Antitrinitáriusok, reformátusok és jezsuiták Gyulafehérvárott, 1557–1588
Unitarians, Calvinists and Jesuits in Alba Iulia, 1557-1588

Summary/Abstract: Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Karlsburg) became the capital of the Principality of Transylvania just being born. Its Hungarian inhabitants became Protestant, and from 1565 on they became the owners of the former Catholic episcopal dome. Influenced by prince Sigismund John and his court-physician, Giorgio Biandrata, the leading pastors and professors of the town (István Csázmai, Pál Gyulai, Benedek Óvári, Gregor Wagner) had chosen the Unitarian Church, instead of the Calvinist one. At this time the print of Raphael Hoffhalter was working in the town. The above mentioned prince wanted to found a new capital and a university, but his early death didn’t let him to fulfill all these plans. The next prince, István Báthory, who belonged to the Catholic Church, wanted to restrict the spreading of the Unitarian faith. First he gave over the dome and the school to the Calvinists and invited from Hungary Benedek Ilosvai who became the leader of the collegiate church. The second step of this tact was – after 1579 – the appearance of the Jesuits in Transylvania and also in the capital; a Jesuit, János Leleszi became the tutor of Zsigmond Báthory before he became of age. In Alba Iulia the Jesuits founded a schola aulica and also a public school, and they got the building of the monastery and the church of the city, out of use since a long period. The plague year of 1586 destroyed brutally the intellectual circles of Transylvania and the noble orders of the country radically got rid of the Jesuits. Though the Jesuit order returned after three years, and the dome was also given to them, but the war years didn’t support their activities, and for the long period of István Bocskai’s Protestant rule they had to leave this region.

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