section_path: Wars of religion and tolerance/Edict of Torda
section_name: Edict of Torda
paragraph_text: Edict of Torda
  
  After King Louis's death at Mohács, two claimants John Zápolya (r. 1526–1540) and Ferdinand I of Habsburg (r. 1526–1564) competed for the Hungarian throne. They were Catholic but neither of them risked to alienate potential supporters by anti-Protestant purges. The Transylvanian Saxon leader Markus Pemfflinger (d. 1537) promoted Evangelical preaching in the Saxon metropolis Hermanstadt (Sibiu, Romania) from around 1530. Evangelical teaching spread among ethnic Hungarians, Slovaks, and Croats after Protestant aristocrats started to appoint Evangelical preachers to the churches under their patronage in the 1530s. After Zápolya's death, the Ottomans conquered central Hungary, his widow Isabella Jagiellon (d. 1559) assumed the regency for their infant son John Sigismund Zápolya (r. 1540–1571) in eastern Hungary under Ottoman suzerainty, and Ferdinand ruled Royal Hungary in the north and west. Often in need of funds, Ferdinand seized church revenues, while Isabella and her treasurer the Catholic bishop George Martinuzzi (d. 1551) secularised the estates of the Transylvanian bishopric. The Transylvanian Saxons adopted the Augsburg Confession in 1544; five years later, five free royal boroughs accepted an Evangelical confession in Royal Hungary.
  
  Two former Catholic priests Mátyás Dévai Bíró (d. 1547) and Mihály Sztárai (d. 1575) were among the first Hungarian pastors to teach Zwinglian Eucharistic theology. " Sacramentarianism " (the denial of Christ's presence in the Eucharist) and rebaptism were outlawed by the Diet in Royal Hungary in 1548. John Sigismund was open to religious innovations. Under the influence of his court chaplain Ferenc Dávid (d. 1579), he adhered to Reformed theology from 1562, and accepted antitrinitarian views during the last years of his life. The Edict of Torda legalised three Protestant denominations—Evangelical, Reformed and Unitarian —in eastern Hungary in 1568. Eastern Hungary transformed into the autonomous Principality of Transylvania under Ottoman suzerainty in 1570. The coexistence of four officially recognised churches—Catholicism and the three legalised Protestant denominations—remained a lasting feature of religious politics in Transylvania. The most radical antitrinitarians rejected the New Testament and held Saturday (or Sabbath) as weekly holiday; hence they were called Sabbatarians.