One of the Greatest Turning Points of the Hungarian Criminal Proceedings in the Worldwide Right to Religious Freedom

Abstract

450 years ago, the Torda Diet of January 1568, which proclaimed the right to freedom of religion, was indeed an achievement of world-wide importance, as it provided the practice of Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, and Unitarian faith in the Transylvanian Principality. However, the preacher Ferenc Dávid, who led the latter one, was prosecuted based on false accusations as a neologist, after political changes, as a consequence of a short publication following the Easter of 1579. Based on documents found in Rome a few decades ago, it can also be proved that his conviction on the basis of blasphemy was decided in a conceptual trial.
Although in the short run this religious persecution led to the death of the Protestant preacher in the castle prison of Deva, however, eventually it led to the
establishment of a new Hungarian-founded Christian church formation called the Unitarian Church.