“Egy Az Isten” (“God Is One”)

Rev. Jeffrey Symynkywicz, January 9, 2011

            Transylvania, you know, is a real place. It’s a land in the westernmost part of Romania, on its border with Hungary, ands its name means “the land beyond the forest”. With the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War One, the territory became part of Romania. During the Second World War, it was divided between Hungary and Romania, both allies of the Axis. With the end of World War Two, it was rejoined in its entirety to Romania once again.

            In the south of Transylvania, there is a shrine to a holy martyr:

            In the town of Deva, high on a hill overlooking the valley of the Mures River,  there are the crumbling ruins of a 16^th century fortress, its roof now open to the sky. At ground level, back in former times, lay the dungeon, and you can still make out the walls of a small cell at the corner, still intact. The door to the cell is now locked, to keep out intruders and would-be vandals. But if you peer inside the stern metal grille at the entrance of the cell, you can see a rather impressive marble monument, inscribed with the name “David Ferenc”.  And above the lintel of the door, the same name—“David Ferenc” is inscribed as well.

            Farenc David—or Francis David, as he has come to be known to us in English—was imprisoned in this cell at Deva for six months; here he died in the year 1579, somewhere in his late sixties. He was buried, sources tell us, “where no one knoweth”, seemingly broken and downtrodden, defeated in the eyes of the world. Yet, he has left us all—not just Unitarian Universalism, but Western civilization in general—a precious spiritual legacy.

            Even after Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the front door of All Saints’ Church at Wittenberg in 1517 and launched the Protestant Reformation, Church and State remained united as one, throughout Europe.  People everywhere were required to practice the religion of their king (or occasionally, queen). If your king was Catholic, so would you be. If he embraced one of the new forms of Protestant belief, so would you. That’s just the way it was back then.

            During the first half of the sixteenth century, a bitter struggled raged between the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the Sultan of Turkey. Both had their eyes on control of the lands of central and eastern Europe. Central to this struggle was control over the Kingdom of Transylvania—always at the crossroads of East and West. Keeping Transylvania out of Muslim hands was seen as fundamental to maintaining Christian control of Europe.

            So, between (around) 1515 and 1540, another bitter struggle raged within this larger bitter struggle over who would rule over Transylvania. One obvious candidate was John Zapolya, the voivode, or ruling prince of Transylvania, who in 1526, married Princess Isabella of Poland, and proclaimed himself King of all Hungary. He was opposed in this by Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria and King of Bohemia, brother of the Hapsburg king, Charles V. Finally, the two reached an uneasy accord, stipulating that, at the death of either one of them, the other would assume the unquestioned title of King of Hungary.

            In 1540, Princess Isabella gave birth to a son, named John Sigismund. (Sigismund was the name of her father, the King of Poland.) But her husband, King John Zapolya, was away at the time of his son’s birth, putting down a rebellion among his subjects in the south. Unfortunately, King John came down with a fever shortly after subduing the rebels, and never made it back to his capital at Buda. His son was only two weeks old at his father’s death.

            Under terms of his agreement with King John, Archduke Ferdinand was supposed to become the undisputed King of all Hungary. However, Queen Isabella had other plans, and proclaimed herself regent, until her son’s coming of age at 21. To solidify her position, she sought an audience with the Ottoman Sultan, and swore allegiance to him, in exchange for military protection. Back in Prague, Archduke Ferdinand didn’t like this agreement very much, obviously, but he didn’t have the military wherewithal at the time to take on the Sultan, so was forced to go along with it, for the time being at least.

            For almost twenty years, Isabella was able to play one side against the other, and hang on as regent, in effect the ruler of the Kingdom of Transylvania (no small accomplishment for a woman at the time, we might imagine). She died in 1559; a little more than a year later, in 1561, her song, John Sigismund, came of age, and assumed the title of king.

            Archduke Ferdinand was still holding on, however, and still had designs on taking control of Transylvania for himself. In addition, young King John Sigismund also faced dissension from within his own kingdom, with representatives of various faiths—Orthodox, Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran--- all vying for control—sometimes by trying to influence the king; other times by trying to assassinate him (during the first ten years of King John’s reign, there were nine attempts to assassinate King John Sigismund). Always, proponents of various faiths argued bitterly among themselves.

            King John decided that only if he could end all this internal wrangling once and for all, would it be possible for him to guarantee the survival of his kingdom—pressed as it was by the Turks on one side, and the Hapsburgs on the other.

            So, in 1568, he called for an assembly (a “diet” as it was called) in the Great Hall in the city of Torda in the north of his kingdom. He summoned representatives of the four chief religions of his land—the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and the newer, smaller Unitarian sect—to come before him and argue their cases. More particularly, they would argue their views on communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper: Does the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of the Savior? Or is it, as some suggest, merely a symbol—and is it even a “savage sin” to suggest such a thing, as some do? (This might strike us as theological nit-picking today, but these were the Big Issues, religiously speaking, of the times, and people’s very lives might well depend on them.)

            “Imagine the scene [if you will]: The atmosphere is tense, full of suspicion and fear. Feelings were running high on both sides. The conditions of the debate had been agreed upon and judges chosen. The speakers would alternate on each side. And the debate, once it began, lasted ten days, beginning each morning at 5 a.m.!”   [Jan Knost]

            The Unitarian representative in the debate was Francis David. A brilliant scholar, David had been born in the Transylvanian city of Kalosvar, in 1510. As a young man, he had traveled to Germany and had studied at the Lutheran seminaries in Wittenberg and Frankfurt, and had also come under the influence of Calvinist thought in Geneva. Returning to his native Transylvania, he entered the ministry, and was elected Calvinist bishop of the Hungarian churches of Transylvania. However, always hungry for new ideas, he read widely, and came under the influence of the writings of the heretical theologian-scientist Michael Servetus, who had been burned at the stake by Calvin in Geneva in 1553. In his masterwork, Of the Errors of the Trinity, Servetus had denied the divinity of Christ, had declared the Holy Trinity non-scriptural and irrational, and had called for a faith based on reason, tolerance, and exploration. In 1565, Francis David renounced Calvinism, and formed the Unitarian church in Transylvania, becoming its first bishop. (Unlike us, Unitarians in Transylvania still have bishops, even today.)  

            At Torda, before the king and other learned theologians, and before the mass of people all assembled, David argued the Unitarian perspective rigorously, point by point. Then, he went a step further: The question was even greater, he said, than which particular religious perspective was correct. On that, reasoned men could disagree. Even more important, David declared, was how people were to relate to one another, and how the kingdom was to be governed, religiously speaking. Only a genuine spirit of religious toleration—an acceptance of different perspectives, within the entire kingdom—could guarantee the furtherance of stability. Without toleration,  Francis David said, even if the King himself declared his fealty to one or another chosen faith—even to Unitarianism—then religious discord would continue to rage, unabated.

            To grasp just how revolutionary the words of Francis David were, we have to remember the context of the times in which he lived: Religious wars raging throughout Europe; people still being burned at the stake, or otherwise executed, for their beliefs—and by Protestant and Catholic authorities alike; Islam making deep forays onto the European continent, twice reaching the very gates of the imperial capital of Vienna. His words are even more striking when we realize that even today, almost 440 years later—such principles as religious toleration and freedom of conscience are hardly universally accepted in our world today!

            But King John Sigismund agreed with Francis David. There had already been liberal influences upon the king: his mother, Isabella, for one, who had already granted a large decree of toleration within her kingdom, in order to gain acceptance of her alliance with the Sultan. The king’s court physician, Giorgio Biandratta, was a devoted rationalist, a man of the Enlightenment, and a close cohort of Servetus. So, the words of Francis David fell upon fertile soil.

            The king named David his court preacher. He embraced wholeheartedly the ideas of Unitarianism (thereby becoming the first, and only, Unitarian king in European history). He went even further. Following the Diet at Torda, the king issued his royal edict:

            “His Royal Majesty, our Lord… reaffirms 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 for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve…

For faith is the gift of God and this comes from hearing, which hearings is by the word of God.””

            The three “received” (or official) faiths of the kingdom—Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist—were all granted royal protection, as was Unitarianism, which was also declared a “received” faith. Practitioners of other religions—Orthodox, Jews, even Muslims—were guaranteed toleration and freedom of conscience within the Kingdom of Transylvania as well.

            All seemed destined to dwell happily ever after in religious harmony under good King John in the peaceable kingdom of Transylvania, right?

            History is never that easy.

            The Edict of Torda unleashed a reaction among the more conservative religious forces of the area. There were further assassination attempts against King John Sigismund. Francis David himself now developed enemies in high places.

            In 1570, John Sigismund gave up all claim to the Kingdom of Hungary to the Hapsburgs, and was in return granted the title Prince of Transylvania. The next year, his carriage overturned accidentally, and the young king—just 31 years old—was killed. He died without an heir, and while his will named his treasurer, Gaspar Bekes, as his successor the nobles refused to honor the king’s request and instead named Istvan Batory—a staunch Catholic—as their new ruler. A brief civil war followed, with Bekes raising an army, and unsuccessfully appealing to the Sultan for aid—but finally Batory and his brother, Kristof, succeeded in securing their rule over Transylvania.

            David, of course, was dismissed as court preacher. Catholicism was reestablished as the official religion of the land. The Edict of Torda was annulled, and religious toleration repealed. It was back to religious business as usual in Transylvania.

            But Francis David would not concede defeat. He took to the road, preaching Unitarianism across the land. The government ordered him to be silent, and even his friends advised him to acquiesce, and go along with the new status quo. But Francis David would not. Instead, his ideas became even more and more radical: Jesus was not a god, he declared; so it was sheer nonsense to pray to Jesus, he said. The doctrine of predestination was nonsense as well, he scoffed; the concept of hell was a figment of deranged imagination.

            But while his mind was still keen, and his spirit eager for a renewed debate, his body was failing him. He developed a serious illness, and soon could barely walk. He had to be carried from place to place, and lifted out of his chair, whenever he rose to speak. But continue to speak he did.

            Finally, the authorities would take it no longer. Ferenc David was summoned to stand trial, charged with the heinous crime of “religious innovation”.

            That he would be found guilty was a foregone conclusion, nor did David deny that he was an “innovator” and that he had questioned fundamental doctrines of traditional Christian faith. There were cries from more extreme quarters  for his execution. But his judges were political realists, who knew that this brilliant preacher still had much support among the people of Transylvania. By condemning him to death now, they would create a martyr—even more threatening to them dead than alive.

            Instead, they sentenced Farenc to life in prison for his heresey. They knew that the natural course of things would not drag that sentence out for very long. Francis David was locked in a dark, damp cell in the ancient fortress at Deva. There, the authorities hoped, he would languish, forgotten.

            He was sentenced in June; he died that November. His burial place remains a mystery.

            Transylvania is a sort of holy land for those of us who call ourselves Unitarian. There, the first Unitarian church in history was founded—a church which holds on today, about a hundred thousand strong, in spite of centuries of persecution and marginalization. The Orthodox excommunicated them. The Nazis terrorized them. Communism under Ceausescu nearly destroyed them.

            But they survived—tougher, if not larger, because of the ideal.

            But Transylvania is a curious holy land, too, for all of us who love freedom, for all of us who yearn for genuine, deep toleration and true freedom of conscience. In their own time, Francis David and King John Sigismund and those who dreamed as they dreamed seemed ineffectual failures, whose power lasted but a short time. But you know what? Dreams have this way of haunting the sleep even of those who follow after. And seeds have this way of growing, even though it still seems like winter all around.

            As the Transylvanian Unitarian poet and minister Francis Balazs wrote, early in the twentieth century:

            I want everyone to know

            that I did not die here.

            My village’s moods and problems

            did not drown me.

            I sowed myself only into

            this tiny place.

            I hid myself all over here

            under the clod.

            Let me be seen thus:

            I will sprout in these fields

            in the spring.

            There will be blossoms here

            which will bear good fruit.

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