ABSTRACT
In January 1568 the diet of Transylvania met in the town of Turda. By the 1560s Transylvania was a social and geographic patchwork of religious loyalties. During the middle decades of the sixteenth century, support for the Roman Catholic Church collapsed. While Lutheran, Reformed and anti-Trinitarian (or Unitarian) ministers came to different conclusions from reading the Scriptures, all maintained a shared interest in asserting the superiority of biblical authority over the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1566, the diet had expelled all priests who did not want to learn from the Bible or who practiced 'idolatry.' The 1568 Turda resolution provides a distinctive Transylvanian variation on a common European theme during the early modern period. Many states responded to the challenges posed by religious diversity following the Protestant Reformation by offering some legal rights to religious minorities.
