45. Die Friedensschlüsse von Siebenbürgen: Wegmarken religiöser Toleranz oder der Konfessionalisierung?

Mihály Balázs

Abstract

The Transylvanian Peace Treaties - Toleration or Confessionalisation? The view that Transylvania was the most tolerant country in sixteenth century Europe has deep historiographical roots. This chapter analyses the genesis and implementation of the Transylvanian legislation which granted religious freedom to four Christian confessions and underlines the differences between the Transylvanian laws and the religious peace settlements in other parts of Europe. This article demonstrates that the sixteenth-century Transylvanian religious laws were designed to promote Protestantism rather than toleration. Under the Habsburgs after 1688, Catholicism took the place of Protestantism, but the methods used to promote its dominance remained the same. The myth of the Transylvanian religious idyll was a nineteenth-century fiction designed to emphasise the unity of the Hungarian nation.

45. Die Friedensschlüsse von Siebenbürgen: Wegmarken religiöser Toleranz oder der Konfessionalisierung?

From the book Handbuch Frieden im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit / Handbook of Peace in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

Chapters in this book (62)