The Protestant Reformation led to the Hungarian Bible translation—the Vizsoly Bible,
published in 1590—which is still the most widely used version of the Scripture in
Hungary. The linguistically and philologically astute work overshadows its predecessors,
the sometimes stumbling and rudimentary medieval translations, starting with the so-called
Hussite Bible, the pioneering and exciting Bibles of the Erasmian humanists, and the
early Protestant reformers. The success of the Vizsoly Bible nonetheless obscures
the long, difficult, and pitfall-laden path by which Hungarian language—which was
pushed out of school education until the modern era—by the end of the sixteenth century,
became suitable for the precise and artistic translation of the entire Bible. This
chapter traces this controversial process. The pioneering work of sixteenth-century
Bible translators—even though they primarily had religious aims—contributed to the
unique flourishing of Hungarian literary language and to the development of Renaissance
literature in Hungarian.
