ABSTRACT
Ideas about religious reform spread right across the Continent from the 1520s and made a significant impact in the Hungarian kingdom from the 1540s. By the early decades of the seventeenth century, the varied pattern of reception of Reformation ideas had established distinct confessional and cultural environments for the two non-Ottoman states of the former Hungarian kingdom. By the turn of the seventeenth century the Catholic Church in Transylvania was largely limited to the estates of some noble supporters and to pockets of support in the eastern Szekler region. Despite these difficult circumstances for any recovery of support for the Catholic Church in Transylvania, some missionary efforts were undertaken during this period. Partly as a result of the church's marginal position in seventeenth-century Transylvanian society, there are many difficulties in reconstructing an accurate picture of the spiritual life of Catholic communities in the principality during this period.
