Books by Zsombor Tóth
Humanizmus és Reformáció 41 (Budapest: BTK, ITI), 2023
Noha egyetlen felekezetre, a református, főként kéziratos hagyományra összpontosít ez a monográf... more Noha egyetlen felekezetre, a református, főként kéziratos hagyományra összpontosít ez a monográfia, a „hosszú reformáció” fogalmának olyan alkalmazásait mutatja be, amely a teljes magyar reformációról szóló tudásunkat helyezi új megvilágításba. A vallási perzekúció tapasztalata és az erre adott mártirológiai válasz dialektikája képezte azt a fő szelekciós elvet, amelynek alapján a könyv vizsgálati korpusza összeállt. Ily módon sikerült kirajzolni egy olyan szöveg és kultúra kontinuumot, amely az egész korszakalakzatot láthatóvá tette, illetve ennek érvényességét exponálta. Az értelmezés során a hosszú reformációnak két jelentése nyert körvonalazást. Következésképp, a hosszú reformáció mindenekelőtt egy kutatási korszakalakzatot jelöl, amelynek az időhatárait 1500 és 1800 közé tesszük ki. Ily módon mind a négy bevett felekezetre kiterjeszthető és alkalmazható. Ebből adódik a hosszú reformáció második jelentése; olyan irodalomtörténeti kategória, amely a fenti korszakalakzat kontextusában és periodizációja értelmében működik, és itt ebben a könyvben elsősorban az ortodox református konfesszionális környezetben produkált és disszeminált kéziratos és nyomtatott szöveghagyományra vonatkoztatható. A könyv legfontosabb felismerése módszertani jellegű: a reformációtörténet irodalomtörténeti alkalmazása a vallási tapasztalat történeti antropológiájának vizsgálatát teszi lehetővé. Ez képezi a hosszú reformáció legfontosabb eredményét és legígéretesebb, a jövőben elvégzendő kutatási kihívását egyszersmind.
(Reformáció Öröksége Könyvek 2.) Budapest: Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem, 2020.
Papers in English by Zsombor Tóth
PHILOBIBLON Transylvanian Journal Of Multidisciplinary Research in the Humanities, 2020
This paper intends to focus on the Calvinist and Lutheran refugees of Royal Hungary in order to i... more This paper intends to focus on the Calvinist and Lutheran refugees of Royal Hungary in order to introduce the major types of exile cases and to evaluate their particular significance in the relevant historical and intellectual contexts of the late seventeenth century. It will argue that the emergence of a reformed confessional identity may well have been influenced by exile experiences, yet the Hungarian case displayed some special features, such as the close interrelatedness of martyrological discourses with patterns of early modern proto-nationalism. It will conclude establishing that the delayed character of both persecution and the emergence of a protestant martyrology demand a rather different perception of Reformation too. Taking into account the historical facts that it was only the Edict of Tolerance (1782) and its validation (1791) that terminated religious persecution and granted free practice of religions, the concept of long Reformation appears to be the most fitting application to the Hungarian case.
JEMC, Special issue: Invention, Transfer, and Reception: The Making of the European Reformation, 2020
With the focus on Calvinist Reformation I propose a case study on Hungarian Puritanism that will ... more With the focus on Calvinist Reformation I propose a case study on Hungarian Puritanism that will allow further extrapolations, projections, and some general remarks regarding the entire process of the Hungarian Reformation. This paper draws on the findings of my research examining the reception of English Puritanism in early modern Royal Hungary and Transylvania. I intend to unearth the problematic aspects of cultural and intellectual transfers in an attempt to decipher the intricacies of how Puritan-Calvinist ideas were accepted and incorporated in the religious culture of Hungarian Calvinists. My concern is primarily related to the receiving Hungarian context and its historical evolution. For both the Hungarian Reformation and Hungarian Puritanism appear to have been newly emerging religious cultures resulting from a mixed tradition consisting of transferred ideas and native components. My contention is that the process of transfers and translations are not mechanical takeovers, borrowings or replacements , but a rather complex hermeneutical process of understanding, explaining and applying ideas to the needs of the receivers. One of the major findings of my article is that the application of the concept of long Reformation to the Hungarian case, in line with the latest developments of the field, will not only provide a more suitable historical framework, but it will put to use a repertoire of methodological novelties nurturing the understanding of the entire process of the Reformation based on the transfers of ideas and their consequent reception.
Arts, Portraits and Representation in the Reformation Era Proceedings of the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference, 2019
Transregional Reformations : Crossing Borders in Early Modern Europe, eds. Violet, Soen; Alexander, Soetaert; Johan, Verberckmoes; Wim, Francois, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2019
The aim of this paper is to offer, within the limits of a case study, an example revealing the de... more The aim of this paper is to offer, within the limits of a case study, an example revealing the determining relation between performing an identity and/while assimilating a confessional identity pattern in early modern Hungarian Calvinism. Due to the deliberately chosen micro approach, the study focuses upon one individual and his life course. Thus, the essay interprets certain moments from the life of Mihály Cserei (1667-1757), especially those, which have been recorded in writing, so that the author can elucidate how religious and confessional stereotypes, gestures, and representations promoted an identity matrix. The article also reconstructs the impact of Calvinist and English Puritan literary and theological traditions upon the spiritual life of this seventeenth-century individual. The interpretation of the author, as a case study relying on the analysis of Cserei's writing, will not simply enumerate the markers of identification with confessional attributes, but attempts to depict confessionalism as a functional component of Cserei's mental world and social or cultural existence. Mihály Cserei' case is remarkable for several reasons. He was a gifted writer and a diligent reader. Both preoccupations were dedicated to harden his Calvinist belief and religiosity. Consequently, one can decipher the multifaceted functions of reading and producing texts in early modern Hungarian Calvinist piety. Moreover, Mihály Cserei, as a historian of Transylvania proved his outstanding skills as a story teller, sustained also by his numerous narratives promoting the story of his life. Still, his genuine Calvinist education and religiosity influenced the manner and the aim of these narrative, which, no matter whether conceived at an early age or as an old man, were all centered upon a typical Calvinist narrative blueprint, suggesting that Cserei is a martyr-like individual enduring the harshness of life relying solely on his Calvinist creed. In this particular context, the experience of "religious despair" only partially admitted by Cserei, reveals an almost unknown dimension of Hungarian Puritan piety. This case study tries to contribute not only to the research related to the writings and life of Mihály Cserei, but also delivers further arguments sustaining the method and results of historical anthropology for studying the European Reformation in a comparative perspective.
This paper attempts to evaluate the historical anthropological process of self-fashioning perform... more This paper attempts to evaluate the historical anthropological process of self-fashioning performed by count Miklós Bethlen. In doing so, the aim of my interpretation is to delineate those cultural and historical contexts that influenced Bethlen's habit of constituting and fashioning a self in his ego-documents. Taking as a point of departure Bethlen's twofold liminality, I argue that he identified himself with the prototype of the early modern Calvinist martyr, so that he could provide an account of his life imitating the so called récit martyrologique as a narrative genre. Bethlen's self-fashioning displayed in his memoirs, letters and political projects, reveals his special commitment to Puritan theology and devotional culture as well.
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Books by Zsombor Tóth
Papers in English by Zsombor Tóth
(a case study)
Despite an outstanding political carrier Count Miklós Bethlen (1642–17116) concluded his life in prison in Vienna, and he never returned to Transylvania. During this unwanted stay from 1708 to 1716, he produced a consistent corpus of manuscripts containing his memoirs, prayers, and several pieces of his impressive correspondence. After the count’s death on October 27, 1716, all his manuscripts had been first sequestrated by the imperial administration, and then they were only partially given back to his son and heir, József Bethlen. This paper proposes a case study reconstructing a key moment in December 1716, when some of the original manuscripts had been released and delivered to József Bethlen. With a focus on József Dienes Hermányi (1699−1763), and his eyewitness account, this case study considers a possible scenario for the destiny of the manuscripts that came into the possession of the heir. The Christmas of 1716 appears to have been a crucial moment as it coincided, most probably, with the first editing of Miklós Bethlen’s manuscripts. As the young Dienes Hermányi was seeking the favours of his patrons, the members of the Bethlen family, he would have been the ideal candidate for transcribing and copying the original manuscripts of Miklós Bethlen under the supervision of János Lukács Borosnyai (1694−1760), the tutor of Miklós’s grandson, István Bethlen. It is safe to say that the Christmas of 1716 marked the entrance of the Bethlen manuscripts into the scribal culture and publicity of eighteenth-century Transylvania.
This paper provides a new contribution to the early modern history of the cultural exchanges between France and Hungary. Taking as its starting point the concept of Long Reformation, the article introduces an unknown source, the Hungarian translation of Pierre Du Bosc’s sermon (La doctrine de la grâce…, 1662), in order to unearth some of the relevant contexts that had articulated the reception of Huguenot theology and devotion in Transylvania during the first half of the eighteenth century. The Hungarian rendering of Du Bosc’s text itself is a philological conundrum, as it had been translated by György Dési Lázár, but its only surviving copy is the one made by József Hermányi Dienes in January 18, 1754. Furthermore, the text displays a number of homiletical features that seem to suggest a particular relation between the translator and the copyist, who not only reduplicated the text but he had edited it as well. It is fair to say that the Hungarian translator (Dési Lázár) and the copyist (Hermányi Dienes) are both authors of this unpublished text, which had been disseminated exclusively in scribal publicity. As I was able to identify several eighteenth-century printed editions of Du Bosc’s collected sermons and some of their Hungarian owners, it is possible to conclude that Du Bosc was a relatively known author, favoured especially by a Calvinist Hungarian readership. Thus, the Hungarian translation appears to have been yet another text serving the needs of Reformed Hungarian people who often interpreted their destiny and condition in a rather similar way as Huguenots did before and after the Revocation of 1685.
The volume starts by showing in a first part how transfer and exchange beyond territorial circumscriptions or proto-national identifications shaped many sixteenth-century reformations. The second part of this volume is devoted to the acceleration of cultural transfer that resulted from the newly-invented printing press, by translation as well as transmission of texts and images. The third and final part of this volume examines the importance of mobility and migration in causing transregional reformations. Focusing on the process of ‘crossing borders’ in peripheries and borderlands, all chapters contribute to the de-centering of religious reform in early modern Europe. Rather than princes and urban governments steering religion, the early modern reformations emerge as events shaped by authors and translators, publishers and booksellers, students and professors, exiles and refugees, and clergy and (female) members of religious orders crossing borders in Europe, a continent composed of fractured states and regions.
First of the Transregional Trilogy by www.transregionalhistory.eu . Will be continued by a volume on Transregional Territories and one one Transregional Nobilities: B. De Ridder, V. Soen, W. Thomas & S. Verreyken (eds.), Transregional Territories: Crossing Borders in the Early Modern Low Countries and Beyond, Brepols, Turnhout (Habsburg Worlds, forthcoming 2019) and V. Soen, Y. Junot (eds.), Noblesses transrégionales: Les Croÿ et les frontières pendant les guerres de religion en France, Lorraine et aux Pays-Bas, Brepols, Turnhout (forthcoming 2020).