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A History of Unitarianism: In Transylvania, England and America Volume II (1952) This text was taken from a 1977 Beacon Press edition of Wilbur’s book and was made possible through the generous and kind permission of Earl Morse Wilbur’s family, with whom the copyright resides. PREFACE THE AUTHOR'S earlier work, A History of Unitarianism: Socinianism and Its Antecedents (Cambridge, 1945) was designed, though no indication was given in the preface or elsewhere, as the first of two volumes on the general subject. The present volume therefore is to be taken as the second or complementary volume of the work, and any cross-references to the former work are given as to Volume 1. The present book has been written with constant reference to available sources, and the author's obligation to various persons for valued help given still stand; but further acknowledgment is here made to Dr. Alexander Szent-Ivanyi, sometime Suffragan Bishop of the Unitarian Church in Hungary, who has carefully read the manuscript of the section on Transylvania and made sundry valued suggestions; to Dr. Herbert McLachlan, formerly Principal of the Unitarian College, Manchester, who has performed a like service for the chapters of the English section; and to Dr. Henry Wilder Foote for his constant interest and for unnumbered services of kindness in the course of the whole work I can not take my leave of a subject that has engaged my active interest for over forty-five years, and has furnished my chief occupation for the past fifteen years, without giving expression to the profound gratitude I feel that in spite of great difficulties and many interruptions I have been granted life and strength to carry my task through to completion. E.M.W. Berkeley, California June 1952 TABLE of CONTENTS CHAPTER I Transylvania and Its People… 4 CHAPTER I THE EARLY REFORMATION IN TRANSYLVANIA 1520–1564… 12 CHAPTER III THE RISE OF UNITARIANISM IN TRANSYLVANIA, 1520–1564… 19 CHAPTER IV THE PROGRESS OF UNITARIANISM IN TRANSYLVANIA TO THE DEATH OF JOHN SIGISMUND, 1569–1571… 28 CHAPTER V UNITARIANISM IN TRANSYLVANIA TO THE DEATH OF FRANCIS DAVID, 1571–1579… 35 CHAPTER VI THE UNITARIAN CHURCH UNDER THE BÁTHORYS, 1579–1599… 49 CHAPTER VII THE UNITARIAN CHURCH UNDER CALVINIST PRINCES, 1604–1691… 60 CHAPTER VIII THE UNITARIAN CHURCH UNDER AUSTRIAN OPPRESSION, 1691–1780… 77 CHAPTER IX THE UNITARIAN CHURCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER… 88 CHAPTER X PRECURSORS OF UNITARIANISM IN ENGLAND… 102 CHAPTER XI SOCINIANISM QUIETLY PENETRATES ENGLAND… 113 CHAPTER XII THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN CONFLICT WITH SOCINIANISM: THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY… 127 CHAPTER XIII THE ARIAN MOVEMENT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,,, 142 CHAPTER XIV THE ARIAN MOVEMENT AMONG THE DISSENTERS… 147 CHAPTER XV UNITARIANS SECEDE FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. THEOPHILUS LINDSEY… 162 CHAPTER XVI THE LIBERAL DISSENTERS FOLLOW THE LEADERSHIP OF JOSEPH PRIESTLEY… 174 CHAPTER XVII LIBERAL DISSENTERS UNITE TO FORM THE UNITARIAN CHURCH… 187 CHAPTER XVIII THE UNITARIAN CHURCH ORGANIZES, EXPANDS AND BATTLES DETERMINED OPPOSITION… 203 CHAPTER XIX THE UNITARIAN CHURCH IN ITS MATURE LIFE... 214 CHAPTER XX RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND…224 CHAPTER XXI THE PERIOD OF CONTROVERSY: 1800–1825… 237 CHAPTER XXII ORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT… 255 CHAPTER XXIII THE UNITARIAN CHURCH MATURES AND FINDS ITS MISSION… 274 ENDNOTES… 287 CHAPTER I TRANSYLVANIA AND ITS PEOPLE In the two previous divisions of this history we have considered the rise and development of the religious movement with which we are concerned, from its diverse origins widely scattered in various countries of western Europe, through its formal organization and mature state as one of the recognized confessions of Protestantism, to its decline and gradual dissolution and absorption into other families of European Christianity. Its corporate existence in Poland may be dated from the meeting of its first synod in 1565 to the dissolution of its last two exile churches, at Kolozsvár in 1793 and at Andreaswalde in 1811. We have now to follow the less known but extremely interesting history of another branch of this same movement, which took organized form at almost the same time with that in Poland, yet independently of it, ran its own course parallel with that of Socinianism, though largely separate from it, as long as the latter survived, and since then has bravely outlived it to the present day; although well-nigh two centuries and a half passed before its members became aware that there were in England vigorous and expanding groups of churches holding their faith and bearing their very name of Unitarian, while these in turn became conscious of having brethren in a remote and all but unknown land. The seat of this movement was in Transylvania,1 a country comprising the eastern quarter of the old Kingdom of Hungary, and in extent about a half larger than Switzerland, or two thirds the size of the State of Maine. It is mountain-girt on all sides, on the north and east by the rugged Carpathians, on the south by the lofty Transylvanian Alps, and on the west by a lower range overlooking the Great Plain of Hungary. It is well watered by several rivers that break through the mountain boundaries on their way to join the Tisza (Theiss) or the Danube. The climate is temperate, the mountains abound in mineral wealth of great variety, including the richest gold mines in Europe, which have been worked since Roman times, and the forests yield abundant timber. The surface of the land is predominantly hilly, being diversified by many small valleys; and while the enthusiasm of travelers who have called, this the Switzerland of Hungary, whose scenery is all beauty, unique and incomparable, may be thought extravagant, yet it is all in all a fair and pleasing land, which displays much wild beauty and not a few scenes of mountain grandeur. Transylvania was well known to the later Roman Empire as the province of Dacia Mediterranea; and lying on the main route from western Europe to the near and the far East, it was much traversed by traders and their caravans, as well as later by the Crusaders and their armies. But after the Turks had taken Constantinople and were pressing their conquest of Europe in the sixteenth century, this old road to Persia and India was found too dangerous, and Transylvania became almost a forgotten land. So little known was it abroad that at the end of the seventeenth century a native writer complained2 that there were not four persons to be found even in France who knew that there was in Europe such a place as Transylvania. Inhabited by a people whose language it is extremely difficult for a western European to master, remote from the European centres of commerce or culture, and without railroad connections until well after the middle of the nineteenth century, Transylvania was, save to an occasional venturesome traveler or huntsman, still a little known country until less than a hundred years ago.3 It is in this country that the Unitarian religion has, in the face of cruel and almost perpetual oppressions and persecutions, maintained an unbroken and heroic existence during well- nigh four centuries. Transylvania appears above the horizon of authentic history in the first century after Christ. Old placenames surviving through the centuries indicate that its primitive inhabitants, known to the Romans as Dacians, were of Slavic stock. Soon after the middle of the first century their various tribes were united under their King Decebalus, whose armies the Emperor Domitian was unable to hold in check; but early in the second century Trajan defeated them, connected their country with the Roman Empire by a splendid military road, the Via Trajana bridging the Danube, organized the administration of the new province, garrisoned its colonies with Roman soldiers, and returning to Rome commemorated his conquest in the noble Trajan’s Column, whose sculptures give us a contemporary pictorial record of the inhabitants. The Romans continued to exploit the gold and other treasures of the country until 274, when a rising of the Dacians and the pressure of Gothic hordes just beginning their invasions compelled them to abandon the country. Their army and most of their colonists withdrew south of the Danube into Moesia, leaving many monuments of their occupation which survive to this day. The barbarian invasions of the third and fourth centuries effectually destroyed Roman culture in these parts, for after the Goths, who occupied the land for a century, came in succession hordes of Huns in the fourth century, of Gepidae in the fifth, of Avars and Lombards in the sixth, and Magyars in the eighth and ninth; to be succeeded by the frightful raids of Tatar hosts at frequent intervals, sometimes almost annually, for more than four centuries, and by the conquering armies of the Turks for two centuries more. These repeated incursions of cruel enemies, to which Transylvania was peculiarly subject, as lying on the borderline between the settled civilization of western Europe and the restless barbarism of the Asiatic frontier, were all characterized by devastation with fire and sword, outrage, murder and slavery, and were repeatedly followed by famine and pestilence. If Transylvania long lagged behind western Europe in some of the features of civilization, while at the same time its people developed striking qualities of sturdy resistance and exalted heroism, the reason is not hard to discover. Of all these barbarian invasions there are two, those of the Huns and the Magyars, that especially concern us here, since they left a permanent mark upon the country and its population. The Huns were a nomadic race, dwelling near the Caspian sea, who in the first third of the fifth century invaded the Roman province of Pannonia (western Hungary), led by their chief Attila, who became known to history as ‘the scourge of God,’ sent by Heaven to chastise unworthy Christians for their sins.

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