The study focuses on the analysis of some texts in two manuscript volumes of preachings written by the Jesuit Márton Káldi in the first half of the 17th century. One volume is kept in the University Library Budapest, the other one in the Batthyaneum Library Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia, Romania). The texts contain a series of reflections connected to the the tragical contemporary events in the country (Hungary and Transylvania) compared to its glorious historical past, and this woeful historical situation is being explained with the sins committed by the members of the nation, being thus interpreted as a judgement on the sinful community. The reflections concerning the history and the recent past of the nation are based on a parallel drawn with the fate of the Jewish nation as it is indicated in the Bible.

According to this parallel, the Hungarian nation is presented as God’s chosen people, which, just like the Jews, became ungrateful and errant; and their sins enumerated in this national self-critique are identified as heresy (i.e. the different branches of Protestantism, including wounds of denominational nature) and moral decay.