Albert Molnár Szenci (Szenc, 1574 - Kolozsvár, 1634)

Poet, writer, literary translator. He was born in one of the agricultural towns of Szenc. The fact that he could participate in the preparation work of Gáspár Károlyi's Vizsoly Bible, was an experience which influenced his entire life. He visited all the main Protestant universities of Germany studying for example at the universities of Wittenberg and Heildelberg. He also travelled in Italy and the Netherlands. He had been to Rudolf II's Prague where he lived in the house of the astronomer Kepler. He wrote a book under the title of Diary which is a delicate self-reflection of the path of his life. In contrast to most of his compatriots he did not return home for a long time but lived and married abroad. His settling among German Protestant educated people was not free from difficulties. At the beginning of the Thirty Years War his home town of Heidelberg was occupied by Spanish mercenaries who cruelly tortured him. After he returned to Hungary he settled in Transdanubia where he became the court priest of Ferenc Batthyány. From 1625 he worked in Kassa and later in Kolozsvár with the support of Gábor Bethlen. He was acquainted with the Hungarian intellectual elite of the time (Rimay János, Bocatius János). His main works: Psalterium Ungaricum (Marburg, 1607-1611), Dictionarium Latinoungaricum (Nürnberg, 1604), Novae Garmmaticae, Prayer Booklet (Heidelberg, 1621), the translation of Calvin's Institutio (Kolozsvár, 1624), Of the Supreme Good (Kolozsvár, 1630).

ÁP-SzJú-UG