Thursday, October 15th, 2015 Two Hungarian Jesuits and the Qur'an: Understanding, Misunderstanding, and Polemic

Description

Two Hungarian Jesuits active in the early 17th century, Stephanus Arator (Szántó István) and Peter Pázmány, engaged with the text of the Qur’an, although neither was fluent in classical Arabic.

In Confutatio Alcorani (1619) Arator understands the Qur’an through Turkish speaking informants and utilizes Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán a translation and transliteration of portions of the Qur‘an prepared by Juan Andrés, an Iberian Muslim converted to Catholicism. Arator also draws on Georgius Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, who confuses the battle cry “God is great!” with a paean to the Moon goddess. Stories from the Hadiths (most notably that of Harut and Marut) are combined with sometimes garbled passages from the Qur’an itself to complete Arator’s polemical, anti-Qu’ranic text.

Pázmány, the most prominent Hungarian Jesuit of his day and later Primate of Hungary, in his Az Mostan Tamat Vy Tvdomaniok (1605) drew his Latin translations of the Qur’an from Theodore Bibliander’s Machumetis saracenorum principis, itself based on earlier translations. A noted Hungarian stylist, Pázmány employed the vernacular to warn Christian (and perhaps especially Unitarian) laypersons away from Islam, whereas Arator dedicated his work to Franz Cardinal Diedrichstein; his work, written in Latin, was more likely intended for clergy and perhaps especially Jesuits themselves.

This talk will address the following points: What is the role of Jesuit humanistic education, as set forth in the Ratio and imbibed by Pázmány et al., in shaping the attack on the Qur’an through its own texts? Arator spent two sojourns in Rome; might he have encountered Muslims while there? Finally, was Pázmány’s use of Calvin as a supplementary source an attempt to appeal to Hungarian Calvinists?

Paul Shore has held research and teaching posts at Saint Louis University, Harvard Divinity School, Trinity College Dublin, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the University of Wrocław, and in 2013 he was Alan Richardson Fellow in Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. Currently Shore is Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Regina. His books include The Eagle and the Cross: Jesuits in Baroque Prague, Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania, and Narratives of Adversity: Jesuits on the Eastern Periphery of the Habsburg Realms (1640-1773).