Calvinists in Baranya [antikvár]

FOREWORDThis volume entitled Calvinists in Baranya introduces previously known and unknown traditions and stories. Medieval and modern era churches, characteristic church furnishings, the cassettes with their awe-inspiring beauty and the ceilings' secretive pictorial world are famous around the world, and can be said to be one of the indicators of Baranya County's and primarily the Ormánság region's religious life. Religious objects, baptismal jugs, Lord's Supper chalices, tablecloths and everyday objects that help us practice our faith along with the various editions of the Bible, song books, church life records and school memories are less well-known. The exhibition that opened in Pécs in 2015 brings all of these up close to those who are interested. This volume completes the exhibition, in that the scholarly authors provide readers less versed in the world of historical memory with a concise but sufficiently thorough account of the history of Protestantism in Baranya County (primarily the Calvinists), beginning with the mid-16th century up to the present day. We can learn of the Turkish occupation, wars and great deterioration along with the strengthening of various Protestant denominations, and the new start following the Turkish era, new settlements, reconstruction and the organisation of church life. The authors place everything into a comprehensive framework, and in addition to introducing local aspects we can better understand the entirety of Protestantism in Hungary. Nonetheless this is not a museum catalogue, but a more thorough and in-depth work. The objects in the exhibitions did not arrive from museum warehouses, nor are the stories elements of a former past, but they are part of a religious community that exists to this day. In other words, this volume on the Calvinists of Baranya County beckons us into a world in which to this day a church invites those congregated for services into its own exalted beauty, where the joys and sorrows of today's believers are proclaimed by the bell, where the names of those baptised today are added after their elders into the registrar, where the Bible is studied, where the work of the re-established church schools is fulfilled, and where newly built churches continue old traditions. What we can learn about those from times long ago is also the story of those in the present. In 2017 we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation. Let us now evoke the origins and turn to the sources. This volume reveals the power with which renewed Christianity influenced early Hungary, and what impact (we hope) it has to this day. Dr. István Bogárdi SzabóBishop of the Dunamellék Reformed Church District of the Hungarian Reformed Church, Ministerial President of the Reformed Church of Hungary's SynodCalvinists in Baranya