"With gray paper by the color of wolf fur..." Tamás Balásfi’s School of Csepreg

Abstract

In 1616, Tamás Balásfi, a Catholic religious debater famous for his outspokenness, published his almost 500-page book in Pozsony under the title School of Csepreg. With this, he joins the faith dispute which centre, a few years earlier, was the small town Csepreg in Western Hungary. Although he draws his opponents from a wider circle: in addition to the Lutherans, he also speaks out against the views of the Calvinists and, in some places, the Arians. In his writing, he also refers to several works by Péter Pázmány, in some places he takes quotes from them verbatim, and he also reveals Pázmány's pseudonym, i.e. Miklós Szyl. Although Balásfi's work did not disappear completely during the centuries, because about twenty-five copies of it survived in various libraries, and it also had a reception, and a new edition was published (Eger, 1775), nevertheless, our thesis is the first detailed analysis of this unique work in many respects.