György Enyedi's life belongs to the sixteenth century and yet he differs in essen-tial ways from that period. The cause of that difference was a new historical situ-ation by the end of that century.
Ferenc David and his followers had been in conflict with Protestant dogmat-ism. A new adversary now arose: Catholicdogmat-ism. Calvinism, albeit impatient and prejudiced, was nevertheless a Protestant trend itself and thus it recognized and allowed the spiritual rights of the individual to be expressed. In contrast, the Counter-Reformation with its totalitarian approach, disallowed alternative spir-itual expressions, and the means of power prevailed. The task of the pulpit was no longer to search for truth by dialectical methods, but was reduced to preservation [maintenance] and protection underpinned by a new attitude: passive resistance.
The many wars and intemal struggles during the reign of the Bathorys, and the incalculable destruction of Tartar and Turkish invasions, impoverished the coun-try. As a consequence, a moral deterioration ensued. Ministers were faced with new tasks. Theo/ogizing was replaced by moralizingand that tendency was main-tained in Unitarian sermonic literature until the nineteenth century.
Instead of a scholar, the minister became primarily a pastor who kept the flock together and a prophet who chastised it, similar to those of the Old Testament:
" ... the Lord visits them so often because of their many sins." Repent so that God may put an end to our sufferings.
His Sermons
During the ten years of his ministry, Enyedi wrote more than 300 sermons, but only one of them was allowed to be published - his sermon for the funeral of Demeter Hunyadi. However, Enyedi's sermons were copied and circulated
1 Imre Gellerd (1920-1980) was a Transylvanian Unitarian minister-scholar, a martyr to political persecution under the Romanian communist regime. In his doctoral dissertation: The lntellec-tua/ History of Four Centuries of Transylvanian Unitarianism as Rejlected in the Sermonic Literature, Gellerd has conceived of a new discipline within Practical Theology, that of the history of sermonic literature (published as A History of Transylvanian Unitarianism Through Four Centuries of Sermons, Chico-Cluj-Napoca 1999). Because of political reasons Imre Gellerd received his posthumous doctorate with a 25 years delay, in 1996. This presentation is an edited chapter of this work, translated by his daughter, Dr Judit Gellerd.
among his students. Uzoni Foszt6 and Kenosi Tözser mention that Enyedi's ser-mons were widely disseminated throughout Transylvania. The serser-mons analyzed are from the Sarospatak codex, transferred to Kolozsvar by Ferenc Kanyar6 in 1898. The codex is incomplete, whole fascicles feil victim to religious intoler-ance. (After all, according to Elek Jakab, " ... more than one hundred contempor-aries wrote against Enyedi."2) We will analyze the 66 extant sermons of this vol-ume that Kanyar6 reviewed.
One of the most important pieces in the codex is the ninety-forth sermon.
Starting from the text "Fear not, little flock "(Luke, 12:32) he concluded that the history of Transylvania was the story of the Old Testament repeated. "There-fore, the truth of a religion does not depend upon the multitudes [ ... ] The argu-ment of those who attempt to demonstrate the falsity of our Unitarian faith sim-ply because we are few is wrong [ ... ] Their argument is just as false as another accusation: that our faith was born only recently."
Both charges came from the Catholics and Enyedi passionately fought against them. Quantity was an argument neither for genuineness nor for value. "There is much of dust and of weeds, but there is little of gold [„ .] Therefore, one who is wise will trust neither the multitudes, nor abundance, but will retain one's appre-ciation for rarity. There are many flakes of flint but few of diamond."
At the end of the sixteenth century, Enyedi was already fully aware that the Unitarian church could survive the coming storms of Transylvanian history only if it accepted quality as its life-principle. With a prophetic vitality, Enyedi emphas-ized how important it was for each Unitarian to become conscious of that idea.
Until the nineteenth century no one perceived and highlighted the qualitative values of Unitarianism more clearly than Enyedi. No one focused with such con-vincing power upon the central character of the Unitarian personality: Quality-centered seif esteem. This new awareness introduced by Enyedi was a protective shield for Ferenc David's ideas during the centuries to come.
A prophetic dimension was given to the sermon by the conditions under which Enyedi preached it, that is, at a time when the majority of Transylvania was Unitarian. Although he could have reminded his people of their power as a major-ity; instead he admonished them to be prepared for the great fight of the tomor-rows, because, though " ... we are not as few as our enemies propagate [ ... ] yet it is indispensable for us to be aware and to feel that on the !arger scale of religious conviction we Unitarians represent quality."
Enyedi's concem for the future of the Unitarian ideas and that of Transylvania was intertwined. His struggle to reinstitute genuine Christianity was not formal.
He placed idealism into a historic time-frame, into the hie et nunc. Enyedi's main concem was not how many persons there were in God, but what was going to happen to Transylvania and to Unitarianism. He planted Jesus' religious ideals reintroduced by Ferenc David, into the everyday life of Transylvania. And because that life was harsh and depressing, the ardor of those ideas was
moder-2 Elek JAKAB, Enyedi György elete (The Life of György Enyedi), KM, XXV(l 890), 242.
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ated, and made subtle. In fact, there was a compromise - a compromise of the ideal with the empirical reality. Therefore, Enyedi 's personality may be character-ized as being an amalgamation of Ferenc David and the empirical life of Transylvania. The compromise of Enyedi became one of the basic conditions for the survival of Unitarianism.
In the fourth volume of the collection of Kolozsvar there are two sennons we use to illustrate another principle of Unitarianism that Enyedi emphasized: reli-gious tolerance.
The text of the two-hundredth sennon (centurae primae triacas septima) is from Romans 14:1: "As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions." Those who were still immature in faith, were to be treated in a special way, Enyedi wams: "Receive them into your company and show them your love and benevolence and, even more important, don't bother and tire them with hard disputations."
Enyedi fought against the custom of religious conversions. He denounced aris-tocrats who easily abandoned their faith because of material interests. "We have reached the point when we are being reproached for our small number and this is because of apostasy. Day by day people convert to Calvinism or Catholicism just to attain an office. Therefore, no one should reproach our congregations for their small number in contrast to the multitude of the papists. Truth often belongs to the few. Anyone wanting to leave, let them go. If one, two, ten, a hundred or a thousand apostatize, twelve will always remain. But even them we should not flatter. Let people run to and fro through the door of the church."
Enyedi was aware that those who confessed their faith bad at all times been treated harshly. That was why he lamented: "Where, if anywhere, has persecution and derision of true knowledge and its teachers been greater than among us? Yet this has been the fate of all who have carried the truth ever since the Lord Christ."
Enyedi intuitively experienced the virtue of martyrdom. There was nothing more magnificent than accepting suffering, and enduring derision for the sake of true faith and honor.
Enyedi was convinced that time was not the criterion of value. Values are inde-pendent of space, time and conscience: "Not everything that is old is good, just as not everything that is new is false." In order to forma realistic Unitarian his-torical conscience, it was indispensable to gain general acceptance for this really new idea. At the turn of the century only those who deeply lived the two funda-mental concepts fonnulated by Enyedi were able to remain in Unitarianism.
These concepts were:
1. Value is not the privilege of the multitude.
2. Value is independent of temporal factors.
Ferenc David posited the principles of Unitarianisrn, Enyedi detennined the con-ditions for rnaintaining that faith.
György Enyedi's Activity as a Preacher
Enyedi was the greatest Hungarian preacher at the end of the sixteenth century.
He was an original thinker and a deeply spiritual man. His educational impact on the whole period is indisputable. He was an extraordinary rhetorician and, in addition, his sermons were colorful, interesting and dynamic. After a period char-acterized only by polemic and dogrnatic preaching, Enyedi's sermons were like a warm and fragrant spring following a rigorous winter.
Enyedi was entirely a man of his age. His sermons are an accurate mirror in which the history of the end of the sixteenth century is reflected.
In subject matter, they can be categorized into four groups: social, moral, apo-logetic and occasional sermons.
The sermons with social character represent a decade of Transylvanian history, filtered through a living conscience. Enyedi deeply and passionately lived the Transylvanian destiny. There were times when he was in tears like Jeremiah and other times when he struck with Elijah's lightning. Sometimes he admired that horribly beautiful Transylvanian life and other times he quarrelled with the Lord.
In this group of sermons we can recognize the features of the Bathorys and the bloody marks of the Turkish-Tartar-Austrian triple peril. The ardor of his patri-otism was surpassed only by his affectionate, heroic Unitarian faith and his immense knowledge. lt offers a special experience to read the series of seven ser-mons which he wrote in the year of Transylvania's downfall. Every sermon was a painful yet not disheartened cry. Enyedi was interested in all the aspects of social life. He was aware that there was a uniquely potent power which holds people together: a pure morality and its source, a clear faith. This very social character was what always kept his sermons timely. And yet this constant timeli-ness never blurred the pure Christian idealism before his eyes. He unsparingly scourged certain political and social innovations.
In his moralizing sermons Enyedi dealt with the problems ofhumanity. He was convinced that, by the law of a moral world order, the cause of all suffering was sin and moral corruption. He opposed indifference, conceit, secularization, misery and the indolence which created poverty. He also criticized war, egotism, the spirit of blind slavery and blindness in faith. His moralizing sermons also had a proph-etic dimension. He prophesied even greater sufferings for the people of Tran-sylvania if they did not repent.
Enyedi's main subject was humanity. Humanity was not an abstract notion for him but an experiential reality taken from flesh and blood. When he dealt with humanity, he was not attracted by theology, but by psychology. His favorite sub-ject was the human character. The difference between him and Ferenc David was
that while the great religious founder was absorbed by the ideal human, Enyedi presented the concrete human nature and everyday tasks of the people. David examined the human from above, Enyedi face to face. If David had discovered humanity, Enyedi put it into the flow of real life and beheld it as such. He criti-cized humanity, and scourged it but not because he did not believe in humans.
Quite the contrary, he did so because his trust was so great. "What a strange being 60
the human is „ . , " he exclaimed in the ninety-seventh sermon, in misery he grieves, complains, humiliates himself. But as soon as luck smiles on him a little, he behaves as if horses have run away with him." Enyedi was not only realistic in describing the people, he was often quite naturalistic, especially when he revealed people's moral faults with biting irony. For example, this very natural-istic outburst: "I do think that more people would come to listen to the sermon if good wines, roasted meat, and big dishes were served along with it."
The important thing for Enyedi was not what one believed but what one accomplished. "Not the creed is important but the deed." Deeds not only meant charitable activities but also included the whole of the human attitude. "Your out-ward behavior is being judged both by God and people." lt was not, coincident-ally, a usual phrase with him: "lt doesn't become you, my brother, to do that."
His apologetic sermons were not polemics, but rather apologetics in the mod-ern sense of the term. He did not focus on discrediting an opponent but rather demonstrated the superiority of the Unitarian articles of faith. (The Szilvassi polemic is an exception.) His opponents had been Roman Catholics and he felt superior to them. This seems natural because he was the preeminent theologian in Transylvania during his lifetime. Gifted with apologetical sense, Enyedi did not dogmatize but he used the simple, practical contradictions occurring in soci-ety as illustrations. His slogan was: "Similar can be convinced with similar." His apologetic sermons were saturated with inner tension. Enyedi was deeply con-cerned about the contemporary problems of society and about the tribulations of his church.
From among the occasional sermons we have already dealt with funeral mess-ages. The collection also contains sermons for weddings. For example, in the eighth sermon he condemns the wedding custom of drinking and excessive revelry. These sermons were not quite liturgical, but rather toasts. "Drinking, fault-finding, gos-sip, music, all these bring a curse upon the marriage rather than a blessing." We learn from one of the sermons that during the blessing of the marriage the hands of the young couple were clasped.
As an orator, Enyedi was imposing in the pulpit. Mate Toroczkai wrote of him:
"Nobody was more beloved in the pulpit." Uzoni Foszt6 noted: "Oh, you, faith-ful pastor who gives your soul for your flock!" Elek Jakab's characterization was:
"Enyedi was all fire and life. His whole life was a tempestuous struggle with ideas and deeds. Brave ideas and strong passions met in him; an eager desire for truth and light was his noble passion." In another place Jakab's description: "He was a priest to his church and a prophet to his homeland."
In his style Enyedi surpassed his period and became the "master" of the next centuries. His sermons opened a new age in the history ofthe sermonic literature of Unitarianism, from the viewpoints of both content and style. The shining light of his outstanding spirit was deeply needed: the chronicler crying out about the time that would follow.
HENK VAN DE GRAAF