Unitarians

The Ottoman Empire gradually weakens after Suleyman's death in 1559.

The Ottoman occupation of Hungary continues, however, not so much because of the Turks' strength but because of the West's disunity and lack of resolve.

Hungarian nobles grow impatient with the Habsburgs' persecution of Protestants and reluctance to take steps to drive out the Turks.

Their discontent explodes after the Habsburg imperial army routs a Turkish force at St. Gotthard in 1664.

Instead of pressing for concessions, Emperor Leopold I (1657-1705) concludes the Treaty of Vasvar in which he concedes to the Turks more Hungarian territory than they had ever possessed.

After Vasvar, even many Catholic magnates turn against the Habsburgs.

Leopold, after a failed Hungarian plot to throw off Habsburg rule, suppresses the Hungarian constitution, subjects Royal Hungary to direct absolute rule from Vienna, and harshly represses Hungarian Protestants, handing over Protestant ministers who refuse to deny their faith to work as galley slaves.

Hungarian discontent deepens.

In 1681 Imre Thokoly, a Transylvanian nobleman, leads a rebellion against the Habsburgs and forces Leopold I to convoke the Diet and restore Hungary's constitution and the office of palatine.

The Turks, sensing weakness, make their strike against Austria, but Polish forces rout them near Vienna in 1683.

Transylvania, an Ottoman vassal state, functions for many years as an independent country.

In 1542 Martinuzzi revives the 1437 Union of Three Nations to govern the land, and the Transylvanian nobles regularly meet in their own Diet.

In 1572 the Diet creates freedom of worship and equal political rights for members of Transylvania's four "established" religions: Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Unitarian, and Calvinist.

The Eastern Orthodox Romanian serfs are permitted to worship, but the Orthodox Church is not recognized as an "established" religion, and the Romanians do not share political equality.

The Habsburgs had in 1591 invaded Transylvania under George Basta, who persecutes Protestants and expropriates estates illegally until Istvan Bocskay, a former Habsburg supporter, musters an army that expels Basta's forces in 1604-05.

In 1606 Bocskay concludes the Peace of Vienna with the Habsburgs and the Peace of Zsitvatorok with the Turks.

The treaties secure his position as prince of Transylvania, guarantee rights for Royal Hungary's Protestants, broaden Transylvania's independence, and free the emperor of his obligation to pay tribute to the Ottomans.

After Bocskay's death, the Ottomans compel the Transylvanians to accept Gabor Bethlen as prince.

Transylvania prospers under Bethlen's enlightened despotism.

He stimulates agriculture, trade, and industry; sinks new mines; sends students to Protestant universities abroad; and prohibits landlords from barring children of serfs from an education.

Unfortunately, when Bethlen dies in 1629, the Transylvanian Diet abolishes most of his reforms.

After a short succession struggle, Gyorgy Rakoczi I (1648-60) becomes prince.

Under Rakoczi, Transylvania fights with the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) and is mentioned as a sovereign state in the Peace of Westphalia.

Transylvania's golden age ends after Gyorgy Rakoczi II (1648-60) launches an attack on Poland without the prior approval of the Ottomans or Transylvania's Diet.

The campaign is a disaster, and the Turks use the opportunity to rout Rakoczi's army and take control of Transylvania.

The Spanish theologian, physician, and jurist Michael Servetus, in his De Trinitatis erroribus (1531; “On the Errors of the Trinity”) and Christianismi restitutio (1553; “The Restitution of Christianity”) has provided important stimulus for the emergence of Unitarianism.

His principal work, Christianismi Restitutio, published under the pseudonym Michel de Villeneuve, is denounced on all sides for anti-trinitarian heresy.

Arrested by the Inquisition for his philosophy, he escapes from Vienne to ...

...Geneva to see French Protestant reformer Jean Calvin, to whom he had sent an earlier manuscript of his work.

Geneva’s libertines, resistant to Calvin’s reforms of the past fourteen years, offer backhanded support to Servetus, but Calvin orders his arrest.

He is tried and burned as a heretic on October 27, 1553.

Many prominent Protestant leaders of the day approve of the execution.

Philipp Melanchthon writes to Calvin: "To you also the Church owes gratitude at the present moment, and will owe it to the latest posterity....I affirm also that your magistrates did right in punishing, after a regular trial, this blasphemous man.”

Theodore Beza, in defense of Calvin and the Genevan magistrates, publishes De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis.

Calvin presents arguments in favor of the execution of Servetus for diverging from orthodox Christian doctrine, in a treatise published in February 1544 entitled Defense of the orthodox faith in the sacred Trinity (Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate).

Calvin’s actions cause some Italian religious exiles, who are now in Switzerland, to move to the more tolerant Kingdom of Poland.

Leaders of what will soon come to be called Unitarianism, an organized religious movement that has emerged in Poland and Transylvania, seek to achieve a reformation that is completely in accordance with the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament; in particular, they find no warrant for the doctrine of the Trinity accepted by other Christian churches.

Italian-born physician George Blandrata, or Giorgio Biandrata, had served Queen Bona Sforza of Poland from 1540 to 1552, then returned to Italy to practice medicine at Pavia, where he had aroused the hostility of the authorities of the Inquisition by his interest in theological speculation.

He had fled in 1556 to Geneva and there became an elder in the Calvinist congregation of Italians, but soon antagonized Jean Calvin by declaring that debates over the nature of the Trinity threatened the concept of the unity of God.

Blandrata had returned two years later to Poland, where he has become an influential elder in the Minor Church, an anti-Trinitarian organization.

The Unitarian king János Sigismund Zápolya, or John Sigismund II, had in 1563 summoned him to Transylvania as court physician.

Here Blandrata and the Unitarian bishop Ferenc Dávid win many converts from Calvinist to Unitarian beliefs.

Dávid, after successively rejecting Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism, had in 1566 become bishop of the Calvinist community at Kolozsvár and court preacher to John Sigismund.

Converted to Unitarianism by Blandrata before 1567, Dávid had begun to advocate the unity rather than the trinity of the Godhead.

He has transformed the Great Church at Kolozsvár into a center of anti-Trinitarianism, introduced Unitarianism at the court, won many converts, and secured state toleration through the 1568 Edict of Torda, by which ...

...the Transylvanian Diet grants religious freedom to Catholics, Lutherans, the Reformed Church, and those who are soon to be called Unitarians, declaring that "It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expelling for his teaching"—a freedom unusual in Europe until this time and for some time after.

János Sigismund Zápolya, first prince of Transylvania and, as John, or János, II, titular king of Hungary, gives up the royal Hungarian title in 1570.

Transylvania under his rule has become largely Calvinist and separate from Hungary.