A búcsúzás diszkrét bája. Református halotti beszédek egy unitárius prédikációgyűjteményben
The Discrete Charm of Saying Farewell: Calvinist Funeral Sermons in a Unitarian Sermon Collection

Summary/Abstract: Funeral orations by notable Transylvanian preachers marking the death of Zsuzsanna Károlyi (d. 1622), the first wife of Prince Gábor Bethlen, had a rather unexpected afterlives. Published alongside farewell poems in two volumes in 1624, the texts were copied in the middle to the end of the 17th century into a single volume (Manuscript 0636 in the Teleki-Bolyai Library in Marosvásárhely [Târgu Mureş]) by two Unitarian preachers, one identified as János Pákay (a preacher in Kide [Chidea] in the last decade of the century). Though the misshaped volume survives in poor condition, the infrequently studied contents includes a manual for preachers, excerpts, exempla, and sermons by well-known Unitarians (Ferenc Dávid, György Enyedi, and János Th ordai), borrowed material from their Calvinist equivalents (István Melotai Nyilas, András Gyöngyösi, János Keserűi Dajka, József Gönci, János Szikszai Hellopoeus), and, strikingly, altered sermons that originated from the 1624 volumes. While János Pákay retained the original use of the material, adapting it for his own funeral sermon, his inventive fellow minister reused one to say farewell to his congregation aft er four years of service, moving from Tordatúr [Tureni] to Sinfalva [Cornești]. Marginal notes and explications at the end of the sermon reveal the preacher’s disappointment that the people of Tureni were not as pious as expected. Study of the multiple contexts of the funeral sermons show a wider view of the 17th century textual universe from the elite court to the countryside congregation, and from the written (and printed) word to the spoken sermon.

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