Freedom to Preach

In January 1568 the Diet of the Three Nations of Transylvania, meeting at Torda at the request of the Antitrinitarian preacher Ferenc Dávid, authorized local communities to elect their own preachers.

The edict of John Sigismund Zápolya's realm gave the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist churches, and the Unitarians around Dávid, room to preach side by side. It did not grant individuals freedom of conscience, but it was an unprecedented act of toleration in sixteenth-century Europe.