Cserei hallgat…

Abstract

This paper as a case study is an attempt at revealing some of the previously ignored, but relevant contexts related to the phenomena of reading, listening to, or assimilating early modern sermons. Due to the survival of numerous ego-documents accounting for the everyday life of an early modern individual, Mihály Cserei (1667–1756), my interperation provides a microhistorical reconstruction of those moments when Cserei was either listening to or reading Catholic and Protestant sermons. As he put down his reflections recording the hermeneutical experience of listening to or reading early modern Hungarian or Latin sermons, there is a possibility to decipher the cultural, confessional, and mental intentions, biases or prejudices shaping the act of understanding. Thus, Cserei became a modelreader immortalized in the microhistorical contexts of his life, revealing some of the unknown historical anthropological features of reading and understanding in the confessionally divided culture of the early modern era.