CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Zászkaliczky, Márton |
|---|---|
| Title | Protestant Political Theology and Corporate Constitutionalism in 16th-17th century Hungary |
| Summary | Abstract The dissertation provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the emergence and development of Protestant political theology in 16th and early 17th-century Hungary. How Protestant theologians in their confessional writings treated political issues and theoretically discussed the question of political power has been discussed in the historiography, usually as case studies, or dominantly by church historians thus from a theological perspective, or by historians focusing on narrow issues such as the right of resistance or the critical attitude of Protestant preachers toward those in power. A comparative perspective has almost never been applied, so the question of how Protestant political theology in Hungary fits into European patterns was only occasionally and briefly answered. Moreover, the question of what position the political discourse of the Reformation gained, which has been a central topic for the history of early modern political thought in Europe, has only been exceptionally addressed about Hungary. An essential finding of the dissertation is that while in various European countries, the new political theology of the Reformation relatively soon interacted with the existing political discourses of the age, in Hungary the political discourses inherited from late Medieval times did not or did relatively rarely and in a limited way interact with the new public language of the Reformation. The dissertation therefore intends to chart the various local versions of Protestant political theology as it identified representative groups of texts, representing regional and confessional variations. Thus, the dissertation discusses crucial texts by the Transylvanian Saxon humanist city judge and reformer, Johannes Honterus, Protestants living under the Ottoman occupation, Reformed communities and market cities represented by leading Reformed theologian Péter Melius and numerous Reformed synods, Péter Bornemisza Lutheran minister in North-West. The dissertation analyses in detail how the Bocskai rebellion brought about a radical change as Protestant political theology and the ancient constitutionalism of the nobility were interacting in propaganda and diplomatic writings. The dissertation concludes by highlighting the consequence of this shift in the Reformed predicator Péter Alvinczi’s pamphlets as he started to write Protestant political pamphlets which were not only theological in nature but rather an amalgam of all the political traditions that existed independently and separately in the 16th century. The dissertation admittedly utilized contextual methodology and rhetorical-discursive approach while also heavily relying on literary and textual analysis. |
| Supervisor | Trencsényi, Balázs |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/zaszkaliczky_marton.pdf |
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