Church registries (in the former Kingdom of Hungary)
Church registries (in the former Kingdom of Hungary)
Church Registers were public documents in the period before the Law on State Registers came into force on Hungarian territory on December 18, 1894.
These Registers refer to the records of births/christenings, marriages, and deaths/burials recorded by churches (also First Communions, Confirmations and conversions). At the Peace of Linz in 1645, Hungary successfully forced the ruling Habsburgs to recognize four religions: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism.
Roman Catholic: Roman Catholic parishes were first required to keep church registers in 1563 by order of the Council of Trent. Unfortunately most of Hungary was under Turkish rule at that time and was unable to comply. Only a few Franciscan registers exist from the Turkish period and these start in the 1660s. Most Catholic records begin shortly after the Turks were forced to leave in 1686.
Greek Catholic: In three separate agreements, made during the 1600s, Orthodox ethnic groups (Ukrainian Ruthenes, Romanians, and Serbs) agreed to accept the jurisdiction of the pope while retaining Orthodox liturgy and ritual in order to gain legal status and its accompanying freedoms and benefits. The resulting Uniate churches were called Greek Catholic. Most Greek Catholic parishes began keeping registers in the mid 1700s.
Reformed: Calvinist Protestantism became the dominant religion of Hungarians in the late 1500s. Many Hungarians remained faithful to this religion despite the Counter Reformation efforts by the Habsburgs which began in 1604 and continued into the late 1700s, aiming to reassert Roman Catholicism in Hungary. The keeping of Reformed church registers began in the early 1700s after the Turks were replaced by the Christian Austrian government.
Lutheran: Lutheranism was accepted by many Germans in Hungary at about the same time Calvinism was adopted by the Hungarians. Their church registers begin in the early 1700s with the departure of the Turks.
Unitarian: Unitarianism (anti-trinitarianism) was introduced to Transylvania in the mid 16th century. Unitarians were considered heretics in many other lands but were legally recognized by Hungary after 1609. Unitarianism is identified with the Hungarian minority in Transylvania.
In 1730, Hungarian Catholic priests were ordered to record non-Catholics in their church register books. A new format for the records was introduced in 1771. In 1781 the Emperor Joseph II issued the Toleration Patent which recognized Protestantism and Judaism throughout the empire. After 1784 the Emperor Joseph II declared church registers to be official state records. Protestants were officially required to maintain registers under Catholic supervision. Imperial law also required that the church registers record births, deaths and marriages separately for each village in the parish. In Hungary, Protestants were authorized in 1787 to keep their registers independent of Catholic control.
Source: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Hungary_Church_Records
Data in church registries
Although church registries (from before 1895) are valuable sources when researching family origins, migratory flows, natural increase, mortality or population health in general, one needs to have in mind that they are not always credible.
Causes of death
The data listed in the death registers should be approached with caution, because often there are: a) nicknames instead of baptized names of persons; b) assumptions of the cause of death due to lack of professional staff; c) only symptoms and not the diagnosis of the disease, so in the case of general symptoms the real causes can be very diverse; d) inconsistent names of diseases, when the same diseases are named with different names; e) archaic names of diseases that are no longer used in modern medical terminology; etc.
A trilingual tabular overview of the diseases in the church registers of those who died until 1895
