Abstract » Balázs
Prague 2009
Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and Prophecy: Eschatological Expectations between East-Central and Western Europe, 1560–1670
Mihály Balázs
Unitarian Millenarianism in Transylvania
This study concentrates on treatises and commentaries on the Apocalypse from the end of the 16th century, written in Hungarian and spread in the form of manuscripts. These treasures of Transylvanian Unitarianism, still unpublished and only partially known even by Hungarian scholars, have the potential to modify substantially the understanding of the relationship between Antitrinitarianism and Millenarianism. Texts by Benedek Óvári, Pál Karádi, Miklós Bogáti Fazakas, and György Enyedi attest to their multifaceted visions. Inspired by works of earlier representatives of European Antitrinitarianism (Servet, Palaeologus, Matthias Vehe-Glirius), they offered very different interpretations concerning essential points, as well as eloquent refutations of the concept that Sabbatarianism and Millenarianism were unavoidably intertwined in end-of-the-sixtieenth-century Antitriniatrianism. (The author’s position is that this concept basically reflected the simplistic view of that time which most markedly appeared in the obviously prejudiced Fausto Sozzini.) The analysis of Pál Karádi’s commentary on the Apocalypse reveals moments of independent theological inquiry in greatest detail, and lessons of this work’s survival are also pertinent. The author thinks that all these, once again, underline the exciting and unique moments of the Transylvanian evolution. The question of Millenarianism definitely is a reminder of how the slow and delayed confessionalization in Transylvania made it possible for Antitrinitarianism to remain an extraordinary phenomenon until the mid-17th century. The pursuit of explanations only reinforces that Polish models must not and cannot be applied in the understanding of the period leading up to Ferenc Dávid’s imprisonment.
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