Gáspár Károlyi

Monument to Gáspár Károlyi in Gönc

Gáspár Károlyi (* around 1529 in Großkarol ( Hungarian Nagykároly, Rum. Carei), Szathmar County , Kingdom of Hungary ; † January 3, 1592 in Gönc , Kingdom of Hungary) was a Hungarian Protestant theologian and Bible translator.

Life

Origin and career

Gáspár Károlyi was originally called Radics because his parents fled from the (former) southern counties of Hungary to Sathmar county from the threat from the Ottoman Empire . According to the name, the parents were a Serbian family who converted to Protestantism during the Reformation . He attended primary school in his hometown and in Kronstadt, Transylvania . In 1556 he enrolled under the name Caspar Carolus Pannonius at the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg . After his return to Hungary he was (under the patronage of Dominik clothes . Domokos ) Dobo, brother of the famous castle captain István Dobó . Through his protection he received the preaching position in Gönc. From 1564 he was dean of the northeastern church district, later superintendent . Károlyi remained a representative of Orthodox Protestant theology throughout his life . During this time (1566), together with the bishop of the Hungarian Reformed Church Péter Méliusz (* 1532, † 1572), he had severe religious battles with the representatives of Hungarian Unitarianism , which was mainly led by the theologians Ferenc Dávid (* 1510, † 1579) Lukács Egri († 1574) was represented, fight out. On January 22, 1566, he convened a synod in Gönc, which aimed to strengthen the Reformed faith. He called another synod on February 24, 1567 in Debrczin .

Károlyi also suffered several severe personal strokes of fate. In 1586 he lost his (second) wife and three children during an epidemic .

Title page of the first edition (1590)

Gáspár Károlyi died on January 3, 1592 in Gönc and was laid to rest at the local parish cemetery. His grave inscription read:

A scion of the Károlyis, Wittenberg offered him a hostel, the pulpit and the grave offered him Gönc, the unique.

The Bible translator

In addition to numerous theological writings, his translation of the Bible - based on the model of the Luther Bible translated by German reformers - into Hungarian is considered to be Károlyi's main work. Martin Luther was his role model all his life. In 1586 he began - with two like-minded Hungarian Protestant theologians - the translation work, which lasted three years, was carried out by the then captain of the castle of Erlau Sigismund Rákóczi and the chief judge of Hungary Stephan (István) Báthori (* 1555, † July 25, 1605) were supported and promoted. It was the first full translation of the Bible into the Hungarian language. The printing was done by Bálint Mantskovits, who ran an office in Vizsoly . In July 1590 the entire Bible (with Apocrypha ) appeared in a total of 700 copies.

A second and third edition was published by Albert Molnár von Szenc (German Wartberg ) in Hanau (1608) and Oppenheim (1612).

Another editing of the Bible was done by the Transylvanian Miklós Misztótfalusi Kis in the second half of the 17th century. In 1685 he published the Károly Bible in his own print shop in Amsterdam . The edition was 3500 copies, which he printed at his own expense.

51 copies of the first edition are currently known: 20 are in Hungary, 14 in Transylvania , 1 copy in Vienna . The copies that still exist today are rarities that fetch record prices at book auctions. In 2001 a copy fetched a maximum price of 26 million forints in a campaign in London .

Since then, this Bible - which became known under the name "Károli Bible" (Hungarian Károli Biblia ) in the entire Hungarian-speaking area - has reached over 100 editions. Similar to the Luther Bible in Germany , the Vizsoly Bible exerted a decisive influence on the development of the Hungarian written language and literature. Numerous important writers (e.g. János Arany , Endre Ady etc.) drew linguistically from the richness of this Bible translation.

A copy of the first edition is in the Reformed Church in Vizsoly, which was renovated after 1960 and to which a small Bible museum is attached.

posterity

Károlyi's revolutionary translation of the Bible is still valued today. In honor of Károly, the Hungarian sculptor Lajos György Mátrai (born March 6, 1850 in Pest , † October 15, 1906 in Budapest ) created a sculpture of the Hungarian reformer, which was unveiled in Gönc in 1890. Numerous schools, streets and squares were named after Károlyi. Today's Evangelical Reformed Theological University of Budapest (Hungarian Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem ) also bears his name. It was founded in 1855, received university status in 1900 and was divided into several faculties in 1993.

literature

• Magyar Életrajzi Lexicon (MEL), Budapest 1981, ISBN 963 05 2498 8 , vol. 1, p. 868 (Hungarian).
• Pál Ács: Study and translation of the Bible in Hungary at the time of the Reformation (1540–1640) ; in: Alberto Melloni: Martin Luther: Christ Between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017) , Walter de Gruyter, 2017, ISBN 978-3-11049825-7 ( PDF )
• András Szabó: The Bible by Vizsoly , in: Joachim Bahlcke, Stefan Rohdewald, Thomas Wünsch: Religious places of remembrance in East Central Europe: Constitution and competition across nations and eras , Walter de Gruyter, 2013, ISBN 978-3-050-09343-7 , Pp. 372-376

Web links

• Szinnyei József Magyar Írók élete és munkái (Hungarian)
• Biography (hungarian)
• Bible from Vizsoly (Hungarian)
• Bible online hungarian
• Gáspár, Károli in the Vegelahn Bible Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ by some historians, his name is also Karoli written
2. ↑ According to other sources: Radicsics
3. ↑ It is the area of ​​today's Vojvodina in Serbia .
4. ↑ In the 16th century, Unitarianism spread across Europe as a result of the spread of the radical Reformation . This is a theological view that rejects the doctrine of the Trinity .
5. ↑ cit. according to Szinnyei Életrajzi Lexicon (see web links)
6. ↑ The village belonged to Stephan Báthori and his wife Euphrosina Homonnay - Drugeth . One of the oldest printing works in the Kingdom of Hungary was founded here in 1588 to be able to print this new translation of the Bible. Therefore, the Protestant Bible was known under the name "Bible from Vizsoly" (ung. Vizsolyi biblia). Since then numerous new editions have been printed; Even today it is regarded as the authoritative Bible of the Reformed and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary.
7. ↑ Pál Ács: Study and translation of the Bible in Hungary at the time of the Reformation (1540–1640) ; in: Alberto Melloni: Martin Luther: Christ Between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017) , Walter de Gruyter, 2017, ISBN 978-3-11049825-7
8. ↑ These editions were improved and partially revised editions by Albert Molnár.
9. ↑ According to other information, the second edition is said to have appeared in Marburg an der Lahn , where Albert Molnár stayed between 1607 and 1611 at the invitation of Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel .
10. ↑ ^{a b} MEL, p. 868 (see literature)
11. ↑ Austrian National Library ; Signature: Nat 3 Olim: Debrecen, ref.coll.
12. ^ András Szabó: The Bible by Vizsoly , in: Joachim Bahlcke, Stefan Rohdewald, Thomas Wünsch: Religious places of remembrance in East Central Europe: Constitution and competition across nations and epochs , Walter de Gruyter, 2013, ISBN 978-3-050-09343- 7 , pp. 372-376
13. ↑ History of the KER Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary (English)