ABSTRACT
Graeme Murdock Reformed religious ideas identified the need for a strict division to be maintained between the world of material objects and the realm of the divine. Most significantly, the physical elements used in the sacraments of baptism and holy communion were thought only to signify how God’s spiritual presence was made known to the faithful. God was not believed to be really located in the water, bread and wine of the sacraments. Neither was any spark of the divine thought to be made manifest in pictures, images, or in wooden or stone objects. These ideas were sometimes received with enthusiasm by ordinary sixteenth-century Christians, who responded by destroying traditional religious objects. Crowds ridiculed the host of the Catholic Mass as a ‘god of paste’, smashed idolatrous images and statues depicting God, Mary and the saints, and destroyed crosses and relics which had previously been venerated and adored. Some communities across the Continent certainly responded both positively and quickly to Reformed preaching in outbursts of popular iconoclastic anger. However, this should not be allowed to obscure the time which clergy often needed to foster understanding and acceptance of Reformed patterns of belief and styles of worship among many congregations. The experience of many ministers indeed suggests that years of preaching, teaching and disciplinary action were required to ensure popular acceptance of Reformed ideas.1 1 Many thanks to Maria Crăciun and Andrew Spicer for their comments and suggestions on this article. L.P. Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands. Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge, 1995); C.M.N. Eire, War Against the Idols. The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986); P.M. Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-69 (Cambridge, 1978); N.Z. Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, P&P 59 (1973), 51-91; D. McRoberts, ‘Material Destruction Caused by the Scottish Reformation’, in D. McRoberts (ed.),
This article will consider the development and reception of Reformed attitudes towards church buildings, which had contained many sacred objects and had been thought of as sacred spaces. It will assess how Reformed notions about the true worship of God affected ideas about sacred space and the appearance and uses of church buildings. It will focus on the churches of the Hungarian Reformed community, in the first place setting out the resolutions about the appropriate decoration and use of church buildings agreed at synods held during the midsixteenth century. It will then assess the implementation of these reforms in Hungary over time, and consider how far the appearance of Reformed churches had been altered by the early seventeenth century. Drawing on examples from the settled Reformed communities in the north-eastern Hungarian county of Zemplén, it will be argued that parish churches had been remodelled according to Reformed beliefs. In particular, the appearance of a new church constructed in the village of Bekecs in Zemplén will be considered from records of the services of consecration held there on New Year’s Day in 1625. This example will be used to illustrate the role of clergy, noble patrons and ordinary parishioners in shaping Reformed space in early seventeenth-century Hungary. Synodal Regulations and Parish Visitations The official doctrines and approved patterns of worship adopted by the Reformed church in Hungary were established at synods held during the middle decades of the sixteenth century. Among the resolutions agreed at various meetings of clergy were instructions about the acceptable forms of material culture in Reformed religious life. These included regulations which laid down the clothing which ministers were required to wear during services, the appropriate appearance of church buildings, and the permitted forms of decoration within churches. The reforms which were advanced by these synods challenged traditional patterns of religious expression, as well as attitudes towards the nature of space within and around church buildings, and ideas about the relationship between the divine and the physical world. Buildings which had been used for Catholic rituals had to be altered to be made acceptable for Reformed worship which was dominated by listening to, saying and singing words in the vernacular. Objects inside churches which had been thought to connect believers with God or to assist the worship of God were deemed idols and causes of superstition. Altars, screens, organs, pictures, crosses, statues, candles and decorated windows were ordered to be removed from the sight of congregations. The 1554 Óvár synod for
example demanded that local civil authorities take responsibility for the destruction of all idolatrous images inside churches.2
