Reformed Religion: Public Ceremony and Private Piety

Reformed religion developed in Hungary and Transylvania during the second half of the sixteenth century as reformers collected together insights from a range of theologians including Beza, Bullinger, Melanchthon, Zwingli, and Calvin. Hungarian Reformed religion was distinctive from local confessional rivals primarily through Calvinist sacramental theology, and Calvinists in Hungary were indeed initially described as sacramentarians. A fledgling Reformed church united in 1567 around the Confessio Catholica, drawn up by Péter Meliusz Juhász and Gergely Szegedi, and accepted the Second Helvetic Confession. Regional synods of reformminded clergy across Hungary and in Transylvania soon recognized similar confessions of faith and endorsed alterations to the conduct of religious services and ceremonies. Disagreements arose during the early seventeenth century, particularly on the conduct of the sacraments, on styles of preaching, and on the role of public prayers and music in church services. Ministers who advocated a religion of personal conscience and domestic piety were also often supporters of further ceremonial and liturgical change.