On the 30th anniversary of the death of the Czech church historian of European significance Amedeo Molnár (1923 - 1990)
Abstract
An important Czech historian of the Protestant church, professor Amedeo Molnár (1923-1990) came from a Czech-Italian family. After the war, he joined the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and studied at the Hus Czechoslovak Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague, at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague as well as at the Protestant Faculty of Theology of the University of Strasbourg in France.
Between 1957 and 1961, he worked as the secretary of the editorial committee of the writings of Jan Hus (Opera Omnia) at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1962, he returned to the Comenius Faculty as a full professor.
From 1964, he was also a professor at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome. He worked at the Faculty of the Comenius University and in Rome until his death.
Perhaps Molnár's greatest contribution is the completely original periodization of the Reformation and its real definition. According to Molnár, Reformation does not mean Reformation in the 16th century, but also Reformation efforts between the 12th and the 16th centuries, which are based on the Scripture and following the law of Christ (Lex Christi).
He divides the Reformation into two waves - the so-called first Reformation starts with the Waldensians and culminates with the Hussite movement. The second wave - the so-called second Reformation is, according to his perception, the European Reformation in the 16th century.
To include individual phenomena in the Reformation movement, eschatology also played an important role for Molnár. Molnár published the world-famous monograph "The Waldensians - the European dimension of their defiance" (1973), which was published in a total of five language versions.
He was the editor of Hus's Latin writings, many of which he translated into Czech - among others Hus's main work "De Ecclesia".