In beginning the present enquiry with this latter
group, one must first cite a report by Bishop Mánuel
Mihály Olsavszky from 1759.27 Bishop Olsavszky
compiled the report upon instructions from the
Congregation Propaganda Fide in Rome, actually on the basis of a highly detailed questionnaire
(consisting of as many as seventy items), dispatched
by the Dicastery. Question 67 concerned changes
in the situation of the flock entrusted to the Hierarch’s care over the preceding twenty years: Had it
improved or had it deteriorated instead? Bishop
Olsavszky started his self-confident response by
pointing out that, in the previous two decades, development among the Greek Catholics had been so
substantial that if his predecessors in the episcopacy
were to come to life again, they would not have
recognised their Church. As the engine of development, he identified the Mukachevo school founded
by him, where the clergy received thorough training and education. The related results were visible
in the life of the clergy, with a positive effect on
27 The report was published by: Lacko, 1959, 72–82. Cited in: Patacsi, 1962, 285–286.
28 Kónya, 2015.
the morals and religious practice of the faithful as
well. Therefore – as Olsavszky wrote – more and
more Lutherans, Calvinists and even Jews converted
to the Greek Catholic religion. He also saw it as
an unmistakable sign of development that stone
churches were built in so many villages to replace
the old wooden churches. This change was obviously justified by the growing size of congregations.
This section of Bishop Olsavszky’s report is of
particular relevance to the present investigation.
Increase in the size of the Greek Catholic community was a common phenomenon in the period
under analysis thanks to natural population growth
and continuous waves of settlement. This was compounded by the processes described by Bishop Olsavszky, i.e. Lutherans, Calvinists and Jews joining
the Greek Catholic Church. Although the Bishop
does not name ethnic groups himself, it is clear that
Lutherans and Calvinists are to be understood as
Slovaks and Hungarians.
The conversion of Hungarian Calvinists to the
Greek Catholic faith has recently been investigated
by Péter Kónya.28 In his study, he examined the
demographic, ethnic and confessional characteristics of nearly half a hundred settlements in the
South-Zemplén Region by analysing the data content of various 18th-century censuses. As, owing to
the battles of the Ottoman period, the struggles
of Rákóczi’s War of Independence, as well as the
ensuing epidemics, the region sustained considerable losses of human lives, it became a target area
for north-south migration. Concerning relations
between the resettled Greek Catholic Rusyn population and the local Calvinist Hungarian community – having processed the relevant data – Péter
Kónya concludes that Greek Catholics actively
participated in the re-Catholicising processes of
the region. As a consequence, numerous Calvinist
Hungarian families became Greek Catholic as part
of the waves of re-Catholicisation beginning from
the 1670s, as well as gathering new momentum
after Rákóczi’s War of Independence. He notes that
this phenomenon was well known even prior to the
creation of the Greek Catholic Church as contem-porary sources testify that Calvinists converting to
the Orthodox faith – due to marriage or conflicts
within congregations – was no rare occurrence. In
his final conclusion, he emphasises that, after his
investigations, the position that the ancestors of
Hungarian Greek Catholics were exclusively Magyarised Rusyns – a view that used to be prevalent in
relation to this region as well – is no longer tenable.2
https://szentatanaz.synergyfox.app/public/4/studia/onallo_kotetek/ca_i_15_angol_kozos_nyomda_low.pdf
