Matthias Vehe known as Glirius (c.1545-1590) was a German Protestant religious radical, who converted to a form of Judaism and anti-trinitarianism, rejecting the New Testament as revelation. [1]
The identity of Vehe and the writer Glirius, who published Mattanjah (Knowledge of God, 1578) in Cologne, was established by G. E. Lessing. The history of the group including Vehe has been reconsidered by recent scholarship. [2]
He was born in Ballenberg, and brought up in Königshofen. He studied at the University of Heidelberg, and at the University of Rostock under David Chytræus. [3]
He was arrested by the local Church Council with others in 1570, as a dissenter from the Calvinism being introduced by the Elector Palatine. He was at that time deacon at Kaiserslautern. Adam Neuser, later a convert to Islam, eventually escaped with help from Simon Grynaeus. [4] Johannes Sylvan was executed, in 1572. [5] Two others involved were Jacob Suter and Johann Hasler.
He took refuge in Transylvania, teaching at the Unitarian college at Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, in Romania), where Ferenc Dávid was the head. [6] [7] Others with radical Christian views there were Jacobus Palaeologus and Christian Francken.
Vehe's followers András Eőssi and Simon Péchi founded the Szekler Sabbatarians, after Dávid died in prison in 1579. [8] It has been said that Vehe was primarily responsible (as Faustus Socinus claimed) for the 1581 Defensio Francisci Davidis. By then he had been expelled from Kolozsvár. [9]
He spent most of the rest of his life in Poland, publishing under pseudonyms. He returned to Germany in 1589, was arrested, and died in December 1590. [10]
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The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's recognition of Jewish scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, or due to the parallels or commonalities in Judaeo-Christian ethics shared by the two religions. The term "Judæo Christian" first appeared in the 19th century as a word for Jewish converts to Christianity.
Unitarianism is a Nontrinitarian branch of Christianity. Unitarian Christians affirm the unitary nature of God as the singular and unique creator of the universe, believe that Jesus Christ was inspired by God in his moral teachings and that he is the savior of humankind, but he is not comparable or equal to God himself.
Fausto Paolo Sozzini, or simply Fausto Sozzini, was an Italian Renaissance humanist and theologian, and, alongside his uncle Lelio Sozzini, founder of the Nontrinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.
Ferenc Dávid was a Unitarian preacher and theologian from Transylvania, the founder of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, and the leading figure of the Nontrinitarian Christian movements during the Protestant Reformation. He disputed the mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity, believing God to be one and indivisible.
Unitarianism, as a Christian denominational family of churches, was first defined in Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania in the late 16th century. It was then further developed in England and America until the early 19th century, although theological ancestors are to be found as far back as the early days of Christianity. It matured and reached its classical form in the middle 19th century. Later historical development has been diverse in different countries.
The Edict of Torda was a decree that authorized local communities to freely elect their preachers in the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom of John Sigismund Zápolya. The delegates of the Three Nations of Transylvania – the Hungarian nobles, Transylvanian Saxons, and Székelys – adopted it at the request of the monarch's Antitrinitarian court preacher, Ferenc Dávid, in Torda on 28 January 1568. Though it did not acknowledge an individual's right to religious freedom, in sanctioning the existence of a radical Christian religion in a European state, the decree was an unprecedented act of religious tolerance.
Religion in Hungary has been dominated by forms of Christianity for centuries. According to the 2011 census, 54.2% of Hungarians declared themselves as Christians, of whom 38.9% were Catholics, 13.8% were Protestants, 0.1% were Orthodox Christians, and 1.3% were members of other Christian groups. At the same time, 27.2% did not respond when asked about their beliefs, 16.7% declared to be not religious and 1.5% atheists. Minority religions practised in Hungary include Buddhism, Islam and Judaism.
Georg Schomann was a Socinian (Unitarian) theologian.
Jacob Palaeologus or Giacomo da Chio was a Dominican friar who renounced his religious vows and became an antitrinitarian theologian. A polemicist against both Calvinism and Papal Power, Palaeologus cultivated a wide range of high-placed contacts and correspondents in the imperial, royal, and aristocratic households in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire; while formulating and propagating a radically heterodox version of Christianity, in which Jesus Christ was not to be invoked in worship, and where purported irreconcilable differences between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were rejected as spurious fabrications. He was continually pursued by his many enemies, repeatedly escaping through his many covert supporters.
Christian Francken was a former Jesuit who became an anti-Trinitarian writer.
Unitarforbundet Bét Dávid is the denomination of Unitarian Christianity in Norway.
The Szekler Sabbatarians were a religious group in Transylvania and Hungary between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries who held Unitarian and judaizing beliefs.
Johann Sylvan was a Reformed German theologian who was executed for his heretical Antitrinitarian beliefs.
Adam Neuser was a Protestant pastor of Heidelberg who held Antitrinitarian views.
Mihály Balázs is a Hungarian Catholic historian and professor of religious history at the University of Szeged. He is widely regarded as an expert on the religious history of Hungarian-speaking Transylvania.
The Bibliotheca dissidentium is a series of 26 volumes (1980–2008) of historical editions of 16th century Non-Conformist religious works, largely in Latin, with scholarly introductions, essays and notations in French, German and/or English published by the Groupe de Recherches sur les Non-Conformismes du XVIe Siècle et l'Histoire des Protestantismes under the general editor, professor André Séguenny of the University of Strasbourg as part of the larger series Bibliotheca bibliographica Aureliana.
Johann Hasler, also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.
János Gerendi was a Transylvanian politician who supported radical theological views. He "was in contact with nearly all the prominent representatives of the radical Antitrinitarians" after 1570. His followers, who regarded Saturday as the day of rest, but did not obey all the Old Testament laws, were known as "Gerendists". He accepted atheist philosophy from the late 1580s.
The Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary started around 1520 and resulted in the conversion of most Hungarians from Roman Catholicism to a Protestant denomination by the end of the 16th century. Hungary was a Central European regional power in the late 15th century. It was a multhiethnic composite monarchy with a significant non-Catholic, predominantly Greek Orthodox, population.
