CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Muntán, Emese Annamária |
|---|---|
| Title | From Apocalyptic Prophecy to Political Discourse: The Relationship between the Theological and the Political in Reformed Funeral Speeches in Mid-Seventeenth Century Principality of Transylvania |
| Summary | The relationship between the Reformed Church and the Transylvanian government provides a unique and controversial manifestation of the confessionalization-paradigm. Although the Reformed Church appeared to be in close alliance with princely power; the formal connections between Church and government were limited, which in certain cases resulted in the discontent and anxiety among many members of the Reformed clergy. The aim of this paper is to show how the theological convictions and religious concerns of Transylvanian Reformed preachers shaped their stance in imagining the relationship between religion and politics, and how was this reflected in their funeral speeches written over rulers and magistrates. The death of princes and nobles were interpreted as signs of imminent divine judgment. In different funeral speeches, orators expressed their concerns about this in the form of unraveling prophetic revelations. Because most of the clerics had political concerns (regarding both ecclesiastical politics and everyday politics) and were in many cases in close contact with the rulers, whose death later they preached upon, the way they articulated their rhetorical-homiletical discourse seems to have not only theological and religious motivations, but it also entails political repercussions. This paper is meant to analyze the relationship between the Reformed Church and the Transylvanian government from a new perspective, hoping to shed a new light on the intertwining of the Theological and the Political in the period of confessionalization. In order to obtain the most adequate results possible, I constructed a multilayered analysis of the chosen material. Therefore as a first step, I am providing a short theoretical and methodological assessment, in order to illustrate the way I imagine approaching these sources through the lenses of confessionalization and political theology. On a second level, after giving a brief survey of the main turning points of the Reformation in the Principality of Transylvania, I am presenting a possible classification of contemporary (political) public spheres in the principality, which I am supplementing by a short primary source-based analysis of the dominant political philosophy, in order to highlight some main aspects of the discourses about religion and politics prior to the death of György Rákóczi I. This part basically provides a sort of prelude to the actual analysis of the main source material. The examination of the selected corpus aims to assess the extent to which the views expressed in funeral speeches conformed to contemporary ideals on the relationship between the sacred and the secular. This all culminates in the conclusion of the thesis. I believe this research project will enrich the scanty studies on funeral speeches in seventeenth century Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania, filling in some crucial gaps in their investigation, and hopefully highlighting certain directions this research might be carried on. |
| Supervisor | Szőnyi György Endre, Matthias Riedl |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/muntan_emese.pdf |
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