György Kultsár
György Kultsár was a protestant preacher, writer of religious texts and a teacher who most probably came to Dolnja Lendava from Slovakia. In the first few years that he spent here (1573), he worked as a teacher and was later, up until his death in 1577, active as a preacher.
In the spirit of Protestantism, he wrote three books in Hungarian which he published with the help of his patron, Count Miklós Bánffy. All three of them were printed on the itinerant printing press of Rudolf Hoffhalter. His first compilation book, entitled “Az halálra valo keszöletröl rövid tanossag…” (in English: The Brief Moral of Preparing for Death), was published in 1573 and was the first book printed in the territory of modern-day Slovenia. The book deals with the transience of terrestrial life in comparison with the eternity of the afterlife. Kultsár´s second book, “Az ördögnec a penitencia tarto bünössel való vetekedéséröl: es az kétségbe essés ellen az reménségről való tanusság” (in English: On the Debate Between the Devil and the Penitent Sinner: as well as About the Moral of Hope Against Despair), arose in the spirit of Protestantism, too. His most famous work, however, is the Postilla, a book published in 1574 that contains elucidation of the Holy Scripture. This book ensured he would become the most widely known personality of Old Hungarian literature. Multiple reprints of the book indicate that the protestant clergy must have appreciated his work very much and that priests proudly used his teachings in their sermons.
The period that György Kultsár spent in Dolnja Lendava is also the main theme of the documentary “The Birth of the Book in Dolnja Lendava.”
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