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Towards a Model of Enmeshment

When Sultan Suleyman of the OttomanEmpire first learned of the birth of John Sigis-mund, the son of the King of Hungary, he feltit was such a fortuitous event that he sent anequerry to stand in a corner of Queen Isabel-la’s room to witness hernursing the infant(Goodman, 1996, p. 86).Sigismund’s father, KingJohn Zapolya, King ofHungary and Voivode ofTransylvania, had diedjust two weeks after hisson’s birth that July of1540. On his deathbed,he had given instructionsthat his son be namedheir to his titles, a viola-tion of a previousagreement that promisedHungary after John’s death to Ferdinand, thebrother of the Hapsburg emperor, Charles.When it became clear after John’s death thathis successors had no intention of allowingHungary to become a part of the Hapsburgempire, Ferdinand responded by laying siegeon Buda. In 1541, with Queen Isabella’sforces nearing collapse, Sultan Suleymanappeared in Buda with a large army, success-fully repulsing Ferdinand. Suleyman claimed

the capital of Buda and much of lower Hun-gary for his direct control while grantingIsabella and her infant son Transylvania torule independently but under the ultimatesuzerainty of Turkey. After some years of politi-cal contrivance and redefinition, Transylvania

developed into its newidentity as a border state.An odd slice of semi-inde-pendence between thoseareas directly controlledby the Hapsburgs and theOttomans, Transylvaniaeventually became one ofthe safest places inEurope for the develop-ment of progressiveProtestantism, includingUnitarianism. In 1568,the now grown-up kingand newly minted Unitari-

an John Sigismund issued the Edict of Torda, adocument which historians have proclaimedto be the first European policy of expansivereligious toleration (Cadzow, Ludanyi, andElteto, 1983).

Though this much is well known,American Unitarian historians have longbeen tantalized by the prospect of making amore specific connection between the IslamicOttoman rule and the development of

The Islamic OttomanInfluence on the

Development of ReligiousToleration in Reformation

TransylvaniaSusan Ritchie

aladar korosfoi-kriesch’s famous painting

of francis david and the 1568 proclamation

of religious freedom at torda. copies of

this sepia-colored photogravure

hang in most unitarian churches

and in many homes in transylvania.

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Unitarianism in Transylvania, especially asexpressed in what has been described as its“most striking and distinguished” achieve-ment: the advocacy and practice of whatWilbur named the most “perfect” principle oftoleration (Wilbur, 1952, 164-165). The Edictof Torda was, of course, not exactly perfect, extending toleration to only fourstate-approved churches and not to otherChristian and non-Christian minorities. It was,nonetheless, an impressive achievement; thefact that the first modern principle of religioustoleration articulated by Europeans on thelevel of state rule was articulated by Unitariansunder the ultimate political rule of religious-tolerant Ottomans seems too strong andobvious a connection to be mere coincidence.Yet there has also been despair over the possibility of ever finding direct evidence ofmutual relation and influence (Kratochvil,1999). While everyone agrees as to the presence of the Sultan’s equerries standingquietly in the corners of Transylvanian history,it has been harder to know their true influence.

In what follows, I would like to suggest thatuncovering the influence of Ottoman Islamon Unitarian development is not as hard a taskas it has seemed. As much as it is sometimessuggested, I believe that our inability todemonstrate the vital connection betweenIslam and Unitarian development is notappropriately attributable to the deplorablelack of 16th century Transylvanian govern-mental documents, the resistance of thecontemporary Transylvanian church, or theshortage of Unitarian historians able to access

documents written in both Hungarian andTurkish.1 All these things comprise genuineobstacles, but the most obvious evidences ofinfluence have been overlooked, I believe, asa result of our application of an inadequateparadigm of East-West influence. We haveimagined that the boundary between East andWest has been relatively impermeable, a border crossed once at a time, by a few spec-tacular individuals or ideas. Yet the borderbetween Europe and its “Others” is one thathas existed much more strongly in theory andhistoriography than it ever has in cultural factor lived geography.

It is now widely recognized that the Christian and Muslim cultures of the Mediter-ranean, with their European and Near Easternhinterlands, were more in contact in the Mid-dle Ages than had been assumed before, butonly recently have we begun to imagine theresults of extending a similar understandingof cultural enmeshment to the early modernperiod. Furthermore, in the case of the MiddleAges, the recognition of mutual influence hasbasically taken the form of acknowledging theEuropean debt to Arab learning, literature,and material culture (Menocal). The textualnature of such influence has lent itself well totraditional scholarly methods for tracing influ-ences and origins, especially to the historicalphilology that remains the legacy of the firstEuropean Orientalists (Said). However, suchmethods are less helpful when the contactbetween Christian and Muslim cultures is notprimarily textual but rather cultural and socio-political, as it is in the early modern period.2

Hence, I would recommend the adoptionof the more flexible historical methodologyof historians Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brottonfor our purposes. Writing of the Renaissance,Jardine and Brotton (2000) suggest that

Once it is recognized that … the bound-aries between what we will refer to hereas the East and the West were thorough-ly permeable in the Renaissance, …

IT IS NOW WIDELY RECOGNIZED THAT

THE CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM CULTURES

OF THE MEDITERRANEAN,WITH THEIR

EUROPEAN AND NEAR EASTERN

HINTERLANDS,WERE MORE IN CONTACT

IN THE MIDDLE AGES THAN HAD BEEN

ASSUMED BEFORE

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even in situations of conflict, … freshpossibilities for cultural cross fertiliza-tion and two-way traffic open up atevery turn. With these possibilities andtheir implications comes the inevitablerecognition that cultural historiesapparently distinct, and traditionallykept entirely separate, are ripe to berewritten as shared East/West under-takings. (8)

In what follows, I will attempt to rewritethe story of the Edict of Torda’s proclama-tion of religious toleration precisely as such ashared Islamic-Unitarian undertaking, as theresult not only of influence but of culturalenmeshment. In the process, I will make theclaim that there is indeed a direct relation-ship between Ottoman rule that is based onIslamic theological commitments and thedevelopment of the Unitarian articulation ofreligious tolerance. My goal in so suggestingis less the clearing of this one historical trailthan it is the demonstration of a methodolo-gy that might suggest how many of theapparently blind trails within history indicatenot the absence of influence so much asmutual influences so great as to become visi-ble only in the intersections of previouslyseparate stories.

The Edict of Torda and the Anxiety of

Influence

Currently, when the story of the Edict ofTorda is told, it is most common to attributeits expansive definition of religious tolerancedirectly to the original and brilliant mind ofJohn Sigismund’s court preacher, FerencDávid. If cultural influence is admitted to atall outside of this paradigm of originalgenius, it is most often the Western influenceof classical humanism. Giorgio Biandrata,the court physician to Sigismund and mostprobably a member of the princely councilthat authored the Edit of Torda, had, as iswell known, been a follower of Miguel

Servetus before his arrival in Transylvania andis freely acknowledged for bringing to courtnot only Servetus’s progressive Socinianism(Unitarianism) but also the rich traditions ofItalian humanism. It is also quite standard tonote Queen Isabella’s familiarity with suchWestern strains of thought; it is fairly wellknown that when she left Buda to journey toTransylvania, she carried with her a muchthumbed copy of Erasmus and that she subse-quently insisted her son be educated in thevalues of classical humanism (Varkonyi, 1993,100). It is only reasonable to assume thatDávid would have shared these influences.

However, any suggestion that the culturalinfluences surrounding the edict might haveincluded those of the Ottoman East is stillrather hotly denied, most expressly by theextant Transylvanian church and Hungarianhistorians. Many of the most nationalistic

Rev. Dr. Susan Ritchie has served asthe minister of the North UnitarianUniversalist Congregation sinceSeptember of 1996. Rev. Ritchie wasordained by First UnitarianUniversalist Church in Columbus

in May of 1995, where she subsequently served as thecongregation’s first (interim) associate minister. Sheholds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Ohio StateUniversity and a Divinity degree from MethodistTheological School in Ohio. Rev. Ritchie has pub-lished widely on Unitarian Universalist history andtheology and on comparative religion. Collegium, theAssociation of Liberal Religious Scholars, recentlyhonored her with its award for “Best New Scholarshipin Liberal Religious Studies.” The Journal ofUnitarian Universalist History published herwork, and one of her essays is currently being translat-ed into Turkish for a collection of the best articles ofthe last twenty-five years relating to Ottoman culturalstudies. Rev. Ritchie’s “The Promise of Post-mod-ernism for Unitarian Universalist Theology” waspublished by the Journal of Liberal Religion andwas also translated into Hungarian for publicationby the faculty of the Unitarian seminary in Clug,Romania.

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Hungarian historians even reject what haslong been accepted elsewhere: that theReformation could never have developed andmatured in Hungary and Transylvania to theextent that it did if it were not for the politicalprotection of the Ottoman Empire, which, atthe very least, protected the development ofvarious Protestantisms by significantly delay-ing the arrival of the Counter Reformation tothe region. Most moderate international his-torians accept not only that the politicalprotection of the Ottomans allowed for thedevelopment of progressive Protestantismsbut also that the infamous permissiveness ofOttoman administrative practice regardinglocal customs and religions must have hadsome influence with regards to the issue of tol-eration. It has long been discussed, even in themost traditional of sources, that, according tothe Islamic tradition of respect for all Peopleof the Book, any monotheist who was willingto accept the political right of the Ottomanswas given protection and legal right by andwithin the Empire (Sugar, 1983, 5). But thosescholars who specialize in Ottoman culture goeven further, defining toleration as the chiefcomponent of Ottoman identity. As one suchscholar has put it, “The Ottomans are perhapsmost unique for including and synthesizingthe cultural elements of the land throughwhich they passed. They are known for creat-ing structures by which the people who had

lived there before could carry on their livesand their beliefs in the way that they chose”(Holbrook, 2003). Toleration, then, was amatter of Ottoman policy and Ottomanbureaucratic structure and an expression ofthe Ottoman interpretation of Islam, whichwas in most instances stunningly liberal andcosmopolitan.

Yet the most celebrated sources on thedevelopment of progressive Protestantismusually handle the Ottoman influence on theUnitarian development of toleration as, atmost, a matter of indirect political influence.Williams’ Radical Reformation is an examplehere. Williams acknowledges in a footnotethe possible impact of the Ottoman concernwith religious tolerance, yet his model ofinfluence is exclusively political, negative,and unidirectional. He suggests, in otherwords, that the Ottoman policy of religioustolerance was simply a cynical political meansof preserving and developing such local divi-sions as would enhance their own control(1105). This is of course partially true; thesuccess of Ottoman domination was directlyconnected to the famous Ottoman flexibilitytowards local custom. And yet, there is moreto the story: the policy of tolerance was morethan a matter of military strategy, and it foundits expression not only in political structurebut in everyday cultural life.

Why, then, the resistance to this otherdimension of the story? We should not miss inall of this anxiety over Eastern influence the lin-gering effects of Hungarian nationalism. Oneof the political results of the Reformation was acertain identification of Hungarian patriotismwith liberal Protestantism, an associationwhich has motivated the representation insome quarters of Unitarianism almost as anational religion, as something sprung freshand whole from uniquely Hungarian soil.3 Itremains threatening, not only in a theologicalbut in an ethnic way, to credit the inspirationsof Unitarianism to the influence of the histori-cal enemy and ethnic other. Indeed, because of

15th-17th century transylvania

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this political climate, those who have dared tosuggest a connection between Islam andUnitarianism have done so only to discreditUnitarianism as un-Hungarian. AlexanderSándor Unghváry’s The Hungarian Protestant

Reformation in the Sixteenth Century under the

Ottoman Impact provides an especially remark-able example of this. In an attempt to dismissUnitarianism as a form of Islam (and thereforediscount it as a Hungarian Protestantism),Unghváry suggests that Ferenc Dávid basedthe entirety of his religious conviction on thecopy of Servetus’s work given to him by GiorgioBiandrata and that Servetus himself was actu-ally more Islamic than Christian, quoting,Unghváry claims, Mu^ammed with more rel-ish and frequency than the Bible. Oddly, hecites as his source for Servetus’s reliance on theQur’an a page in Wilbur that in fact praisesServetus’s familiarity with and sophisticateduse of the Bible and which makes no mentionof the Qur’an. Unghváry also falsely claimsthat Dávid’s education was at universities“where Judaism and Islam then reignedsupreme” (Unghváry, 1989, 334; Wilbur,1945, 45). Unghváry’s distortions make hisclaims easy to dismiss, yet his work raises thetantalizing possibility that it might be easier toread for tracks of Unitarian-Islamic influencein anti-Unitarian propaganda than it is in thesympathetic histories. Servetus was, after all,genuinely interested in Islam, perhaps Dávidas well, and the connections that Unghvárymakes, while inaccurate and dismissive, arenot entirely untrue.

Indeed, the only other literature that hasconsistently documented a connectionbetween Transylvanian Unitarianism andOttoman Islamic influence is that of the anti-Socinian (Unitarian) movements of 17th and18th century Europe. The French historianMathurin Veyssiére de la Croze, for example,speaks in “Rèflexions historique et critiquessur le mahométisme et sur le socinianisme”(part of Dissertations historiques et critiques

sur divers sujets, 1707) of an explicit connec-

tion between Islamic theology, particularlythe Qur’an, and the development ofUnitarianism in Transylvania, claiming thatthe Transylvanian Unitarians themselves sawa complete correspondence between theirnon-Trinitarian theology and the unity ofGod as taught in the Qur’an. Anti-Socinianwriters, such as de la Croze, were generallywriting out of the alarmed conviction thatUnitarianism might represent a stage towardsconversion to Islam, a belief partially inherit-ed from the early days of the magisterialreformation, when the spread of Islam wasseen as both an extension of anti-Trinitarianheresies and as a consequence of divine wrathover such apostasy. After all, none other thanMartin Luther himself had famously blamedthe spread of Islam on the Unitarians in exact-ly this fashion, writing that “Arius’spunishment in hell becomes greater each dayas long as this error lasts. For Mohammedcame from this sect” (5:206). The ultimateconcern about Unitarians was more than aconcern with heresy: the ultimate worry wasalso political, with many Europeans fearingthat Islamic-happy Unitarians might possiblysympathize with Ottoman ambitions, a con-cern that had more than an element of truth.

As much as these works distort and propa-gandize, these Western European anti-Socinians were not entirely incorrect in theirassessment of the Unitarian attraction to

minarets of ottoman hungary

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Ottoman political interests. In his Anti-Sociani-

anisme (1656), for example, N. Chewney quitecorrectly cites Adam Neuser as case in point of aUnitarian whose theology led him not only toan attraction to Islam but to actually propose apolitical alliance with the Ottomans. There isalso the colorful story of the British anti-Trini-tarian Edward Elwall, preserved by no less awitness than Joseph Priestly. Elwall (1676-1744) saw so little difference betweenUnitarianism and Islamthat he began to wear “aTurkish Habit out ofrespect to the Unitarianfaith of the Mahometans”(Champion, 1992, 177).And recently, there hasbeen some interest in recov-ering the history of theLondon Unitarians, who, in1682, intended toapproach the Moroccanambassador Mohammadben Hadou with a letter(perhaps authored by NoelAubert de Verse) propos-ing a Unitarian-Ottomanalliance. The text of thisbold letter suggests a plan for better Unitarian-izing Islam, suggesting that the remnant“repugnancies” in the Qur’an could easily bedisregarded if the Muslims would only begin toread scripture in a historical and critical way,just as the Unitarians had come to read theBible. It seems that the letter was never deliv-ered, but it is interesting that the only trace ofits existence was preserved not by the Unitari-ans but by the active anti-Socinian C. Leslie asevidence of the political untrustworthiness ofliberal Christians, who serve, in his words, as“scouts among us for Mohamet.”4 The letterwas the focus of intense anti-Socinian debate inEngland in the 1690s, and Leslie published theletter in 1708as a part of his Socinian Controversy

Discussed. For obvious reasons, in such a cli-mate, those defending the Socinian point of

view against Leslie chose not to remind thepublic of actual instances of Unitarian-Turkishsympathies.

For their part, the 17th and 18th centuryEuropean Socinians praised Islam as a puremonotheism that had corrected many of thetheological corruptions that had befallen theChristian church even as they repressed anydirect political connection to the Ottomans.They tended to speak of Islam as a theological

ideal rather than as anactual religion practiced byactual persons. In 1727,Andrew Ramsey spoke ofSocinianism approvingly asthe sublime religion whichstems from “Ideal Islam”(Bastianensen, 1984, 21).Henry Stubbe, JohnToland, Arthur Bury,William Feke, and StephenNye were similarly allSocinian authors whostrategically employed the-ological Islam as a meansof highlighting the devia-tions from primitiveChristian practice that they

found bothersome especially in the form ofAnglican orthodoxy. Dealing with Islam onthis level of abstraction had a number of inter-esting results. It is J.A.I. Champion’sfascinating claim (1992) that we can find theorigins of both civil religion and the history ofreligion in the work of such authors as Stubbeand Toland, particularly in their examinationof Islam as an ideal Abrahamic monotheismand in their understanding of religion as pri-marily serving social purpose. However, forour purposes, what remains most fascinatingabout these authors is their willingness todescribe the attractiveness of Islam in highlytheologized and idealized terms, even, howev-er, as they are busy covering up and denyinginstances of actual mutual influence. In thislight, returning to the setting of the Edict of

an ottoman tomb in buda (gul baba)

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Torda, we might not be surprised to discoverthat the strongest suggestions we have ofUnitarian and Islamic cultural enmeshmentlie not in Unitarian sources but in anti-Islamic and, ultimately, anti-Unitarianpropaganda.

Rereading Torda for Cultural Enmeshment

If there was one form of anti-Islamic propagan-da that dominated Hungary contemporary tothe Edict of Torda, it would be the lurid andoften quite popular accounts of allegedTurkish atrocities in Eastern Europe that werepublished throughout the 16th and early 17thcenturies. Most of these accounts were specifi-cally intended to enflame ethnic hatredagainst the Turks, and many were even explic-itly written for the liberal Protestants who wereliving in conditions of serious oppression inthe Hapsburg lands bordering Hungary, whomight, in their distress, have been tempted tosee the Ottomans as most tolerant friends(Tihany, 1975). Their express point, then, wasto deny any mutual toleration between Turksand Hungarians, but, as is so often the case,such a denial of influence actually betrays aconsiderable anxiety over the extent of a greatand actual influence.

Consider one story offered up in these nar-ratives about a Lutheran minister, who, whileentertaining Turkish guests for dinner, wassupposedly tricked into replacing his hat witha turban. In the somewhat illogical progressof the story, the donning of the turban is con-sidered as the sign of a full, even if forced,conversion to Islam, subsequent to which hisguests force him to undergo an immediatecircumcision. This dinner-table operation isall the more hideous, the text informs us, forits supposed exclusion of the man foreverfrom Christian ministry.

It is not difficult to read such stories as origi-nating in fear of losing ethnic identitythrough conversion, assimilation, and theincreasing cultural enmeshment of the“other,” especially when the stories take the

form, as they often do, of narrations of the“execrable Turkish custom of seducing Christ-ian women” with the nefarious aim of creatinghybrid children.5 Surprisingly, these incredi-ble stories still make appearances in modernHungarian histories, more often than notcited as evidence against the claim thatOttoman rule was helpful to the developmentof Protestantism (Tihany, 1975; Unghváry,1989). But the irony is that in their eagernessto demonstrate supposed religious intoler-ance and generally beastly behavior on thepart of the Muslims, these accounts actuallypreserve interesting evidence of considerablecultural enmeshment: Turkish guests at traditional dinners, Lutheran clergy convert-ing to Islam, Turks and Hungarians marryingand having children together, and Europeansrelocating to the heart of the OttomanEmpire.6

Regarding marriage in particular, there isconsiderable evidence of intermarriage in16th and 17th century Hungary, bothbetween Turks and Hungarians and alsobetween the members of different religiousconfessions. Early 16th century HungarianReformed canon law devotes enough energyto the prohibition of Islamic-Christian inter-marriages to indicate the prevalence of thepractice, at least on the level of common law.Meanwhile, the degree of intermarriagebetween members of the different churches ofTransylvania seems to have been great and,interestingly enough, most likely predates theEdict of Torda. Intermarriages were so accept-ed by the late 16th century that it was simplycommonly accepted that sons would followthe tradition of their fathers and daughtersthat of their mothers. For example, the con-temporary (early 17th century) historianKozma Petrityvity describes the rather compli-cated religious mix of his family as notunusual. His grandfather was Unitarian, hisgrandmother Catholic; his mother was raisedCatholic, although many of her siblingsbecame Reformed; his mother then married a

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Unitarian, who raised his sons, including thehistorian, to be Unitarians, while the daugh-ters attended mass with their mother(Murdock, 2000, 112).

Consider as well stories of the supposedforced relocation of Christian Europeans bythe Ottomans. Just as with the stories of forcedconversions and marriages, we might learn toread there mutual influence where we havebeen asked to see only unidirectional oppres-sion. It was an acknowledged Ottomanpractice to take some young boys from EasternEurope away from their homes and into theheart of Ottoman power in order to educatethem for Ottoman administration, yet inter-pretations of this practice have varied widely.

In some instances, knowledge of thisOttoman practice seems to have allowed forthe rewriting of stories of actual voluntaryrelocation on the part of HungarianProtestants into stories about capture andforce. Niyazi Berkes, in his study of Turkishsecularism (1964), has already pointed outhow Ibrahim Müteferrika was initially erro-neously described in 18th century Europeansources as a young Hungarian Calvinist study-ing for the ministry, captured by the Turksonly to be enslaved by them and condemnedto a life of misery in Ottoman lands.According to these same sources, this youngHungarian was forced to convert to Islam andtake the name Ibrahim in order to escape slav-ery. Now, we know that Ibrahim was in fact ayoung Unitarian raised in Kolozsvar, a manwhose anti-Trinitarian convictions attractedhim of his own free will towards Islam, andsomeone who thrived rather than suffered inthe heart of the Ottoman Empire, eventuallyestablishing there the first modern printingpress in a Muslim land. One of his own bookspublished on his own press in 1710 had beendismissed by 18th century historians as a pro-Islamic tract, but in fact it is a far morecomplicated and more Unitarian tome thanthat. According to Berkes, Risale-I Islamiye wasnot only the clear work of an anti-Trinitarian

Christian, it actually reflected the possibilityof an attraction to Islam on the part ofIbrahim (whose Hungarian name isunknown) predating his removal fromTransylvania. Berkes concludes, “If we goback one century and trace the developmentof religious and political conditions inTransylvania, we shall not fail to appreciatethat neither Transylvanian Unitarianism norIbrahim’s folk were unfamiliar with or too dis-tant from Islam” (Berkes, 1964, 39).

In the traditional literature, we are alsotold of M. Péter Pérenyi: he was a 16th centuryProtestant Hungarian noble with a reputationfor the advocacy of religious tolerance who“left” his son Ferenc “in Turkish hands as ahostage, only himself to endure detentionsome years later” after having been accused oftreason (Péter, 1996, 360). Upon furtherinvestigation, this interesting man proved tobe an unorthodox Christian, neither unfamil-iar with nor distant from Islam, a minor noblewho sought refuge with the Ottomans whenhis early advocacy of religious tolerance madehim the target of his more orthodox neigh-bors.

There were, of course, actual instances ofthe capture of Eastern European boys, andtheir actual presence was in Constantinople aswards of the sultan—technically, as slaves. Butwhile these boys were technically slaves, it cre-ates the wrong impression to leave the matterthere. They also received what many describeas the best care and education available tochildren anywhere in the world at that time(Holbrook, 2003), and the desirability ofbeing so “captured” is also reflected in thenumerous instances of Turkish parentsattempting to disguise themselves asChristians so that their children might beafforded this honor. Indeed, the Ottomansspecifically groomed these and otherEuropeans for positions of power within theiradministration, finding it safer to placeEuropeans in the Empire’s highest post thanMuslims who might belong to families with

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rival dynastic claims to those of the Ottomans.Given that the Hungarian boys raised asUnitarians often did the best with theirIslamic educations, it is tempting to speculateon the presence of these Hungarian Muslim-Unitarians in the highest of Ottoman places.We know that of the twenty-one Grand Viziersmost credited with Ottoman success (thosewho directed the imperial administrationbetween 1453 and 1623), eleven aredescribed as South Slavs. As for the eightviziers who constituted the royal Divan ofSultan Suleyman himself, only two aredescribed as Moslems at birth, three beingCroatian, two Albanian, and one Hungarian.7

Unfortunately, it does seem that most textualtraces of voluntary Unitarian-Islamic conver-sion might be lost. Ironically, evidence ofconversion has been denied not only by tradi-tional European accounts seeking to mitigateOttoman power but also by those seeking toretell the story of Islam without Western bias.On a contemporary level, for example,Edward Said’s Orientalism brilliantly demon-strates the anti-Islamic prejudices of eventhose Westerners who devoted their life to thestudy of the Middle East. Yet one of the casesthat Said cites as evidence of the Europeanprejudice against Muslims is that of WilliamWhitson (1667-1752), the successor to IsaacNewton’s science chair at Cambridge, a manfascinated by Arabic Islamic manuscripts.Whitson was indeed expelled fromCambridge for heresy in 1710. Said suggeststhis was a result of his affinity for Islam (1979,76). Yet, actually, his reading of Islamic man-uscripts converted Whitson not to Islam butto Unitarianism, introducing him to the ideathat the doctrine of the trinity was notpreached directly by Christ. Indeed, after hisexpulsion from Cambridge, Whitson went onto write three explicitly Unitarian books(Arberry, 1960, 34-35).8

It would appear, then, that the history ofUnitarian-Islamic mutual influence has beenerased from at least several directions.

Prepared, then, to find more culturalenmeshment in our story than we might haveotherwise expected, let us return to telling thetale of the Edict of Torda.

Restoring the Pasha to the Edict

It is my final assertion that the 1568 Edict ofTorda would have been unthinkable were itnot for the direct political influence of theOttoman example and the indirect culturalinfluences that resulted from two cultures,enmeshed in more ways that any textual evi-dence alone will ever adequately reveal.

Here is an example of the direct influenceof Ottoman rule on the edict: on August 24,1548, the Sultan’s representative in Buda wasrequested by local authorities in Tolna to takeaction against the Hungarian Protestant pas-tor there, Imre Szigeti. Specifically, theCatholic authorities in Tolna, offended byPastor Szigeti’s unapologetic and public advo-cacy of reformed ideas, asked that he eitherbe killed or driven from the city for heresy.The chief intendant of the Pasha of Buda notonly communicated to the authorities inTolna that the Pasha denied their request, healso issued an edict of toleration which statesin part that “preachers of the faith inventedby Luther should be allowed to preach theGospel everywhere to everybody, whoeverwants to hear, freely and without fear, andthat all Hungarians and Slavs (who indeedwish to do so) should be able to listen to andreceive the word of God without any danger.Because this is the true Christian faith andreligion.”9

The Pasha’s edict is not mentioned in anyof the Unitarian histories, yet it bears much incommon, in terms both of imagery and inten-tion, with the later edicts of toleration tocome from John Sigismund’s court. We havebeen taught that the radicalness of the 1568

Edict of Torda over previous tolerations liesnot merely in its extension of tolerance but inits unique assertion of freedom of individualconscience: “because faith is a gift of God; it

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springs from listening, which listening for-wards the word of God” (Varkonyi, 1993,106). Yet this 1548 edict by the Pasha of Budaestablishes an even earlier connectionbetween true faith and free listening.

While no direct textual trail exists, it is hardto imagine that Dávid himself could have beenunfamiliar with the Pasha’s 1548 edict whenhe laid the groundwork for the Edict of Tordatwo decades later. Like Dávid, Imre Szigetihad been a Hungarian student at Wittenberg,and, indeed, the record we have of the Pasha’sedict comes to us from a letter written bySzigeti to his former classmate MatthiasFlacius, a man also known to Dávid. In 1548,while Szigeti was serving the Lutheran churchin Tolna, Dávid was serving the Lutheranchurch in Bistrita (Beszterce), placing him incloser geographical range to Buda thanSzigeti. Recall also that the Magyar Lutheranselected Francis David as their superintendentin 1557, and the authority for the toleration ofthe churches, which David administered,would have emanated directly from this partic-ular edict by the Pasha.

Moreover, the Pasha’s action correspondswith what might be anticipated on the basis ofother more frequently recounted events. Weknow, for example, that in 1574, in LowerHungary, two preachers championing theUnitarian cause were persecuted for heresy bylocal authorities under outdated, pre-tolera-tion laws. Lukas Tolnai managed to escape,but George Alvinczi was put to death on orderof a church court presided over by theCalvinist bishop. Influential Unitarians knewto turn to the Pasha at Buda for assistance.Eager to assist the Unitarians, the Pashadeclared the execution of Alvinczi “inhu-mane” and ordered that the bishop and histwo fellow judges be killed. Only when theUnitarian preacher at Pécs interceded, sayingthat Unitarians did not want such dramaticrevenge, did the Pasha remit the sentence; inlieu of it, a heavy annual tribute was imposedon the entire locale (Wilbur, 1952, 84-85).

Additionally, we know that we have previouslyunderestimated the influence of theOttoman legal system on the development ofthe Reformation. During the 1550s, 1560s,and 1570s, the Protestants in Hungarianlands, directly ruled by the Ottomans, man-aged to hold their doctrinal debates with theCatholics and issue their subsequent edictsunder the direction of a presiding Turkishpasha or bey who assured the Protestant tri-umph either through overt ruling or indirecttampering (Tihany, 1975).

I would like to leave the story of direct influ-ence there, for it would not do to have, onceagain, the allure of a direct trail detract fromwhat I hope instead gradually begins toemerge as a portrait of two cultures moregreatly enmeshed in patterns of creative con-flict, mutual attraction, and circular patternsof influence than we have imagined before.There are of course, many pieces of the por-trait yet to be assembled, but when we assemblethem, let us do so with an eye not towardstelling an ethnically distinct cultural history,but with an eye towards the many ways in whichthe borders between the Ottoman and Hungarian cultures were in this periodcrossed, renegotiated, and re-crossed. Thebasis for the Edict of Torda was established notonly in Francis David’s mind, not only in Euro-pean humanist influence, not even onlythrough the direct political and legal influ-ence of the Ottoman Empire. The grounds forreligious toleration were also prepared for inthe everyday lives of actual persons, who expe-rienced the negotiations of intermarriagebefore any legal proclamation of toleration,and who knew the attractions of Islam and thesafety it accorded progressive Protestantsbefore the publication of any theological treatise.

What if we were to spin out the implica-tions of toleration as a shared East-Westundertaking beyond Torda? It has been com-monly asserted that John Locke’s even morefamous proclamation of religious tolerance

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was undertaken in ignorance of the Edict ofTorda (Várkonyi, 1993). I’m not fully con-vinced by this denial of influence—we know,after all, that Locke read Unitarian literaturefrom Transylvania and that he met and con-versed with Unitarians from Transylvaniaprior to his articulations of the principle of toleration. I am also aware that Locke’sstatement originated from a time marked bymore cultural crossings, more mutualUnitarian-Islamic interests than is usuallyacknowledged.10 Could it be that religioustoleration, supposedly that most preciousinheritance of the EuropeanEnlightenment,has always been a shared creation? It is espe-cially ironic that we celebrate theprogressive, diversity-promoting character ofthe earliest European statements of religioustoleration, even as we describe them in waysthat erase Islamic influences. It is past timefor a more perfectly realized version of theparadigm of shared understanding that isnow itself centuries old.

Notes1 On the lack of governmental documents,

see Péter; on the denial of influence, see

Kratochvil. 2 For an account of how the assumptions of

philology work against an understanding of

Ottoman culture, in this case specifically

Ottoman literary culture, see Holbrook.3 Unitarianism, for example, is often

referred to in the nationalistic literature as

being uniquely suited to the spirit of the

Hungarian people (Sisa, 1990, 86). While this

association occurs most frequently in the litera-

ture of Hungarian Unitarians, it is interesting

to note the degree to which many modern

American Unitarians maintain the connection. 4 “An Epistle Dedicatory to his Illustrious

Excellency Ameth Ben Ameth” was reprinted in

C. Leslie’s Theological Works after originally

being published in Socinian Controversy Discussed

(Champion, 1992, 111, 113). Accounts of it are

also found in Matar and Wilbur.

5 Both the quotation and the story about the

turban are from Paul Thuri-Farkas’ 1613 Idea

Christianorum Hungarorum. Farkas was a

Lutheran clergyman, a rector of the reformed

theological school in Tolna. His specific aim was

to stir up anti-Ottoman and pro-Habsburg senti-

ment amongst Protestants living in areas

controlled by the Habsburgs. (Tihany, 1975,

58). 6 The fascinating dynamic of “turning Turk”

is explored in Vitkus (2003).7 Statistics from C.D. Darlington’s The

Evolution of Man and Society (NY, 1971), as cited

in Tihany, 1975, 382-383.8 In fairness to Said, he does acknowledge

that “Access to Indian (Oriental) riches had

always to be made by first crossing Islamic

provinces and by withstanding the dangerous

effect of Islam as a system of quasi-Arian belief”

(76).9 Tihany, 55. Tihany takes letter from Imre

Szigedi from Geza Kathona, Fejezetek a török

Hodoltsági reformáció történetéböl (Budapest,

1974).10 Harrison and Laslett’s description of

Locke’s library certainly suggests that, given the

number of Unitarian and Socinian histories

owned by Locke, it as at least possible that he

had reading knowledge of the Edict of Torda.

Even more suggestively, though, when the

research by Harrison and Laslett and by

MacLachlan and Champion are combined, we

realize that Locke would have personally met

Unitarians from Transylvania. We also know

that he read the Qur’an (Harrison and Laslett,

1971) and that the London of his time was far

more marked by Islamic influence than previ-

ously thought (Matar, 1994).

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