Péter Meliusz Juhász (1532-1572)

He studied in Wittenberg, after returning home he was imprisoned on the request of Miklós Oláh, the Archbishop of Esztergom. After he was freed he finished his prison diary. From 1558 he became the Calvinist priest of Debrecen. The stabilisation and implementation of the Helvetian reformation in Debrecen and the neighbouring regions was attributed to him. His church policy could be characterised with dogmatic firmness and relentlessness towards the believers of other churches. He fought against the Unitarian Ferenc Dávid. The majority of his writings were sermons, but he also wrote church songs. His New testament, which was lost, supposedly appeared in Syeged in 1567; though many people have doubts about this, as Syeged possessed the occupied part of the country, and book printing was prohibited in the Osman Empire. After his death, Gáspár Heltai's widow published his Herbarium, the first Hungarian botanical work (Kolozsvár, 1578).

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