www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Hungarian Greek Catholic Converts

Frequently in reading the limited history of the Greek Catholic Church of Hungary I come to references without citation stating (as on wikipedia): " In the 18th century many Hungarian Protestants were converted to Catholicism, adopting the Byzantine Rite rather than the Latin."

Does anyone here know the history of these Protestants cum Greek Catholics in Hungary? Every instance I have read referencing this supplemnting of Greek Catholic faithful in the Hungarian nation with an infusion of Protestant souls offers NO history, only vague statement that it in fact occured.

Anyone else have info?

just don't put too much stock in wikipedia.there ahve been many instances where entries in wikipedia have been quite inaccurate.there should be texts on Church History vis a vis Hungary that should give you a start. hit the libraries if the Internet search engines are not helpful.
Much Love,
Jonn

Dr. Alex made mention of this not too long ago. He surely has more details.

I know Ung has made reference to this as well...

Chris

I don't know anything about this, but I sure would like to. I have traced my ancestry on my father's side to the late 1700's--and that ancestor was a Lutheran who became Grecko-Catholico, as they said back then. Did he marry a GC girl after falling in love? Was it a shotgun wedding? Or was he forced to convert? Or did he choose to convert the way it seems this thread is talking about? If anyone knows--please share the secret!

Tim

Thank you John for the sage advice, I do my best to put a little more due dillegence into even my casual research, so I generally follow that thinking as well. But I am not coming to ask this question because of wikipedia - I am using it to illustrate the most basic form of the story I have seen without reference or citation for a good many years.

More plainly, wikipedia simply recycles what I have been reading in books and magazines for a decade. I didn't get the idea there, I just found it repeated.

If you ancestors are really Slovak or Hungarian and Greek Catholic chances are your ancestors were Slovak Lutherans or Hungarian Calvinists who converted. If one digs around historical publications about Greek Catholics of Mukachevo, Presov, and Hadudorog the references can be found.

Fr. Deacon Lance, son of Slovak Greek Catholic ancestry

Fr. Deacon, thanks but...

Well I am trying to learn about the history of this movement and you essentially re-iterating the same.

I have looked through sources at the BCS and been able to find nothing of detail.

More to it, I am looking to find if this was a movement that started among the faithful of Lutheran/Calvinists, was fostered by Basilians, was imposed by the government....

Anyone?

I do know that most of these lands Hungary, Poland and Lithuania were lost to Protestism, then by Jesuit work and preaching during the Catholic Counter Reformation they were won back to the Church.
Stephanos I

Have you seen this online article?

History of the Reformation in Hungary [reformatus.hu]

Curious that they would end up Greek Catholic. How and why this happened is a real curiosity to me.

One of the major issues according to the article I posted just above is that they could use their own language rather than Latin.

I may have overlooked that as I have had a little trouble reading the text, but can you point to that?

Curious that they would end up Greek Catholic. How and why this happened is a real curiosity to me.

The Hapsburg Monarchy of Austria were Roman Catholic, the Subcarpathian Rusyns, Galician Ukrainians and Romanians were Schismatic Orthodox, and the Hungarian ruling families of Northeast Hungary and Transylvania were Calvinist. After the Unions of Brest and Uzhorod, the Catholic Hapsburgs wanted to rid their Kingdom of Protestants. When several Magyarized Rusyns of Szabolcz, Szatmar, Southern Zemplen, Southern Bereg and Ugocha Counties began the campaign for the use of the Hungarian language in the Divine Liturgy, it was very easy to attract the Calvinists to the newly-created Greek Rite Hungarian Church. Remember, the Roman Catholic Magyars liturgy was in Latin, so I'm sure a Hungarian liturgy was very attractive to the Magyar Calvinists.

Ungcsertezs {grandson of MagyarOrosz Greek Catholics of Ung County;)}