The ideas advanced by Weber about Reformed Protestantism and its alleged role in European modernization have long provided an instructive point of departure for analysis of early modern Calvinist societies. Weber certainly did not have Hungary in mind when he suggested that unintended legacies flowed from the internalization of a particular set of ideas about predestination within the Reformed tradition. Molnár’s book does not seek to verify or falsify Weber’s theories based on evidence drawn from Hungary. Rather, this text reviews the case study of Hungary to reflect on aspects of Weber’s ideas and on the extent to which a Protestant or Puritan ethic may have existed within early modern Hungarian Reformed communities.

As Molnár explains, from the middle decades of the sixteenth century, Reformed religion quickly spread across the lands of the former Hungarian kingdom. A Reformed church gained legal status within the nascent principality of Transylvania. Reformed congregations became well-established in the towns and villages of north-eastern Hungary and the eastern Hungarian plain. There were also Reformed churches elsewhere in Habsburg Hungary and Ottoman Hungary. The Hungarian Reformed church established contact with other Reformed churches, notably in the Palatinate, the Netherlands, and England. By the early decades of the seventeenth century, Hungarian-speaking Reformed student ministers were a familiar presence at Dutch universities and regular visitors to England. They returned home to serve in schools and congregations having received an education in orthodox Reformed theology. Many students were also influenced by Puritan styles of piety that they encountered in congregations in the towns of the Dutch Republic and in London. Some Hungarian students wrote texts of practical theology and others translated books by Puritan writers. For example, Imre Pápai Páriz studied at the universities in Franeker and Leiden during the 1640s. While in the Netherlands he published at Utrecht a text called The Narrow Way that sought to explore the pathway to salvation and alleviate any doubts among readers that they were among the elect. Two further editions of this text were printed during Pápai Páriz’s lifetime, with eight further editions published over the following century. In 1668 Jakab Csúzi Cseh published “A treasury, or beautifying practice of living and animating true faith, in which it is clearly shown how a Christian should live by faith throughout his life in this world.” Molnár identifies this text as the closest work within Hungarian printed literature to ideas on vocations developed by Richard Baxter and to the Weberian model of Reformed predestinarianism in part based on Baxter’s casuistry.

Puritan ideas about salvation theology and personal piety certainly circulated in early modern Hungary. Through sermons and texts by Puritan ministers, the Reformed faithful were encouraged to examine their lives for signs of the consequences of saving faith. However, Puritan clergy also met with opposition to their plans to reform styles of public worship and to alter existing patterns of hierarchical church government. Puritans pressed for the formation of local consistories to monitor the religious beliefs and moral conduct of congregations. However, these plans were rejected by church synods and viewed with suspicion at the Transylvanian court not least because of the belief that this agenda risked grave political consequences (following the perceived results of Presbyterianism in England). Drawing on a wide range of printed sources, Molnár explores the moralist agenda advocated by Puritan clergy in Hungary. Molnár then takes up the challenge of assessing the impact of Puritanism in Hungary. Molnár turns to surviving correspondence, diaries, autobiographies, and to some disciplinary records to look for evidence of the reception of Puritan ideas about personal morality among the laity. The author acknowledges the limits of these sources that largely reflect the views of the social elite. Molnár argues that there is only slight evidence that the question, “am I chosen?,” featured prominently in the minds of ordinary Reformed believers. Puritan ideas about salvation do not seem to have promoted anxious self-reflection or stirred people to pursue lives of busy asceticism and frugality. Molnár writes that although the idea of predestination was widespread in Hungary, the church’s teaching promoted assurance of salvation rather than “a salvation panic” and “did not necessarily make people active and it did not make them more pious or more ascetic” (183). Molnár suggests that the form of Puritan piety that developed in Hungary made less of a practical difference in the everyday life of believers than in England or the Netherlands. The author’s analysis confirms the significance of the Puritan tradition with the Hungarian Reformed church but concludes with caution about any suggestion of a causal role for Puritanism in the emergence of a spirit of capitalism in Hungary.