Peter Konya
THE ORTHODOX POPULATION OF UPPER HUNGARY AND THE REFORMATION
Abstract: Since the late Middle Ages, a large population of Eastern Rite Romanians, Ruthenians
and Serbs lived in the peripheral areas of the Kingdom of Hungary. Hundreds in the northern
and north-eastern parts of Upper Hungary, which occupy the north-east of the country, were
inhabited by Ruthenians. Like the Romanians in Transylvania, they too were confronted with the
Reformation from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. The ideas of the Swiss Reformation were
spread among them by preachers sent and supported by the nobles who owned the vast estates on
which the Ruthenians lived, especially the Drugeth and Rákóczi families. Thanks to them, a number
of Ruthenian Reformed parishes were established in the northern and north-eastern provinces,
around Humenne and Mukachevo, which are also recorded in the surviving Reformed canonical
visitations. However, these Ruthenian Reformed congregations did not last more than a few
decades, and after the conversion of the estate owners during the recatholization, their believers
returned to the Orthodox Church.
Keywords: Reformation; Ruthenians; Eastern Christianity; church communities; magnates
THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, Vol. 92, 2021, No. 1, Number of Article 2, p. 26 – 37.
DOI: 10.14712/12117617.92.1.2