A Visit to Transylvania
Jane Thickstun
August 27, 2006

Reading

The reading today is from the classic Unitarian history text by Earl Morse Wilbur.  It is from the second volume, called A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America.

The reading is describing events that happened in 1568 in Transylvania, when Francis David was beginning to argue that the doctrines of the Trinity and the eternal deity of Christ were not taught in the Scriptures.  In March of that year, Francis David and others participated in a ten-day disputation about these doctrines, in the palace at Alba Julia before the king and all his court.   A Diet is a legislative meeting of the king.

The year had begun auspiciously for the liberal party, for even before the disputation just mentioned the Diet at Torda in January renewed the decree of toleration passed in 1557 and confirmed in 1563, declaring that ‘in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well; if not, no one shall compel them, but they shall keep the preachers whose doctrine they approve.  Therefore none of the Superintendents or others shall annoy or abuse the preachers on account of their religion, according to the previous constitutions, or allow any to be imprisoned or be punished by removal from his post on account of his teaching, for faith is the gift of God, this comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God.’ 

This decree practically legalized Unitarianism in Transylvania. [The debate at Alba Julia] was generally regarded as a signal victory for David and his followers.  The news of it reached Kolozsvar before him, and on his return hither a great throng of his people were awaiting him where the Torda road enters the town, and hailed the victor with loud acclamations.  The tradition is that her thereupon mounted a large boulder at the street corner and proclaimed the simple unity of God to them with such persuasive eloquence that they took him on their shoulders and bore him to the great church in the square to continue the theme, and that the whole city accepted the Unitarian faith then and there.  (p. 38)

Sermon

            Transylvania is stunningly beautiful.  It is also the home of many Unitarian congregations– congregations that have existed continuously since the time of the Reformation in the 1500's.

            I paid a visit this summer to this homeland of our faith.  I had wanted to go for a long time, and I had also become interested in the other places and ways our faith shows up around the world.  So it was serendipitous when I learned that the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, the ICUU, was holding a Theological Symposium in Koloszvar this summer.  They offered a three-day tour of Transylvania after the symposium, that I eagerly signed up for.  So, I got to experience the international community of Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists, and I got to see Transylvania.

            I’ll talk another time about the symposium, and its theme, but today I want to tell you about Transylvania.

            Let me start by showing you where Transylvania is on the map. [Show, explain]

            All the cities have names in Romanian, Hungarian, and some even German, but we use the Hungarian names because our people there are Hungarian-speaking.

            Koloszvar is the main city of the region.  The Unitarian school is there– a high school and college.

            Although it currently belongs to Romania, Transylvania historically was part of Hungary, and at the time of Francis David, the founder of Unitarianism there, it was actually independent.

            During the first century after Christ, the Roman Empire extended into Transylvania.  Its rule there lasted until the invasions from the east began a few centuries later. 

            One of the invading groups was the Huns – as in Attila the Hun – in the fourth century.  It is believed that when they retreated after a major defeat, a group of them became separated from the rest and, according to the historian Earl Morse Wilbur, “found themselves stranded against the mountains of eastern Transylvania where they formed permanent settlements; and that it is their descendants that still populate that district and bear the name of Szeklers, still speaking the Hungarian tongue, and observing many of their ancient customs, a brave, sturdy, honest, intelligent, independent race of yeomen, prizing their freedom above all things else.” (p. 6)  Many of these Szeklers are Unitarians.

            The barbarian invasions kept coming, and in the eighth century, the Magyars, who also spoke Hungarian, came to the region and stayed. 

            For many years these two groups predominated.  Then in the twelfth century, according to Wilbur, the king of Hungary, who ruled Transylvania, found “the southern part of Transylvania almost uninhabited” and he invited colonists from the German area known as Saxony.  (p. 7) Many of these Saxons came and they built cities that remained German-speaking all the way up to the Communist era. 

            These three groups – the Magyars, the Szeklers and the Saxons – had certain rights and privileges, and each had their own territory.

            In addition, in the thirteenth century, the Wallacks, now called Romanians, came into Transylvania from the south, the Balkans probably.  They were the underclass, and their religion was Eastern Orthodox.  There were also small numbers of Roma, or Gipsies, Armenians, Jews and others who were tolerated but had no political rights. 

            That’s the ethnic make-up of Transylvania at the start of the Reformation.  As far as religion goes, all of Europe was of course Roman Catholic, except for those at the extreme eastern fringes who followed Constantinople after the split with Rome and became Orthodox.

            There were attempts at reform earlier, such as by Jan Huss of Bohemia (what’s now the Czech Republic).  But the Reformation really got started when Martin Luther attempted to reform the church by nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church.  He thought to fix the corruption in the church by pointing out all its faults, but not everyone wanted the reform he suggested.  So those who followed him were called Lutherans, and soon they were converting people all over Europe, especially in German-speaking areas.

            There were doctrinal differences too.  The Reformation really happened because the printing press, invented in the 1400's, made books available, literacy increased, and people besides the monks and priests began reading the Bible..  Soon Calvin and Zwingli were advocating different doctrines to reform the church, and what came to be known as the Reformed faith, or Calvinism, started spreading across Europe as well.

            The Lutherans were the first to make it to Transylvania.  A Lutheran church was started in the Saxon city of Sibiu, or Hermannstadt, and a Diet (1548) was held at the city of Medgyes to determine what to do about it.  It was decided that “preachers of the faith invented by Luther should be allowed to preach the Gospel everywhere to everybody, whoever wants to hear, freely and without fear.” (Hersom, p. 6) This was the first instance of religious tolerance in Transylvania, and quite remarkable, given the violence that was breaking out all over Europe over these issues of religious doctrine.

            I need to talk a little about the political situation of Transylvania at the time, and introduce the major players of our story of the birth of Unitarianism.

            The political context is really quite complicated, involving the Hapsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Hungarians, and lots of competing claims to rule Transylvania.  To give you just the most important facts: Transylvania became independent in 1543, but the king was still a small child.  His name was John Sigismund, and his mother, Queen Isabella, was quite effective at protecting him and his right to rule.  They had ties to Poland, and spent some time there.  From Poland, they brought the doctor Giorgio Biandrata to be the court physician. 

            There were radical religious ideas being tolerated in Poland.  In fact, there was a group of anti-trinitarians, also known as the Socinians after their main spokesman.  Biandrata brought these ideas to Transylvania and found a receptive ear in the religious leader, Francis David.

            David had studied in Wittenberg and had become taken by the ideas of the Reformation.  A short while after his return home to Transylvania, he was elected chief minister in Koloszvar, then became bishop of the Transylvanian Hungarian Lutherans.  Not long after that, he became converted to the Reformed faith, which had made its way by then into Transylvania.

            There were debates regularly where points of religious doctrine were disputed.  David was very good at it, and soon was regarded as the leader of the Calvinists.

            The Protestants– both Lutherans and Calvinists–had become such a force in the country by 1557, that Queen Isabella issued a decree at the Diet of Torda, providing equal tolerance to Catholics and Protestants.  It was similar to the earlier edict, but said that “every one might hold the faith of his choice together with the new rites or former ones without offence to any . . . and that the adherents of the new religion should do nothing to injure those of the old.”  (Hersom, p. 8)

            The Protestants were so successful at conversion in Transylvania that the few remaining Catholics fled the country, and for a century and a half, Transylvania had no Catholic Bishop.

            Meanwhile, the young king John Sigismund came of age.  He was keenly interested in religious questions, and he liked hearing the debates that would go on for days at a time.  He was also interested in promoting peace and harmony among his people.

            Francis David had now become now Superintendent, or Bishop, of the Reformed Church.  Not content to stay with the accepted doctrines, he set up a debate to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity.  To make a long story short, he began preaching from his pulpit in Koloszvar and debating against others that the Trinity is not a doctrine found in Scripture, and so a thorough reform must get rid of it.  David was a very effective speaker, and between his influence and that of Biandrata, the king was eventually converted to this Unitarian view.  He was the first and only Unitarian king in history.

            As we heard in the reading, King Sigismund renewed the decree of toleration, which now included the Unitarian faith.  It had become a separate faith by now, with David as its leader.  He debated in both Latin and Hungarian.  He began publishing books, using the press at the royal palace that the king made available.

            David argued in a large debate in Hungarian, the common people’s language, that God is one, not three, and from that came the rallying cry of Transylvanian Unitarianism:  “Edgy az Isten,” “God is One.”  You see that phrase today inscribed in the pulpits of the churches and elsewhere.

            Just as Unitarianism was sweeping the land, the young king’s health was failing.  David knew that if the king were to die, his churches would be in trouble, even with the edicts of general tolerance that existed.  So he persuaded the king to bring their cause before the Diet, to secure their status as equal to the accepted religions.  King Sigismund did this, and the Unitarian churches were granted formal recognition, together with the Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Calvinists.  These became the four protected religions.  Other religions were tolerated, but had no real rights or privileges.  Two months later, the king died at age 31.

            That last act of the king assured that the Unitarian churches did not meet the same fate as their brethren in Poland, who were chased out of thier country after 100 years.  Not being chased out doesn’t mean the Transylvanian Unitarians had it easy.

            In fact, the new rulers worked hard to bring back Catholicism.  They couldn’t touch David or the Unitarian churches as long as they stayed with the accepted doctrine.  But there was a clause about innovation – meaning that if anyone dares to preach a new doctrine, they can be guilty of heresy.

            David, never content to stay with the accepted doctrines, saw new things he felt needed to be reformed, new ways to help the religion conform better to Scripture.  And he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.  He was put in prison, in a small cell in the dungeon of a fortress on a high mountain in the city of Deva.  Five months later, he died there in the prison.

            I saw that cell in the ruins of the fortress.  The Unitarians have restored it and fixed it up as a sort of shrine to the memory of their religious founder and first bishop.  David is the only person to have been a Bishop in three different faith traditions.

            Through the centuries, the Unitarians in Transylvania have struggled to maintain their religion in the face of oppression as a religious minority.  More recently, they have also had to struggle with being an ethnic minority.  After WWI, Transylvania was given to Romania, who was on the winning side in the war.  After WWII, Romania became Communist, and things became difficult in whole new ways.

            John Lipowitz lent me a book about a Unitarian, Imre Gellard, who was imprisoned for many years by the Communists for some religious writings.  Even after prison, he was persecuted and held back even by the Unitarians themselves, because of the fear that operated in that society.

            Today, fifteen years after the collapse of Communism and the Cicescu regime, things are much better.  But the Transylvanian Unitarians are still very aware of being a religious and an ethnic minority.  Romania is now 95% Romanian.  The Germans (Saxons) left during the Communist era, when the German government paid money to Romania for them to emigrate.  Israel did the same for any Jews that were left.  Many Hungarian-speaking Transylvanians have emigrated to Hungary.  Many are still there, however, including the Unitarians.

            Romania has made and is still making an effort to Romanize Transylvania.  They have moved Romanian people from elsewhere into Transylvania.  They are not allowing the Hungarian heritage and history to be taught in the schools, and are eradicating the history and culture in other ways as well.  The government is building new Eastern Orthodox churches all over Transylvania – the religion of the Romanian people.

            Still, the Transylvanian Unitarians are thriving.  They exist mainly in small villages.  They are for the most part poor farmers, who don’t have modern equipment.  Their churches are very old, and proudly and beautifully maintained.  There are now a number of women ministers.  The worship is still very traditional, and some of the newer ministers are wishing for some change.

            Since the country opened up to the West in the early 1990's, we have been able to have contact.  Very soon, the Partner Church program was begun, that links a congregation here with a congregation there for mutual support and exchange.  People from the US or Canada who go over there, and even those who stay here and support the program, are changed by the encounter.  The churches in Transylvania benefit from the cultural exchange as well, and from the financial assistance that our wealthier congregations often feel compelled to offer.

            I understand there are still congregations in Transylvania without a partner.  They are also opening up the Partner Church program to include other countries in the ICUU.  Maybe that’s something we’d like to consider?

            This story is our history, as Unitarians.  Wilbur’s history traces the spread of Unitarian ideas from Transylvania, to the Netherlands, to England, where it took hold in the 1700's, and eventually to the United States of America.  The Unitarianism practiced in Transylvania today feels different in many ways from the way we practice it here, but when you have a free faith, it is bound to have a variety of manifestations.  It looks different everywhere it is practiced.  In fact, there is far more uniformity within the faith in Transylvania than there is here.  We have much to learn from being in relationship with other Unitarians, and I am grateful for my opportunity to go to Transylvania, meet the people there, and experience the extraordinary resilience of a people of deep Unitarian faith.

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland is recognized by the Unitarian Universalist Association as a Welcoming Congregation. We welcome, affirm, promote and celebrate the full participation of all persons in all of our activities without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, race or any other such category of exclusion.

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