New Page

PREFACE
It is a well-known fact that two regions of Eastern Central Europe, Poland and Transylvania,
played outstandingly important roles in the history of sixteenth and seventeenth century
Antitrinitarianism. It is another fact that the developments in Poland are much better known for European
scholars of the subject than those in Transylvania. One of the most important causes of this deplorable
situation might be that Hungarian scholarship in the last century has not exerted continued and organized
efforts in order to make Transylvanian developments known for international scholarship. While in
Poland Stanislaw Kot and his disciples, then members of the younger generation regarded it as their
important task to elaborate what role Polish heterodoxy and particularly seventeenth century Socinianism
had played in the history of European thought, researches in Hungary could be described as introverted.
However, some changes are visible in this area. The intent to change is demonstrated by starting
the series Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum, as well as the volumes of Bibliotheca Dissidentium published so
far, and the present work intends to be part of the same effort. Thus, its most important goal is to offer a
summary of the earliest period of Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism that contains the results of the
international researches of the last decades and also all that Hungarian scholarship has produced.
This alone would justify concentrating attention on the late 1560s, that is to say, on the years that
saw the rise of Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism; but this decision is supported by further scientific
historical considerations.1 Antal Pirnát's monograph in German,2 which demonstrated on a so far
completely unknown manuscript material the activities of the Antitrinitarians in Transylvania, has had a
profound influence of subsequent studies. The work focussed attention on the trend that unfolded in the
1570s, called dogmatically radical in the literature on the subject, source publications and treatments of
the representatives of this trend (J. Sommer, J. Palaeologus, M. Vehe-Glirius, Ferenc Dávid, Ch.
Francken) following in suit in great numbers.3 These works have considerably enriched and, on a number
of points, modified the statements of Pirnát's book, which was the first to describe those so far unknown
records. The bulk of these works concentrated, as a matter of course, on the 1570s and 1580s, and thus the
period of the development of Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism when its products could be published in
print and distributed for the European public was neglected. Let us add that this was the period when
Ferenc Dávid, the most important representative of the movement in Transylvania, wrote most of his
works.
It is no wonder, then, that the abundant literature on the subject has failed even to ask the question
that the present work is endeavouring to answer. For what I have tried to examine is why Transylvania
became the centre of this dogmatic radicalism, and whether the Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism of the
1560s displays any peculiarities that could explain this phenomenon.
What particularly justifies for me the formulation of this question is that I do not find the picture
emerging from the studies that do treat the Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism of the 1560s satisfactory. To
put it somewhat simply, we can discern two tendencies. One can see no difference between the ecclesia
minor in Poland and the Antitrinitarianism unfolding in other parts of Europe and the Transylvanian
developments of the period under discussion. According to this view, the Transylvanian phenomena
smoothly fit into the current called Anabaptistic Antitrinitarianism, without exciting dissimilarities or
local peculiarities.4 The other, radically different view, on the other hand, puts the emphasis on
continuity, essentially projecting the image of the 1570s, without any problems, back to the period
discussed below.5 The great problem of this view is that it cannot handle the fact that it was precisely in
Transylvania that the most important Latin works of the so-called Anabaptist Antitrinitarianism were
published in print.
2