest congregation in 1787 and in 1791 held a comprehensive synod, which urged the construction of a Lutheran church with a parsonage and a school in the town. (Of the fifty-thousand strong population of Pest at the time, four hundred belonged to the Lutheran church, not counting the garrison stationed here, which tended to include about seven hundred Lutheran soldiers on average; the number of Calvinism’s Pest followers was even lower. Due to its topographical features and administrative function, the royal 5
