Transylvania: Going Back in Time and Meeting Unitarians

Before I begin the chronicle of our week in Transylvania, I have to say that Deane is very disappointed in me and the blog, because every day he offers me any number of corny puns to use, and I have yet to use even one. I am sorry for this, but I promise that if he ever comes up with one that works without requiring paragraphs of explanation, I will put it right in.

We began our week with a day devoted to driving the back roads north of Brasov, looking for Unitarian churches. We had a list of churches from the UU Partner Church Association and a Romanian atlas to get us started. We had seen many horse-drawn carts in the more rural areas on our way to Brasov, but when we turned off the main road to drive towards Belin, suddenly the horse carts outnumbered cars. I felt as though I had entered another century, maybe early 20th, maybe 19th. We found Belin, which had three churches without names or anything we could figure out to tell us which one was Unitarian. At the newest church, Deane asked a woman passing on the road where the Unitarian church was, but she answered in Romanian, or Hungarian -- whichever, we couldn’t understand a word. One of the churches was obviously very old, and surrounded by a wall, as churches in Transylvania often were centuries ago for protection from attacks by various invading forces. We poked around that church some more, and suddenly Deane found a sign on the wall that said, along with Hungarian and Romanian text, “Unitarian Church Office.” We were pretty surprised, but went through the gate. It looked like a private home, but there was an open door, and a man and boy inside, so Deane said, “Excuse me,” and the man answered, in perfect English, “Just a moment.” So we met Albert Kosmo, or Kosmo Albert as is the Hungarian convention, minister of the Unitarian Church in Belin.

He showed us around the church, and answered questions about theology, ritual and history. The Unitarian creed is a simple one: There is but one God, and Jesus is the prophet who best showed us how to live. The church is traditional and, other than theologically, conservative: Men and women enter through separate doors and sit separately; they take communion four times a year, in remembrance of Jesus, as he asked at the Last Supper; the preacher gives his sermons from a high pulpit. Watch out, UUCGF -- Deane liked the view from on high. Just kidding!

The Unitarian Church in Romania is Hungarian, and runs its own schools where children are taught in Hungarian. Transylvania was once part of Hungary, and the language and culture are strongly rooted in the region. In the sanctuary, I noticed the hand embroidered cloths on the table and the pulpit, and embroidered covers on each and every hymnal. The embroidery had Hungarian roots as well.

We visited with Albert for two hours, meeting his family and having tea, but then it was time to move on. We drove in a big loop through villages, and having learned to look for a three dimensional star on the steeple, we could see that almost every village in the area had a Unitarian church. Most were not open, but two special ones were. The first was in Ocland, and we found it because a sign said that there was a “Monument,” which turned out to be the Unitarian Church, special because of the wooden painted panels on the ceilings and walls. The Hungarian Unitarian symbol was there as well -- a serpent with its tail in its mouth forming a circle around a white dove from Jesus’ charge to his disciples to be as “wise as the serpent and as gentle as the dove.”

The village next to Ocland, with a long name I won’t attempt here, was having the steeple repaired, so the gate through the wall surrounding it was open. We poked our head in, and saw a man sleeping in the grass. We hemmed and hawed, not wanting to startle him, until he woke up. His gestures said that it was okay to visit the church, so we went in, while he went to fetch someone who spoke English. That someone turned out to be the minister, who came with his daughter and explained that the frescos in the church dated back to the 1400s, and were just now being uncovered, having been plastered over when the church changed from Catholic to Unitarian. The frescoes were quite violent, and apparently depicted the triumph of some local ruler, complete with halo, over invaders from the East -- “Russians,” the old man said. The church is now a UN World Heritage site, looking for funds to continue restoring the frescos.

It was an eventful day, and we drove back to Brasov amazed at how strong the roots of Unitarianism in Transylvania are.

On Tuesday, we left Brasov, and drove by way of Bran Castle, which has come to be associated with Vlad Tepes, also know as Vlad Dracula, although no one really knows if he ever even was there. I suppose on a dark and stormy night the castle might feel a bit spooky, but on a sunny spring day, it was just lovely.

We also stopped in Sighisoara, where there is a well-preserved medieval city on the hill. We walked up to the large church at one end of the city, coming through the graveyard, where we noted that there were no crosses on the graves, and the names were all German. We asked the person collecting fees to visit the church, and he told us that there were no crosses because the church was Evangelical Lutheran, so they rejected the symbolism of the Catholic church, and that the names were German because they were Saxons from Germany who came to Transylvania sometime in the 1500s as craftspeople. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the church, but I can describe the symbol I found most affecting. It was the heart of God, held between two hands emerging from a cloud, with flowers growing out of the top of the heart.

There was also a movie shoot going on in Sighisoara, with about 50 men dressed in Medieval peasant clothes and carrying pitchforks, scythes and other farmer’s weapons. We heard them charging around the city, shouting menacingly in deep voices, every now and then. As we were leaving, they were charging right towards us down the street, and we could see they were led by someone with a rainbow flag. “It’s a medieval Gay Pride parade!” Deane exclaimed.

We drove on to Targu-Mures, where we stayed for two nights. On Wednesday, we took a trip down to Alba Iulia, to see the church where John Sigismund was buried. He was the Romanian king who was so persuaded by Frances David that he converted to Unitarianism himself, and issued the Edict of Turda in 1568, stating that all major religions were to be considered equal. The church where he is buried is Catholic, so there was no mention of the Edict or his Unitarianism.

On the way back, I was navigating using the Romanian atlas I mentioned earlier, which meant that I was putting together the route over four or five different pages, some with twenty pages of maps in between them. Anyway, we were motoring along (as much as you can on Romanian roads, which, if I can generalize, are bad), and I was following on the map, but when I turned the twenty pages thinking we were almost at our destination, I realized that I had actually sent us about 100 kilometers out of our way. So we got to see a whole different part of Transylvania, where the horse carts became ox carts, and people were plowing the fields with oxen, and if you took away the power lines and occasional satellite dish, you really would not know the century.

We made it back safely though, if a little weary, and on Thursday, as we were leaving Targu-Mures, we thought we should see the new Unitarian church right in town. We found the street, and there was the church up on a hill. It looked beautiful from the outside, and when we walked up to it, the door was open. So we poked our head in and were greeted by the secretary, who spoke English, having lived in Berkeley for a year while her husband, a Unitarian minister, did a year at Starr King School. He died unexpectedly four years ago, and she is raising their three children alone. She showed us around the church, and then the minister came. He was young and softspoken, and told us that their partner church (because apparently all the churches have one) is Schenectedy. Talk about a small world! Here’s a picture of everyone -- forgive me for not having the names!

From Targu-Murres, we made a brief stop in Turda, where we found the Unitarian church, but it was closed. We did not find the Catholic church where the Edict of Toleration was signed, so on we went to Clug-Napoca, where there were two significant churches. The first is St. Michael’s Church, Catholic again now, where in the 1500s Frances David forcefully argued for the Unitarian faith in an open debate. The second was the Unitarian church where the rock from which David spoke so persuasively that the entire town converted is housed, which we found along with the seminary associated with it, but again, everything was closed. A picture of the St. Michael’s church pulpit is below.

We spent the night in Cluj, then had a long day of driving to Budapest. When we arrived, we paid for the hotel, which was 17,000 florins. Obviously this is not a unit of money that is worth a lot! We walked the neighborhood around our hotel, took thousands of florins out of an ATM, and found a good restaurant nearby. I had a potato pancake stuffed with chicken and dill sauce that was very tasty and very filling.

Saturday was a “free day” in Budapest, in that we had no particular agenda other than to try to find the Unitarian church there. First, though, we crossed the Danube River from Pest to Buda, and took the funicular up to the medieval city. Budapest had seemed kind of dead until we got there, but when we got off the funicular we found ourselves in tour bus central. So we joined the crowds and walked the cobblestone streets. We visited St. Michael’s Church, which was interesting inside and out.

Walking back across the river, we eventually found the Unitarian Church, which was, of course, closed. Still, Deane was glad to see it, and I wondered what the other Unitarian offices were in the large building the church was part of.

Back at the hotel, we spent our last few thousand florins on dinner. Sunday morning, we drove the back roads to Bratislava, Slovakia. From our hotel, we walked towards the old city, to see the “Little Blue Church.” Built in honor of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, born in Bratislava in 1207, the church was designed in Art Nouveau style, and is painted in shades of blue. It’s lovely, but we could not go inside. However, although it was closed, the doors were open, so we could peer through the iron grille and just make out a statue of St. Elizabeth with a basket of roses.

From the church, we walked into the old city, where we had traditional Slovakian dishes with unpronounceable names probably translating as “heavy and cheesy.” The walk back to the hotel helped to settle our stomachs somewhat, but I’m not sure we could thrive on this cuisine over the long term!