Fornication and adultery in the city of Debrecen (1547–1625) compared with the morality of Geneva

Abstract

To be sure, the more productive field of the international research on Protestantism is related to the subject of social history. In the case of the Calvin studies, for instance, readers will see, much has been written about the operation of the Genevan civil-church administration, consistorial discipline, sexual sins and family-marital life. Their authors' outstanding effort was to consult with the original manuscripts of the Genevan Archives. However, the early generations of Protestant preachers, not only in the western but also in central-eastern Europe, were trying to commit everything to renew the public morality of people. The illumination of the Hungarian pastors' views on the new spiritual and religious dimensions of family life is a neglected part of the research. Consequently, it would be interesting to scrutinise, for instance, the public morality related to the sexual crimes of local townsfolk of the city of Debrecen, which apparently was the centre of the Hungarian Reformation since 1562-1563. Doing so, the present research deals with the operation of the law court, the number of cases, the crimes and motives represented in the Registers of the Magistracy of Debrecen during the period of 1547-1625. Figures and statistics presented by this article point out how important was the practice of forgiveness in the religious life in Debrecen. It is taken for granted that the main results of the study permit to take a brief comparison of the sexual morality of the two Calvinist towns, namely Debrecen and Geneva. INTRADISCIPLINARY AND/OR INTERDISCIPLINARY IMPLICATIONS : This article is based on the field of systematic theology. The study offers an attempt to understand sexual sins or crimes in the 16th and 17th-century theological, judicial and historical context.