Four hundred years ago, there was a little country tucked in among the high mountains of Hungary called Transylvania, or "The Land Through the Forest." The King of that land was John Sigismund. Crowned king when he was only 21 years old, he was already brave and thoughtful–and he needed to be, for he and his little country had some big troubles.

King John’s father died of an illness when King John was a baby, so he had to make his way without a father to guide him. As a boy, John was never very strong or healthy; he often felt dizzy and weak or had a stomach ache, but he did not give in to these feelings any more than he could help. He learned to play all the sports that other young men at his court enjoyed, such as sword fighting, horseback riding and deer bunting in the forest.

King John’s country was right next to two large, powerful countries that fought with each other a lot. King John worried because he did not want his little country to get into their quarrel. But even worse than that–King John’s own people often fought each other in "The Land Through the Forest." They fought because they belonged to four different kinds of churches. The churches were Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian. The people in each church said, "Our ideas about God, and Jesus, and what a church should be like, are the only true ideas." "Everyone," they thought, "should believe what our church tells them to believe." People only wanted to believe in the teachings of their own church.

Sometimes the people fought with words– arguing and saying bad things about each other, whether they were true or not. Other times, the church that had members in government fought by taking people’s jobs away, or people’s money. Often people were put in prison or even put to death. When times were at their worst, people even tried to kill King John himself, because they hoped a new king might make their church the one, true church. Actually, this kind of fighting about churches happened in a lot of countries in that part of the world. King John thought for a long time and then he made a decision. He called the best speaker from each church to come to a place called Torda for a debate instead of a fight. A debate is an argument with rules: each person takes a turn to speak about his or her ideas. There is no quarreling because only one person speaks at a time. A judge decides who has the best ideas. The debate began each day at five in the morning and it lasted 10 days.

The speaker from the Unitarian church was a man named Francis David. He argued that no one has the right to force people to believe anything about God.

After 10 days, King John ordered the debate to end. But he did not announce a winner; he did not say that any of the four churches was the best. This probably surprised many people. King John did listen to the argument of Francis David though, that no one should be forced to believe in any religion but should be able to choose for himself or herself. Then, King John made an important announcement that was called the Edict of Torda. The edict told the people that from that time on, his subjects could debate about their ideas of religion, but they must not fight, punish, or kill each other about religion. Every church and every person would be free to follow their own beliefs. This was a new and strange idea for those times, and many people were angry with King John for this law, but he stuck to it. Unitarians especially remember King John, because his law made it safe for them to be Unitarians.